“In conclusion, it seems clear that both states in Ireland, the Irish one and the British colonial one, are employing refusal of bail and restrictive bail conditions in order to harass and intimidate political activists and to seriously disrupt their work.”
In excess of 50 Demonstrators formed three lines in Dublin’s O’Connell Street on Friday (19th June) to protest the continued incarceration of Steven Bennet, a political activist arrested while peacefully resisting the installation of water meters. Bennet was arrested on two consecutive nights – in the York Road area of Dun Laoghaire and in Bray – and on each occasion he was kept in custody overnight despite the Gardai knowing his address and where he could be contacted and despite the suggested charges not being particularly serious. Brought to court then, he was offered bail if he could provide a €1,000 surety, would submit to a nightly curfew between the hours of 10pm and 8.00am, would sign at a police station daily and would refrain from participation in political activity. A previous High Court ruling that his bail conditions should not interfere with his political activism was thereby changed by the same Court. Stating that these conditions were unreasonable, he refused and has been in jail now for nearly four weeks.
Protesters in Dublin outside GPO demand freeing of Steven Bennet (view northward excluding some on west side of central island)
The Irish Government has imposed a Water Tax on the population of the state although they pay for the maintenance of the public water system already through their taxes (and bizarrely, it was recently revealed, through their Motor Tax also). The Water Tax is extremely unpopular in Ireland and has given rise to huge national demonstrations as well as to local resistance and to the most widescale movement of civil disobedience since the resistance to the Household Tax a few years ago. Most people believe these new taxes are a means of funding the banking bailout and also that the public water service is being prepared for privatisation (a likely benificiary being Denis O’Brien, part-owner of the company currently installing the meters and among the 200 top world billionaires).
Banner and demonstrators protesting jailing of Steven Bennet (photo Vivienne)
Some of the local resistance involves blocking the road to the water meter trucks or, more usually, walking slowly in front of them to slow down their work. People have also interposed their bodies between the meter installation crews and the spot where they intend to drill into the pavement in order to install the meters.
(photo Vivienne)
We should ask ourselves and interrogate the State about why it wishes to impose these restrictions on an arrested political activist. Keeping someone in custody is a serious step in any democratic system. If they have not been convicted, the step is even more serious. Let us not forget that the legal system claims that any accused is presumed innocent until that changes by being found guilty in court. Keeping an innocent person in jail is supposed to be an extreme step, justified only by one or both of the following circumstances:
The accused is thought to be
a serious risk of flight from the jurisdiction before trial
a risk of interfering with witnesses expected to testify against him/her at trial
The “seriousness of the crime” is sometimes raised but that seems related to the “risk of flight”, i.e that the accused might contemplate fleeing the jurisdiction because of the likely seriousness of the punishment if s/he were to be convicted.
As observed earlier, the default position should be that bail is granted.
(photo Vivienne)
Conditions of bail
Conditions of bail are usually that the accused reside at an address supplied to the court – this relates to the defendant being found if required by the State. The accused may be released in his or her “own recognizance”, i.e without any sum being set.
Where sums of money are required to be placed as a surety for bail, these seem again to be related to “risk of flight” — in other words, the accused is thought less likely to flee if it will cost money to the accused or to the person guaranteeing the bail.
The justification for requiring a person to report at a police station every day at a certain time also seems also to have been conceived with regard to risk of flight – it is hard to see what other justification there could be for this. But in fact this makes no sense, since one can present at a police station at eight or nine pm (a frequent time given) but yet be out of the jurisdiction by midnight (in the case no curfew) or by 12 noon when there is a curfew imposed. One supposes it does permit the police to issue a warrant for arrest should the accused fail to sign in at 8pm or 9pm the next evening but that can hardly be a great advantage.
A curfew is sometimes imposed and it is difficult to see the justification for that either, unless it too is related to fear of the accused absconding from the jurisdiction but the same reservations apply to that as to the signing on at the police station requirement.
