Revolutionary socialist & anti-imperialist; Rebel Breeze publishes material within this spectrum and may or may not agree with all or part of any particular contribution. Writing English, Irish and Spanish, about politics, culture, nature.
The coca zones of Colombia are in crisis. The cash crop par excellence, i.e. coca is going through an unprecedented crisis, or so we are told.
The main promotors of the idea that the coca is in crisis because fentanyl has displaced it and sooner or later it will finish off the coca were from the government. Amongst those promoting this stupidity are Colombian state functionaries from the NGOs, social organisations and of course high-ranking members of the Historic Pact. The very president of the country, Gustavo Petro stated in August that
The cocaine market in the USA has collapsed and has been replaced by an even worse one: fentanyl that kills 100,000 per year. Cocaine used to kill 4,000 due to the poisonous mixtures from the market clandestine.(1)
It is simply the case that nothing that Petro said at the time was true. Whereas Clinton exaggerated the deaths due to cocaine consumption in order to justify Plan Colombia, Petro sought to minimise them. First of all, we should be clear that fentanyl did not displace cocaine, but rather another opioid, heroin. And the most notorious aspect of fentanyl is not the increase in consumption, but rather that due to its toxicity, a dramatic increase in overdoses. Petro’s government makes statements on the drugs issue without even understanding basic concepts.
The overdue publication of its drug policy allows us to analyse properly what it aims to do, as up till now we have had to put up with a year of contradictory speeches, tweets that don’t say much and complete incoherence in the matter, without even mentioning his stated aim of handing over the Colombian Amazon region to the US military, something that not even Pastrana openly proposed when he announced Bill Clinton’s Plan Colombia.
In a US study published in May of this year, the researchers found that the deaths from fentanyl tripled between 2016 and 2021, increasing from 5.7 per 100,000 inhabitants to 21.6 in 2021. The deaths from cocaine overdoses increased in the same period from 3.5 to 7.9. At the same time there was a 40% decrease in heroin related overdoses, falling from 4.9 in 2016 to 2.9 in 2021.(2) The study just confirmed the analysis of previous research published in December 2022 that looked at increases in mortality since 2001.(3)
Fentanyl is a new problem for the USA, but neither the increase in its consumption nor deaths tell us anything about the future of coca as Petro and Roy Barreras claimed. Quite the opposite. According to the UN, coca crops reached the figure of 230,000 hectares in 2022.(4) Of course, Petro is not to blame for that, he only took over the presidency in August 2022, but it belies his statements that coca is a thing of the past due to the economic crisis in the coca regions of the country.
So, what can be said of Petro’s new drug policy? Well, the first thing is that there is at last a policy outlined in a public document. They took their time in doing it but better later than never. The document proposes with a certain amount of hyperbole Oxygen for the communities affected, through support from licit economies, environmental measures and treating the matter of consumption as a public health issue. It also proposes Asphyxiation for drug trafficking organisations. Furthermore, it proposes being the voice and leadership of “an international diplomatic strategy to change the paradigm in how the drugs phenomenon is dealt with.”(5)
The document kicks off with a correct analysis that contradicts the public declarations made by Petro and other high ranking government functionaries, a few weeks prior to its publication. It is inexplicable how the president can boast about the collapse of coca at a point when it is almost certain his drugs policy was at the printers. It must be due to mediocre functionaries, as this government has continued with the policy of Duque and the previous governments of hiring mediocre friends. But in any case, the document gets somethings right, at last.
For decades, Colombia has made an enormous investment in human and economic terms in fighting drug trafficking. Although there are no official figures on the outlay in fighting drugs, but the Drugs Observatory of Colombia calculates an annual average expenditure of 3.8 trillion pesos [885.2 million euros] ascending to an approximate investment in the last twenty years of 76 trillion pesos [17.7 billion euros]. Whilst some results have been achieved along the way, it is true that the two main goals have not been reached: reduction in the supply and demand for illicit drugs.
Even though 843,905 hectares of coca were forcibly eradicated between 2012 and 2022, the planted area in this period increased by 327%. In 2022, Colombia had 230,000 hectares of coca with a productive potential of 1,738 tonnes of cocaine. As for demand for psychoactive substances, between 1996 and 2019 an increase of 5.1% to 8.7% in the consumption of all illicit substances (marijuana, cocaine, base, extasy or heroin) was observed.(6)
The document then goes on to acknowledge that the collapse in cocaine consumption is not real but rather on the contrary there has been an increase. It states that one of the first hypotheses was a global fall in demand for cocaine.(7) They are trying to save their own skin. There was no data to sustain the supposed hypotheses: none. It was dreamed up by mediocres and no one else made the claim. The document goes on to say “However, according to the lastest Global Cocaine Report from the UNODC (2023), demand has risen.(8) At least we are having a debate about the reality of poorly written studies from the children of the lovers of their friends who they hired.
So, what do they propose? It would seem that they propose a shift in the punitive model without abandoning it completely. They accept that the fumigations have not worked and that the periods of greatest fumigation do not match those of a lesser supply of the drug.(9) But the punitive element continues to be an integral part of the policy, the supposed shift is a mirage.
The evidence has shown that a security strategy on its own is not enough [the emphasis is mine] but rather it must go hand in hand with actions to prevent crime and deal with the underlying causes.(10)
The document takes a look over the international treaties in the area, softening the real demands of the Single Convention of 1961 stating that it doesn’t prohibit anything but rather submits the plants and the drugs produced to a strict control. There is not enough space here to go into detail on that debate. But once again what the government is saying is not really the case. The Single Convention does actually allow for some coca crops for medical and industrial purposes, mainly in Peru and also opium in India. But it is not the case that Colombia has misinterpreted those treaties. And this is a major issue, as any change in the paradigm is dependent on changes in those treaties or better still their complete derogation and the drawing up of new treaties under a new paradigm.
Whilst it is true that a country can allow coca crops for licit purposes, that is done with the permission of the UN control bodies, i.e. the USA. Even traditional consumption of the coca leaf is frowned upon in the Convention. Article 26.2 states that.
The Parties shall so far as possible enforce the uprooting of all coca bushes which grow wild. [emphasis is mine] They shall destroy the coca bushes if illegally cultivated.
Although Article 49 permits chewing of coca leaf in countries where it was already legal on the 1st of January 1961 (subparagraph 2a), it does so on the condition of banning it and eradicating it once and for all by 1986 (subparagraph 2e), something which was not achieved. Whether they like it or not, this treaty has not been misinterpreted and the whole UN framework i.e. US policy in the area is the problem and not a misinterpretation of previous governments. The supposed freedom to grow and licit use of coca that Petro imagines is not real.
Some states in the US legalised the production and recreational consumption of marijuana and clashed with the federal banking system that was not willing to receive funds from the industry, forcing many producers to resort to mechanisms more suited to money laundering in illicit industries. Something similar happened in Uruguay. The country regularised the recreational production and authorised and regulated the state control of it. However, not even the Bank of the Republic of Uruguay was willing to receive money from a lawful activity in the country due to a fear of reprisals from the USA.
It would seem that the architects of the law did not foresee the problem that would arise in the banking industry, owner and lord of the commercial and financial transactions in Uruguay. Were the Uruguayan legislators aware that it was not just a matter of convincing the international system of prohibition to reclassify cannabis as a substance in the drugs conventions but that they also had to convince the banking system to accept money from cannabis transactions? Everything seems to indicate that the directives the banks implement are those that are simply related to the formality of Cannabis being a prohibited substance and the fact that the money from the cannabis market is legal, illegal, black or white has no bearing on decisions.(11)
Uruguay found itself at the mercy of the repressive whims of the US government and in practice was not autonomous nor sovereign. Any drugs policy should take as its starting point that Colombia is not sovereign in the matter and it faces a massive enemy when it comes to solving the problem: the USA. It is not a matter of a restrictive interpretation by Colombian governments, but rather the reality of imperialist domination. This was the case with Uruguay.
… according to the Uruguayan government implementing a national law [on drugs] depends on the modification of a foreign law. Note that at no stage is a modification of international drug treaties that Uruguay has ratified mentioned, but rather a federal law that internally classifies cannabis in the USA.(12)
The government has no proposals in the matter and its proposals for the peasants are remoulds of the previous policies with a slightly modified language. They no longer talk of crop substitution but rather licit alternatives or economies. And the licit alternatives for the countryside are the usual ones, exportable monocultures.
