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.
Apparently the Subjunctive Mood is disappearing from modern languages, including the Indo-European groups of Celtic, Germanic, Nordic, Romance and Slavonic. The Subjunctive is the grammatical mood by which we expressed wishes and desires, with an underlying feeling that their realisation was uncertain. But why is the Subjunctive disappearing? I think that its disappearance reflects a profound change in our general thinking, a definite shift towards a scientific view of the world.
“Subjunctive forms of verbs are typically used to express various states of unreality such as: wish, emotion, possibility, judgement, opinion, obligation, or action that has not yet occurred; the precise situations in which they are used vary from language to language.” (Wikipedia)
Wishing while blowing the seed parasols off a dandelion ‘clock’. The form of words combined with an object and perhaps an element of chance was believed to have a power of realisation. (Image sourced: Internet)
Firstly, let’s look at relatively common phrases where we find the Subjunctive Mood and in English, these are not as common as in other Indo-European languages such as Irish and Castillian (Spanish), for example.
In its article on the grammatical use of the subjunctive mood in English, the online Collins Dictionary gives, among others, these examples:
Godsavethe Queen!
Godblessyou!
Godhelpus!
Heavenhelpus!
Heavenforbidthat that should happen to me.
Sufficeit to say he escaped with only a caution.
As an antidote to monarchical and religious expression, I give you the example Long live the Revolution! which is also in the subjunctive mood.
Often we can arrive at the subjunctive form by beginning the sentence with the word “May”: e.g May God bless you; May Heaven help us; May Heaven forbid. Sometimes when we use “May” we have to change the order of words a little: May it suffice to say from Suffice it to say; May you go with God from Go with God; May the Revolution live long from Long live the Revolution! And sometimes the May or even more words might have disappeared in common modern usage but be understood as in (May) thy Kingdom come1 and (May you be) welcome or (May) God speed (you).
Certainly the calling or greeting of Happy Christmas and a Merry New Year heard and read everywhere around this time of year were originally preceded by May you have a ….
Well and good2 but what has that to do with the “profound change in our general thinking, a definite shift towards a scientific view of the world” which I interpreted as the cause of the disappearance of the subjunctive?
Well, although the use of the subjunctive expressed a wish about the outcome of which we were not certain, it seems clear that its use was believed to have power. So to wish someone to (May you) go with God in English ((Que) Vaya con Dios3 in Castillian and still common in most of South and Central America and in the USA Southwest4) expressed a feeling that by saying those words, one could invoke protection upon the person leaving. Go5 dté tú slán, an equivalent in Irish but without any mention of God, one can find in the last line of the chorus in the Irish Jacobite song Siúil a Ghrá. And when we did not wish someone well, we might express a curse, invoking ill upon them: May you go to Hell! May you never prosper!
A curse tablet from ancient Athens — sometimes it was not enough to say or to write the curse but one had to attach it to an object (or to the object of the curse). (Image sourced: Internet)
Uncertain as the outcome of expressing a wish for another, whether good or ill, was believed to be in more ancient times, we are fairly convinced today that it is empty of any predictive or enforcement power, i.e we can’t make it happen by wishing alone. The only power left in the words is in the expression of emotion for us and to convey a strong wish of good (even if only socially conventional) or conversely an intense dislike towards the object of the phrases.
So when we wish someone well today we are only expressing a positive regard (whether strongly emotional or only as a social convention) and similarly the reverse with an ill-wish. Gone is the belief that the use of the words themselves had any power at all over the outcome. If we were to say nowadays May you go to Hell or the truncated Go to Hell, we would do so without the slightest belief that we can somehow convey the person to that destination6 by the use of those words – we’d merely be saying something like “I really dislike (or hate) you” or perhaps “I am angry with you at the moment”. To really express a malevolent feeling, we might instead use “I hope” but again with without any expectation of realisation, as when Bob Dylan sang to the Masters of War:
“I hope that you die
and your death will come soon”.
Today, we find the remains of the Subjunctive mostly in prayers and greetings7 and to some extent in curses and in prayers. In religion, the traditional forms of prayer tend to be preserved, whether through strong devotion, convention or habit. The survival of the Subjunctive in greetings is probably retained through the inertia of convention. We also find its survival in a few grammatical constructions and in the feeling that “I wish I were in Carrickfergus8” is somehow better than the more commonly-heard “I wish I was in Carrickfergus”.
Hands in prayer, by Albert Durer. (Image sourced: Internet)
In general we no longer believe in the power of invocation, in making things happen by expressing a wish for them in a certain verbal way. We know now or believe that to make something happen, that we need to act. Even if wishful thinking can still be seen in much of political and social expression, that is more a reflection of a reluctance to confront reality or of hope for the future, rather than a real belief in the power of expression in verbal form. A scientific outlook has replaced that of the religious, of the otherworld, giving us a stronger intellectual tool to govern our actions, to bring a wish to reality.
As with the study of history, the study of language tells us a lot about who we were and who we are now — and helps us to speculate on who we are becoming.
End.
La Malediction Paternelle (the Curse of the Father) by
Jean-Baptiste Greuze (1725–1805).
(Image sourced: Internet)
FOOTNOTES
1go dtaga do Ríocht in Irish, from The Lord’s Prayer of Christians.
2 Or the full Conditional Mood: That may be all well and good 🙂
3“May you go with God” — the subjunctive mood – compare with Ve te con Dios (“Go with God”), the imperative mood.
5The Irish word Go (pronounced as guh might be in English) in the Subjunctive precedes the verb to correspond to the use of the word May in English we saw earlier. In Irish, the name for the group of greetings is Beannachtaí which interestingly translates as “Blessings”.
6If we even believe any more in the existence of that place.
7And since greetings are important for social communication the Subjunctive often gives the learner of a language some difficulty, as in the Irish Go raibh maith agat, for example.
8A line in a centuries-old macaronic Irish song (i.e a verse in Irish followed by one in English etc), Do Bhí Bean Uasal or in English, Carrickfergus. Sadly most people are probably completely unaware of the verses in Irish.
Irish Socialists, though they seem to have little idea of taking on the State in revolution, have at least a rough economic plan for socialism: nationalise the banks and essential services, tax multinationals highly in the meantime, force them to pay higher wages, abide by worker and environmental protection regulations, etc … But Irish Republicans, who have a very clear concept of overthrowing the State, in general appear to have no economic program. How can this be?
Firstly, let’s do away with any idea that Irish Republicans have no awareness of the impact of economics on their lives. Irish Republicans are not nearly as focused on the trade unions as are the Socialists but they are well aware of austerity measures, of wage levels, the cost of housing etc. Irish Republicans are overwhelmingly working or lower-middle class and they feel these impacts and think about them. But they do not, collectively, formulate plans to change these factors.
It would be illogical to think that they don’t care, or that they think that there is nothing that can be done about these things. The rational conclusion to arrive at rather is that they are consciously shelving the question. They don’t have an economic program because they don’t want to – they are actively and consciously avoiding having one.
There is a rational reason for behaviour, even when it seems irrational and this case is no exception. Irish Republicans know that the field of economics is going to have different theories and a variety of proposals tendered for action and this will lead to divisions, some on a very fundamental level. It was part of the reason for the avoidance in the movement of burning social questions in the past. Many of those social questions have been largely resolved without any leadership from the movement, by changes in thinking across society, of which the Republicans are of course a part: contraception, gender equality, divorce, LGBT equality …. even intentional pregnancy termination may be approaching acceptance by the majority of Irish Republicans now.
The notional acceptance of “socialism” as part of the program of Irish Republicanism has led to divisions in the past. The Republican Congress project of the 1930s failed and the Republican movement lost many of its most advanced social theorists and organisers, while the IRA placed an official ban on communist membership.
The essentially social democrats1 who came to lead the 1960s pre-split Republican movement were very strong advocates of socialist economic measures but they foundered on the question of opposition to the State – the deeply sectarian Six-County colonial statelet. When the movement’s leadership failed to supply the arms which the ‘nationalist/ Catholic’ areas needed to defend themselves, the movement split and many in the new camp, the Provisionals, blamed the debacle on “politics” or even more concretely on “socialism”.
Members of the first socialist party in Ireland, the short-lived Irish Socialist Republican Party (distinct from the IRSP) in Dublin’s Phoenix Park, 1901. James Connolly is seated, fourth from left. (Photo sourced: Internet)
It was of course judgement of guilt based on association rather than on intrinsic nature but effective nonetheless (as such often is)2. Subsequently the Adams camp used “socialism” – without of course outlining any real socialist economic program — to unseat the historical leadership of the Provisionals. The objective was to replace them with Adams and his own clique and in this they were successful, through that and other maneouvres.