When these conditions and restrictions are imposed on political activists on charges which normally attract only fines if the accused were found guilty and only very short prison terms in worst case scenarios, what can the justification be? As a rule the accused is still politically active, highly visible to the police and without a history of absconding from the jurisdiction (in fact, often a history of the exact opposite, as in Bennet’s case). The witnesses against the activist are normally the Gardaí, who are supposed to be impervious to “interference” and even when they are others, there is usually no allegation of a fear that the accused is going to intimidate them).
It seems clear that the real reason for these restrictions and conditions are
to disrupt the life of the accused and thereby make him/ her pay a price whether or not s/he is later convicted in court
to disrupt the political life of the accused (interfering with organising, traveling, etc.)
to make it difficult for the accused to get bail (in the case of financial sureties), in which case
to make the accused suffer imprisonment for a period (through refusal of bail or through setting difficult and unreasonable conditions) even though perhaps not convicted later or, if convicted, not receiving a custodial sentence
to discourage others from following in the footsteps of the accused.
Increasingly, particularly in the case of Irish Republicans in the Six Counties, another requirement imposed has been to wear an electronic “tag” or bracelet which may not be removed until the State orders that done. This is usually explained as merely an enforcement of the above conditions but is a physical reminder, every minute of every day, a demeaning intrusion into one’s life.
Three lines of protesters in front of GPO, Dublin’s O’Connell Street (view southward), seeking freeing of Steven Bennet (Jim Larkin statue just visible in the background).
Also in the Six Counties, Irish Republicans on bail are being banned from use of the Internet, from having a mobile phone or, in the case where they are permitted one, being required to supply to the State the phone numbers dialed. Yet another condition has been not to reside within one’s own home town. Very common has been the requirement not to be in the company of others “convicted of terrorism” (if so, have they not served their time?) or merely “suspected of terrorism” (how would one know? The State will tell you!). In the Six Counties in particular, with its history of 30 years of war and subsequent political dissent from the Good Friday Agreement, not associating with anyone who has at some time been convicted of “terrorism” or is currently “suspected” of it, must be seriously difficult.
Apart from the restrictions on one’s personal freedom imposed by the above conditions, these are a massive interference with the facilities of a political organiser and there seems not even a pretence of any other justification for them. They are therefore unwarranted abuses of people’s civil liberties.
In conclusion, it seems clear that both states in Ireland, the Irish one and the British colonial one, are employing refusal of bail and restrictive bail conditions in order to harass and intimidate political activists and to seriously disrupt their work.
Accept the conditions?
Steven Bennet is currently refusing to accept the unreasonable restrictions being required of him in order to avail of bail. In the past, particularly in the Six Counties, others have done so too. One example there was Stephen Murney, of the Éirigi republican party, who was expected to agree to curfew, daily signing at a police station, electronic bracelet, not to reside in his home town of Newry or to approach within five miles of it and not to attend any political events. He refused to accept those conditions for 14 months and eventually was released on bail without the conditions shortly before his trial – at which he was found “not guilty”, which was no surprise since the charges were completely spurious. But Murney had already spent 14 months in jail.
Irish Republican Stephen Murney happy to be out on bail as his trial collapsed — but he had still done 14 months in custody before that.
In recent months, there seems to be a trend of people accepting the conditions in order to receive bail; this includes Republicans in the Six Counties and other water-meter protesters in Dun Laoghaire (on whom a variety of restrictions are being reported). Such acceptance represents in the short term a small victory for the State and in the longer term a significant defeat for civil liberties and the political opposition to the states.
One can hardly blame the activists who have accepted these conditions. The liberal civil liberties sector is silent on what is happening, as is largely the case with the organised Irish Left. When it seems that continued opposition to the bail restrictions can achieve no political objective due to lack of wide-scale protest, and one may be facing long months or even years in prison awaiting trial as a result of refusal, there seems little reason to continue the refusal to accept these restrictions.
Of course, these attacks are taking place on what the Left and liberal civil liberties sectors may see as the “fringes” — the Republicans and some unorthodox anti-water-meter protesters. Have we not learned the lessons of history? The attacks of fascism and the repressive State nearly always start at the “fringes”, from which they move in towards the core. Our silence on this now is in reality an assent to the State — “Go ahead if you like,” is the message the State is receiving, “we’re not going to do anything”. Unless the State goes for the core, of course. But will there be anyone left to mount a decent resistance when we finally decide we should?