And the iron hand continues for the peasantry. They have talked a lot about distinguishing between large and small-scale coca producers, increasing the definition of small-scale producer as one that has up to 10 hectares. But the iron hand continues. They have said that they will not use forcible eradication but…
Forcible eradication will be applied to crops that: (i) do not fall into the category of “small-scale grower”, (ii) increase in area, (iii) planted after the publication of this policy (regardless of size), (iv) have infrastructure for the production of base and cocaine hydrochloride, (v) do not fulfil their commitments to substitution and other mechanisms on the path to licit economies.(13)
Many peasants have some infrastructure to produce base, an infrastructure that is not all that complicated. So, I don’t know who these peasants who will not be subjected to forcible eradication are. It is not all that different from the policies of Uribe and Pastrana and borrows policies from Plan Colombia, the Exporting Stake of Uribe and the directives of the former Social Action and of course the Peace Laboratories of the European Union and the nefarious apologist for the economic policies of Uribe and also in passing the World Bank, the priest Francisco de Roux: the so-called Productive Alliances.
Productive agreements between the public sector, private sector and grassroot economies
These consist of a tripartite collaboration between the state and the private sector as drivers of the productive reconversion, through actions such as capitalist investment, transfer of know-how and insertion into local, national and international markets. To that end the “Productive agreements for life and hope” will be implemented, in which the state will offer benefits to the businesses that commercially associate themselves with the communities. The Ministry of Industry, Commerce and Tourism will facilitate and strengthen these type of alliances.(14)
Not that long ago in 2017, various current senators and representatives of what is now called the Historic Pact publicly denounced a proposal from Santos on the countryside. They stated:
… limits [the communities] chances of defining the productive and economic model that would allow the building of peace with social justice, by tying it to technical criteria… that give priority to the establishment of alliances and chains of production between small and large producers and the efficient use of rural land, technological innovation, technical aid, credit, irrigation and commercialisation that favour an entrepreneurial large-scale agro-industrial production.(15)
So, what about now? Ah of course, the proposal is yours, and it doesn’t matter whether it is the same proposal or not, but rather who makes it. And if the peasants do not agree with the economic model being imposed, what will happen to them? Well, “a differential treatment will be promoted that will be transitory and conditioned on their signing up to processes on a path to licit economies”.(16) In other words, they are going to jail.
As for money laundering, there is nothing new. The government is obliged by various international treaties to fight against money laundering. But the language used is telling.
This last point [laundering] is based on identifying high value financial targets, understood to be persons or legal entities, goods, assets or bodies that due to their nature, volume or characteristics may be exploited by criminal groups (emphasis is mine) to hide or channel illicit funds and thus launder money from criminal activities.(17)
HBSC Tower, Mexico (Photo source: Wikipedia)
As with other governments, including the USA, the banks are seen as another victim. More so than the peasants, exploited by criminal groups when in reality they themselves are criminal enterprises. The massive laundering of assets that HSBC carried out in Mexico cannot be understood in any other light. There are no measures taken to jail the banks’ directors, cancel their banking licence, freeze their assets, fine them to the point of leaving them naked in the street. No. The asphyxiation the government talks about is like the law, to be applied to some but not to others. They are more concerned about illegal mining in coca zones than the laundering of assets only yards from the Presidential Palace.
The document is very similar to previous policies with some small changes, a slightly distinct language and “new” proposals that are not new. Perhaps we could say that it indicates some goodwill in some aspects, but nothing more. Petro can’t fight for a new paradigm without changing the current one.
Proposing a revision of the international legal framework does not imply a conflict between prohibition or total freedom in the market for psychoactive substances. On the contrary, it means coming up with intermediate solutions such as alternatives to prison, harm reduction strategies and the responsible regulation adult use substances such as cannabis. The progress, failure and lessons learnt from international cooperation on drugs represent an opportunity for the international community to evidence based innovative strategies and policies.(18)
Harm reduction is policy in most of the world, including some parts of the USA. Alternatives to prison also, though in practice it is not always the case in all countries. What is put forward is the current state of play, not a big struggle to change the paradigm. It is a disappointing document, more so than previous policies, as this one tries to play with the language to stupefy, fool and lie to us. In the end, it is another lost opportunity. If you want to see something innovative in drug policy, you would be better off taking a drug, preferably a magic mushroom.
(2) Spencer, M.R. et al. (2023) Estimates of drug overdose deaths involving fentanyl, methamphetamine, cocaine, heroin, and oxycodone: United States, 2021. Vital Statistics Rapid Release; no 27. Hyattsville, MD: National Center for Health Statistics. May 2023. DOI: https://dx.doi.org/ 10.15620/cdc:125504. P.3
(3) Spencer MR, Miniño AM, Warner M. Drug overdose deaths in the United States, 2001–2021. NCHS Data Brief, no 457. Hyattsville, MD: National Center for Health Statistics. 2022. DOI: https://dx.doi. org/10.15620/cdc:122556.
Currently the Garda Representative Association is in a public struggle with the body’s most senior officer and nearly 99% in a high-participation poll of GRA members voted as having no confidence in Drew Harris, the Commissioner.1
The real issue for the GRA (Garda Representative Association) is that they enjoyed the rosters adopted by the Garda Síochána during the Covid pandemic and don’t want to abandon them. Of course not. Four days off after four days on shift must be nice and would we all had that.
But for that, the Gardaí would be required to work 12-hour shifts on their four days on and they are not complaining about that all – they are clamouring to do it. The workers’ movement fought hard for the 8-hours day and in in 1886 Anarchists in Chicago were martyred in that struggle.2
Not so long ago in the West, 12-hours was a usual shift for a worker thoughfor six days (“seventy hours was his weekly chore”).3 There is a well-known close association of fatigue with harmful incidents (as remarked upon by James Connolly)4 — and also with shoddy work.
Most Gardaí working 12-hour shifts will adapt themselves to the long hours by taking care to stretch themselves as little as possible but always being available for short energetic work, i.e evictions, intimidating industrial pickets, batoning protest marches and conducting raids.5
Justice Minister Helen McEntee says that she will not interfere in the dispute though at the same time expressed support for Harris and mildly criticised the threatened strike action by the GRA. Naturally the ruling class does not want to alienate their first line of physical defence.
But Sinn Fein TD Pearse Doherty last Thursday attacked the Government and Fine Gael in particular over what he called a “hands off” approach to the dispute by the Justice Minister. According to SF the Gardaí are a service valued and needed by communities.
This benevolent SF attitude to the Gardaí even extends to “specialist groups”.
Doherty and his party leaders now choose to forget that Irish Republicans, including thousands of their own supporters when it was a Republican party, have been spied upon, harassed, threatened, raided, beaten up, framed and perjured against in order to see them jailed.
Sinn Féin’s attitude to the Gardaí is a clear illustration of its change from revolutionary opposition to accommodation with the Gombeen capitalist system — and when in government they will use the Gardaí against any resistance to the system as currently they are using the PSNI.
GARDAI – A LONG REACTIONARY HISTORY
The Gardaí, as the first line of physical defence of the Irish Gombeen class has a long anti-working class, anti-Republican and anti-Left history. The intelligence branch CID worked with the National (sic) Army in identifying Republicans to kidnap, torture and murder.6
ANTI-REPUBLICAN
After the defeat of the Irish Republican Movement by the State forces armed and equipped by British imperialism, the Irish neo-colonial state used the Gardaí to harass Republicans.
Eoin O’Duffy, the second Garda Commissioner (1922-1933) of the Irish State, hounded Irish Republicans and socialists during the Civil War and after, one of the causes of political emigration from Ireland and in 1932 (still in his post) founded the Irish fascist Blueshirt organisation.7
Eoin O’Duffy reviewing his fascist “Blueshirts” in the 1930s – he founded them while still the second Garda Commissioner of the Irish State (1922-1933). (Photo sourced: Internet)
O’Duffy and his Blueshirts attempted to prepare a coup against the De Valera government of Fianna Fáil and after partial suppression by the government, went on to combine with another two reactionary political organisations to form the Fine Gael Party in 1933.8
Ned Broy, appointed third Garda Commissioner (1933-1938) created the Special Branch9 (nicknamed “Broy’s Harriers”10 after a Bray dog hunting pack) to repress the fascist movement. However, he filled the unit with ex-military who had been anti-Republican during the Civil War.