Now that Provisional Sinn Féin seeks to become a partner in managing the state for the neo-colonial Gombeen class, it has dropped the “socialist” tag (though occasionally, when convenient, likes to describe itself as “Left”).
But not since the 1960s split (apart perhaps from a brief moment in the Irish Republican Socialist Party) has the Irish Republican movement had an explicit economic program, much less a socialist one. “These are all questions that will be resolved later” is and has been the message – i.e after the colonial Statelet and the neo-colonial State have been overthrown, after the nation is free and united.
What is much more likely, however, is that at that point, should we reach it, we’ll have another civil war. And really socialist Republicans will likely lose, because they’ll be trying to sort out priorities and alliances in the midst of a struggle for survival, against a new capitalist order or a foreign invasion – or a combination of both.
The Jim Larkin monument in Dublin’s O’Connell Street today (Photo: D.Breatnach)
DEFINE AND DECLARE OR PREPARE FOR DEFEAT
All Irish Republican organisations and parties now define themselves as “socialist Republican”, which is something that was not true until fairly recently. They need not only to put flesh on those bones but to grow the very bones themselves. If they want to succeed, they need to answer the questions:
what do they mean by “socialist”?
What practical economic measures do they intend to implement?
What is their notional timetable for this implementation (i.e which are immediate, which transitional etc)?
James Connolly Monument, Beresford Place, Dublin. (Photo: D.Breatnach)
The implications of answering these questions or not are crucial not only in whether we build a viable socialist society to benefit the vast majority of the working people on this island, but crucial also in whether we achieve independence for the nation in the first place. The working people need a visible stake in a free, united and independent Ireland; I am in agreement with James Connolly when he made the profound declaration that “only the Irish working class remain as the incorruptible inheritors of the fight for freedom in Ireland.”3
end.
FOOTNOTES
1Some may object to this definition but it seems to me correct to describe followers of a doctrine of installing a socialist regime without a fierce struggle to overthrow the existing State.
2There was of course also the wish not to alienate the Irish capitalist elements which the Provisionals hoped would support them, both in Ireland and in the USA.
Dear Mr. Tony Holohan, We write to congratulate you on being voted Man of the Year for 2020 in the Today FM poll this month1. It must have come as a pleasant surprise to you – it certainly surprised us. We couldn’t have expected the Irish public would forget that embarrassing debacle with the cervical cancer checks.
People might think it reasonable to send the test results off to the USA for screening but, when it turned out that many of those “all clear” results were in error and that some who who later learned of the error were too late for treatment and going die …. you couldn’t hope they would forgive you for trying to keep a lid on the news or for declining to create an urgent response. Well, of course, some of those who wouldn’t be likely to forgive you aren’t with us any more …. but surely so many others would remember? Well thank God for short memories, you must’ve thought!2
Mr. Tony Holohan in a sombre moment.
(Image sourced: Internet)
Still, that was news in 2018 and your award was for this year. What is more surprising is that they forgot that when the HSE first became officially aware of the pandemic in February this year, as Chief Medical Officer, you did not advise the Government to close the ports. Or even to isolate those returning from watching the rugby in Italy, where the pandemic was raging. Well, we can’t have the flow of capital interrupted, can we?
We wonder too how it slipped the mind of so many that you did not advise the Government to order precautionary arrangements and protective measures in essential services, so that An Post workers had to strike for such provision and shops and supermarkets only put them in place slowly, piecemeal. We’re sure your thinking was that those who are making money out of such establishments are the best placed to decide what is needed and when – even if they won’t actually be working at the danger point.
Then there was the advice to lockdown, relax, lockdown, relax, lockdown again …. what one know-it all TD called “the yo-yo policy” as reducing rates of contagion recovered and shot up again, etc.
More surprising still — and must have been more than you dared hope — was that people who are nearly unanimously and everywhere now wearing masks, apparently forgot that back in the early days you declared in public that wearing masks was of no help at all in reducing the spread of the virus.
We thought your humble acknowledgement of the award was excellent and especially that you refrained from one of those insincere responses one often hears like: “I feel I don’t really deserve this award.”
November is a bad month in the memory of many Basque independence supporters, bringing with it the recollection of the violent deaths of two of their most prominent activists, Santi Brouard and Josu Muguruza. Both men were murdered by Spanish assassination and terror squads in which foreign and native fascists, criminals, police and army cooperated under State political direction in attacking the Basque liberation movement and attempting to spread terror among its supporters.
THE MURDERED BASQUE ACTIVISTS
Santi Brouard was killed on the 20th of November 1984 in the Basque city of Bilbo (Bilbao), capital of the province of Bizkaia, one of the four provinces of the nation under Spanish control1. He was a children’s doctor, Deputy Mayor of the city and a member of the leadership of the Basque socialist independentist political party Herri Batasuna.
Santi (abbreviation for Santiago) Brouard was born in Lekeitio in 1919, an important town for the fishing industry in Bizkaia province. Having completing his schooling he went to study medicine at the University of Valladolid, a city in the north-east-central part of the Spanish state, culturally and politically far from his native home. After graduating, Brouard returned to the southern Basque Country and practiced medicine, specialising in paediatrics in the hospital in Basurto Hospital in Bilbo (very near the San Mamés stadium, home ground of the Athletic Bilbao soccer team).
At the age of around 40, Brouard married the poet Teresa Aldamiz, a Filipino woman of Basque descent and the couple had three children. Likely while striving to achieve his children’s educational and cultural needs, Brouard became active in the underground Ikastola movement (offering education through the medium of Euskera, the then banned Basque national language).
In 1974, in his 55th year, after treating a member of the armed Basque liberation organisation ETA, gunshot-wounded by Spanish police, Brouard was forced to flee the Spanish State jurisdiction into the French-administered part of the nation, where many others had settled for their safety from the forces of the Spanish State2. There the refugee met Argala3 and other members of the ETA leadership, the Basque armed socialist national liberation movement and in the early post-Franco years hr collaborated with Argala and others in developing the KAS Alternative, organised around minimum lines of agreement across the Basque nationalist sector, including armed organisations, political parties and collectives and trade unions.
When Brouard felt it was safe to return to the Basque Country he became active in the political aspect of the movement for Basque independence, was one of the founders of EHAS (Basque Socialist Party of the Basque Nation) of which he was elected President in 1978; he was also on the national executive body of Herri Batasuna until the day of his death. For the HB party he stood in the 1979 elections for Mayor, gaining the position of Deputy-Mayor which he held during the term of that office, i.e until 1983 but that year he was elected as a representative on the Bizkaia Provincial Council. It was in that capacity that he was jailed by the Spanish State and in 1984 was elected as Bizkaia representative to the Basque Autonomous Government4.
The jailing in 1983 came about because he joined other Herri Batasuna elected representatives in singing Eusko Gudariak5 during the King’s6 visit to Gernika and in the presence of the Monarch. Juan Carlos had been Franco’s protege from the end of the 1940s and had also acted as head of state for such occasions in place of Franco in the latter’s final years. Gernika had been infamously bombed by the Condor Legion and also strafed by Italian Fascist airplanes, planes and pilots loaned by Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy to the fascist-military forces led by Franco, in an attack on a civilian population perhaps mostly remembered today through the image of Picasso’s painting Guernica (sic). Franco’s publicity department at first blamed the bombing and conflagration on the antifascist opposition, then apologists later claimed it had been bombed in mistake for another target.
It is unclear what the final judicial sentence was (it was revised by the Supreme Court in 1986) or to how long in jail the accused were sentenced but it seems to have been for a year or less.
Santi Brouard who, despite having been warned of fascists focusing on him, declined to hide or even to lock his clinic door, was murdered on 20th November while working in his clinic by Luis Morcillo and Rafael López Ocaña, killers hired by senior officials within the Spanish Interior Ministry and at least endorsed, if not actually organised, at the highest level of the State.
Josu Muguruzawas shot on the same date but five years later (1989) – and in Madrid. He was sitting at a table with Herri Batasuna comrades, planning their participation the following day in the Spanish Parliament, to which they had been elected from the southern Basque Country. For the left Basque independentist party, it was the first time their representatives were to take part in the Spanish Parliament. Muguruza died on the spot in the attack and a comrade Iñaki Esnaola was seriously wounded.
