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.
One hundred and fifty years ago this month, the working class seized control of a major city and held it for over two months – the first time any such thing had happened. They did not just arm themselves and erect barricades – they elected representation, issued directives and implemented them, day by day. And the women were very much a part of it, including some of the lower level leadership, like Louise Michel, the Breton Anarchist woman who declared to the authorities who drowned the revolution in blood: “If you let me live, I will never stop crying out for vengeance.”
We should not allow the 18th of March to pass without stopping a least a moment to ponder on that momentous occasion and the extraordinary acts taken by mostly ordinary people. If we consider that the industrial commodity production of the industrial revolution had created the working class, the proletariat, it had been struggling for centuries against the exploitation of its labour power by the capitalists, the expropriation of all production for sale in exchange for the minimum in wages required to keep the workers alive and to produce the next generation of workers to be exploited. They had participated in many failed uprisings and even successful revolutions but in the latter case, always to the benefit of other social classes.
In 1871 they were successful beyond strikes, protests, riots and insurrections and, for the first time, in their own interests – they seized a major European city, the capital of a powerful State and ran it for their own benefit.
A number of conditions obtained which helped prepare the ground for the uprising: defeat of French state in war against Germany, ceding of Alsace-Lorraine, war shortages of food, firewood, coal and medicine in plummeting temperatures and a simmering discontent from the failure of a rising the previous October and others before that. But the action that precipitated the rising that led to the founding of the Commune was the attempt of the Government to seize the old cannons in the working class Montmartre district. As the casting of these had been paid for by popular subscription, the people saw them as their property and also as their own protection (having still living memories of the suppression of the 1848 revolution among many).
Contemporary sketch depicting even women and children removing cannon to Montmartre for people’s defence
The attempt by the Government’s soldiers resulted in the death of a resisting member of the National Guard, a popular armed force and this in turn led to the surrounding of the military and, when ordered to fire on the crowd, mutinies, desertions and the capture of officers. Soon afterwards the crowds began to take control and prominent high officers were grabbed and shot. By midday the Government was leaving and had ordered the regular army, which had already been retreated to the Seine, to leave and to reassemble at Versailles. Unfortunately one of the escaped was Marshall Patrice McMahon1 of the French Army.
MEASURES OF REVOLUTIONARY MANAGEMENT
Proclamation of the Commune and government by its Council
The Commune organised not only the defence of the city but its running and organisation along socialist lines.
On April 1st – that no employee or member of the Commune’s salary could exceed 6,000 francs. On April 2nd, the separation of Church and State, the abolition of all State payments for religious purposes and the transformation of all Church property into national property.
On 6th April the guillotine was brought out by the 137th Battalion of the National Guard and burned to great rejoicing. On 8th April the removal of all religious symbols, pictures, dogmas, prayers from schools was decreed and began to be implemented.
On 12th April, that the Column of Victory in the Place Vendome should be demolished, as the symbol of and incitement to national chauvinism and hatreds (this was carried out on the 16th). On the 16th the Commune ordered the systematic registration of all closed factories and the working out of plans for their management into production by the workers formerly employed in them, in cooperative societies. These cooperatives were to be organised in one great union.
On 30th April, the closing of all pawnshops. On 5th May the demolition of the symbol of expiation for the execution of Louis XVI, the Chapel of Atonement.
The Commune also abolished child labour and night work for bakers, made citizens of migrants (a number of which were also prominent in the Commune), granted pensions to unmarried partners of soldiers killed and their children, postponed commercial debts and outlawed interest on them and ensured the right of recall by voters of their delegates. The Commune’s local committees organised local defences, ran schools, provided clothing for children, food for the destitute, established canteens and first-aid stations …
A number of newspapers were published during the life of the Commune, varying from communist to anarchist to republican.
DEFEAT AND MASSACRES
The French Versailles Government was unable to take back control of the city even with their own regular army without systematic artillery bombardment to clear the way through to Paris and within it also. They appealed to those who had beaten them in the war, the German generals, to help them overcome the revolutionary resistance or at least allow them to pass. On the 11th May, the French Versailles troops under Marshal McMahon had blasted their way to the City Walls, then passed by the forts the Prussians had earlier taken on the north and east of the city. As the Versailles troops drove deeper into the city, resistance stiffened and intensified as they reached the working class quarters in the eastern half of Paris. It took eight days for the regular French Army to overcome the resistance on the heights of Belleville and Menilmontant.
“And then the massacre of defenceless men, women and children, which had been raging all week, reached its zenith.”2
Despite women not having the right to vote, they were active in the struggle, including in leadership roles, though not formally. Women were not only in the rearguard but helped build the barricades and fought on them, chaired committees and took part in debates. Many were killed in battle and many survivors were tried and sentenced to prison. Louise Michel, who was one of the leading activists, in her memoirs estimated their numbers in first-hand activity at 10,000; she fought with a unit of 30 women at Place Blanche in Montmartre until they were overrun.2
At the Hotel de Ville, which had been the headquarters of the Commune, the Versailles troops executed around 300 prisoners and burned the building (since rebuilt). One group of Communards retreated to the Pere Lachaise cemetery to make their stand and there, with no weapons or ammunition remaining, 147 survivors were placed against the wall and shot, their bodies thrown into a long ditch dug along the wall.
All armed resistance ended on 28th May but not the retributions of the French ruling class (with the support of the Republican bourgeoisie).
The Communard Wall plaque in Pere Lachaise cemetery, place of annual pilgrimage for the Left, especially the revolutionary Left.
Bodies of executed Communards
Some of the dead Communards prepared for burial by family or sympathisers
The full number of massacred will probably be never known and estimates vary from 10,000 to 20,000. On the wall of the Pere Lachaise cemetery some years later a plaque was erected and it has been a place of annual pilgrimage since for the Left (except during the Nazi occupation).
Louise Michel, Communard, in the uniform of the National Guard, the main armed force of the Paris Commune. Wearing that uniform was one of the charges of which she was convicted after the fall of the Commune.
Louise Michel, who defied the judges at her trial in December and challenged them to have her shot, was sentenced to penal exile, along with 10,000 Communard survivors, hers being to New Caledonia, a French colonial possession in the Pacific3. She arrived there after 20 months’ jail, where she met many other revolutionaries and apparently there became an Anarchist, returning to France under the general amnesty for the Communards in 1880 (and continued revolutionary activities almost to the day of her death in 1905, a few months short of her 75th birthday).
FOR THE FUTURE AND THE PAST
With the Paris Commune of 1871, the proletariat had for the first time seized and managed a major city. It would be 46 years later before they succeeded in seizing a country – Russia. In the case of the Commune, the workers had learned how to take a city but were unable to hold it against sustained external attack; with the Soviet Union, they took a country and fought off external attack but were unable hold it against subversion from within. One hundred and fifty years after the Commune’s and a century after the Soviet Union’s achievements, we are overdue for another revolution. Hopefully this time we will have learned to hold on to its gains.
The Communards sounded the trumpet proclaiming the approaching end of capitalism and gave an answer then and since to those who say a revolution is not possible or if it is, that the workers are incapable of governing themselves and supplying the means to satisfy the needs of society.
Let us take a moment to reflect and to honour.
End.
FOOTNOTES:
1Descendant of Irish gentry who had fled Cromwellian confiscations and repression and settled in France.