The returning officer, Ríona Ní Fhlanghaile, has declared that the 26-County state has voted in the Referedum IN FAVOUR OF INSERTING A CLAUSE IN THE CONSTITUTION THAT PERMITS COUPLES OF EITHER GENDER TO MARRY by 1,201,607 votes to 734,300. That’s 62.1% yes to 37.9% no. The total turnout was 60.5% which is higher than in some other Irish referenda. The “Yes” vote exceeded the “No” in every county in the state except in Roscommon, where the vote was close. The “Yes” vote was significantly higher in all other counties and generally across rural and urban areas too.
The vote in favour is not surprising given that all the main political parties, as well as Sinn Fein and Left parties were all advocating a “Yes” vote. However, on its own that does not explain the wide gap between the two positions and the high turnout, especially in the face of the Irish Catholic Church hierarchy’s position against legalisation of same-sex marriage. It is hard not to see this as to some extent a conscious decision to oppose or ignore the Church’s position and to take a stand in favour of equality and civil rights.
When the votes are counted after today, we will either have a new clause inserted into our Bunreacht (Constitution) or we will not. If we do not, many of the “Vote Yes” campaign and opinion will be despondent. The revolutionaries among them should not be so but should instead reflect on their weakness as a force and on how to make that force stronger.
Should the vote result in a change in the Constitution, it will be probably the biggest blow so far to the power of the Catholic Church in lay society, a power it has enjoyed and abused even before 1921 but certainly since. Some, on both sides of the question, will see it as a blow against the Catholic religion itself but that is not necessarily so. Christianity and its Catholic variant survived and even thrived without State support in the past – indeed when its followers were discriminated against in every conceivable way by State power, a situation its faithful endured for centuries in Ireland as a whole and continue to do today, to a lesser extent, in the Six Counties.
What is the issue upon which we were being called to vote today? Although the NO campaign has tried to make us think it is, it is clearly not about whether two-gender households are better for raising children, whether surrogate birthing is right or wrong. It is not about whether we approve or homosexuality or not – although I suspect that is the real issue at base with many of the NO campaigners. In fact, it seems to me that it would be quite possible to disapprove of homosexuality and still to vote “Tá”, a question I will return to later. This might seem illogical, until we examine the actual issue upon which we are voting: do we agree with inserting a clause into the Bunreacht (Constitution) which states that a couple has a right to marryregardless of gender.
Presented with this question, which is a legal and Constitutional one, a number of issues arise, I think.
What does the Bunreacht say at the moment about this question?
What right has the State to define anything about sexual relationships?
Are we in favour of equal civil rights for people?
1. It may come as a surprise to people that our Bunreacht, our Constitution, currently says nothing about the gender issue in marriage. There is nothing actually in our Bunreacht to prevent same-sex marriage. But the prohibition does exist in law. In other words, legislators at some point decided to propose and pass a law which confined the right (and rite) of marriage to heterosexual couples alone. Why did they do so if it was not an issue at that time? It seems to me that they were aware that same sex relationships did exist and strove to exclude those people from the rights enjoyed by others. This was the point of a number of other pieces of legislation against homosexuality which were not finally overturned until 1993 in this State (1982 in the Six Counties, 1980 in Scotland, 1967 in England and Wales) – five years after the European Court of Human Rights ruled that this state’s laws against male homosexual acts violated human rights.
According to the Catholic Church (and most other churches), despite the current legal situation with regard to homosexuality at the moment, it is still wrong. Well, the Catholic Church – and before them the established Anglican Church of Ireland – can have their views but they are not entitled, nor is any other church, to impose those on lay society, neither by legislation nor by other means. They are, of course, entitled to express their opinion – just like any other organisation.
“God and Nature say NO” was the caption on this placard paraded in O’Connell St. near the Spire, some weeks prior to the Referendum. Some young people are arguing with the placard-holder.One of the many badges worn in support of a vote to insert the clause into the Irish Constitution. There was also an English-language one and each were to be seen nearly everywhere in public in the weeks prior to the Referendum.