Subsequently, “Broy’s Harriers” also carried out repression against the Republican movement opposed to De Valera and Fianna Fáil.
In the long line of Garda Commissioners that followed, all have presided over repression of the Irish Republican and Left movements, as well as against Travellers and LGBT11 people and even in persecution of people providing contraception prevention.
Some Commissioners have resigned or retired in controversy: Patrick McLaughlin (1978-1983), retired in the wire-tapping scandal and Patrick Callinan (2010-2014`), over the phone-tapping GSOC and penalty points corruption scandal.
Noirin O’Sullivan (2014-’17) during the breath-testing corruption and persecution of Garda whistleblower controversy, resigned the post and disturbingly, walked into a job as Director of Strategic Partnerships for Europe at the International Association of Chiefs of Police.
Then Garda Commissioner Martin Callinan speaks privately to then Deputy Commissioner Noirin O’Sullivan; she succeed him when he resigned in controversy, herself resigning in a separate controversy not long afterwards (Photo cred: Eamonn Farrell in The Journal)
Republican prisoner solidarity pickets are frequently harassed and subject to attempted intimidation and individual activists are followed, stopped and questioned etc.
The no-jury political Special Criminal Court regularly jails Republicans on charges of “membership of an illegal organisation”, sending people to jail largely on the word of a Garda officer at the rank of Superintendent and above, who never reveal their alleged sources.
In 1976, the Irish State tried to smash the Irish Republican Socialist Party by pinning the Sallins Mail Train Robbery on them, though they knew the robbery wasn’t theirs. Forty homes were raided and false confessions beaten out of victims by the special Garda “Heavy Gang” unit.12
Three innocent activists were sentenced to 12 years in jail as a result and some of the special unit went on to frame others with false confessions also, including Joanna Hayes and family in the “Kerry Babies” case, as outlined in the Crimes and Confessions RTÉ series.
The last time the Gardai took unofficial industrial action by phoning in ‘sick’ was during the “blue flu” of 1998, when however their Special Branch remained very active indeed.
Foiling an attempted robbery by a Real IRA unit, the Special Branch Gardaí shot and killed Volunteer Ronan McLoughlin in the back while he was driving away from them. Despite the victim posing no threat to anyone when he was killed, the Gardaí were judged ‘innocent’.13
ANTI-PROGRESSIVE, ANTI-WORKING CLASS
The long-overdue second inquest into the fatalities of the 1981 Stardust Fire is underway as this piece is being written and in 1983, Garda Special Branch raided the launch of Christy Moore’s vinyl LP An Ordinary Man to seize the record after Stardust owners objected to a song in it.14
Over the years of the State the Gardaí have attacked protests and demonstrations, including with particular infamy those of the 1981 Hunger Strikes solidarity march15 and Regain the Streets in 200216 in Dublin and the Corrib Pipeline protests17 against British Petroleum in Mayo.
Gardaí also harassed and assaulted some of the since-famous Dunne’s Stores anti-apartheid strikers and again the more recent Debenhams sacked workers’ pickets.18
Video online of Gardaí using Covid restrictions to harass picketing sacked Debenhams workers. Later they used violence to remove picketers so Debenhams, defaulting on redundancy payments owed to workers, could remove stock from their closed stores.
The Gardaí have on numerous occasions displayed their tolerance of fascists, even to the extent of tolerating abuse from them and flagrant violation of Covid19 regulations.19 Conversely Gardaí have threatened and attacked antifascist counter demonstrators on many occasions.
In February 2016 a mass mobilisation of anti-fascists and anti-racists prevented the fascist islamophobic organisation Pegida from launching itself in Dublin. Gardaí attacked the antifascists and batoned an RTÉ cameraman in the face.
Gardaí threatening antifascists after the latter had been attacked by armed fascists on Custom House Quay and Gardaí had then attacked the antifascists, pushing and shoving them on to Butt Bridge. (Photo: Rebel Breeze)
On a number of occasions outside the GPO, Gardaí witnessed fascist assaults on opponents without even taking names of perpetrators but on 22nd August 2020 they went much further in showing their true colours as armed fascist thugs attacked a counter protest on Custom House Quay.
The Gardaí briefly separated the combatants and then the Public Order Unit attacked the unarmed antifascists, threatening them with raised batons and pushing and shoving them away on to Butt Bridge. Later they lied to the media, pretending that no serious violence had occurred.20
Three weeks later, on 12th September, an LGBT activist and a couple of friends were observing a rally of the fascist National Party when they were mobbed, threatened and shoved and one was struck on the head with a wooden club which had a Tricolour wrapped around it.
The Gardaí again lied to the media and said there had been no violent incidents. However video of the attack and of a Garda confronting the victim with blood streaming from her head and waving her away, circulated widely and the Gardaí had to change their story.
Ms Izzy Kamikaze being pushed by Gardaí down Kildare Street after being struck on the head with a club by a fascist (Photo sourced: Internet )
It took the victim to swear out a formal complaint and a month’s delay before the specific wooden club assailant was charged. Last year he pleaded guilty and was sentenced to three years prison.21
In the face of criticisms about their failure to prevent random violent assaults in Dublin’s city centre this year, the Gardaí claimed that they did not have enough personnel to prevent them. However it seems they can always find huge numbers to repress people’s resistance.
Early in June 2022, 100 Gardaí, including an armed unit and a helicopter, took part in the eviction of two activists of the Revolutionary Housing League, who had taken over for the homeless a large empty property on Eden Quay, Dublin. (That building remains empty at the time of writing).22
Garda vehicles in their eviction operation against a building occupied by the Revolutionary Housing League in Berkely Road 11 July this year (Source: RHL)
In early July this year, a similarly large number of Gardaí with a helicopter in attendance blocked two ends of Berkely Road in Dublin in order to evict four RHA activists holding a three-storey empty building in which they had recently housed some homeless people.23
Gardaí have acted against a number of housing campaign actions, in one documented case sending an armed response unit. While acting against housing activists, they have at the same time permitted illegal evictions without intervening (except against protesting housing activists).24
On yet others, masked Gardaí have colluded with masked thugs to evict housing activists.25
Masked Gardaí working with masked private thugs in carrying out an eviction in Dublin 2018. (Photo sourced: Internet)
Although Gardaí were nearly invisible on the huge anti-extra-water-tax demonstrations, they were present and active on many of the smaller and more local anti-water-privatisation protests opposing the water meter installations for Denis O’Brien’s Uisce Éireann, assaulting and arresting people.
During the long decades of church sexual predation and other abuse by members of (mostly) Catholic Church institutions, complaints to the Gardaí were routinely ignored. Indeed, the Gardaí often seized escaped victims in order to return them to the institutions.26
It is old news that the Gardaí have abused their power against members of the public but less known is that members have done so for sexual advantage or in the course of their personal domestic relationships. Of course this is not surprising since abuse of power reaches everywhere.27
Terence Wheelock’s28 relatives and their supporters are not the only ones accusing the Gardaí of having killed someone in their custody and Vicky Conway (recently deceased) quoted the figure of an annual average of 15 deaths around Garda custody from 2017 to 2021.29
Corruption in the Gardaí has come to light a number of times, including most recently the false reporting of drink-driving checks and the failure to charge a number of people who were actually found to be driving “under the influence”.
In the course of the above a number of whistleblowers within the Gardaí were intimidated, harassed and in one case an attempt was made to frame a prominent one for abuse of a child.30
CURRENT STRUGGLE BETWEEN THE GRA AND THE COMMISSIONER
Irish Republicans have long held a particular enmity towards Drew Harris, given his previous employment as Assistant Commissioner of the colonial gendarmerie in the Six Counties.31 They regularly refer to him as of MI5, the British Intelligence department operating in the UK.
This is understandable and, in fact, it is less natural that other sections of the Irish polity seem to have had no issue with Harris’ provenance. But in fact, the State’s own senior Gardaí have long been in service, and not always indirectly, to British imperialism, witness Edmund Garvey.32
Former Garda Commisioner Edmund Garvey outside the Four Courts 11/10/1978. (Part of the Independent Newspapers Ireland/NLI Collection). (Photo by Independent News and Media/Getty Images)
The revolutionary Left, socialist republican or just socialist, have no reason to side with the Garda Representative Association in their campaign for a different roster or against Drew Harris. Nor of course do we owe Harris any support either.
Unlike Sinn Féin, our position should be opposition to all of the State’s repressive institutions.