3A long way from the west of the Australian continent.
Print of women on trial in Versailles court for their actions during the Paris CommuneDepiction of arrest of Louise Michel among survivors of massacre of prisonersBattle in defence of the Paris Commune
Now, engine failure is one thing if it’s in your lawnmower but another thing entirely if you’re flying a single engined aircraft. You might’ve heard about that incident last week with the Irish Air Corps plane at Baldonnell?
Well, the engine conked out about 30km from the air base but, rather than bailing out, the two pilots managed to manoeuvre the aircraft and glide it all the way back for a safe landing at Casement Aerodrome, Baldonnell in south-west Dublin.
The two-person PC-9 aircraft was conducting a training mission when the problem arose but, according to a military source, the pilots were unharmed aside from being “slightly shaken”.
The Irish Air Corps plane, safely landed at Baldonnell – photo RTE
A paper cutting from The Irish Independent, March 1949
Now, how about this: I had an uncle who was a pilot. I…
Instead of the traditional St. Patrick’s Day Parade in Dublin, this year saw a number of far Right-organised demonstrations. The Level 5 Lockdown as part of measures to prevent the continued spread of the Covid19 virus meant the cancelling of the traditional parade and the ongoing closure of bars, people instead taking advantage of the fair weather to head out to parks, river and canal banks and the seaside. A number of far-Right organisations however convened protest events for a number of locations in Dublin under the pretence of caring for mental health and defending civil rights. Hot food services for those in need normally served from outside the GPO were cancelled due to concerns about possible trouble from far-Rightists and a limited service was provided instead.
Unlike many other occasions in the past year, the Gardaí mobilised to take control of the demonstrations, in some cases arresting people who could not give a valid excuse for exceeding the 5-kilometer from home permitted limit without a valid reason, or refusing to give their name and address, or preventing their re-entering the city centre later in the day. The Gardaí general tolerance of far-Right events and of the latter’s continual flouting of anti-contagion measures appears to be worn down, at least for the moment. This tolerance (and at times actual collusion), at marked variance with their treatment of Republican and some other Left events, seems to have been broken by the Far-Right event at Stephen’s Green, where some of the demonstrators threw fireworks at the police.
The most effective operation of the police was in the surrounding of the RTÉ’s campus, the national television service. Unlike a protest last year when they permitted far-Right demonstrators to enter the grounds, on this occasion they were effective in keeping them out. At least two of those arrested there, a man and a woman, had traveled down from the North, they were detained for refusing to give their names and addresses. Altogether, the Gardaí reported having arrested 21 people, including four females, and that 14 were taken before a magistrate’s court that evening and seven charged and released on bail. A number of others may have been told they would be fined for having exceeded their permitted traveling distance without reasonable excuse.
One of the arrested was Joe Doocey from Mayo, variously a member of Gemma Doherty’s “Anti-Corruption Ireland” and “Integrity Ireland”, both racist and far-Right organisations; Doocey was sentenced to prison a few years ago for driving over a Garda at a checkpoint and running an on-line harassment campaign against his victim.
The small gathering earlier at the Garden of Remembrance seems to have been somewhat different, apparently a Christian fundamentalist group calling for “Reclaim St. Patrick’s Day for the Holy Trinity”1. At least handful of those present were seen the previous day in O’Connell Street, wearing a red sash and dispensing Catholic leaflets from the “Irish Society for Christian Civilization”, with a right-wing message.2
“Soldiers of the Immaculate Conception”, part of the right-wing fundamentalist Irish Society for Christian Civilisation, in O’Connell Street on 16th March. They were also present at an event at Garden of Remembrance on St. Patrick’s Day, among other Catholic fundamentalists. (Photo: C.Sulish)
The fairly small gatherings at the GPO and the Garden of Remembrance earlier in the day were monitored with a heavy Garda presence, some of which was in evidence there later that evening. Hot food services and tea for the needy, which would normally be provided in the evening, were cancelled due to worries about possible far-Right interference. One low-level cold food service was however in operation with antifascists, mostly of Irish Republican origin, in the vicinity in case of trouble from the far-Right, who however did not materialise.
DEMONSTRATING IN SUPPORT OF MENTAL HEALTH?
For public consumption, these far-Right groups pretend to be demonstrating for civil rights to to march etc and in defence of mental health. To see Far-Rightists who wish to push their authoritarian agenda on the public now marching in defence of “democracy” and “civil right” would be amusing were it not for the serious intentions of fascists hiding behind those slogans.
Mental health services in Ireland are and have been underfunded and overstretched for many years, with long waiting lists for treatment. So are these far-Rightists at least marching to remedy that situation? No, they are demonstrating for an end to the Lockdown which they say is the cause of mental illness.
Not to be unkind but mental health services might help some of the believers in crazy conspiracy theories which make up the numbers at these events organised by far-Rightists and fascists. Believing that the Irish Government is part of a communist plot organised by the Communist Party of China through the UN and EU is surely not a sign of a healthy mind. Nor is a belief that antifascism is a paedophile ring support group, or that pregnancy termination and gay marriage rights are intended to reduce the native (white) population so they can be replaced by (non-white) migrants – an alleged plot which Herman Kelly of the Irish Freedom Party declares is being run by the EU and by the Irish Government.
Far-Right marchers approaching Donnybrook, with placards displaying some of the fantastic conspiracy theories: one in foreground suggests the Government is introducing communism under the guise of the Covid19 pandemic. (Photo credit: C. Lally, Irish Times).
And in fact Kelly’s “Irish Freedom Party” is the reality behind the false mental health event organised for St. Patrick’s Day in Herbert Park, through the newly-created front organisation “Le Chéile”3 claimed by Tracey Mahoney of the IFP, who spoke there. The remaining speaker was Dr. Anne McCloskey (who last October resigned from her Derry & Strabane Councillor seat for the right-wing Aontú party) and her daughter was arrested outside RTÉ. The party’s Vice-President (and castle owner in Athy), Dolores Cahill, was the main speaker at the event and claimed that wearing face-masks leads to oxygen deprivation which in turn led to a reduced IQ in children and would harm their career prospects in adult life.
These bizarre claims would have all those whose work requires wearing masks in healthcare, surgery, laboratories, “clean workshops” etc worried – if there were any scientific basis for them. There isn’t of course and Cahill can no longer use her position as lecturer in Medicine at UCD as some kind of validation for her claims, since she has been replaced on the course. Not before more than 130 UCD students, mostly from its School of Medicine, had signed a letter protesting the University’s silence on her claims. The University had however already publicly disassociated itself from Cahill’s view, though not at the time replacing her in her First Year course in Science, Medicine and Society, which it has now done.4 According to the text introducing an on-line petition calling for her to be disciplined by UCD because of her publicity-seeking statements being in contravention of all scientific health understanding, Cahill has also been asked to resign from the EU’s Scientific Committee of the Innovative Medicines Initiative and the Max Planck Institute for Molecular Studies.
Irish Freedom Party lineup, Herman Kelly centre back row with Rowan Croft (aka “Grand Torino” to left of photo) and Dolores Cahill centre front row.
Cahill’s claim and that of other far-Right conspiracy theorists is that “oxygen-deprivation” leads to passivity, which is why it is being enforced against an “invented” pandemic. Completely contrary to her own logic (but being cheered by many in attendance) was her complaint that the HSE is failing to obtain a particular substance which would be effective treatment (in the “imagined pandemic”)!