So, going back to the beginning of the legal status of heterosexual marriage within our current legal system, it was introduced as an excluding measure, at a time when male homosexuality was illegal and subject to heavy punishment and when lesbianism was frowned upon (though not actually illegal for complicated reasons). In other words, a law excluding a group of people was passed at a time when any man who declared himself to be one of those people was subject to prison sentence and any woman who did so was subject to extreme opprobrium in society. What chance was there for their point of view to be represented? In the absence of such representation and informed opinion-making, how can any democrat defend the laws passed at that time?
2. Turning now to the question of what right the State has to make a ruling of any kind upon a sexual relationship between any two people, of either gender, it must be difficult indeed for anyone to justify that without recourse to church canon or prejudice. Those who do so tend to bring up questions of childcare, inheritance and taxation – in fact just about the same questions that were brought up in the Irish referendum on divorce in 1995. But childcare, or at least the financial aspect of it, can be regulated by the State without any interference whatsoever in the sexual relationship between the parents. Whether it does so fairly at the moment is another question which has no bearing on the concept. And inheritance – ignoring for a moment whether we agree with a political economy where land and other wealth may be appropriated by individuals or families and then legally handed on through their following generations — can also be managed without recourse to State regulation of marriage. Taxation, similarly. Were we to have a socialist society, one based on other principles than that which we now have, even those current excuses for state interference should no longer be even a consideration. In fact, it is difficult to see any reason why even now the State continues to have a role in the formalisation of a sexual contract between two individuals or, indeed, in its dissolution, except perhaps in ensuring fair divisions of belongings.
3. Those opposed to insertion of the new clause into the Bunreacht have done so from a number of perspectives of opposition: to lesbianism and homosexuality on religious or other grounds; to formalising same sex relationships; to the alleged undermining of the “sanctity of marriage” or of “romance”; in opposition to surrogate child-bearing and raising of children by gay and lesbian parents ….
Those supporting the new clause have defended the naturally-occurring continuum of sexual preference; maintained that the “sanctity of marriage” will be the same between same-sex couples, as will “romance”; denied that it opens the way to or encourages surrogate child-bearing and raising of children within a gay or lesbian household ….
Who is right and who is wrong? There is no doubt that as long as cultural beliefs and practices have been recorded, homosexuality and lesbianism have existed within societies — sometimes tolerated, often repressed, on rare occasions celebrated. We see homosexuality occurring too among animals. If there is such a thing as “sanctity of marriage” and “romance”, why should same-sex couples have any less of it than heterosexuals? Surrogate child-bearing is already possible and the hugely unequal distribution of wealth in our society – and between even our society and many others – ensures it can and will continue while the rewards are financial. Raising of children within a same-sex household is already happening, even without surrogacy. It is more difficult for gay men at present, but in the case of a gay man having custody of his children through widowhood (yes, some gay men do marry women), or the mother deserting the children or being deemed unfit by a court to have custody, a gay man may bring up his children within a homosexual parent household.
But will this change in the Constitution (and therefore also in the law) make surrogacy and child-rearing by gay couples more likely to happen? Will it increase the frequency of its occurrence? I think the answer to that, logically, must be yes – despite all the denials of the “Vote Yes” camp. And I think some of them must know that. Slowly perhaps and who knows by how much – but logically it must tend to increase the chances. But is that so awful? I find the idea of surrogacy in general distasteful but isn’t that just a prejudiced reaction? Probably. Will children reared by same-sex parents experience uncertainty about their own sexuality? Some will probably and some won’t. And if they do, why should they not be able to resolve that in time – as children reared in heterosexual relationships also find themselves having to do? Is uncertainty about sexuality such a terrible thing? In a judgmental, prohibitive and penalising society, it can be – so let’s create a society that is the opposite.