Chief among those institutions and regularly confronting us in repression or exercising its power against working class communities is the Gardaí Síochána, with its long anti-working class, anti-democratic, anti-Republican and anti-Socialist reactionary history.
4Competent investigators, for instance, have found that the greatest number of accidents occur at two specific periods of the working day – viz., in the early morning and just before stopping work at evening. In the early morning when the worker is still drowsy from being aroused too early from his slumbers, and has not had time to settle down properly to his routine of watchfulness and alertness, or, as the homely saying has it, “whilst the sleep is still in his bones”, the toll of accidents is always a heavy one.
After 9 a.m. they become less frequent and continue so until an hour after dinner. Then they commence again and go on increasing in frequency as the workers get tired and exhausted, until they rise to the highest number in the hour or half-hour immediately before ceasing work. How often do we hear the exclamation apropos of some accident involving the death of a worker: “He had only just started”, or “he had only ten minutes to go before stopping for the day”? And yet the significance of the fact is lost on most.
9Now known as the Special Detective Unit; however the “Special Branch” name had a history in Britain, where Scotland Yard formed its Special Irish Branch in 1833 to spy on the Fenian movement among the huge Irish diaspora in the cities of Victorian Britain – and several of its members were Irish. Police services in a number of British present and ex-colonies have also carried on the “Special Branch” name, as far apart as the Six Counties colony and the British Bahamas.
13And McLoughlin’s inquest was delayed for decades.
14 The LP included Moore’s They Never Came Home which alleged that fire exits were chained shut, a matter with which the current inquest is dealing and about which I do not wish to say more at this point. The following account discussing the banning does not mention the Branch raid but I know of it from people who were present: https://theblackpoolsentinel.com/2021/01/11/christy-moore-and-the-stardust-tragedy/
15The marchers were frustrated that they were being prevented from even reaching the British Embassy in Merrion Road, attempted to push through and a battle ensued. Many were injured on both sides but the police baton-charged the whole crowd and even threatened journalists, though most subsequent media reports were either supportive of the Gardaí or blaming both sides; this brief report and photo being the exception: https://www.reportdigital.co.uk/reportage-photo-garda-baton-charging-national-h-blocks-committee-protest—18-jul-image00138214.html
18Indeed in one afternoon, uniformed Gardaí hassled the Dunne Stores picketers in Henry Street under Covid19 pandemic regulations, although all were masked and maintaining social distancing, while around the corner the far-Right were demonstrating mask-less and packed together, without the least interference from the Gardaí. A 100 yards or so down the road, the plain-clothes Special Branch (SDU), the political police, were harassing an anti-internment and political prisoner solidarity picket.
19Occasionally Garda patience snapped and one can see the incredulity in the reaction of the Far-Rightists on those occasions, as they had become so used to doing nearly anything they wanted.
31Previously the Royal Ulster Constabulary (and RIC before that), the PSNI is the armed colonial (and sectarian) police force of the UK State.
32Ned Garvey was ‘outed’ as a British Intelligence ‘asset’ (code name ‘Badger’) by disaffected MI6 handler Fred Holroyd. Garvey denied he was an agent for the British but the Barron Report found that that Holroyd had visited Garvey in his office in 1975 and that he had not made his superiors aware of this. The incoming FF government in 1978 sacked Garvey as having no confidence in him but as a result of not following disciplinary procedures Garvey was able to sue the State and retain his pension. While Garvey was Assistant to Patrick Malone, Garda Commissioner during the British Intelligence/ Loyalist Dublin and Monaghan Bombing in 1974 bomb remains were sent to the Six Counties for forensic analysis. No-one was ever even arrested for the bombing, never mind convicted and the widely-suspected British proxy Glennane Gang went on to murder many more, mostly civilians (see Cadwaller, Lethal Allies).
Diarmuid Breatnach – previously published in the Pensive Quill
(Reading time main text: 6 mins.)
At the end of last month, in Johannesburg, South Africa, over 76 residents perished in a fire sweeping through one of a number of “illegal” buildings, home to some of the city’s poor who are desperate for somewhere to live.
How is this possible we may ask. Didn’t the South African people win their struggle after many years of sacrifice? Didn’t Mandela and the ANC lead them to victory in 1994?
The huge South African majority people fought a long and hard struggle against the domination and exploitation of a European settler minority and institutional racism. But they also fought against capitalist exploitation and imperialist plunder of their rich natural resources.
Some of the results of the Sharpeville Massacre, 1960 after South African police opened fire without warning at unarmed black people protesting the pass (apartheid) laws. In total, 69 people were killed and more than 180 people were injured, mostly shot in the back as they fled the violence. A later report would state over 700 bullets had been fired, all by police. (Photo sourced: Internet)
Despite the riches of those natural resources in gems, precious metals and minerals,1 most non-white Africans2 in South Africa lived in abject poverty with poor health care, scarce or non-existent infrastructures and services, including education and training.
In the decades leading up to the fall of the formal apartheid system, that struggle was led by the ‘triple alliance’ of the (banned) African National Congress,3 the National Union of Mineworkers (of S.A.) and the (banned) Communist Party of South Africa.
Township in South African photographed in 2018, over 20 years after enfranchisement and ANC government (Photo credit: Andrea Lindner/ Getty Images)
Their struggles defeated the apartheid system and in April 1994 all residents of South Africa were enfranchised. National elections brought 1990, was elected President of the country.
Yet shortly after that great change, it was noted that the living standards of the mass of people were even lower than before, that the settler capitalists continued to reap their profits and that imperialism had actually intensified their penetration of the South African economy.5
Today approximately 55.5 percent (30.3 million people) of the S.A population is living in poverty at the national upper poverty line (~ZAR 992) while a total of 13.8 million people (25 percent) are experiencing food poverty. Municipal services to the huge ‘townships’ are unreliable at best.
Almost one in every three of work-available people is unemployed and only 95% of the population have basic literacy, which means that one in 20 doesn’t have it.
It is in that context that we can begin to understand hundreds of people living in an “illegal” building without even a fire escape, obliged to take the risk of such accommodation, in a land that continues to be rich in great wealth which however, never comes near the mass of people.
PACIFICATION PROCESSES
In the 1990s a number of people began to promote processes to resolve a number of long-ongoing conflicts around the world, mostly where imperialism or colonial settlers were oppressing the people of a country. The promoters called them “peace processes”.
Palestine was the first of those in which a “peace process” was introduced and South Africa was next in 1994, followed by Ireland in 1998. As it took root in one country, former resistance activists went from there to other conflicts to encourage people there to embrace the process too.
In fact the progress of this process seemed like the US imperialist ‘dominoes’ theory, only in reverse: rather than ‘communism’ in one country influencing people in another to go the same way, capitulation in one country was used to infect the next.
Palestinian and South African delegates attended Sinn Féin congresses to promote their ‘peace process’ to the party’s membership; subsequently SF delegates in turn joined South African ones in selling the process to the Basque national liberation movement.6
Arnaldo Otegi (centre photo) foremost of the Basque movement’s ‘official leadership’ and EH Bildu party in 2019 – the banner behind asks for “one further step” in Castilian (Spanish) and “yes” in Euskera (Basque). (Photo cred: EFE)
Some movements declined to imbibe the process wine but those that drank it found their movements split, their leaderships increasingly accommodated to their people’s exploiters and nowhere at all were any of the movement’s principal objectives achieved.
Except, that is, in South Africa, where at least the people were enfranchised. But the right to vote is intended to help shape the polity for improvement and that has not happened in South Africa. The ANC, NUM and CPSA of the ‘triple alliance’ have become part of the system instead.
THE OPPOSITION BECAME THE SYSTEM’S GUARDIANS
Western imperialism recognised the vulnerability and isolation of the minority settler regime, convincing its leadership to concede mass enfranchisement rather than suffer revolution. And in order to prevent the mass going ‘too far’, they brought the resistance leaders into the deal.
Bishop Tutu7 once remarked that “The ANC stopped the gravy train just long enough to get on it”, which angered his friend, Nelson Mandela. But when forty striking miners were murdered by police of the ANC Government with NUM collusion in 2012, Mandela did not condemn them.