“FOR FREEDOM AND CIVIL RIGHTS”?
These campaigners for the right to congregate without masks (i.e freedom to spread the virus) are far from general advocates of freedom. At a Dublin event organised in August last year on Custom House Quay by the Irish Yellow Vests, a mob organised by the National Party (another fascist party) attacked unarmed counter-protesters with metal bars and clubs disguised as flags, leaving one of their victims unconscious. A few weeks later they assaulted a tiny group of LGBT campaigners in Kildare Street, clubbing one of the women to the ground.5
Alan Sweeney6 of Irish Yellow Vests and others boarded a LUAS tram in Dublin after one of their events and abused passengers who were wearing masks and far-Right demonstrators regularly accuse passers-by of being “muzzled”. A man arrested the day before St.Bridget’s Day in Faughart was said to have been ripping masks off elderly people (picking on older people might be thought as safer than others) and Ben Gilroy, one of the Irish Yellow Vest leaders, videoed himself following a masked elderly man around a supermarket while abusing him. Karl Cohalon from Limerick, who goes by the name James Collins on YouTube also had himself videoed on his way to an event in Dublin on St. Patrick’s Day, shouting homophobic and other insults at a man in the front garden of his home.
Many of the far-Right and fascists are Catholic fundamentalists too, also not known for supporting democratic rights such as the rights of LGBT people or of women needing a pregnancy termination, not to mention vulnerable children (of course they do not condemn the Church for paedophilia and in fact claim the accusations are false). These include not only the openly fascist parties mentioned earlier and Síol na hÉireann but also QAnon and the likes of Gemma O’Doherty (“make Ireland Catholic again”!) of Anti-Corruption Ireland and Dolores Webster (aka Dee Wall) of QAnon, both of whom who demonstrated last year against Croke Park being made available to a Muslim group to celebrate the Eid Festival. Both those women were seen during the events of St. Patrick’s Day as were other fascists such as Carey (“helping the homeless”) and Andy Heasman from Mayo, a supporter of the fascist Síol na hÉireann party, who shared a video expressing his disappointment at the poor turnout, blaming Sinn Féin (undeserved credit there!) and Glen Miller of the Yellow Vests, who apparently cautioned people not to attend.
Whether people genuinely confused or believers in fantasy conspiracies of devil-worshippers, paedophiles or faraway communist parties, they are kept together to make up the numbers by fascist organisations with racist agendas, pretending Irish nationalism too although a number have Far-Right British and Loyalist connections. Those who for other reasons demonstrate alongside racists and fascists cannot escape the facts of their association by declaring that they are not fascists, racists or even far-Rightists – they are giving those forces the numbers they need to seem like a viable force and to attract other supporters. Of course, once they have served their purpose, like the SA “Brownshirts” in Nazi Germany, they will be disposed of. But meanwhile …
More placards of fantastic conspiracy theories displayed on pedestrian bridge outside RTÉ campus: one placard claims that a vaccine kills while another claims it is genocide, yet another claims that the “true agenda” is (Irish) depopulation to facilitate a Chinese (communist) takeover. (Photo credit: Sam Boal, The Journal).
ST. PATRICK WAS …
St Patrick is one of three patron saints of Ireland, the others being Brigid and Columba and is revered not only by Irish Catholics but also by other Christian sects, for having established Christianity in Ireland around the 5th Century CE. However over the centuries since, St. Patrick has become symbolic of far more, being a representation politically and culturally of Irish nationhood at home and among the nation’s far-flung diaspora.
Contrary to those who try to employ this symbol to push an “ethnic” racism against immigrants, it needs to remembered that Patrick first came to Ireland as a captive taken in a raid by pagan Gaels, was then sold as a slave and exploited as a swineherd. Some time after escaping from his servitude (probably back to Britain), he returned to spread his faith in Ireland. He was then a migrant, one of the very group against which many of the far-Right and fascists organise.
End.
FOOTNOTES:
1No doubt drawing on the legend of Patrick using the shamrock to explain the Christian Trinity, which no serious historian credits because a) he did not mention it himself in his biography, b) the Gaels already had pagan divine trinities and c) the legend only surfaced comparatively recently.
2Their website declares that the “The aim of the association is to resist, in the realm of ideas, the atheistic, liberal, and socialist trends of our times and proudly affirm the positive values of Christian Civilisation”.
3Not at all to be confused with the youthwork organisation NGO of the same name, nor the Catholic schools management trust, nor the very recent antifascist and anti-racist coalition, all of which have the same name.
5The National Party played it safe and held their event on the Hill of Tara where their Fuhrer, Justin Barret made a speech celebrating St. Patrick, ignoring the man’s origins, of course. The Irish Yellow Vests stayed home.
6Who operates far from his Co. Galway home and who last year attempted to strike a disabled woman counter-protester on the ground and spat at her
On a sunny but windy day in Greystones, lá grianmhar ach gaofar, nature put on an abstract art show. The sunshine brought out intensely the yellow of the lichen on the limestone rocks, while the black lichen encrustation on some rocks contrasted sharply with a neighbouring section of bare grey. Some trick of the camera and light brought out a gorgeous blue in the rock-shadowed sea which had not been visible to the eye.
Yellow lichen incrusts the tops of stones in foreground like paint daubs while in background, a trick of light or camera turns blue the shadow on the sea. the lichens and plants here are extremophiles, living on the front line (or the beachhead). (Photo: D.Breatnach)(Photo: D.Breatnach)
Lichens are an amazing life form, being an integrated symbiosis of an alga and a fungus. A cross between a frog and a goose would not be more bizarre in concept – fungi are not even plants, while algae are. The fungus provides a relatively strong skeleton while through photosynthesis the alga produces sugars to feed the fungus.
Although not all are easy to distinguish, there are over 1,165 species of lichen in Ireland, varying from the common to the rare. The yellow-orange one, Xanthoria parietina, is one of the common ones in Ireland. The white and often off-white or grey Ochrolechia parella can be mistaken for bird excreta at a distance, or even as the ground-in chewing gum that costs Dublin City Council so much to remove from street surfaces every week. The black one, Verrucaria maura if I am identifying it correctly, covers rocks that are wave-lapped or hit by sea-spray on a daily basis.
Limestone rock covered with black lichen contrasting with bare grey limestone in upper centre of image (Photo: D.Breatnach)
These are all hardy adventurers, extremophiles, living in zones exposed to great variations of temperature, all even in one day, as the sun beats down between rain showers or windy spray. And they are very tolerant of salinity, without at the same time being dependent upon it. Perhaps not these species but their ancestors, or other forms like them, were the early colonisers of the land on our planet. Terraformers too, as they slowly abrade the rock upon which they cling, helping to create soil, while black lichen attracts heat to warm up surfaces and the alga in the symbiotes releases oxygen into the atmosphere.
Lichens can live attached to rock, wood and metal, some species even inside stone and on snow.