However, I have to say that I think all those questions and considerations are beside the point. If marriage is to be a legal status, then it is a civil right for everyone who is at the age of consent (and of sufficient mental ability to know to what they are consenting — in so much as any one of us was or does!). The right to same-sex marriage, as a civil right, should be supported even by people who do not approve of homosexuality, or marriage, or surrogacy, of child-rearing in a homosexual household. As for myself, someone who seeks revolutionary social, economic and political change, who wishes to see the overthrow of this State, a revolutionary as opposed to a reformist, I must nevertheless support reforms that extend civil rights, even when not led from below …. and so I voted “TÁ”.
From their homes stolen lives.
Injustice never new.
Not one crime done nor crime seen.
A sentence served undue.
Witness blind and judge astray.
Trial a kangaroo.
You want a reason to believe?
My friend, I’ll give you two.
Two sons of Craigavon Ireland,
Our voices now are due.
The cry should shout until it cracks
For justice to the two.
It happens time and time again,
Shadows of me and you.
Where once stood four and then the six,
The mirror shows the two.
Together we can make this right.
As one we’ll see it through.
You want a reason to believe?
My friend, I’ll give you two.
The poem is about the incarceration of the “Craigavon Two”, Brendan McConville and John Paul Wooton. On the 30th of March 2012 both men were convicted and given life sentences. They were accused of the fatal shooting of Constable Steven Carroll in Craigavon on the 9th of March 2010. The evidence was a hotch-potch of questionable material including an “eyewitness” who only came forward a year later after both Republicans had been in jail for a considerable time, a man whose evidence was contested by that of his wife and of his own father.
The case against them was so riddled with inconsistencies and suspect material, alongside new evidence of police interference with witnesses for the Defence, that there were high hopes of both men being cleared and freed when the appeal concluded in October last year. However, to the shock of many, including a number of Independent TDs (members of the Dáíl, the Irish parliament) and the late Gerry Conlon, their appeal was denied.
The campaign is on-going and supported by a number of organisations and individuals. It was in support of the Two that Gerry Conlon, formerly of the Guildford Four (and a subject of the film In the Name of the Father), made his last public statement days before he died.
Their campaign website http://justiceforthecraigavontwo.com/we-are-innocent/
“Where once stood four and then the six” in the second-to-last stanza is a reference to the Guildford Four and to the Birmingham Six, ten people (all Irish save one) who in 1974 were wrongly convicted of bombings in Britain and were finally cleared only fifteen and sixteen years later. Also wrongly convicted were the Maguire Seven (which included Giuseppe Conlon, Gerry’s father, and teenagers) and Judith Ward (a woman who was mentally ill at the time).
Start of the march in Dame Street after rally in Central Plaza
On Saturday 21 February, at two days’ notice, somewhere between eight and ten thousand people gathered in Dublin in solidarity with those water tax protesters jailed by the State and those recently arrested. They marched to Mountjoy Prison and packed the road outside it and in front of the local Garda (police station).
The march gets going in Dame Street. Photo shows only the front of the march.
Parnell Square West from Granby Place. The front of the march has turned into Dorset Street and is marching there but the end has yet to come around the corner into the square from Parnell Street
The crowd were addressed by relatives and friends of the jailed, anti-Water Tax campaigners as well as by Paul Murphy, Joan Collins and Clare Daly (both TDs of the United Left) and Dessie Ellis (TD of Sinn Fein).
All of the speakers denounced the politicians and the State for the jailing of the protesters while the bankers and politicians who created the crisis and colluded in the bank bailout went free. Most speakers called on the crowd not to pay the water tax and to build resistance on the streets. Dessie Ellis, in keeping with his party’s position, did not call for non-payment, though he did call for “unity of the Left”. The march was notable for the absence of SF banners and placards — apparerently they were having their own protest at Leinster House.
One of the protesters made an emotional appeal on behalf of two of the five who received jail sentences, who have gone on hunger strike, and on behalf of another, Derek Byrne, also on hunger strike, but who has declared his intention of refusing to take fluids from Monday if he is not released. (NB: Since posting that paragraph it has emerged that the demand of all three hunger-strikers is a return to Mountjoy [they had been separated and sent off to a prison facility near Clondalkin] and an end to 23-hour lockup in their cells. These are basic human rights.)
Large sections of the crowd seemed taken aback by this information and unsure how to react.