Monument to Josu Muguruza in his native Recalde, completed by unknown artist in 1989. (Image sourced: Internet)
Josu Muguruza was born in 1958 in the Recalde district of Bilbo (Bilbao). Following his schooling he enrolled in university to study teaching but switched to study journalism instead in Lejona (still in the province of Bizkaia). Apparently he had had been reared speaking only Castillian (Spanish) as Euskera (Basque language) was illegal under the Franco dictatorship but he learned the banned language and was an activist in ASK (Socialist Patriotic Committees), an assemblist collective founded in Bizkaia and also in both KAS and Herri Batasuna.
When his girfriend (and later wife) Elena Bartolomé was arrested on suspicion of connection to the armed group ETA, Muguruza, like Brouard and many others, fled to the northern Basque Country (under French administration). Without a need to worry about extradition from the French state in those years, Muguruza was able to lead a fairly normal life, working as a journalist (although he had left his studies before qualifying). During his six years in that part of his homeland, he taught Euskera for AEK (organisation for the promotion of Basque language to adults) in Bayonne, broadcast for local Basque radio station Gure Irratia and, under a pseudonym, reported for the northern Basque Country edition of Egin7 (a Basque patriotic-left newspaper).
It is believed that Muguruza grew to significant political importance among the Basques in the northern Basque Country, both natives and southern country refugees living there and that he was pushing within the movement for negotiations between ETA and the Spanish State.
In early March 1987 the French police arrested Muguruza on foot of extradition request from the Spanish State and hustled him over the border without an opportunity to challenge the process. Having been released towards the end of the year due to the absence of charges against him, he was able to reestablish himself in the southern Basque Country with his wife Elena but in Gastheiz (Vitoria), in the province of Álava. Muguruza went back to work for Egin but this time as Editor-in-chief, rose in the Basque liberation movement with activity in KAS and election to the national executive body of Herri Batasuna, the electoral party of the movement. For some in the know, although publicly in the background, he was considered among the most important of HB’s leaders and was actively pushing for the participation of the party in the electoral system of the Spanish State.
THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE DATE
The killing of both on the same date though some years apart was no accidental coincidence and clearly signalled the ideological source of the murders – though separated by decades, 20th November was the date of the execution of Primo Rivera and also of the death of the dictator General Franco8.
Primo Rivera was founder and leader of the fascist Falange organisation; he had been captured by Republican forces during the Spanish Anti-Fascist War and was executed on 20th November 1936 in Alicante jail. General Franco became the sole leader of the military-fascist coup and later Dictator of the Spanish State for four decades, dying in 1975. Fascists and Far-Right in Spain revere the memory of both men who, although they were rivals, were eventually interred together in the mausoleum of the Valle de los Caídos (“Valley of the Fallen”), which became a shrine for the Fascists and Far Right9, in particular for processions on the 20th of November — and a cause of bitter complaint for Spanish Republicans, members of the Spanish Left and national independentists (for example of the Basque Country and of Catalonia).
The murders of both Basques on the same date indicated the ideological background of the murderers – Spanish fascism. However, the organisations that carried out the murders were of significant difference and status within the Spanish state.
THE MURDERERS — SPANISH PARAPOLICIAL AND FASCIST ORGANISATIONS
As noted above, the murderers of Brouard were hired killers, contracted by high-ranking officials of the Spanish State.
Protest on 18th October 2008 by Askatasuna organistation on 25th Anniversary of the kidnapping, torture and murder of Jose Antonio Losa and Jose Ignacio Zabala, the first victims of GAL. The Spanish National Court had forbidden the commemoration in Tolosa, Guipuzkoa province. The commemorators are being confronted by the Ertzaintza, Basque Government police and at least six protesters were arrested. (Photo credit: EFE/GORKA ESTRADA)
Wikipedia’s account of the Spanish State assassination squad refers to GAL and the Dirty War, with the years of activity of GAL listed as 1983-1987, in total less than five years. However the whole period of Spanish State/ Far-Right terrorist murders lasted 26 years, beginning in 1975 and ending in 1990. The period claimed at least 66 lives10 and many injured. La Triple A (Acción Apolostolica Anti-communista) was active killing (eight murders according to Spanish State list of victims of this kind of terrorism) and injuring from 1975 until 1982, after which it may be said that GAL took over until 1987. GAL shared some of its time with the BVE (Batallón Vasco Español – “Spanish Basque Batallion”), claiming actions (21 murders and at least 10 serious injuries) between 1975 and 1981.
Poster for film about GAL (Image sourced: Internet)
The hitmen were criminals and mercenaries, sometimes from abroad but usually with a right-wing background, for example with the French-Algerian OAS, Italian fascist movement or the Argentine Triple A.
Some of the terror was directed in general at the Left within the Spanish state and some at Catalan independentists but most of the actions by far were aimed at the Basque Left independentists, many of these residing in the northern Basque Country, i.e under French rule. The terror of these parapolicial murders had a number of objectives:
eliminating specific antifascist and left activists during the period of the Transition from Dictatorship to “democracy”
causing fear and terror to encourage people to vote for the 1977 royalist and unitary state constitution
eliminating specific Left Basque independentists, in particular leaders
coercing the French Government into handing over Basque fugitives to the Spanish State
GAL was exposed in an invesigation by a Spanish controversial judge Baltasar Garzón11 and by journalists of El Mundo, newspaper of the right-wing conservative Partido Popular in a series starting in 198912. Although the Minister of the Interior, high-ranking police and army officers were convicted of a number of crimes including kidnapping, murder and embezzlement of Government funds (for personal enrichment, paying terror gang operatives and bribes), their actual time served was very short indeed.
The trial of the first of the senior13 State members of the terror operation did not take place until 1996, when the PSOE Minister of the Interior, José Barrionuevo and his Deputy Rafael Vera were tried on charges of funding and directing a number of murders. They were sentenced to ten years each. In 2001 they were pardoned, having served little more than a year in prison. That year Barrionuevo and José Luis Corcuera, his successor as Minister of the Interior, were tried for embezzlement but found not guilty the following year.
In 2000 General Galindo of the Guardia Civil was sentenced to 75 years for kidnapping and murder – of which he served only four, being released on health grounds.
The finger for Señor X, top director of GALpointed at Felipe González, Prime Minister of the PSOE Government at the time but, though widely believed to be him, he was never even questioned. Earlier this year a CIA document revealed that González was the Señor X but he remains uncharged.
Felipe Gonzalez in more recent years. Gonzalez was head of the social-democratic PSOE, Prime Minister in 1980s and “Senor X”, mastermind of the Spanish State murder and terror squads. He has never even been questioned. (Image sourced: Internet)
The murder of Josu Muguruza, unlike that of Santi Brouard and many others, appears not to have been sanctioned by the Spanish State and was contrary to its interests in a number of ways:
Muguruza was to attend the Spanish Parliament for the first time the following day and his murder, including being in the capital of the Spanish State, reflected badly on “Spanish democracy”;
The murder stood to weaken those in the Abertzale Left who supported entering the institutions of the Spanish state and strengthened those for whom armed struggle was the main vehicle towards liberation.
The Spanish police clamped down on the Triple A in Madrid after Muguruza’s murder and in response the network officially dissolved itself (though not for long).
Poster for what looks like a documentary film about GAL (contains images of what appears to be real people). (Image sourced: Internet)
THE BASQUE ORGANISATIONS
The history of these organisations is one of struggles for unity alongside splits, including the unseating of one political leadership and its replacement by another. Naturally the murdered Basque activists, along with all other prominent Basque activists of the time, played a part in these conflicts.
HASI in Euskera means “to begin” but is also an acronym for Herri Alderdi Sozialista Iraultzailea (People’s Revolutionary Socialist Party) and was considered the political expression of ETA militar (ETA (m)), a split in the armed libertion organisation. Founded in 1977 out of the fusion of the Basque socialist parties EHAS and ES, HASI was one of the founding members of KAS and of Herri Batasuna.
HASI was dissolved in 1992.
KAS began its existence in 1976, in the dying days of the Franco Dictatorship, as the establishment of a minimum democratic platform for unity across the Basque socialist independentist movement, drawing in a variety of Basque socialist and independentist organisations and later, trade unions. Originally supported by a minority of the movement, it began to quickly gain more widespread support. In 1977 the “Alsasua Table” brought together nearly all the relevant players. KAS put together a transitional program for the independence of the Basque nation, including the removal of repressive forces and the Basque people deciding on the future of the nation; this program was revised in 1978. ETA (militar) came to dominate the alliance after the dissolution of ETA (politico-militar) in 1982.