Plaque commemorating the public launch of the Votes for Women campaign with Hannah Sheehy-Skeffington and Hilda Webb confronting Chief Secretary for Ireland (for the Crown) Augustine Birrell at Greystones Harbour in 1910. (Photo: D.Breatnach)
No plaque or monument celebrates these hardy adventurers but down on the harbour wall was a plaque to another hardy life-form, celebrating the 1910 confrontation there of Chief Secretary Birrell, one of the Crown’s main representatives in Ireland, by Hannah Sheehy-Skeffington and Hilda Webb. They were kick-starting the militant Votes for Women campaign which was later brought into conflict with the Irish Parliamentary Party too but influenced the 1916 Proclamation’s advanced and stirring address: “Irishmen and Irishwomen ….”. That Rising six years after the Greystones confrontation would shock Birrell and sadly, would see Hannah’s pacifist husband Francis murdered by a British Army officer during that momentous week.
Earlier, in a Dublin train station, I photographed a wall of varied limestone, where algae and moss, also terraformers, had made an abstract art collage.
An abstract collage of shapes and colours: limestone wall with moss and algae, train station, Dublin. (Photo: D.Breatnach)
I received an on-line invitation to support a protest about the exclusion of Palestinian Studies from the California State high school curriculum on Middle Eastern studies. Aside from the obvious importance and relevance of Palestinian studies in any Middle Eastern syllabus, there is the glaring need for such options in a country that is the biggest supporter of the state of Israel, with which the Palestinians are in conflict. But then it is precisely its relevance that ensures its opposition, nor is it only with regard to Palestine that such exclusion occurs.
“After months of controversy, California has released the final version of a model statewide ethnic studies curriculum for use in high schools. The original draft curriculum rightfully included the histories and narratives of Arab Americans, including Palestinians, written by scholars in the field.
“Due to pressure from anti-Palestinian organizations, the Arab American lesson no longer includes content developed by Arab American ethnic studies educators, and has NO information about Palestine. Palestinian history and narratives should be central to any ethnic studies curriculum, and this attempted erasure is appalling. …..
“We’re not the only ones raising the alarm. All original curriculum drafters have asked for their names to be removed as authors because the revised curriculum no longer represents their work and vision. It no longer highlights contributions and struggles against structural racism and social, political, and economic marginalization. It has become an “All Lives Matter” curriculum.“
Mosaic map of Palestine and detail of Jerusalem. Civilisation of Palestine, 5th Century BC. Jerusalem, Museo Di Israele (History Museum) (Photo by DeAgostini/Getty Images)
AND SO TO IRISH STUDIES ….
Some decades ago in London I was involved with a number of others in organising a course called Irish Aspects at Goldsmiths College1. The course was composed of a series of weekly 2-hour evening meetings at the site, which was in the New Cross area of SE London. The sessions would cover, as its title indicated, different aspects related to Ireland, such as literature, politics, history ….
The course did fairly well but when it came to the following year, the College administration indicated they were considering closing it down. The course attendance, despite minimal advertising, was fair and the expense to the College, apart from the heating and lighting in the room we were using, was a mere two hours per week at tutor rate, with which we paid the speakers we brought in.
In discussion with the Director, he admitted that “The case for Irish studies is unanswerable”, by which I clarified that he meant “cannot be opposed”. Nevertheless, they did close down the course and would not even offer us a room in which to meet weekly without any paid tutor hours.
A few years later I applied to the Irish Studies course at University of North London2 and got in a year later. In fact, only half the BA course was in Irish studies and one had to choose another section of the Humanities prospectus to make up the whole. Over the years of studying and engaging with the subject of Irish Studies, I learned that in the whole of Britain there was not one whole degree course available in that subject and the only thing close was Celtic Studies, at the University of Aberyswyth, in west Wales3. So a BA course based on the history, culture, literature, art and language of a neighbouring country, with which the British State had been politically and militarily engaged for 800 years, from which huge migration to Britain had taken place for centuries, was not thought appropriate to make available in any one of over 130 universities in Britain4.
It was of course the same as with the refusal of the Palestinian course in the state of California, USA – its very relevance and importance was the reason why it could not be provided.
It is well documented by many writers and historians that the colonialists and imperialists do not wish the indigenous of the colonised lands to have a good appreciation of their own culture and history and certainly Ireland under British rule provides an abundance of examples of that negation.
But the lack of such courses in Britain did not only deprive Irish migrants and their children of the opportunity of such study, it also deprived the host community, along with other migrant communities. And that too has its rationale.
In a long struggle with a colonised people it would be disastrous for the ruling class if the host of the ruling class to suppress “the natives”. And the potential with regard to Ireland was serious, since the Irish migrant and diaspora community in Britain was huge and some of it well integrated into sections of British society – particularly the working class and its trade union and political expressions.
Mosaic map of Palestine and detail of Jerusalem. Civilisation of Palestine, 5th Century BC. Jerusalem, Museo Di Israele (History Museum) (Photo by DeAgostini/Getty Images)
In addition, the Irish had much to teach the host population about the real nature of the British ruling class, since they had seen and felt it with fangs and claws bared, a sight of which the workers in Britain in more recent times caught only an occasional glimpse5.
The people who manage the imperialist and colonialist systems occasionally do stupid things but they are not stupid. They control education as an important ideological process and product. Battles can be fought over course funding and available subjects and these are justified. Some will be won for the ruling class needs its moderates, liberals and revisionists to moderate the content and try to control the discourse and therefore the conclusions. Ultimately however workers and communities from oppressed nations and groups need to set up their own courses and rely on their own resources.
3 I note that Liverpool University now offers a BA (Hons) course in Irish Studies. However, even there, students in Year One are required to take other 30 credits of subjects outside that curriculum.
4 Ireland was invaded by colonisers from Britain in 1169 and the English occupation is counted from that date; currently Britain holds six counties in the north-east of Ireland as a direct colony. The Irish compose by far the largest ethnic group historically migrating to Britain and for most of its history, past and recent, have been the largest ethnic minority community present.
5 It can hardly be pure coincidence that the Irish in Britain supplied the working class there, as well as with many of its activists and prominent figures, two leaders of its first mass movement (the Chartists), its first classic novel (The Ragged-Trousered Philanthropists) and its battle hymn (The Red Flag).
Catalan political activists are in jail for following their electorate’s wishes for independence from the Spanish State, while many election observers are on trial or threatened, along with 700 town mayors in Catalonia … meanwhile other political activists are in exile. In exile too is a rapper who had been sentenced to jail for his lyrics and actually in jail is rapper and poet Pablo Hasél.
Excellently compiled performance slices here in this video put together by rappers (and dancers) in Castillian (Spanish) and Catalan: “Freedom of expression!
Take up a position!
Down with the prisons!
The Bourbons are robbers!”
Repression reigns in the southern Basque Country too and anywhere people in the Spanish state take up a position of dedicated resistance. But Catalonia is the current frontline.
Pablo Hasel portrait mural painted by street artist Jordit on a basketball court in Naples, southern Italy Photo: Ciro Fusco/ EFE)
We celebrate International Women’s Day on March 8th but are we aware that on that day in 1917, women started the Russian revolution? It was one of the many contributions of women the world over to the struggles of humanity.
BACKGROUND
There were many causes of discontent with the ruling regime in Russia in 1917: it was monarchic, autocratic, repressive, incompetent. It had put the country into a war with Germany and Austria, which was in its third year. People were very hungry with food shortages for a number of reasons including the trains being used to transport war materials and soldiers rather than to bring food into the city. Nationalities within Russia and Greater Russia were denied self-determination.