The kopje or hillock at Marikana, near the Lonmin mine, South Africa, where the striking miners were massacred by police of the ANC government in 2012. Over a decade later, plans for a memorial park have still not borne fruit. (Photo sourced: Internet)
This corruption did not grow overnight. Jacob Zuma,8 while President of the ANC, has been formally accused of rape, indicted a number of times and eventually convicted of financial corruption. Winnie, Mandela’s ex-wife led a clique accused of political corruption and murder.
Cyril Ramaphosa, now President, was a millionaire even during the apartheid regime while General Secretary of the National Union of Mineworkers and, because the striking mineworkers in 2012 were rejecting the NUM as corrupt, is widely believed to have organised the massacre.
There should have been many signs of this corruption in the ANC prior to entering government – and there were.
The ANC ran concentration camps notably in Angola, Zambia, Tanzania and Uganda where they punished and even killed “dissidents”.9 And in South Africa perhaps they had their own ‘Steak Knife’10 to organise “Pirelli necklacing”11 for alleged informers.
Mandela knew about the camps and the “necklacing” but did not condemn them, possibly out of mistaken solidarity or ‘the greater good’ theory, as acted upon by some of the solidarity movement abroad.
Ronnie Kasrills, a senior member of the Communist Party of SA and formerly on the ANC’s National Executive Council, who now criticises the pacification process, claims they were concentrating on the political process and took their eye off the economic one.
And no doubt many at home and abroad thought all this could be sorted out once the domination of the white settler regime was broken and African majority had the vote. But political plants grown in contaminated soil do not grow healthy fruit.
And so we come to 76 or more poverty-stricken dead and well over a hundred injured by fire in a building owned by the City, which is run by a black South-African administration that doesn’t care, in a state run by a corrupt black South African government in partnership with the settler class.
Plastic-shrouded bodies of some of the 76 fatal victims of the fire in the housing block in Johannesburg, South Africa. (Photo cred: Jerome Delay/AP )
Armed resistance campaigns, uprisings and revolutions kill but they have in their favour that they are striving for a better world. Pacification processes kill without any chance of achieving a substantial improvement.
Pacification processes murder dreams but kill physically too: in massacres and avoidable disasters but also by overwork, ill-health, work injury, despair, substance abuse, suicide, and the many ways in which the capitalist-imperialist system causes misery wherever it lives.
End.
FOOTNOTES
1South Africa holds the world’s largest reported reserves of gold, platinum group metals, chrome ore and manganese ore, and the second-largest reserves of zirconium, vanadium and titanium. In 2021, South Africa’s diamond production amounted to 9.7 million carats, an increase on the previous year’s 8.5 million carats. The country ranked fifth among the world’s largest diamond producers by volume.
2The racialcategories introduced by the Apartheid regime remain ingrained in South African society with South Africans officially continuing to classify themselves, and each other, as belonging to one of the four defined race groups (Blacks, Whites, Coloureds and Indians).
3Banned by the South African settler government from 1960 until early 1990; now a mass party in government.
4The ANC is still in government at the time of writing, without a break since 1994.
5See The Shock Doctrine – the rise of disaster capitalism by Naomi Klein (2007).
6Palestine faded as a promoter of the pacification process since it had failed spectacularly there, its mass rejection resulting in the resistance upsurge of the Second Intifada followed by the fall of Al Fatah and the Palestinian Authority from their leadership position and the huge turn to the Islamist Hamas by a society generally voting along political rather than religious lines.
The Spanish ruling class was interested only in crushing the Basque resistance and made little attempt to sweeten the surrender of the leadership (Arnaldo Otegi and company) who nevertheless capitulated. Other areas where the process landed or attempted to do so were Colombia, Sri Lanka, Turkey (Kurdish national liberation movement), India, Phillipines (both latter agrarian movements). Only in Colombia was it adopted by both the rulers and the resistance and proved a disaster for the latter.
7A Christian bishop and campaigner for most of his life against the rule of the settler minority.
8South African politician who served as the fourth President of South Africa from 2009 to 2018. Zuma was a former anti-apartheid activist, member of the ANC’s military wing Umkhonto we Sizwe, and president of the ANC from 2007 to 2017.
10MI5 codename for senior Provisional IRA member Freddie Scappaticci who led the guerrilla organisation’s internal security department, which tortured and executed alleged informers.
11A car tyre, doused in flammable fuel, was placed over the terrified victim while still alive and set alight, often in front of a crowd.
Basque actress Clara Galle, criticised for not wearing a bra under her t-shirt at Basque team Osasuna’s football ground, kicks the ball back to score. “You have learned nothing,” she adds.
From Publico.es 09/26/2023Translation by D.Breatnach (Reading time:2 mins.)
The Navarrese actress Clara Galle went to Osasuna’s stadium, El Sadar, last weekend. As a famous fan of theirs, the club decided to honour her with a reception before the match against Sevilla. Luis Sabalza, president of Club Atlético Osasuna, gave her a t-shirt with her name on the back.
Actress Clara Galle photographed while watching her team play Sevilla at El Sadar, Osasuna’s stadium.
The visit was eagerly showcased on the official accounts of X and the club’s Instagram. However, as is often the case, the photos in which the outlines of her nipples were visible due to the absence of a bra triggered a multitude of sexist comments.
The actress, far from remaining silent, decided to respond forcefully with a comment on Instagram: “I’ve been going to El Sadar to see my team since I was a little girl … Given the comments I’ve read, I feel that I have to react.
“When I was getting dressed before arriving at the field, it didn’t occur to me that my nipples were to be such a topic of conversation,” she said. “If you notice them, it’s because I have them. I have never seen this kind of hullabaloo when any player from any team takes off his shirt on the field,” she added.
Osasuna’s president presents actress Clara Galle with a club t-shirt with her name on the back.
“I have a clear conscience, I’m not doing anything wrong by not wearing a bra.
“It doesn’t bother me that they say that I was wearing the two points that they didn’t win, it bothers me that my breasts are the only topic, among so many more interesting ones in existence, that many choose to talk about”, she declared.
Gale ended with an urgent reminder after the controversy over Luis Rubiales’ kiss of Jenni Hermoso: “It seems that we have learned nothing in recent weeks,” the actress concluded.
COMMENT
Sexism and adolescent behaviour by male adults is oppressive to women and at least tiresome to everyone else. It is an unfortunate feature of many – perhaps all – countries but the Spanish state seems to have a particularly high share of it.
The imagination’s land of the Red Cross, cheese, cuckoo clocks and chocolates plans the massacre of 70% of its wolf packs.1
In reality of course Switzerland is a very regulated country, with a rich financial/ industrial economy and is a major arms producer.
However in 2020 Swiss voters made their desire to protect endangered species clear, when 52% of voters rejected a hunting law that would have made it easier to kill endangered species such as wolves.2
Despite the vote, the Swiss parliament passed a new law in December 2022 that allows the wolf population to be ‘regulated’. Then, just days ago, the government proposed a regulation that will wipe out 19 of the 31 wolf packs remaining in Switzerland!
Eurasian Grey Wolf in snow (Photo sourced: Internet)
WOLF MYTH & REALITY
Childhood and adult fiction is replete with horror stories about wolves (to say nothing of werewolves) attacking humans but, when set against reality, these seem like propaganda. The reality is that it’s not to humans that wolves are generally a danger but to their livestock.
Wolves (Canis lupus) are highly intelligent pack canines and, apart from having donated the dog (Canis lupus famialaris) as a worker and companion for humans, is well aware of its survival boundaries with Earth’s very apex predator – humans (Homo sapiens).
Wolf fondling another; pack members are very affectionate to one another while the alphas maintain boundaries. (Photo source: Internet)
Wolves prey substantially on rodents but must also, for pack survival, prey on larger mammals such as deer, mountain goats and boar. When these are in poor supply or other prey is temptingly easy, such as cattle and sheep, they will take those too.
The traditional human fear of wolves is therefore not one based on self-preservation but on economic priorities. And in the moralistic story of “The Boy Who Cried ‘Wolf’” it is not the human villagers that are attacked by the wolf pack but the community’ssheep.
However, if humans are to continue consuming a diet that will include meat, they will of course need to protect their livestock from wolves and have being doing so even before history was written.
Traditionally the main agent in that protection has been, ironically perhaps, the wolves’ own descendant, the dog – or more specifically, several livestock guardian breeds of dog.