The ETA leader Argala considered implementation of KAS proposals necessary if ETA was to cease armed struggle; in addition the PSOE and PNV proposed watered-down versions of the proposals.
Alternatiba KAS was dissolved in 1992 to be replaced by Alternatiba Democratica in which Herri Batasuna would negotiate on behalf of the Basque nation.
ETA, which arguably Brouard also helped promote, was founded originally in 1959 as an unarmed Basque socialist group Euskadi Ta Askatasuna (Basque Country and Freedom); it became the armed organisation of the Basque socialist independentist movement, with its first victim and also first martyr in 1968. ETA announced a unilateral truce in 2011, disposal of its armament in 2017 and its disbandment and dissolution in 2018. There are over 250 Basque political prisoners who are recognised as serving sentences — often of a number of decades — in prisons dispersed throughout the Spanish and French states for actual or alleged membership of ETA or assisting the organisation14. The Spanish State insists the prisoners must express regret for their past actions to gain any degree of relaxation of their prison conditions or release on parole.
Although EPPK, the coordinating organisation of ETA prisoners continues in nominal existence, ETA does not exist at least since 2018, arguably since even earlier.
Herri Batasuna, to which Santi Brouard belonged and helped build, as did Josu Muguruza, registered as a political party in 1981 but had been in existence, arising out of KAS, since 1978. The party, like KAS, was a coalition of different strands.
It became the majority party of the Basque socialist independentist movement and performed well in elections but was outlawed by the Spanish State as were a number of its replacement formations, one of the effects thereof being to disqualify them from standing in elections. Its remnants today are to be found in the EH Bildu and Sortu political parties. Although changed from revolutionary socialist independentist to social-democratic nationalist but continuing to advocate for an independent Basque nation, they are arguably the only organisational survivors of the years of the Spanish State’s terrorist war against the Basque liberation movement.
Outside of the influence of the ‘official’ leadership of the movement a number of new Abertzale Left organisations exist which would claim to be continuing the original trajectory of the Abertzale Left (or perhaps to be improving upon it) such as Amnistia15, Ikasle Abertzaleak16, Jarki and Jardun, the latter seeking to act as a coordinator for the movement as a whole. In addition there are a number of autonomous collectives of various types, often focused on specific aspects such as the environment, anti-racism and anti-fascism, etc.
A FIGHT OVER THE MARTYRS’ MEMORY
Monument to Santi Brouard with placards bearing images of both martyrs and Basque flag, Ametzola Park, Bilbao, Nov 2017 (Image sourced: Internet)
Today there exists a three-cornered fight over the memory of the Basque martyrs since 196817. What is now becoming known as the “oficialista” leadership of the Abertzale Left and its “dissident” opposition both commemorate the murders of those Basque martyrs, including of course those of Muguruza and Brouard. But they rarely do so together and on occasion the oficialistas have commemorated them alongside victims of ETA18.
A woman dances the aurresku, an honour dance, in front of projections of the images of Brouard and Muguruza, Bilbao November 2014. (Image sourced: Internet)
The third party to the struggle is the Spanish State, which claims that any commemoration of those martyrs is, in essence, enaltecimiento del terrorismo — “exaltation of terrorism” and, while it does not always intervene, the possibility is always present of judicial prohibition, police action or subsequent charges under “anti-terror” legislation.
Historical memory is a political battleground.
In 2009 the Ertzaintza, police of the Basque ‘Autonomous’ Government, remove banner that declares that Brouard and Muguruza were murdered by the PSOE (Image sourced: Internet)
Ignoring protest of Tasio Erikizia, a leader of the Abertzale Left, the Ertzainza, police of the Basque ‘Autonomous’ Government, remove banner that declares that Brouard and Muguruza were murdered by the PSOE. This took place during a 2009 commemoration in Bilbao of the Spanish State murders of Brouard and Muguruza (Image sourced: Internet)
End.
FOOTNOTES
1The three northern provinces are under the control of the French State, which shares a border with the Spanish State.
2The Spanish State was under the dictatorship of General Franco, which it had been since the victory of his military-fascist forces in a coup against the Popular Front Government and the ensuing Spanish Anti-Fascist War (1936-1939).
3Nom de guerre of Jose Miguel Berañan Ordeñana, leading theoretician and activist of ETA, also murdered by GAL in the northern Basque Country by bomb under his car in December 1978, which makes December too a month of sad recollection for Basque independentists.
4A semi-autonomous body under the 1977 Spanish Constitution, composed of three of the four southern provinces of the Basque nation. It has traditionally been dominated by representatives of the PNV (Basque Nationalist Party) with representation of the Basque socialist independentists either in second place or in third (after the Spanish social-democratic PSE).
5“Basque Soldiers”, national anthem of the Basque independentist movement, similar in theme to The Soldiers’ Song/ Amhrán na bhFiann, the Irish national anthem.
6Juan Carlos was a protege of Franco, swore allegiance to the fascist State and, due to the Dictator’s declining health often presided over or attended functions in the role of head of state. Contrary to some versions of history, Juan Carlos was foisted upon the citizens of the Spanish state as part of a new Constitution in 1977, in turn part of the “Transition” of the State and accompanied by much violence and threats of the reimposition of a dictatorship. Though rejected in the Basque Country, the Constitution was accepted by a majority of the Spanish state electorate with the support of two of the main opposition parties (and their allied trade unions), the Partido Comunista de España and the Partido Socialista Obrero de España, the latter now one of two main parties of government in the Spanish state. Surrounded by controversy and allegations of financial corruption, Juan Carlos abdicated in June 2014 in favour of his son Felipe (now Felipe VI of Spain) and in August 2020 left the state, reportedly ahead of investigations that would lead to charges of financial corruption. The former King is reported to be living in luxury in the United Arab Emirates from which historically any extradition request to the Spanish State has failed.
7A bilingual Basque daily newspaper. In 1998, following many accusations of representing ETA in journalism, Egin was closed by Baltazar Garzón, the much-loved by liberals Judge of the Spanish National Court, with the mantra that “everything is ETA”. However, on appeal the newspaper was absolved of any connection with ETA but that was in 1989, over a decade later, when it was beyond possibility of reopening. The space was filled for many of those years by GARA, which is still in operation. A similar fate was that of Egunkaria, the first all-Euskera daily newspaper in the world – except that some of its managers were also tortured – all also absolved years later.
8Spanish fascists like to use dates as their signature – GAL killed “Argala” (José Miguel Beñaran Ordeñana) on 21st December 1978, the same date in 1973 in which the Basque armed organisation ETA had assassinated Admiral Carrero Blanco, the Spanish Prime Minister in Madrid.
9On 24th October last year 1919, the long-promised (by the PSOE) removal of the remains of both from the mausoleum at last took place, Spanish TV covering the occasion in a style reminiscent to a State funeral. It had been ordered by the PSOE-Podemos-Unida coalition government.
10This does not include ETA fighters or their associates killed during shootouts with the police, summary execution of prisoners taken by police or deaths in police custody, including cases of torture.
11Controversial in a number of ways: beloved by many Spanish and European liberals for ordering the exhumation of a mass grave of victims of the Anti-Fascist War and seeking the extradition of Pinochet for crimes of mass murder, he was also the directing judge in raids on Basque independentist activists whose 5-day incommunicado detentions he authorised and whose denunciations of torture to obtain “confessions” by the victims he ignored or accused them of their visible signs being self-inflicted. He is also infamous for his quoted remark that “Everything is ETA”, i.e that even perfectly legal organisations and activities of the pro-independence movement are organically linked to the armed liberation organisation, justifying the banning of organisations, closure of media agencies and social venues.
12According to their summary report on line (see Sources) these included “thousands of days of investigation, requiring more than 5,000 hours of journeys in Europe, Africa, America and Asia …. with 300 encounters with protagonists directly implicated ….”
13Some lower-level Guardia Civil officers were tried in 1991 and apparently paid money to keep quiet.
14A very small number of those have publicly dissented from the organisation’s leadership.
15Formerly Amnistia Ta Askatasuna (ATA – Amnesty And Freedom) but its full name now is Amnistiaren Aldeko eta Errepresioaren Aurkako Mugimendua (Movement for Amnesty and Against Repression).
16Students’ Union of the Basque Country, over which the ‘official leadership” has lost control to the “dissidents”.
17All Basques who are not diehard Spanish unionists commemorate the Basque martyrs who fell in the Spanish Anti-Fascist War but the PNV (Basque Nationalist Party) stops there while the Basque socialist independentist movement includes those who died fighting against Franco’s following repression. Accordingly the date of Gudari Eguna (Day of the Basque Soldier) for the PNV is October 28th while for the socialist independentist movement it is 27th September.