Paul Murphy pointed out that this use of the police to attack people protesting injustice has been a feature of the State since its creation and mentioned the threats of jail to striking workers, the jailing of the Rossport Five and of Margaretta D’Arcy. Clare Daly asked the Gardaí which side they were on, that of the polticians and bankers or of the people, saying that if they chose the former it is they who would become isolated, not the protesters. Joan Collins, Murphy and Daly all pointed to the need to create a socialist society. They also, along with most other speakers, called for a build up and huge turn out of support for the demonstration scheduled for March. Many speakers declared that the increased repression is a sign of the Government’s or the system’s weakness, not of their strength and called on the movement not to falter now.
Robert Ballagh, who also spoke, called for the release of the five and pointed out that the class of people who rule and profit out of this society are not those who find themselves in jails.
Section of the march in Dorset Street, looking west (another section is behind the camera — see next photo — but a large section of the march has yet to come around the corner from Parnell Square.)
The same road, photo taken a few seconds later but looking east.
The mood of the crowd in general was of good-humoured determination. The composition seemed to cross social groupings, ages and genders and a number had brought their children along. Some had come from other parts of the country.
Crowd outside Mountjoy. some have left and many are still further down the north Circular Road (the Mater Hospital is to the right of photo).
“What should I do?” The anguish reached out to me; I felt it empathically. The cry of a person who is prepared to act and wants to change things for the better, to resist what is wrong around us on so many fronts – and that’s the problem.
There so many issues: the Water Tax, the persecution of Republican activists including framing and jailing them, the harassment and torture of Republican prisoners, the threat of fracking, privatisation of resources and services, cuts in services, cuts in salaries, high cost of private accommodation and low social housing provision causing homelessness, the decline of the Irish language and of the Gaeltacht …. and others. And that’s without mentioning international solidarity – and not because I don’t consider that essential, either.
Of course, we can put all these problems down to capitalism and, in the case of repression of Republicans (and with regard to international solidarity), to imperialism …. so let’s just overthrow those systems and then we can sort out those problems! But that leads to the question of “How” which in turn brings one back again to that anguished question, or to its variant “Which problem should I prioritise?”
Indeed, it is a question that cuts to the heart of the matter. For the issues call to us to act and since we can’t be everywhere at once we have to make choices. It is a question as old as class society and speeches are always being made recommending this choice or that while books have been written attempting to answer it. Lenin wrote a series of articles in the revolutionary newspaper Iskra (“Spark”) and published later as a booklet under a title that echoes that very cry above: What Is to Be Done? It had a subtitle too: “Burning questions of our movement” (by which he meant the socialist movement in Russia at the time).
Whether we choose to believe that work was absolutely correct, partly correct or completely wrong is in some ways irrelevant, for it was written for the movement in Russia in 1902 and published in 1905. I happen to think that it contains many useful ideas, although I am aware that there is a view that it has been mistranslated but, even so, in many ways, all that is beside the point. The fact is that today we have no blueprint and nothing more than perhaps the equivalent of a trouble-shooting manual: “for this problem, try this; if that doesn’t work, try that; while doing so beware of that other.” And that manual is cobbled together from older and more recent history of struggles, of analyses of the capitalist system and of how it behaves.
Scary, surely, to go up against a system that has ruled for around four centuries, that has spread across the world, that controls education, mass media, the State with its police, judges, prison and armed forces – and all without us having a blueprint. Well, if it’s any consolation, the capitalists don’t have a blueprint either … or if they do, they keep having to ignore it and react to events which they have not been able to predict, as well as to the extent of resistance for which they were unprepared. And they clearly make mistakes. Still, 400 years is a long time … a long time for them to learn tactics and strategy and to get comfortable in control and a long time to make us think that we can’t defeat them.
We can defeat them, of course and the indications from history and the internal workings of capitalism — and of its offshoot imperialism — are that we will. But what to do to make that happen? Yes, back to that question. And to the one that logically follows it: which issue to prioritise? For none of us is capable of being everywhere at once and even stretching over a few issues at a time begins to tear at our fabric.