Peasants were serfs to the aristocracy, who could beat, imprison and even hang them. Officers, always from the aristocracy or — to a lesser degree — from the professional classes regularly struck ordinary soldiers or had them whipped. The officers were also for the most part grossly incompetent.
The Christian Church (Russian Orthodox) was allied to the regime and corrupt. Free speech was suppressed and the secret police could be anywhere; the regular police were brutal and could not be challenged by ordinary people. Wages were often barely enough to live on.
START OF THE REVOLUTION
Petrograd was the Imperial capital city of Russia (the name had been changed in 1914 from St. Petersburg, which sounded too German) and in February and March 1917 a number of factories there were on strike for better wages. In particular, on March 7th (February 22 according to the calendar in use in Russia then), workers in the large Putilov works went on strike. The factory owners sacked the workers but not had not yet replaced them; there were some clashes with police.
The following day, March 8th (by our calendar), International Women’s Day, women in Petrograd organised a number of meetings and rallies. Led by no political party but in an atmosphere of deep discontent throughout the city, the women’s activities became increasingly energetic and militant. Demonstrations began to march, demanding bread and the women went to factories not yet on strike, calling on the workers to down tools and join the demonstrations. As as many as 50,000 did.
Two days later, a general strike had seized Petrograd’s manufacturing industries, much of the city’s services and even some commercial business, bringing clerks, teachers and students to swell the numbers in protests. Everywhere there were street meetings, marches; red flags and banners began to appear among the crowds. Slogans hardly considered before were shouted and became current, including calling for the monarch, the Tsar, to abdicate or to be deposed.
Demonstration during the “February Revolution” 1917
The Petrograd police were powerless to control the demonstrators who would have turned on them had they intervened. On the 11th, three days after the women’s mobilisation, the Tsar called on the Russian Army to intervene and to shoot demonstrators.
Russia had the largest single army in the world and despite the war, thousands were still in Petrograd. They had been used in the past against the workers and in 1905 had massacred people on a demonstration to petition the Tsar. But now, after three years of war and shortages, they were not keen to do so and particularly reluctant to open fire on women. Soldiers began to mutiny and, when threatened by officers, often shot them instead.
On that day, the Chairman of the Duma, the parliament which the Tsar Nicholas had kept powerless, sent an emergency telegram to the Tsar, who was at the Headquarters of the Russian Army, asking him for urgent action. The Tsar’s reply was dismissive – his wife, the Empress Consort Alexandra, had written to him that the problems in Petrograd were being exaggerated.
A Russian Army barricade during the “February Revolution” — the soldiers refused the orders of their officers to shoot demonstrators.
But the garrison of Petrograd, including elite units, had mutinied by the 12th, four days after the women’s marches and demonstrations. In addition the Cossack troops, usually reliable in shooting and sabring demonstrators and rioters, were disobeying the orders of their officers to attack the people (although they had not joined the mutiny). Officers began to go into hiding as more of them were being shot by soldiers from their own units. Symbols of Tsarist rule were being torn down in public places.
Two days later, on the 14th, the socialist parties and organisations established the Petrograd Soviet, last seen there twelve years previously, in 1905, before it was crushed by the Russian army. The Petrograd bourgeoisie were frightened but were unused to ruling except as permitted to by the Tsar, who himself now seemed unable to control events. Their powerless Duma (parliament), although ordered closed down by the Tsar that morning, set up a temporary committee to restore law and order and later, their Military Commission as part of the Provisional Government they created.
Thus began a period of dual authority in the city – the revolutionary workers, soldiers (and later, sailors) through the Soviet on the one hand and the bourgeoisie through their Military Committee on the other.
The Petrograd Soviet set the tone for what was to come by approving a number of points in Order No.1, effectively the first law drawn up by the Soviet, point 4 of which stated:
“The orders of the Military Commission of the State Duma shall be executed only in such cases as do not conflict with the orders and resolution of the Soviet of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies.”
The Soviet was making sure it could not be overruled by the new unelected body which the bourgeoisie had set up, the Provisional Government, or by its Military Commission.
Senior Army and political appointees advised the Tsar to do what just over a week previously would have been unthinkable – to abdicate. On the 15th, the Tsar abdicated on his own behalf and of his son, nominating instead his brother, the Grand Duke Alexandrovich, to be Tsar. But he in turn knew he had no support as things stood and refused the “crown”.
Demonstrating workers shot down by Army units in the Russian “July Days”, 1917
The Russian monarchy of centuries had been overthrown — only seven days after the women’s mobilisation in Petrograd.
Maneouvers by the different sides continued during May and June, including an attempted military coup by senior officers commanding army units away from Petrograd. The fortunes of the revolution swayed back and forth across the country until demonstrations in July supported by the Anarchists and the Bolsheviks were suppressed by army units loyal to the Mensheviks and Socialist Revolutionaries political parties in power.
Workers were being disarmed, soldiers re-submitted to the old discipline and revolutionary leaders were being hunted; the War was also ongoing.
In October, the Bolsheviks seized power, ended Russia’s involvement in the War and began to construct a socialist state.
Two years later the people had to fight to defend it against a right-wing military uprising supported by eight states, including the Allies but were successful in the end.
But it was the women who had started the ball rolling seven months earlier on March 8th, with their rallies and demonstrations and calling the workers out from the factories. Henceforth too, they played their part in government, in building the country and in the armed forces, particularly during the war against fascism and in defence of the USSR from June 1941 to the fall of Berlin and Nazi Germany in 1945.
Nearly 200,000 women were decorated and 89 eventually received the Soviet Union’s highest award, the Hero of the Soviet Union. Some served as pilots,snipers (some of the ace snipers at the famous battle (or siege) of Stalingrad were women), machine gunners, tank crew members and partisans, as well as in auxiliary roles of nursing, construction, administration, factory work and of course food production.
end.
Soviet female combat pilots in WW2. The USSR was the only belligerent state to have female combat pilots during WW2.
Love, life, death and lots of alcohol! Yeah the sort of themes you expect to hear on a Celtic-Punk album but in the hands of German band Tir Nan Og on their new album Sing, Ye Bastards! these traditional themes are anything but traditional!
Driving out of frenzied Manhattan heading out over the 59th Street Bridge and through the highway traffic east into Queens, the dense urban landscape is suddenly broken up by a jarring sight- an immense sea of green. Coming closer, the driver, who sees a vast number of gravestones and monuments, realizes that this great green space is a huge city of the dead.
The Manhattan skyline is seen behind the Calvary Cemetery. Photo credit: REUTERS/Andrew Kelly
This great green city of the dead is Calvary Cemetery, a place rich in New York Irish history. Founded by the Archdiocese of New York, the graveyard contains the remains of a staggering three million people, more than all the current population of the borough of Queens. Calvary holds more burials than anywhere else in the United States, covering an unbelievable 365 acres of prime real estate. The cemetery reaches into two neighborhoods and is comprised of four large sections. Many of the most important characters in New York Irish history rest beneath its fields and walking around Calvary is a lesson in New York Irish history. It even holds the remains of Annie Moore, (1874-1924) the Irish immigrant who was the first person of the millions of hopeful immigrants who passed through Ellis Island.