18In 2017 and again in 2018, Julen Mendoza, member of EH Bildu and Mayor of Errenteria participated in honouring the memory of the armed Guardia Civil killed by ETA in the area and this year in November the Basque Parliament, with the agreement of EH Bildu, commemorated the murder of Santi Brouard along with a number of elected representatives killed by ETA.
‘Today’, she said, ‘we will discuss the training of dogs’.
The class looked at her face to see whether she was joking. She looked back at them patiently.
‘But Teacher,’ ventured one braver student. ‘We are here to learn how to control humans.’
‘That is correct,’ replied the Teacher. ‘This is a sociology class. But there is much to learn from the training of dogs. In many ways, it is the same thing.’
‘
(Image sourced: Internet)
So, to begin: Where do dogs come from to us? Where did they originate?’
‘Are they not descended from wolves, Teacher? I think I read that somewhere.’
‘Yes, I did too. And dogs and wolves can interbreed, so they would have to be closely related.’
‘That is correct, they are closely related,’ replied the Teacher approvingly. ‘There is only 0.1% of a DNA difference between them and they can interbreed quite easily. The wolf is classified as Canis lupus and the dog as Canis familiaris. It is not strange to find dogs that are part wolf. The assumption is therefore that the common dog is descended from the wolf. And in some parts of the world, for example in South Africa and in Australia, there are wild dogs, dogs that live like wolves. We presume these were domesticated wolves that became dogs, that later again returned to the ways of wolves. So our question for discussion today is: How did wolves become dogs in the first place?’
‘But Teacher, if this occurred it must have done so in prehistory, surely?’
‘I think I read that it was in the Paleolithic Era.’
‘Well, then surely nobody knows, Teacher? No-one would have written to describe it as humans did not develop writing until much later.’
‘You are all correct, yes. But we can speculate. We can extrapolate from what we know. Now, when we have a dog as a pet – or as a working animal – it is in a social relationship with us, right?’
‘Well, yes. Some people see their dog as part of the family – you even hear them say that. But working dogs?’
‘Working dogs too, I suppose. A shepherd would have a close relationship with his dog … and so would a hunter. Even if the bond was primarily between the one person and the dog, it would have to recognise those close to the owner as ok, as safe, not to be attacked or growled at.’
(Image sourced: Internet)
‘Good, yes, we are getting there. The guard dog needs to know its owner or owners and who is acceptable. Sled dogs the same, even though they are a group, like a hunting pack. The hunter, the shepherd, the truffle-searcher, the seeing-eye guide dog – they are all in a social relationship with humans. We could, in fact, describe a dog as “a wolf-descendant in social relationship with humans.” But what is the normal social group of the wolf?’
‘It is the pack, isn’t it?’
‘Yes, that’s what I have read too. A hunting pack.’
‘Yes but not just a hunting pack. They have to raise pups, don’t they?’
‘Oh, and don’t they have an accepted leader?’
‘Yes, very good. The social organisation of the wolf is the pack. And they have leadership – a male and a female. They are called Alphas, Alpha Male and Alpha Female. They lead the pack – the other wolves obey them. So, how is it decided, do you think?’
‘They must have elections, Teacher.’
‘Very amusing. It is a serious question however, part of our discussion today.’
‘Maybe …. they fight over it? The strongest wins?’
‘Yes, correct, that is part of it. The male fights other males and the female fights other females.’
‘How civilised of them!’
‘You all laugh but you don’t realise how true that comment is. Now, let’s tease the process of leadership selection out a bit. Let’s concentrate on the males, for simplicity. Male A wants to be leader, so does male B and they fight. Male A is successful and wins. But he will be wounded, right? Right?’
‘Well, yes he would be. Bite marks, bleeding ….’
‘So up comes Male C now and he is not wounded. He fights Male A and beats him, so now he is top dog, or wolf, the leader of the pack, right? Right?’
‘Yes, it must be like that.’
‘Then we have at last an accepted leader of the pack. But in what state are the males? And if the females went through the same process, what state are they in and what are the consequences?’
‘They’d be walking wounded.’
‘A wounded pack can’t hunt well.’
‘Some might die of their wounds. Some would die of hunger.’
‘It’s not like that, is it Teacher? There has to be another way.’
‘Another process, yes. They must have a system, right Teacher?’
‘Yes. Very good. Exactly. They do have another system. Firstly, they very rarely fight a full fight to the end. And if there is a challenger, it is usually only one. Not all wolves want to lead. Maybe not all wolves think they can. So if there is to be a leadership conflict, Male A and Male B, for example, they will fight but usually to the point where one recognises the other is tougher or wants to be leader more, or has more to lose — say Male A. Then Male B gives up. And if Male A has to remind him or any of the other males at any point, he only has to threaten and they give up. They lie on their back or show their submission in some other way. The pack stays healthy and the Alpha Male and the Alpha Female are in charge. The rest of the pack accept them. And if they are good at what they do, the pack does well. If not, well, maybe another leadership contest. Or the pack breaks up.’
Wolf pack.(Image sourced: Internet)
‘Teacher? When pups are born, I presume they accept the hierarchy of the pack. But when the Alphas get old, or killed or injured in the hunt – or by hunters, humans – the process must start all over again?’
‘Yes and no, not completely. I didn’t tell you earlier but only the alpha females in the pack mate. The Alpha Female chases away other females if they come into heat and the Alpha Male may accept some males mating with her or may threaten other males so only he will mate with the Alpha Female, when she is in season. So the pups are all from the alpha female and from the alpha male or a few others. The next leaders will likely come from those pups – but not certainly. There are possible variations. They might all be killed or injured. An alpha descendant might take a different mate and that one will be alpha too. And so on. Now, let’s think about dogs. How did dogs come to be human-bonded?’
‘Hmmm. Maybe hunters killed the parents, took the cubs and raised them?’
‘Or found the cubs ….’
‘Yes, that is the common scenario. But after generations of the pack, how does a pup come to bond with humans? More to the point, how does it come to obey a human or a family?
‘Hmmm. Does it see the family as the pack, Teacher?’
‘Yes, and its master or mistress as the Alpha or Alphas?’
‘Very good. Yes, now you have it. I must be that way. But …. pups in a pack grow up and may want to become leaders themselves. We don’t hear of dogs deciding they want to run the human family, do we? What would we do if our dog decided it wanted to be boss and was prepared to fight?’
‘We’d have to shoot it.’
‘Yes, we couldn’t allow that.’
‘Wait a minute. Teacher, has that happened?’
‘Probably, in the early days. A domesticated wolf that would not accept the human as the Alpha was killed. Or ran away, maybe. Perhaps joined a wild pack, if it survived …. was accepted …. But in any case, the pups being raised by humans would not be descended from that disobedient wolf.’
‘So …. over generations, wolves …. were bred into dogs. Obedient individuals chosen …. disobedient ones killed …. or run off …. so only obedient dogs mate ….’
‘Yes … and every now and again you hear of a dog being “put down” because it attacked a human being …. especially a child …’
‘Wait! Are you saying humans have been bred to accept a hierarchy? And that the hierarchy is hereditary?’
‘Well, now – I hope I am not being accused of advocating monarchy … or feudalism?”
‘No, Miss …. of course not …. but …..’
‘Slow down, now. Don’t jump too far ahead to conclusions. Stay with the discussion a little longer, ok?’
‘Yes, Teacher. Sorry.’
‘That’s alright. Now, let’s unpick this a bit more. Is the non-Alpha wolf in the pack governed by fear alone? Does he or she have nothing to gain from its position in the pack?’
‘The pack hunts together, doesn’t it? So I suppose …. a pack can kill a bigger animal …. by working together?’
‘Yes, of course. A deer …. or antelope …. or bovine …. and then the whole pack will have enough to eat. Any other benefits?’
‘Defence? Lots of teeth, many individuals.’
‘Vigilance …. warning? Lots of eyes to keep lookout.’
‘Maybe warmth, huddling together against the cold?’
‘Yes, all those are true. And emotional warmth too, the solidarity of the group. The pack looks after the cubs also, as soon as they start to run around. This benefits the future of the whole pack as well as relieving the Alphas of their childcare from time to time. And the pack seems to get an emotional reward from looking after the cubs.’
‘Being a dog is quite a change then, Teacher. From being a wolf.’
‘Yes. But what are the advantages and disadvantages for the dog who is no longer a wolf? And there must be disadvantages, for some dogs have returned to the wild and the pack. As those I mentioned in South Africa and Australia. Advantages, first.’