Known livestock guardian dog (LDG) breeds include the Aidi (Atlas Mountain Dog), Carpathian Shepherd, Estrela, Greek Shepherd, Komondor, several breeds of Mastiff and Sardinian Shepherd; a known extinct breed is the Alpine Mastiff (before 5th century BC to 19th century AD).3
Mastín (Mastiff) amidst sheep it guards near Lagunas de Somoza (León, Spain). (Photo sourced: Internet)
Livestock guardian dogs are socialised to the livestock and to their immediate human ‘family’ and will not tolerate the close approach of any potential predator (which often includes even other humans). The primary role is to protect the herd, warn of danger and if necessary, attack.
Where employed in the past, LGDs have been highly effective in protecting their charges, in most cases not even having to fight predators but rather intimidating them. If they have to fight, they are bred for fearlessness and tenacity and their throats also protected by a “wolf-collar”.
Anatolian or Kangol Livestock Guard Dog, with sheep herd it is protecting, Eastern Turkey. (Photo sourced: Internet)
Predators, however courageous, also have strong survival instincts which warn against danger to life or limb (the latter, for a predator in the wild, often in time equalling the first). Unless absolutely desperate they will move on to safer although more difficult-to-catch prey.
For a good LGD however, there is no backing down possible, it is in defence of its own (as a wolf pack might defend its pups). The herder, when present with a firearm, is mainly an additional protection, as well as an alpha member of the dog’s ‘pack’ to obey and protect.
In contemporary times, LGDs have proved effective throughout the world, even in the experimental reintroduction of wolves to the USA.4 So why are they not being more widely employed and, instead, the remaining large predators being exterminated?
Central Asian breed of Livestock Guardian Dog beside its owner (Photo sourced: Internet)
It is no doubt more profitable for big livestock famers to have huge herds roaming freely and when they run out of edible pasture, to move the herd by herding dogs, mechanised herding vehicles or even helicopters. But is it all-around better? And are huge herds environmentally viable?
Apart from other considerations, wolves have been shown to have an environmentally positive effect in a balance between predator, prey and the environment, including vegetation and even water courses, for example in the famous case of the reintroduction of wolves to Yellowstone.5
Deer are pretty to look at but eat young trees and cause damage to reachable branches, while wild goats will eat almost anything, right down to the roots. Wild boar can also be very destructive and, being omnivorous like humans, even prey on ground-nesting birds.
Eurasian Grey Wolf in woodland (Photo sourced: Internet)
All of those invade agricultural crop lands to eat, in the course of which they also trample other crops; wild boar6 are now invading villages and suburbs in a number of towns and cities, overturning large refuse containers for their edible contents.
Female wild boar with litter of piglets in German urban area (Photo cred: Florian Mollers)
Wolves and other predators keep those species down to numbers in better balance with the environment but also of less bother to human settlements. Wolf packs on the other hand do not grow in size beyond the food supply that is fairly safely available.
The human race has made a huge impact on the environment which is sustainable up to a point beyond which, however, we are rapidly passing. We live in a sustainable balance with the environment — or we perish. Perhaps “let the wolf live” can be part of the lesson we need.
4“After the reintroduction of wolves, that were eliminated in the United States in the 1930s, American farmers were losing about a million sheep annually to wolf attacks. 76 farmers took part in the Coppingers program, which introduced European livestock guardian dogs into the US sheep breeding (in their project they used Anatolian Shepherd Dogs). In all farms, where, in the absence of dogs, up to two hundred attacks of wolves per year happened, not a single sheep was lost under the protection of LGDs. At the same time, none of the predators protected by law got killed: the dogs simply did not allow them to approach the herd.” – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Livestock_guardian_dog
6A wild boar is much more likely to attack a human than is a wolf in Ireland, where the Wolfehound breed was famous, it was a boar that mortally gored Diarmuid of the legendary Fianna after his return from exile. Wild boar also carry diseases that can infect domestic pigs and humans.
“Six innocent men” … “Garda oppression and perjury’ … “Longest case in the history of the State”
Four leading human rights organisations this week delivered a petition to the Irish Government asking the Minister for Justice to establish an inquiry into the abuse suffered by six innocent men in the Sallins case almost half a century ago.
Not to do hold such an inquiry, maintained Liam Herrick of the Irish Council for Civil Liberties at a press conference on Tuesday, is to continue the abuse of the victims’ human rights and to fail to prevent such an abuse in the future.
Osgur Breatnach, Liam Herrick and Nicky Kelly at the petition launch press conference (Photo: Rebel Breeze)
Apart from the ICCL, the other three organisations pushing the petition are the Committee for the Administration of Justice (CAJ), the Pat Finucane Centre (PFC) and Fair Trials; the first three are Ireland-based organisations and Fair Trials is a global criminal justice watchdog.
The six innocent men were named as Osgur Breatnach, Michael Barrett, John Fitzpatrick, Nicky Kelly, Brian McNally and Michael Plunkett (deceased1).
At the time in 1976 all were members of a legal political party (the Irish Republican Socialist Party) but were tortured and some jailed in the Irish state.
In the longest series of trials in the history of the State, three of the men were sentenced at the end of 1978 to prison terms of between nine and twelve years each on the basis of no ‘evidence’ but their confessions obtained by torture and which in court they completely retracted.
Michael Plunkett, who had signed no confession walked free while Nicky Kelly absconded the day before the sentence, eventually reaching the USA where he remained until a strong campaign saw Breatnach and McNally freed, whereupon Kelly returned to Ireland and was immediately jailed.
Although the nature of the ‘evidence’ against Kelly was of the same kind as that which had been declared ‘unsafe’ for Breatnach and McNally, Kelly remained in jail forfour-and-a-half years, despite another strong campaign2 and was only freed eventually on ‘humanitarian grounds’3.
PRESS CONFERENCE
ICCL’s Liam Herrick chaired the conference in Buswell’s Hotel4 flanked by survivors Osgur Breatnach and Nicky Kelly, while Chris Stanley of KRW Law sat nearby, all facing the audience which included Sinn Féin’s Pa Daly TD5 and Fionna Crowley of Amnesty International.
Opening the proceedings, Herrick listed the four organisations backing the call for an inquiry and pointed out the present-day relevance of that call, both in terms of the survivors and their families and in terms of wider society.
Not to have that inquiry would be an ongoing violation of human rights, Herrick maintained and pointed out that the ICCL was founded arising out of concerns regarding the post-Sallins robbery arrests and the activities of the Garda CID unit colloquially known as the “Heavy Gang”.
The ICCL Director stated that they could not rest until the demand for an inquiry was met and referenced also “crucial legislation before the Oireachtas”6 and recognition of past injustices in a series of TV documentaries linking the cases, in particular through actual Garda individuals.
Introducing Osgur Breatnach, Herrick acknowledged the leading role he had played in keeping the demand for the inquiry going over the years.
Breatnach read from a prepared statement that there had been cases of torture, perjury and framing innocent people in England, Northern Ireland and the Republic.
It was wrong and hypocritical of the State raising concerns about cases elsewhere not to hold an inquiry into the Sallins case, of which there had been five trials, one the longest in the history of the State.
Breatnach said he went through the process expecting to be jailed but to expose the political nature of their persecution; his and McNally’s convictions were overturned, the ‘confessions’ having been obtained by oppression but despite that none were indicted for that oppression.
Breatnach concluded saying that the State’s refusal to hold an inquiry amounted to cruel and inhuman treatment of the victims and their families and that without the investigation of an inquiry a similar scenario could be repeated at some point ahead.
Nicky Kelly, introduced by Herrick thanked the ICCL for organising the events that day. Speaking apparently ex-tempore with perhaps reference to some bullet-points, he expressed the opinion that the State wanted the victims to die so that they had no need to hold an inquiry.
“Ireland has an impeccable reputation with regard to foreign relations,” Kelly said, but not so within the state. He believed that the Sallins case is “too big in its implications for politicians, judiciary and police force” and all attempts to investigate were obstructed by successive governments.
Liberal politicians in government have been “no different from the rest”, the Wicklow man said and referred to his own personal battle even to get out of jail after the ‘evidence’ to convict him had been discredited and how he had been obliged to undertake a hunger strike to be freed.
Now, rather than hold the inquiry into what went on, they were waiting for him “to be over and done with” Kelly said in conclusion.
Herrick introduced Chris Stanleyof KRW Law who said that cases such as the Birmingham pub bombings and the Dublin and Monaghan bombings, like the Sallins one, all related to the recent conflict and required investigation for the sake of the victims.