The Marxist-Leninist approach argues for the creation of a revolutionary party that will make decisions on prioritisation and allocate resources to those struggles it chooses as it does so. Of course, the party will make mistakes from time to time and it will learn from those, getting better as it goes along. That’s the theory anyway. In application, or in alleged application, the results have not vindicated the theory – not in the long run, or even in the medium-term. Sure, we have been at it for less than 200 years: the first time workers captured a city was in 1871 and the first successful overthrow of the State was in Russia in 1917, very nearly a century ago. Much less time to learn, to make mistakes and to correct them but still ….
Of course, the alternative method of organising has even less to recommend it on results: amorphous, disparate collectives have not ever successfully overthrown a State and even their success in capturing a city (Barcelona, 1936) is debatable.
So, what is to be done? How to decide which struggle to prioritise? This is not a question I think can be answered by pointing and saying “That one and no other” or even, except at rare junctures, “That one and no other for the moment”. Individuals, collectives and parties will need to choose from the selection as a painter chooses from a palette: “this colour now, then that, no, scrub that one, now mix this with that, no, a bit more light …” and so on, always working towards the desired result which, although in the head, is also taking place on the canvas and making its own demands as it does so.
The truth is that all of those issues I mentioned in passing at the start of this piece, all of those, need addressing. All of them need people to fight in them. That is because they are all part of the same problem and also because we can’t just allow a cancer to grow unchecked in one part of the body while we address the tumours in another. Some individuals and perhaps even collectives are better suited to fight on some issues than on others: for example, a factory shop committee is probably not best placed to lead the struggle against fracking in a rural area, while a rural environmental collective is probably not in the best position to lead the struggle against the Water Tax. Individuals will need to pick and choose according to their own situation, their locality, their own knowledge.
And that would be fine, if the resistance movement as a whole were integrated enough to make creative use of that disparity – for particular struggles to be able to call for temporary additional resources and to be heard by the whole resistance movement, so that it could try to allocate those resources to one or other sector as seemed appropriate. But the resistance movement is far from integrated – it is fragmented and, even worse, it suffers from something akin to schizophrenia.
There a number of ways to imagine schizophrenia and the most popular is to see it as the development of two or more personalities in the one individual. But another is to see it as a disintegration of the personality – where the various aspects in our minds break free and appear as distinct personalities in themselves. The voices that speak in our heads to say things like “You shouldn’t have done that” or “Please make that happen” break free and seem to become different personalities. At times they conflict with one another while the central core personality tries to make sense of what is going on. Something like that, anyway. It is in that sense that I think the resistance movement in Ireland suffers from schizophrenia.
The splitting off of aspects of the revolutionary movement in Ireland has been towards two major poles of attraction: the Socialist one and the Republican. Of course there are some elements who incorporate both to one degree or another but I think examining them as distant poles of attraction is useful and much closer to their concrete manifestation within the revolutionary movement. In order to examine them as opposite poles I think it is also useful to imagine a stereotype individual inhabiting each pole. Let us then imagine a stereotypical Irish Republican and a stereotypical Irish Socialist.
The Irish Republican is probably working class or maybe lower middle class; he may or may not have done well at secondary education but in any case he is unlikely to have gone to university. He sees himself in a tradition of resistance to British Colonialism and Imperialism stretching back at least to the United Irishmen and perhaps even back to the Norman conquest which began in 1169. His priority is the removal of the British from Ireland. He experiences “political policing” (of which some socialists are now complaining) practically from the moment he becomes publicly active – he has had his name and address taken by Special Branch and/or RUC/PSNI and they have opened a file on him. The Republican’s recent predecessors have been jailed (as are some of his contemporaries now), beaten or even shot dead; they were engaged in armed struggle against the colonial and imperial armed forces in the Six Counties for 30 years and perhaps he looks forward to take the gun up again some day, to strike back at the colonial overlord. He will turn out on demonstrations and pickets against repression of Republican activists, in support of Republican prisoners, including framed ones. He will almost certainly attend mass demonstrations against the Water Tax and may participate in local direct action against it. The Republican’s idealogues are Wolf Tone, Patrick Pearse and Bobby Sands.