‘The dog gets regular guaranteed food, doesn’t depend on the hunt for it.’
‘And the dog gets protection …. humans have weapons.’
‘And the dog gets …. gets …. medical care?’
‘Yes, all those things. But one very important thing dogs get that very few in the wolf pack get.’
‘They get to mate.’
‘Yes, exactly. No alpha telling them they can’t. Well, humans lock a bitch in heat up sometimes or we sterilise a male or female but otherwise, they mate. And a bitch gets to have her own cubs.’
‘Teacher …. are you implying that dogs chose not to be wolves?’
‘Well, it’s certainly an interesting question. If some dogs go feral, if some dogs form packs, and other dogs don’t, there would seem to be a choice involved, hmmm? And perhaps the ancestors of the dog did choose to leave the pack, rather than just being socialised and conditioned as captured pups. Some wolves may have hung around human encampments, getting scraps, warning humans of the approach of dangerous beasts …. other humans …. They may have been renegades from the pack …. dissidents …. The first domesticated wolf may have been an illicitly pregnant bitch, knowing that in the pack, her pups would get killed by the alpha female …. Her pups, socialised to humans as soon as they were born. Then, selection by the humans for non-aggression … obedience …. culling the ones that didn’t fit …”
‘Wow!’
‘So now we come to extrapolating what we can from managing wolves and dogs to managing humans. Postulate, please.’
‘The pack is a metaphor for our society.’
‘We generally accept our leaders, so long as they are effective.’
‘Sir, we train humans from childhood. Like pups in the pack’
‘And we give them some benefits so they choose to be in our pack’.
‘Yes, very good. And what about those who choose not to be in our pack?’
‘We eliminate them.’
‘Cull them.’
‘Isolate them.’
‘Marginalise them’.
‘Very good. For your written assignment, summarise in around a thousand words to be handed in next Monday.’
Around 30 Republicans and Socialists gathered on a very wet O’Connell Street in the Dublin City centre on Friday evening in solidarity with Irish Republican prisoners. Despite the rain and darkness, many passers-by took an interest in the banners and placards and some stopped to converse with the picketers. Behind the picket line other events were illustrating the sad state of a section of Irish society: one voluntary free meals service finished and another began, a Muslim one, with a queue along half the length of the General Post Office.
View of picket line from across the road
(Photo: C. Sulish)
The December prisoner solidarity event is organised annually by the Anti-Internment Group of Ireland, an independent collective of activists which also organises other awareness-raising pickets during the year; this evening it was supported by Irish Republicans and Socialists of different organisations and by independent activists.
(Photo: C. Sulish)
As the picket drew near to its scheduled end, placards were gathered, banners rolled up and picketers gathered (though some had already left) to hear a few words from the organisers.
The man speaking on behalf of the AIGI spoke a little in Irish welcoming those present before doing so again in English.
(Photo: C. Sulish)
“60 POLITICAL PRISONERS IN IRELAND BETWEEN BOTH ADMINISTRATIONS”
“We send solidarity greetings from here to the political prisoners in jail,” he said. “We do this every year at a particularly difficult time for the prisoners and their families and friends.”
He went on to say that they also did it to remind people, “those who would like to be reminded and those who would not” of the existence of “60 political prisoners in Ireland between both administrations.”
In reference to the pandemic, the speaker noted that it had been a difficult year for ordinary people but even more so for the prisoners, their families and friends, with restrictions and reduced visits and that in some cases the authorities had used the health restrictions “as a stick to beat the prisoners with.”
“It’s been a hard year too for Republicans, for some more than others”, he continued, alluding to house raids, arrests, incarcerations, cars stopped and searched, intimidation and harassment of pickets by the police.
On the other hand, the AIGI spokesperson stated, “anti-vaxers, racists and fascists” had been “strutting around” pretending to be patriots and “desecrating our national monuments”, without any attempt being made to compel them to adhere to the pandemic regulations.
(Photo: C. Sulish)Closeup Saoirse Banner (Photo: C. Sulish)
The speaker said that when Republicans and socialists had confronted with approaching or equal numbers those elements, they had “seen them off” clinging to “the protection of the British colonial police or of the Gardaí.” He pointed out that “They scream about ‘freedom’” but “they don’t know what freedom is”, pointing out that they are not being jailed for being active for the freedom of their country (implying that such is what is happening to Irish Republicans).
View of section solidarity picket line looking southward
(Photo: C. Sulish)
“We are here today,” said the spokesperson, “for those who cannot be, who would be here for us if we, in turn, could not.”
He thanked all who had attended the event that evening, “go raibh maith agaibh, particularly those who have supported our picket during the year.” On behalf of Anti-Internment Group of Ireland he thanked those present again and wished them and the prisoners, along with their friends and families all the best for the festive season.
The AIGI spokesperson concluded by saying. “Feicfimíd sibh arís ar an tsráid. We will see you again on the street.”
end.
NB: An updated list of political prisoners and the addresses of the prisons may be found on the End Interment FB page.
View of section of solidarity picket line looking northward (Photo: C. Sulish)
French electricity workers switching low-cost electricity to workers’ homes (Photo source: The Free)
“For Christmas, the CGT lowers the price of electricity”: words on banner on French electricity generating station or routing installation (Photo source: The Free)
Hoy, hace un año Dilan Cruz cayó bajo los disparos de la Policía. Un bean bag incrustado en su cráneo, acabó con la vida de este joven. Conocimos luego de los hechos, las fotos sonrientes del fue que buen estudiante, buen muchacho y muy querido por sus compañeros.
Nada en la vida de Dilan fue fácil, nació y se crío en un barrio popular, dejó sus estudios para luego retomarlos y soñaba con entrar a la universidad. Como a muchos colombianos le negaron esa posibilidad, primero por la pobreza y luego por un disparo a su cabeza.
Ni siquiera su muerte fue fácil. No murió en el instante, luchaba contra la muerte varias horas, y luego murió en el Hospital San Ignacio de Bogotá. Ahora muerto, las cosas siguen igual de difíciles para este joven. Todos sabemos el nombre y rango de sus asesino. El verdugo se llama capitán Manuel Cubillos del ESMAD y sigue vinculado a la Policía de Colombia. El anda tranquilo y la familia de Dilan anda angustiada. Hoy en la protesta organizada en el sitio del crimen, la calle 19 con carrera 4ª en Bogotá, la mamá del joven fue clara. “No estamos buscando indemnizaciones sino judicializaciones de los responsables.” Y está claro la responsabilidad no cae únicamente sobre los hombros del ogro Manuel Cubillos, sino sobre el entonces alcalde de Bogotá Peñalosa y el rey de los payasos, el sub presidente Iván Duque.
Pero Colombia está gobernado por un rey de payasos donde la impunidad es reinante y pavonea por las calles armada hasta los dientes, asesinando a diestra y siniestra. El monstruo Manuel Cubillos es apenas uno de los miles de asesinos a sueldo en Bogotá.
Hoy lloramos por Dilan Cruz, y no podemos equipararlo a sus verdugos. Cuando nos pidan llorar por algún policía muerto, recordemos a Dilan y lloremos por él y los 13 jóvenes asesinados luego de la tortura y asesinato de Javier Ordóñez y no por ellos, jamás. Que no nos caiga ni una sola lágrima por ellos, son ellos quienes cada año nos arrancan ríos de sangre y lágrimas.
En honor a Dilan Cruz y todas las víctimas de terrorismo de Estado en Colombia.
Few people know the pain of being dispossessed of their land better than the Irish, but tragically in the 1870s, thousands of impoverished Irish immigrants ended up enlisting in American armies that were fighting to push Native Americans off their land.
Irishmen fought and died in the most iconic conflict between Native Americans and the United States Army at the Battle of the Little Bighorn in Montana. The defeat of the General Custer’s 7th Cavalry by Native Americans on June 25, 1876 has become legendary. Many people know the story of Custer’s defeat, but few are aware of the role the Irish played in fighting the battle, and in creating the most famous painting of it.
One hundred and three Irish soldiers perished on that fateful day, and yet another Irishman, John Mulvany, realizing the popularity a canvas of the battle would create, painted his iconic “Custer’s Last Rally,” which remains today one of the most celebrated paintings of the American West.