Chris Stanley of KRW Law speaking at the petition launch press conference (Photo: Rebel Breeze)
Stanley commented that perhaps the State had been too reliant on the Good Friday Agreement for resolution of these matters.
Commenting on the UK’s new legislation blocking much resolution of historic cases, all but become law, the solicitor regretted the UK had chosen to disengage from Europe but remarked that that they remained signed up to the European Commission of Human Rights.
From among the seated audience, Fionna Crowley of Amnesty International spoke to underline the importance of having an inquiry into the case and that her organisation had been in support of the victims’ campaigns and was fully in support of the current petition for an inquiry.
Breatnach acknowledged that within one week of the arrests, Amnesty had raised public concerns about them.
DELIVERY OF PETITION TO DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE
After the conclusion of the press conference with Herrick’s summing-up and thanks to those in attendance, Herrick and ICCL staff along with Chris Stanley, Breatnach, Kelly and a couple of others walked to the Dept. of Justice’s offices on the south side of Stephens Green.
Delivering the petition to the Department of Justice: (from bottom up) Nicky Kelly, Osgur Breatnach, Chris Stanley, Liam Herrick. (Photo: Rebel Breeze)
Pausing for some photos to be taken, a delegation entered the building and presented the petition. Then some more photos were taken outside and Breatnach was interviewed by a TG4 reporter in Irish and Nicky Kelly in English while a light rain began to fall.
TG4 (Caoimhe Ní Laighin) interviews Osgur Breatnach outside the Department of Justice in Stephen’s Green (Diarmuid, brother of Osgur is centre photo and Nicky Kelly to the right). (Photo: Rebel Breeze)
The group split up into smaller groups then, the ICCL staff returning to their office to issue a press statement and others to hope, perhaps with further pushing, for positive developments further – but not too far – down the road. For all and for some much more than others, it’s been a long haul.
End.
Outside the Department of Justice with copies of the four-agency petition (right to left): Liam Herrick of ICCL, Chris Stanley of KRW Law, victims/ campaigners Osgur Breatnach and Nicky Kelly (Photo: Rebel Breeze)
APPENDIX (A): BACKGROUND
The IRSP was the result of a split from what had remained in Sinn Féin after an earlier split in 1969, the group leaving the party then calling themselves ‘Provisional Sinn Féin’.
Not all who had become unhappy with the direction of Sinn Féin departed into Provisional Sinn Féin because they perceived the new group as being much more nationalist than socialist and being also socially conservative.
After some internal struggle that section remaining within what became known as “Official Sinn Féin” left in 1974 under the leadership of Séamus Costello to form the IRSP.
The armed wing of the Republican movement had split along the same lines into Provisional IRA, Official IRA and the Irish National Liberation Army, the latter loyal to the perspective of the IRSP.7
Bernadette Devlin (now McAlliskey) and Tony Gregory (now deceased) were on the IRSP’s Executive but however departed soon afterwards from the party on what they perceived as the dominant relationship of the armed group INLA to the political party.
It appears that the Irish State at that time viewed the IRSP as more dangerous than the two Sinn Féin parties and determined to ensure its demise, framing them for the Sallins Mail Train Robbery in March 1976.8 And framing, rather than mistaking, it was.
The 40 arrested included IRSP members who, tortured by the SDU Garda unit known colloquially as the “Heavy Gang”, confessed to participating in the robbery but who could not possibly have been there. The State decided to put on trial those whose only alibis were with family.
The court chosen was the Special Criminal Court, set up under the Offences Against the State Act in the panic of the 1974 Loyalist and British Intelligence Bombing of Dublin and Monaghan which somehow got blamed on Irish Republicans. The SCC has three judges and no jury.
Until the SCC moved to the court building near the main gate to Phoenix Park, it was located in Green Street, in the very same building where Robert Emmet was tried in 1803 and sentenced to death, his sentence carried out in public in Thomas Street, in the Dublin Liberties area.
The Four IRSP eventually selected for the second of what became four trials included senior member of the party’s Executive and the Editor of its newspaper, The Starry Plough, Osgur Breatnach.9
In the second trial, one of the three judges hearing the case was regularly seen to be sleeping. Only after the judge died suddenly was there another retrial ordered.
In the fourth trial, Kelly being tried in his absence, the judges accepted as fact10 the Prosecution case that the injuries of the accused were due to beating one another up (in Breatnach’s case, that he’d beaten himself up) and that their withdrawn confessions were true.
Mick Plunkett, in the absence of a ‘confession’, was found not guilty but the other three were sentenced to 12 years in jail. In May 1980 Breatnach and McNally were freed by the Appeal Court on grounds that they had suffered ‘oppression’ and that their confessions could not be relied upon.
No investigation took place into who had carried out the ‘oppression’ or how the judiciary had jailed the victims purely on withdrawn confessions and Garda perjury or which political decisions by whom were behind it.
Nicky Kelly returned to Ireland in 1980 — but to jail.
He was only freed by a Minister of Justice on ‘humanitarian’ grounds after four-and-a-half years in jail, a strong campaign seeking his release and finally a hunger strike of 38 days which pushed the European Court of Human Rights to agree to hear his case.
He received a presidential pardon in 1992 from Mary Robinson and in 1993 Breatnach, McNally and Kelly were awarded compensation, allegedly a six-figure amount. But to get that, they had to forgo any litigation on torture or police brutality.
No official inquiry has ever been carried out in the whole set of State actions and in fact some of the Heavy Gang went on to force false confessions from others, most notably the Joanna Hayes and relatives case.11
APPENDIX (B): SUPPORTING STATEMENTS FROM OTHER ORGANISATIONS
Also speaking elsewhere on the day, Director Daniel Holder of the Campaign for the Administration of Justicesaid they support this call and that
“an inquiry into the case of the Sallins Men is long overdue.”
He went on to say that “Over the last few years inquests and other legacy mechanisms in the north have been finally delivering like never before for families who have had to wait decades.
“They are providing important historical clarification for victims and accountability for past human rights violations but now face being shut down by the notorious UK Legacy Bill.”
Pat Finucane Centre (PFC) Director Paul O’Connor said that
“PFC welcomes this demand to the Irish Government for a human rights compliant investigation into the miscarriage of justice that followed the Sallins Trains Robbery 1976.
For too long human rights violations that occurred in the Republic of Ireland during the Conflict have been at best marginalised or at worst ignored.
Successive Irish governments have either relied upon the British to address the investigatory deficit of the Conflict or deflected it as an inconvenient non-issue.
“Now the human rights deficit created by those successive Irish governments is clear – and will be clearer when the legislative effect of the British Legacy Act starts to bite.
The Irish Government was right to challenge the British about the use of torture suffered by the Hooded Men; now it must look to its own police and criminal justice system and acknowledge the torture suffered by the Sallins Men.”
Verónica Hinestroza, Senior Legal Advisor at Fair Trials said:
“According to international standards, States must investigate complaints and reports of torture or ill-treatment.
We call on the Minister for Justice to ensure that a prompt, impartial and independent investigation is conducted into the allegations made by Mr Osgur Breatnach, Mr Michael Barrett, Mr John Fitzpatrick, Mr Nicky Kelly, Mr Brian McNally and Mr Michael Plunkett (deceased), considering that torture and ill-treatment violations are not to be subject to any statutes of limitation.”
2 The campaign PRO was CaoilteBreatnach, a brother of Osgur’s and was supported by many people in the fields of politics and culture, including the band Moving Hearts who performed Christy Moore’s song about the Nicky Kelly case, The Wicklow Boy.
3 By Minister of Justice Michael Noonan after Kelly’s hunger strike of 36 days. According to law, Kelly had exceeded the time period after conviction permitted for registering an appeal and it was claimed that only a ‘pardon’ could set him free.
4 Buswell’s is across the road from Leinster House, the Irish Parliament building and is frequently host to political meetings and press conferences.
5 Recently appointed to Sinn Féin’s front bench as spokesperson on Justice, he is by profession a solicitor.
7 The history of the IRSP is a separate and contentious story but suffice it to say that of the ten hunger strike martyrs in 1981, three were INLA; at one point a number of INLA factions were feuding within it leading to a number of fraternal murders. After the Provisional prisoners embraced the Good Friday Agreement and left the jails renouncing armed resistance, the much smaller contingent of INLA prisoners did the same. The IRSP remains a legal though much reduced political party.