Annie Moore, teenager from Ireland, first immigrant processed through Ellis Island (Photo sourced: Internet)
By the 1840’s, Lower Manhattan’s Old Saint Patrick’s Cathedral graveyard was filling up and it was no longer possible to bury its large population on the island. In 1847, faced with many corpses from a raging cholera epidemic the New York State Legislature passed the Rural Cemetery Act, authorizing non-profit corporations to operate commercial cemeteries. The trustees of St. Patrick’s bought the 151-acre Alsop farm in Queen, which became the original section of Calvary Cemetery, today known as Old Calvary. When Mrs. Ann Alsop sold the farm to the Trustees, she insisted that her Protestant Alsop family burial ground remain separate from the Catholics and the trustees have maintained this division to this day. The tiny family plot still remains walled off, dwarfed by the hundreds of thousands of Catholic tombstones around it.
Calvary was consecrated by the legendary Tyrone-born Archbishop “Dagger John” Hughes (1797-1864) in August 1848 and by 1852 there were 50 burials a day, half of them poor Irish kids under seven years of age, victims of the noxious conditions in the disease-ridden, teeming Manhattan slums. It cost seven dollars for an adult to be buried there, children under age seven cost three dollars and children aged seven to fourteen cost five dollars. In the early 20th Century, influenza and tuberculosis epidemics caused such a shortage of gravediggers that people were forced to dig graves themselves for their own loved ones.
In the days before highways and city parks, people reached Calvary by ferryboat and excursions to the graveyard were regular Sunday family outings. People often picnicked while visiting their loved ones and enjoyed the bucolic charm of the giant green expanse. With amazing statuary, marble mausoleums and towering trees, the graveyard remains a place of great beauty, though today there are few family visitors. Calvary, though retains a wonderful tranquility, making it a welcome refuge from the noisy city around it. Today, some harried New Yorkers visit Calvary to collect their thoughts or just to enjoy its wonderful calming silence. I have just written a book The Irish in New York and I realized that many of the characters in my book and hundreds of other famous Irish figures lie in Calvary’s ground. The Irish clawed their way to power and acceptance by creating an infamous political machine called Tammany Hall and dozens of its most notorious members lie in Calvary’s earth. The most famous Tammany Hall politico lies there, Al Smith, (1873-1944) the first Catholic Governor of New York, a reformer and the first Catholic nominee for President of the United States. A poor boy himself, Smith enacted many factory safety and labor reforms to help the working class. Another Tammany Hall figure who lies there is the infamous “Big Bill” Devery” (1854-1919). Serving as a notorious police chief of New York City, Big Bill stole enough money to become part-owner of a baseball team that would be known as the New York Yankees. A generous thief, Devery died almost broke.
William “Bill” Devery, Irish corrupt Superintendent NY Police DepartmentGravestone Al Smith, Tammany Hall politician, reformer and Irish Governor New York (Photo sourced: Internet).
Fr. Edward McGlynn, Irish social reformer in the US unfrocked by the Catholic Church hierarchy as a “communist” but reinstated at a later date (Photo sourced: Internet)
A contrast to the corrupt Devery, Fr. Edward McGlynn (1837-1900) also lies in the graveyard. McGlynn was so passionately attached to the ideas of socialism and helping the poor that the Catholic Church branded him as a Communist and had him defrocked, though he was later reinstated. He was so loved that three decades after McGlynn’s death a parishioner wrote these words in Gaelic and English on paper attached to his tombstone:
Fr. McGlynn, We thank the Lord who gave us you, Soggarth aroon, (beloved priest in Gaelic)
Learned and wise, kindly and true, Soggarth Aroon,
You know your cause was sanctified,
Stood till measures were rectified,
And rest with God’s beatified, Soggarth Aroon.
There are also many infamous characters in Calvary including “ The Queen of The Night Club” Tex Guinan (1884-1933), who became a legendary, and often arrested, hostess of speakeasies during the Great Depression. She became famous for her sharp tongue and for insulting her rich male clients who still spent vast sums in her clubs. Tex lies amongst many famous murdered Italian mafiosi who also sleep in Calvary.
The Irish have been valiant New York fire fighters and some who lie in Calvary died fighting fires. One of the memorable graves contains a life-sized statue of Charles Keegan (1858-1882), a Brooklyn firefighter killed in the line of duty while fighting a blaze at Locust Point (the long-lost locale is at Meeker Avenue where it meets Newtown Creek), caused by a lightning strike at the Sone and Fleming Kings County Oil Refinery in 1882. Explosions associated with the blaze claimed the first Penny Bridge; Keegan and fellow firefighter Stuart Deane suffered grisly deaths, being burned alive. Some of the teenage girls who were burned in the tragic 1911 Triangle Fire also sleep in Calvary.
(Photo sourced: Internet)
Union Civil War officer, one of a series of sculptures in Calvary Cemetery by Daniel Draddy from Cork (Photo sourced: Internet)
Perhaps the most striking feature in the cemetery is the city park located completely inside Calvary, dedicated to the Civil War soldiers who defended the Union. Irish sculptor Daniel Draddy from Cork created the park’s most stunning feature — amazing life-sized statues of Civil War soldiers. There is also a Fenian Monument in Calvary, erected in 1907 to honor members of the Fenian Brotherhood buried there, one of whom is the great Tipperary Fenian leader and Civil War veteran Michael Doheny (1805-1862) .
There is also — and a monument also honors — the legendary Civil War NY Irish regiment, the Fighting 69th, whose leader Thomas Meagher is also profiled in my book. My friend Peter McHale, author of Greenpoint Doughboy, wrote his excellent work about his great-uncle who fell in France fighting with the 69th in World War I. The book ends with the fallen hero’s return to be interred in Calvary.
Monument to the famous “Fighting 69th” Regiment US Army first formed from Irish migrants for the American Civil War (Photo sourced: Internet)
One of the most famous figures interred there is Mayo legend and Olympic Gold Medalist Martin Sheridan (1881-1919). Sheridan, a World Record-setting discus hurler, was cut down just short of his thirtieth birthday by the last great pandemic a century ago. He lies in sight of the former Celtic Park where a number of Irish immigrants formed a legendary sports club that brought home several Olympic medals.
Artists and musicians also lie there. Galway-born Patrick Gilmore (1829-1892), song writer and band leader, known as “The Father of the American Band,” who wrote When Johnny Comes Marching Home and Meath’s John Mulvany (1839-1906) the great western painter of Custer’s Last Stand also rest there. Also among the dead is James Blake (1862-1935) who wrote the text to the iconic New York song “ The Sidewalks of New York.”
Millions of New Yorkers lie here, each with his or her own biography. Sadly, the Archdiocese shut down walking tours of the cemetery and unlike Brooklyn’s Green-Wood Cemetery, Calvary fails to commemorate its amazing history. Let’s hope that this changes soon.
The fascist far-Right in Ireland organised a protest in Dublin on Saturday 27th February against the Government-ordered restrictions on travel and entertainment, pubs etc. In a departure from the usual submissive conduct of these “rebels” with the Gardaí, some of the participants were aggressive towards the police to the extent of throwing fireworks at them. Following the event, Drew Harris, the Commissioner of the Irish State’s police force, the Garda Síochána, outrageously claimed that the far-Right and the far-Left and Republicans had jointly organised the event but soon had to withdraw the claim. Irish Republicans were also blamed by the State’s television broadcaster on-line report which was also subsequently edited to remove the allegation but the Minister for Justice repeated them. Opinion is divided about the significance of these claims.