Custer’s Last Rally, painted by John Mulvaney (Photo sourced: Internet)
In the 1870s, the hard and dangerous life of an American cavalry trooper was still the best option for many poor, newly arrived Irish immigrants. In 1875, Custer’s 7th Cavalry was full of Irish-born recruits when gold was discovered in the Black Hills of South Dakota, the sacred ground to the Lakota. These soldiers must have known the danger they faced when the United States claimed the land and invaded it, despite treaties the American government had signed with the Lakota, guaranteeing them its ownership. The military’s armed incursion into the area led many Sioux and Cheyenne tribesmen to leave their reservations, joining the rebel leaders, Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse, in Montana. By the spring of 1876, more than 10,000 Native Americans were camped along the Little Bighorn River – defying a War Department order to return to their reservations and setting the stage for the famous battle.
The charismatic General George Armstrong Custer and almost 600 troops of the 7th Cavalry rode into the Little Bighorn Valley, determined to attack the native encampments. Riding with Custer were over 100 Irishmen, ranging in rank from newly recruited troopers, many of whom could barely control their mounts, to Captain Myles Keogh, a heroic veteran of the Civil War from County Carlow. There were 15 Irish sergeants and three Irish corporals in Custer’s command, the backbone of his noncommissioned officers.
Today, we imagine Custer wearing his trademark buckskin jacket – it was sewn by an Irishman, Sergeant Jeremiah Finley from Tipperary, the regiment’s tailor. The song of the 7th Cavalry was another Irish influence. Just prior to Custer’s arrival in Fort Riley, Kansas, where he took command of the 7th Cavalry, Custer ran into an Irish trooper who, “under the influence of spirits,” was singing “Garryowen,” an Irish song. Custer loved the melody and began to hum the catchy tune to himself. Custer made it the official song of the 7th Cavalry and it was the last song played before Custer and his men separated from General Terry’s column at the Powder River and rode off into history.
Centre section of The Battle of Aughrim, by John Mulvany. (Photo sourced: internet
John Mulvany, who is known for his paintings of the American West and in particular “Custer’s Last Rally,” also painted “The Battle of Aughrim,” in 1885, which was exhibited in Dublin in 2010. The battle, fought between the Jacobite and the Williamites forces in Aughrim, County Galway on July 12, 1699, it was one of the bloodiest battles in Ireland’s history, over 7,000 killed. The battle marked the end of Jacobitism in Ireland, a movement that aimed to restore the Roman Catholic Stuart King James II of England and Ireland (as James VII in Scotland) to the throne
Before the battle, the legendary Lakota chief Sitting Bull had a vision in which he saw many soldiers, “as thick as grasshoppers,” falling upside down into the Lakota camp, which his people saw as a foreshadowing of a major victory in which a large number of soldiers would be killed. Custer, however, blinded by ego and visions of glory, made a reckless decision to attack the huge gathering of Native Americans head on, saying, ironically, “Boys, hold your horses, there are plenty down there for us all.”
Foolishly splitting his command into three units, Custer tried in vain to attack and envelop the largest concentration of Native American fighters ever to face the American Army. The first assault against the Native American encampment was launched shortly after noon by three companies – 140 officers and men – led by Major Marcus Reno, whose men attacked along the valley floor towards the far end of the camp. Thrown back with many casualties, the survivors scrambled meekly for their lives to the top of a hill. Custer, with five companies totaling more than 200 men, advanced along the ridgeline, commanding the river valley on its eastern side. He further divided this force into two groups, one of them led by Captain Keogh.
There is debate about what occurred when Custer engaged the Native American forces just after 3 p.m. because the General and all his men were killed, so no one from Custer’s command could tell their tragic tale. Archaeological evidence suggests that Keogh and his men fought bravely, being killed while trying to reach Custer’s final position after the right wing collapsed.
On June 27, 1876, members of Gen. Terry’s column reached the Little Bighorn battlefield and began identifying bodies. Keogh was found with a small group of his men and his was one of the few bodies that had not been mutilated, apparently owing to a papal or religious medal that he wore about his neck (Keogh had once served in the in the Battalion of St. Patrick, Papal Army). Although Captain Keogh did not survive the battle, his horse, Comanche, did. The horse, spared by the Native American fighters for its heroism, recovered from its serious wounds and was falsely honored as the lone survivor of the battle (many other U.S. Army horses also survived). Comanche was retired with honors by the United States Army and lived on another 15 years. When Comanche died he was stuffed, and to this day remains in a glass case at the University of Kansas.
Comanche, Keogh’s horse, which survived his master who died at the battle.
(Sourced: Internet)
White Americans, shocked and angered by the defeat of Custer and his men, demanded retaliation. And they got it. Soon after, over 1,000 U.S. troops under the leadership of General Ranald Mackenzie opened fire on a sleeping village of Cheyenne, killing many in the first few minutes. They burned all the Cheyenne’s winter food and slit the throats of their horses. The survivors, half naked, faced an 11-day walk north to Crazy Horse’s camp of Oglalas.
The victory at Little Big Horn marked the beginning of the end of the Native Americans’ ability to resist the U.S. government, but 37-year-old John Mulvany from County Meath saw opportunity in the tragedy.
John Mulvaney, photo by Anne Webber (Sourced: Internet)
12 YEARS OLD IN THE USA
Mulvany arrived in America as a 12-year-old. He went to art school in New York City and became an assistant of famed Civil War photographer Mathew Brady. He later covered the Civil War as a sketch artist for a Chicago newspaper, developing an amazing ability to capture battlefields on canvas.
Mulvany knew that a painting of the fight would be a sensation. He visited the battlefield twice and also found Sitting Bull in Canada so that his painting could capture even minute details of the battle and its combatants. Mulvany finished the epic 11 ft. x 20 ft. canvas in 1881, which was hailed as a masterpiece, and began a 17-year tour of the United States. The canvas made Mulvany the toast of Chicago, but his good fortune would not last.
Sitting Bull of the Lakota, photo by William Notman. John Mulvany sought him out to consult him about the Battle of the Little Big Horn. (Image sourced: Internet)
Mulvany eventually sold his painting and ended up destitute in Brooklyn, where he drowned in the East River in 1909 in what many labeled a suicide. Mulvany quickly became forgotten, but not the fame of his great canvas, which recently sold for $25 million. Mulvany painted many great works, but they are lost and there is a concerted effort to find these missing canvases. Perhaps we will soon find more works of this great, tragic Irish painter.
Last Saturday (November 28th) saw the centenary of the Kilmichael Ambush, when a column of the West Cork IRA commanded by Tom Barry ambushed two lorry-loads of Auxiliaries and fought them to a finish, losing three of their own in the fight. It was a battle of tremendous importance in rural Ireland during the War of Independence, when the forces of British occupation of the nation turned to undisguised terrorism and employed the Auxiliaries as the knife edge of that terror. Despite the Covid19 pandemic restrictions, the 100th centenary was marked by physical commemorations in addition to on-line talks and articles. However, it appears that the “patriots” of the Far Right and fascists1 in Ireland failed to commemorate this important event – why might this be?
The Auxiliary Division were all ex-British Army officers but were recruited in July 1920 as a mobile strike force to bolster the British colonial police, the paramilitary Royal Irish Constabulary. This was in addition to another police support group which became known as the “Black and Tans”. The massive swelling of the ranks of the police was because the British rulers wanted to deny that they were fighting a liberation war and instead to present it as a policing problem (though they were obliged to use 20,000 British Army nevertheless)2. Both the ‘Tans and the Auxies gained a reputation for rough and arrogant treatment of civilians, torture of captives, theft, drunkenness and general indiscipline. However, a fear of the the “Auxies” had also grown, a feeling that they could not be beaten. The Kilmichael Ambush smashed that myth and was as important in the rural areas as the wiping out of much of the British intelligence network in Dublin was for the city.
Auxies raiding the James Connolly College and Irish Socialist Party at 42 North Gt. Georges Street, November 1920 (they raided the building twice that month, along with many other organisations considered subversive by the colonial authorities).
However although they have been posing as Irish patriots, we saw no sign of the commemorative celebration of the Kilmichael Ambush from the Irish Far-Right and fascists. They have played patriotic ballads and anthems often at events and strutted around under — and sometimes wrapped in — Irish flags. They have tried to appropriate Irish patriot heroes and martyrs including Wolfe Tone, James Connolly and Terence MacSwiney. But they left Tom Barry untouched.
Niall McConnell, head of the fascist organisation (registered as a business) Síol na hÉireann, posted about James Connolly as though Connolly would have supported McConnell’s type of people and claimed Connolly was born in Ireland. Laughable though it may be to think that revolutionary socialist and anti-sectarian, anti-imperialist Connolly would ever have supported a little Ireland religious sectarian and fascist like McConnell, the latter did try to appropriate him. And although Connolly was born to Irish parents in Edinburgh, where he grew up, that was not enough for McConnell, who had to claim he’d been born in Ireland.