8 The robbery was carried out by a unit of the Provisional IRA which however did not acknowledge operations carried out within the Irish State, to which ion 27th April 1980 they made an exception in a public statement taking responsibility for the robbery. The Irish State chose to ignore their statement as had the British State when the Balcolme Street group ibn 1977 admitted in court their responsibility forthe Guildford Pub Bombingsfor which the UK had jailed the innocent Guildford Four and Maguire Seven.
9 Apart from anything else, the notion that prominent Executive members under constant police surveillance, including one regularly working on the newspaper in the Dublin office (in the days before this could be done from anywhere else), could carry out such an operation, was clearly ridiculous.
10 According to the Court of Criminal Appeal in the “Madden” Case in November 1976, Appeal Courts should usually accept as a finding of fact anything decided by the Special Criminal Court (SCC) to be a fact. Therefore although a court verdict of guilt or innocence can be overturned on appeal, a decision as to fact made in the non-jury Special Court cannot be overturned in any appeal court.
11 Three separate cases of false confessions obtained by Gardaí, including the Sallins and Joanna Hayes cases, were covered in the three-part documentary series Crimes and Confessions by the Irish TV channel RTÉ July 2022- January 2023: https://www.rte.ie/player/series/crimes-and-confessions/SI0000012595?
In a Sinn Féin “think-in” on Friday regarding a national election, the party’s leader was reported stating that in any coalition government of which they were a member their party would insist on taking the ministry responsible for housing.
Mary Lou McDonald was quoted as saying this was a “red line” for them. Some will be surprised since the housing situation in the Irish state is in crisis and any new government will be under considerable pressure to deliver significant improvements in that sector.
(Picture: David Young/PA Wire)
Sinn Féin does not look like a party that is prepared to embark on an extensive program of building public housing for rent and taking over empty properties, in other words stepping on the toes of landlords, property speculators and banks – although clearly what’s needed is nothing less.
Still, the party’s own supporters and many who decide to vote for its candidates in a general election will be relieved to see the newcomer to government take over a sector which has been visibly neglected by all the other parties that have been in government in recent decades.
“A Sinn Féin-led government will build the homes that our people need,” said Ms. McDonald, going on to say “we will deliver the biggest affordable and social housing programme this state has ever seen. That is the level of action needed to match the scale of the challenge we face.”
However, supporters may be in for a substantial disappointment, given that the party spokesperson reportedly refused to give a date by which the numbers of homeless would have dropped significantly or even disappeared.
A crash program of building affordable housing for rent, the only real solution to the housing crisis, if seriously undertaken, could be completed in two years at most. The fact that the party is unwilling to give a date for the completion of such a program cannot inspire confidence.
She’s been here a while now but has lost none of her beauty. She’s by no means fragile – very adaptable, in fact, like many of our own emigrants to other lands. She sounds kind of Japanese but isn’t, not at all.
It’s the fuchsia shrub, seen often in gardens but the hardy Fuchsia magellanica ‘Riccartonii’ variety grows naturalised in Ireland, especially along our west and south-west coasts where the soil tends to remain warmer than inland in winter.1
Naturalised Fuchsia (& Montbretia) in a country lane, West Cork (Photo cred: Stone Art Blog)
The first of her kind to receive European classification was Fuchsia triphylla on Hispaniola (now Haiti and Dominican Republic), baptised by French friar and botanist Charles Plumiere in the late 1690s in honour of the German botanist and medical investigator, Leonhart Fuchs (1501-1566).
We tend to pronounce her name as “foo-shia”, which sounds Japanese (to me at any rate) but in keeping with the origin of the name perhaps we should be pronouncing it “fooch-sia”, with the “ch” pronounced as the Irish one, e.g in the word “loch”.
Giúise (g’yoo-sheh) is its Irish botanical name but it has also been popularly known as “Deora Dé” which translates as “God’s tears” but can also mean “Drops of God’s blood” (more appropriately when the flower has yet to open).
There are 110 varieties of the plant, not counting cultivars, of which there are many also. The natural varieties are nearly all native to South and Central America, with a few varieties in New Zealand2 and Polynesia, testifying to the Silurian period connection between those landmasses.
Hanging fuchsia blooms from a bush growing in a Drumcondra garden a few days ago against its back wall, with many dropping to form a carpet in the lane beneath. (Photo: D.Breatnach)
In many parts of Latin America the flowers were pollinated by different species of hummingbirds but here in Ireland they do well enough with bees, both native and imported, to assist in their procreation.
The fruits are small and vary from sweetly edible to unpleasant to taste. As children we didn’t try the developed fruits but we did pluck the flower and chew the dark red part of the stem that becomes the fruit when the flower drops – and could often taste a faint sweetness.3
The fuchsia has been in Ireland a long enough time – since the early 19th Century — and, though not native, is not generally referred to as “alien”, much less “invasive” to Ireland, unlike for example Cherry Laurel, Japanese Knotweed and a number of water plants such as Parrot’s Feather.
The Rhododendron and the Cotoneaster, which probably ‘escaped’ from gardens at the same time as the fuchsia, however do cause serious enough problems.
A fallen fuchsia bloom carpet in a Drumcondra lane at twilight a few days ago. (Photo: D.Breatnach)
The naturalised South American migrant fuchsia brings bright colour wherever she grows for four months of the year, from June to October.
Fáilte roimpi – bienvenida!
end.
FOOTNOTES
1That favours rooted plant life so long as they can withstand the wind-chill factor and Atlantic gales.
2An exception to the bush/ shrub nature of the fuschia is one New Zealand species, the kōtukutuku (F. excorticata), which grows up to 12–15 m (39–49 ft) tall.
I am engaged in an extermination war and I’m not winning.
It’s against those tiny brown fruit flies. Apparently they live by consuming bits of fruit and other vegetable stuff. But no matter how much I seal kitchen refuse and fruit into bags, large of small, they still fly around and around, annoying me. Deliberately taunting me.
Since I seal the bags, what do they live on? Just the faintest of smells is enough for the little f…ers, it seems! And I use the term advisedly. They are renowned fast breeders and an adult female fruit fly can lay up to 2,000 eggs on the surface of anything that’s moist and rotting.
Within 30 hours, tiny maggots hatch and start to eat the decayed food. Within 2 days, they’re all grown up and ready to mate, too! Luckily a fruit fly only lives 8 to 15 days – but still.
With such a fast turnaround, they’ve been used for genetic experiments, with even a flightless subspecies developed for the purpose.
Unfortunately, the ones at my place are all fully able to fly. And sometimes not just around me but flying right at me, inches away from my eyes. Do you know how difficult it is to kill something tiny mere centimetres away from your eyes? I really, really hate them.
I could spray them with insecticide, or course but that would mean poisoning my living space environment. I use anti-bacterial surface cleaner spray instead, hopefully less toxic for me. I know it’s less toxic for them also but it does slow them down or stick them to the wall so I get them.
Sometimes.
When they’re at a good distance for me to focus, I reach out really fast and smack my two hands together on them. Success rate? About one in ten. And even then, sometimes, when I open my hands, the little f..ker flies away, apparently unharmed and no doubt fly-sniggering.
But what about all those times I know for certain I caught one, open my hands and … nothing there. It’s not like I missed it because I didn’t see it fly away and it is nowhere to be seen. Except a few seconds later, it reappears – from nowhere.
Of course, it can’t appear from nowhere, not really.
So where did it go? Obviously, into an alternate universe and then back out to laugh at me. You don’t believe in alternate universes? Well a lot of physicists treat the subject with great seriousness and even think they might conform to quantum theory.
Don’t ask me to explain quantum theory but the multiple universes theory has to do with time and space or something. And we do know that time is objective (we’re getting older) but also subjective, as we experience when we sit through an interview or a haranguing from a partner.
Anyway, my war with the fruit flies continues. But what is their alternate universe like and why do they come back into mine? No fruit there? No oxygen? Really clever (but not quite quick enough) spiders?
I’m engrossed by the possibilities. Maybe there’s no cops or other fascists there.
So, I talked to this tech geek I know and he’s working on designing a micro-micro video camera. When he has it developed, we’ll trap some of those irritating flies, attach the micro-camera to one, threaten it until it jumps into the next universe and catch it when it returns.
Then, remove the camera and download the film.
What will we see? Who knows. Wonders, perhaps. But maybe only a giant hand swatting at the camera carrier as the fly dodges and shifts-universes back into this one.
rebelbreeze 