27 February 2021: Gardaí clash with participants in anti-Lockdown protest organised by the Far-Right in Dublin’s Grafton Street after fireworks were thrown at the police (Photo sourced: Internet)
The event was attended by a number varying, according to reports, from 300 to 1,000 and undoubtedly attracted participation from some people who would not normally be regarded as of the far-Right. However it was organised from the Far-Right with the fascist National Party taking a prominent role and not only would the socialist Left and Republicans not have any kind of association with the fascists and other far-Rightists but they had actively opposed the latter and sections of the former had clashed with them on a number of occasions.
Drew Harris, Garda Commissioner (most senior post in the police force of the Irish state) — he was forced to withdraw his claim that the “far Left” had organised the anti-Lockdown march jointly with the far-Right, the actual organisers (Photo sourced: Internet)
After the uproar over his claim, including by some TDs in the Dáil), Drew Harris withdrew the allegation but pretended that there had been “initial indications” to give rise to his accusation. Subsequently, Minister for Justice Helen McEntee tried to obscure the issue, claiming that some people who had previously been Republicans had subsequently become far-Rightists. Regardless of the alleged isolated case of an individual here and there, their claims had neither Irish nor world history to suggest what Harris had said. From the moment fascism appeared in history, communists and socialists have fought it, right around the world. As Hitler, Mussolini and later Franco clawed their way to power in Germany, Italy and Spain, communists and socialists and anarchists – i.e the so-called “far left” — fought them fiercely and when they lost there, paid with their lives. The turning points of WW2 came outside Moscow, even inside Stalingrad and in the Battle of Kursk. Overall it cost twenty million Soviet Union lives to turn the war.
In the rest of the world, during the 1930s the “far Left” fought fascism and this was the case in Ireland too, although here, where the Left was small, Irish Republicans led the struggle and drove the Blueshirts off the streets, some of their number also going on to fight the fascists in the Spanish state. It was De Valera’s pseudo-Republican government, installed in particular on Republican votes, that banned the Blueshirts but was soon to ban the IRA too.
So nothing in World or Irish history exists to give rise to Drew Harris’ outrageous and outlandish early claims.
PARTIAL RECENT HISTORY OF SOCIALIST AND REPUBLICAN OPPOSITION TO THE FAR-RIGHT
But further – in more recent history in Ireland, Republicans and Socialists have mobilised against racism, fascism, and populist groups of the far-Right. In 2016 the European Islamophobic organisation Pegida planned to launch itself in a major city in every European state and planned a Dublin GPO rally on 6th February. A massive mobilisation took place against them and Republicans and Socialists1 confronted them physically, so that an Irish fascist required A&E treatment and the East European fascists needed to be taken out of the area in a police van with another acting as a diversion. Three Republicans still face serious charges2 arising from those events.
One of a number of struggles as Gardaí attacked Republicans and Socialists actively opposing the fascists attempting to launch the Pegida islamophobic organisation in Dublin in February 2016. An RTÉ photographer was batoned by one of those Gardaí (who was eventually fined but never disciplined within the force). This scene was photographed in Cathedral Street, just off O’Connell Street, with the fascists hiding out in a nearby pub until rescued and driven from the area in a police van. (Photo credit: The Journal)
More recently, since the fascists and other far-Rightists have begun to organise again, Socialists and Republicans have confronted them time and time again. And the Gardaí and their intelligence service know this from monitoring social media traffic and from policing those events, without needing even their other facilities such as phone tapping and informers. They know also that the Far-Right have been threatening Republican and Socialist activists with violence and accusing them of being paedophiles, drug merchants, child kidnappers, paid agents of a certain Greek Millionaire etc.
Far-Right racist, fundamentalist Catholic and crazy conspiracy theorist Gemma O’Doherty has often been confronted by Socialists and Republicans at her public protests, as have others such as Niall McConnell and his handfull of Síol na hÉireann fascists, or other fascists such as Herman Kelly of the Irish Freedom Party, Justin Barrett of the National Party, along with the likes of QAnon and other small far-Right groups and the larger populist Irish Yellow Vests, led by the Islamophobe Glen Miller.
The Gardaí have attended all the public events of the far-Right in Ireland and whenever they have seen the Left and/or Republicans attend also, it was clear to the police that it was to counter-protest. On some occasions the Gardaí have been content to keep the two sides apart but on others have actively sided with the Right. A few Dublin examples will suffice:
A number of those countering a Gemma O’Doherty “free speech” protest in Dublin in November 2019 were threatened with arrest for getting ‘too close’ to the far-Rightists while on the other hand some of the latter were permitted to walk among their opponents and challenge them, all the while under police protection.
On 14th December 2019, a broad gathering of anti-fascists and anti-racists occupied the planned protest ground of the far-Right in a counter “Rally for Peace” outside Leinster House, outnumbering the latter by order of at least two to one. Republicans and Socialists were, of course, with the antifascists.
Anti-Racist Rally for Peace outside Leinster House 14 Dec 2019 — the Socialists and Republicans are among the anti-racists on the right of photo, confronting the Far-Right rally opposite who are pretending to be patriots flying the Republican tricolour (also official flag of the State). (Photo: D.Breatnach)
In January 2020 a smallish Irish Yellow Vest protest on Custom House quay was confronted by much smaller group of antifascists from the Irish Left. The unfurling of the Antifa flag was sufficient to attract instant hostility and threatening behaviour from the far-Rightists.
Early in the year Gardaí permitted some of the far-Right QAnon protesters at the GPO to cross the street to insult counter protesters on the central pedestrian reservation, often at one-foot distances without wearing masks (despite the pandemic); then rescued one of them who had entered among the counter-protesters to punch a Republican, escorting the fascist safely out and refusing to arrest him.
A few weeks later, the Gardaí removed a counter-protester who had approached the QAnon and been assaulted by one of the latter, not even cautioning the assailant.
Gardaí harassed masked and social-distancing Debenhams pickets under pandemic restrictions in Henry St. while not bothering QAnon around the corner at the GPO who were neither wearing masks nor social distancing.
On a number of those Saturdays the Special Branch police also harassed Republicans picketing in solidarity with political prisoners.
On 11th July 2019 during a homophobic rally (under the pretence of “protecting children from paedophilia’) of the Far-Right outside Leinster House, the Gardaí permitted thugs to attack a tiny counterprotest, beating them and grabbing their banner before the police chose to intervene, arrested none of the assailants and ushered the counter-protesters away.
On 31st July 2020 a Far-Right and fascist islamophobic protest outside Croke Park was opposed by anti-racist anti-fascists, including Socialists and Republicans.
On 8th August 2020 antifascists including Socialists and Republicans opposed a Far-Right march (towards RTÉ) and clashed with them on O’Connell Bridge, on D’Olier Street and again later at the GPO.
On 18th October 2020 a mixed-gender group of Socialists, Republicans and LGBT campaigners counterprotesting an Irish Yellow Vest rally on Custom House Quay were attacked by a larger male group, mostly masked (although at an anti-mask protest!) and armed with metal bars and wooden clubs. The Gardaí allowed the unequal fighting to continue for a while before intervening, a few police gently ushering the assailants back while the rest, including the riot police, violently pushed the counter-protesters out of the area, threatening them with drawn batons and forcing them to leave one of their number unconscious on the ground. The Gardaí’s statement later was that there had been no serious incidents and that they had arrested four people (which occurred in an unrelated incident at the other end of the Quay).