Wolfe Tone, a revolutionary patriotic democrat who strove to unite the mass of people in Ireland of different religions and who fought for a secular independent state, would have crossed the street to avoid the likes of McConnell – but that didn’t prevent McConnell from trying to appropriate him.
Recently we passed through the 100th anniversary of the death on hunger strike of Terence MacSwiney – and they tried to appropriate him too. MacSwiney was a devout Catholic but the IRA, of which he was a prominent officer in Cork, was a non-sectarian body. Presumably MacSwiney, like his IRA comrades, fought under the principles of the 1916 Proclamation, part of which read: “The Republic guarantees civil and religious liberty to all ….” Nevertheless, got up somewhat reminiscently of the Ku Klux Klan, McConnell led a small torchlit group allegedly to MacSwiney’s grave and had himself videoed making a speech there.
Dee Wall (real name Dolores Webster), whose Saturday afternoon screeching on behalf of the QAnon negationists and conspiracy theorists assails the ears of people passing the GPO in Dublin and whose social media tries to reach those who avoided that experience, tried to claim MacSwiney too, only she pronounced the surname as rhyming with “tiny” instead of like “sweeney” (as one who had never heard the name before might from the spelling alone).
Jim Dowson, a British fascist and sectarian Loyalist, who has shared a platform with fascists Rowan Croft (aka “Tan” Torino) and Herman Kelly of the Irish Freedom Party (but formerly of UKIP), has cheered the armed fascists of the National Party in attacking unarmed counter-protesters, calling them “my Fenians”. Yes, bizarre to call his fascist comrades anything to do with the revolutionary Irish Republican Brotherhood but even more so when “Fenians” is one of the hate-names of Dowson’s Loyalist brethren for Irish Republicans.
Another centenary we passed by very recently with a number of commemorations held outside the stadium was that of the Bloody Sunday Massacre in Croke Park by Auxiliaries, ‘Tans and RIC. Apparently the fascist National Party sneaked in an early videoed commemoration of their own before anyone else on the day and left a wreath among other floral tributes there.
Yet, despite this focus on recent centenaries in the Irish struggle for independence, the “patriots” of the Far Right and fascists in Ireland seem to have let that great event of the Kilmichael Ambush slip them by without a commemoration of any kind. Not a murmur, not a video, not a post, not a photo, not even a tweet from these publicity-obsessed types.
The start of the action in the Kilmichael Ambush as depicted in a scene from Loach’s film The Wind that Shakes the Barley. (Image sourced: Internet)
THEIR PROBLEM WITH KILMICHAEL AND TOM BARRY
What possible reason could there be for this omission by the fascists and Far Right?
Was it because Tom Barry, who led that ambush was anti-sectarian and proved it by publicly punishing two men who had robbed from a Protestant chapel in West Cork? Doubtful, because that did not stop the fascists trying to appropriate Wolfe Tone, whose main effort was precisely to end sectarianism.
Photo of a young Tom Barry, guerrilla leader, on the cover of a reprint copy of his memoir (Image sourced; Internet)
Or was it because following the Kilmichael Ambush, the IRA were condemned by the Bishop of Cork, Daniel Colohan? We might be on to something there. “Demented” Dee Wall, Niall McConnell and National Party representatives all attended the anti-Muslim protest earlier this year, organised by Gemma O’Doherty, who unfurled a banner bearing the slogan “Make Ireland Catholic Again”, where they prayed the rosary through amplification. The new fascist parties, far-right organisations and the anti-mask people are building on the remaining fundamentalist hard-right reactionary core of the Catholic Church in Ireland who have seen its grip on the social and political life of society slipping over the years, due to its scandals and people’s democratic desire for equality.
By the way, Barry commented in his memoir that, although practicing Catholics, the threat of excommunication deterred the patriots of West Cork not in the least, as they were able to separate their religious from their patriotic views.
It may be that the false patriots have another problem with Barry: he fought against the Free State at least twice. Tom Barry, like the overwhelming majority of the military part of the resistance movement, rejected the terms of the Anglo-Irish Agreement of 1921 and refused allegiance to the 26-County Free State. The latter, in 1922 under Michael Collins, opened artillery fire upon the Republicans, launching a civil war which persisted until 1923 and during which the State, apart from those killed in battle, killed at least another 120, either through shooting prisoners, martial court executions or covert assassinations. Barry was part of the IRA’s leadership in the Civil War.
Bombardment of Republican-held Four Courts in Dublin by Free State forces from the bottom of Winetavern Street (with British artillery on loan) starts the Civil War on 28 June 1922 (Source Internet)
Although because he felt the war could no longer be won and was narrowly outvoted on ending it, Barry had resigned his leadership position shortly before the end of the Civil War, he rejoined the IRA leadership in 1927 and was jailed by the DeValera Government in 1934 for seven months on a charge of illegal possession of firearms.
In March 1936 Barry was suspected — but never charged — of involvement in the assassination of retired Vice-Admiral Henry Somerville at his home in Cork, because he was attempting to recruit people into the British Naval forces3. In 1937 Tom Barry was elected Chief of Staff of the IRA after the resignation of Seán McBride but resigned the position himself in 1938 over a tactical dispute.
Yet another problem for the Far Right and the fascists is that from the 1970s onward, though he publicly disagreed with some of their actions, Tom Barry stated he supported the Provisionalsand later, Republican prisoners in the H-Blocks. At a commemoration at Crossbarry in 1980, the scene of another of Barry’s famous battles, shortly before his death, he was quoted as saying:
‘I don’t want you to fall out4 until the same prayers are said for men who are being crucified in H-block, Long Kesh. I want you to say prayers for them to show our unity with these men, many of whom are completely innocent and are railroaded by the same British that killed these men whom we are commemorating.’
The Far Right and fascist “patriots” have a big problem with the Provisionals5 and others who were, during the recent war of three decades, at the time fighting against British occupation for a united, independent Ireland.
IN CONCLUSION
Of course, given their flexibility with history, logic and integrity6, there is no guarantee that at some time in the future the Far Right and fascists will not try to appropriate the Kilmichael Ambush. However, their present difficulty with commemorating the event and celebrating the memory of a true patriot, Tom Barry, exposed the false patriotism of the Far Right and fascists in Ireland. But it did more: it gave a clear indication of what they do support.
The Far Right and fascists in Ireland support:
the 26-County neo-colonial State
the continuation of British colonial occupation and division of Ireland
a Catholic Church dictating in political and social affairs to the population within the Irish state
The Far Right and fascists, for all their slogans about “freedom”, “free speech” and posturing as “patriots”, are in oppositionto freedom, both national, social and individual. There is nothing patriotic about them.
End.
FOOTNOTES:
1 Though the dividing line in Ireland between most of of the Far Right and committed fascists is a thin one, it nevertheless exists but it is important to note their past cooperation in staging public events and the continued presence of fascists within the Far Right.
2 Wikipedia gives the following figures: British Army 20,000; Royal Irish Constabulary 9,700; Black and Tans 7,000; Auxiliary Division 1,400; Ulster Special Constabulary 4,000 (i.e a total of 42,000 combatants). These were opposed in fighting by little more than 15,000 IRA and about 250 ICA (although those were supported by a large network of formal and informal non-combatants).
3 With the signing of the Anglo-Irish Agreement of 1921, the British had retained the three deepwater “Treaty Ports” of Lough Swilly in Donegal, Berehaven and “Queenstown” (Cóbh) in Cork. The Irish State took these ports over with British agreement in 1938. De Valera’s refusal to allow the UK to use these ports during WW2 led to a threat of invasion by Churchill and the resultant declaration of an “Emergency” by the Irish Government and recruitment into its armed forces; the threat was unfulfilled and the Irish State remained neutral through the war though generally friendly to the Allies.
4 A military parade command: “Fall out” indicates that the parade is formally over and soldiers may disperse for recreation or take up other duties.
5 However the history-illiterate Dee Wall of the QAnon group, protesting outside Maghaberry Jail in solidarity with an anti-masker jailed for a few days in Maghaberry for refusing to give his name, stated that Bobby Sands had died there. Bobby Sands, the first of ten hunger strikers of the Provisional IRA and of the INLA, died on hunger strike in the H-Blocks of the Maze prison, which was closed 20 years ago.
6 Along with their willingness to libel with the most vile and outlandish personal accusations individuals who oppose them