Antifascists (centre of photo) resist attack by fascists (mostly left of photo) on Dublin’s Custom House Quay; one antifascist is fending off a flagpole wielded by a fascist 22 August 2020. Many of the fascists were armed and also masked to avoid identification at the anti-masking rally called by Irish Yellow Vests. The Gardaí permitted the attack for a while before gently ushering the fascists back a little but driving the antifascists with threats and violent pushes all the way back on to Butt Bridge (Source photo: Internet)
Three weeks later, at a National Party rally outside Leinster House in Kildare St, a tiny oppositional group of women were attacked and an LGBT campaigner clubbed to the ground. Streaming blood from a head wound, the Gardaí pushed her out of the area. Later their statement claimed that nothing had happened but due to social media videos in circulation and protests had to change their story but claimed the victim had to make a complaint!3
On 1st February and again on 10th October 2020 in Kildare Street, socialist and republican counter-protesters were attacked by Gardaí. They also sealed off a section of Nasseau Street to prevent the National Party from being pursued by their opponents as they left.
Far-Right rally (left of photo) outside Leinster House 1st February 2020 opposed by Republicans and Socialists (right of photo, where most of the Gardaí are). (Photo: D.Breatnach)
The Gardaí are in no doubt about the allegiances of the Republicans and Socialists: after driving them (foreground) back with batons from the National Party (seen in the distance, with very few police there) on 10th October 2020, the riot police kept pushing them into Molesworth St. until they had established a safe distance, then escorted the NP supporters out of Kildare St.
On 22nd October 2020 for the first time (that time in Grafton Street also), the police attacked some of the Far-Right at a protest organised by the Yellow Vests. However that was because not only were they violating all the restrictions but they were jamming Grafton Street and refusing to move and some even getting aggressive with the Gardaí, which led to a few baton blows and 11 arrests (no ‘far-Left’ there that time either). Drew Harris claimed afterwards that they were investigating the organisers and perhaps they did finally warn them off as the Yellow Vests organised nothing officially since – but as we can see, their place has been taken by other far-Right groups.
Republicans and Socialists after clashing with supporters of the fascist National Party outside Leinster House, then chasing them on to Nasseau Street, where the Gardaí not only provided the fascists with an escort but also blocked off the eastern end of the street, 10th October 2020. (Photo source: possibly D.Breatnach or AFA?)
WHAT GAVE RISE TO HARRIS’ EARLY STATEMENT?
Some have explained Harris’ early statement as coming from the liberal complaint that “extreme Right and extreme Left are essentially the same”. Certainly this travesty of analysis exists and it is a fact that we have seen some of that view expressed by some media pundits. Such liberal claims serve as excuses for the liberals not to take action in defence of the vaunted democratic rights when the fascists organise. Then the liberals criticise those who go out to fight the fascists and to try to prevent them taking power. Sometimes the State uses these liberals to justify the banning of “far left” organisations, sometimes at the same time as those of the far right. Of course, the capitalist system remains to do the work of pushing austerity on to the working people and in such situations the State knows who the real enemies of the capitalist system are and hardly needs the fascists any more.
Drew Harris in his former role as Deputy Chief of the PSNI (formerly the RUC), the British colonial police force in Ireland (Photo sourced: Internet)
However, Drew Harris is no liberal. In 2014 he was deputy head of the Police Service of Northern Ireland, the successor of the Royal Ulster Constabulary, an armed colonial police force with a long history of suppression of anti-colonial resistance and democratic rights and, in fact, riven with anti-Catholic and anti-republican sectarianism. It is a force with a long history of brutality, torture and murder.
One of the many scenes of the RUC colonial police, forerunner of the PSNI, attacking unarmed civil rights marchers, this one in Duke Street, Derry, 1968. (Photo sourced: Internet)
Many people outside the Six Counties mistakenly view the British Army as the main repressive force of British colonialism there; however that role belongs to the armed colonial police. From the partition of Ireland in 1921, it was they who raided the nationalist areas, arrested people, beat them up, sometimes murdered them, enforced the sectarian and fascist Flags and Emblems Act, used their Special Powers Act, attacked the Civil Rights marches from 1968 onwards, oversaw Loyalist attacks on marchers, machine-gunned the Derry Bogside and were the cause of the barricades barring them from entry and the subsequent Battle of the Bogside, where colonial police fought side by side with Loyalist sectarian thugs (when they were not actually the one and the same). Only then did the British ruling class send in the Army but even then the repressive role of the colonial police did not end – they just shared it with the imperialist army.
Drew Harris served in that colonial police force for 21 years and led it for four. His father was in the RUC for 33 years and had reached the rank of Superintendent before he was killed by the IRA during the 30 Years War.
PSNI attacking sit-down peaceful protest objecting to Loyalist marches through the Garvaghy Road, Beflast in 2007. (Photo sourced: Internet)
PSNI raid on Republican centre in August 2020 (Photo credit: Saoradh)
During that long war, intelligence played a major role on both sides and the MI5 and MI6 departments of British Intelligence were both active with RUC Special Branch there, with MI5 eventually gaining overall control. People who find it easy to disbelieve Gerry Adams’ claims that he was never in the IRA somehow find it reasonable to deny that Drew Harris is an MI5 asset. Actually, both claims are at least as likely to be true. And now he is head of the police force of the Irish neo-colonial State – nor would it be the first time British Intelligence has penetrated the upper echelons of the State’s police force. Ned Garvey, who was Garda Commissioner and formed the “Heavy Gang”, was exposed as a British agent; when they got back into government in 1975 Fianna Fáil sacked him but without exposing him publicly, which would have exposed also the Irish ruling class4.
Harris is long accustomed to handling and using intelligence collected by his agents in both police forces in Ireland from surveillance, touts, tapping phones, pressurising and blackmailing people, raids and searches etc. He would know very well that Socialists and Republicans have been to the forefront in opposition to the far-Right in Ireland. And that even those Socialists and Republicans who have not fought the Right actively have at least condemned them in print and spoken word.
Given all the history of socialists and republicans in Ireland, given the world history of fascists and their opposition by socialists, given also Drew Harris’ long policing background and the Gardaí’s knowledge of events over the years in Ireland in addition to their ongoing intelligence-gathering, what can be behind his extraordinary original statement and McEntees’s attempted justification? Preparation for the repression of the Socialists and Republicans, perhaps to assist in the imposition of austerity measures upon the working class? A planting of the seed in the public’s psyche to allow for restrictions on “both sides” — while in reality concentrating on the socialists and republicans?
One thing is for sure: Neither ignorance nor liberal confusion is behind this “mistake”.
End.
FOOTNOTES
1From now on I will be using this word to describe any or all of the various groups covered by the term: communists, trotskyists, anarchists, left social-democrats but not Irish Republicans, though some of them may be as committed to socialism as any of the others or even more so than some.
2“Violent disorder”, carrying a maximum jail penalty of 10 years, unlimited fine – or both! These are the first political demonstrators to be charged under that Act.
A portrait of my uncle, Pilot Michael McGloughlin 
The Irish Air Corps plane, safely landed at Baldonnell – photo RTE 
A paper cutting from The Irish Independent, March 1949 
rebelbreeze 