The Irish socialist is probably medium or lower middle class and has finished secondary education; she has almost certainly gone on to university. She sees herself as belonging to a tradition of only a couple of centuries, with an Irish tradition going back to the early part of the 20th Century, in particular to the 1913 Lockout and the Limerick Soviet of 1919. She may or may not give a high place in her history to the Irish Citizen Army in the 1916 Rising. Her priority is the defeat of the capitalist class, probably in Ireland first but will turn out in demonstrations against racism, gender discrimination and homophobia in Ireland. The Irish Socialist aspires to a general strike giving rise to a revolutionary take over of the State; in the interim she may or may not think electing left-wing TDs or trade union officials an important activity. She probably can’t conceive of taking up a gun. The Irish Socialist has never had her name taken by the Special Branch or been framed by the RUC/PSNI and may never even have been detained by the police, though she has probably been pushed around by them. She will almost certainly attend mass demonstrations against the Water Tax and may participate in local direct action against this Tax. Her idealogues are Karl Marx, Lenin, possibly Trotsky and James Connolly.
Granted these are stereotypes but they are not so far from reality as to be unhelpful in describing in turn many and perhaps most Irish Republicans and Socialists and therefore in identifying one of the principal fracture lines in the Irish movement of resistance.
If the Republican and the Socialist parts of the Irish resistance movement were to be combined, or at the very least to work on a more collaborative basis, the “What should I do?” question would be easier to answer. It would be simpler to be on a picket for prisoners one week and resisting water meters the next, even if one’s main sphere of activity were among Republicans. The socialist could attend a picket against cuts one week and one for the human rights of Republican prisoners on another, even if her main sphere of activity was among Socialists. But that is not the situation that exists at the moment and, though a number of attempts have been made to combine the two trends in one organisation, they have not met with any great success to date.
So, I have not yet answered the question, have I? Am I saying that what we should be doing is creating some kind of synthesis or at least a collaborative alliance between the the socialist and republican parts of the resistance movement? Well, yes, certainly. But also, and as a contribution to that, as individuals we should try and spread our activity between the areas of greatest concern of each of those sections of the resistance movement. We should, I think, take some time to support resistance to the water tax, demonstrations against cuts etc. in their own right but also find some time to support resistance to British colonialism and its repression of Republican political activists. “If we are not part of the solution, then we are part of the problem” may be a glib truism but it is particularly applicable in this case.
So, how will we find the time to spread ourselves around? How do we ever? We balance and juggle priorities between our politically active and our social lives, with employment thrown in when we have a job. Or upskilling or studying. And possibly cultural or sporting or other activities. But how to choose, how to prioritise? Each of us has to make those decisions herself and himself. Not a very helpful answer? Well, I did state earlier on that there wasn’t a blueprint, so I couldn’t have one myself, could I? This however I feel fairly confident in predicting: if we don’t find a way to support both those parts of the resistance movement to some degree, it will always be fractured. And while it is so, it cannot be successful in either ridding Ireland of our capitalist classes or in finally throwing off the colonial yoke.
Sixteen years after the signing of the Good Friday Agreement, cases of Irish Republican political activists appearing before colonial judges are none too rare in what some call “Northern Ireland”. Of course, the Republicans are not from Provisional Sinn Féin, who have made their peace with Queen and Empire – but they are Irish Republicans none the less.
Despite their fairly common occurrence, one recent case seemed to symptomise the state of civil liberties in the colonial statelet so as to deserve some detailed analysis. On January 6th Gary Donnelly (43) and two other Derry Republicans, Terry Porter (56) and William Brogan (51), won their appeals against a sentence of six months imprisonment for painting slogans on the famous Derry Walls but money was paid on their behalves into the court.
The judge, Philip Babbington, ordered the £2,600 (€3,300) compensation to be equally divided between the Northern Ireland Environment Agency, which has responsibility for the upkeep of the Derry Walls, and the charity Foyle Search and Rescue. No explanation seems to have been given as to why the total sum, which was supposed to have been necessary to remove the anti-internment slogans, was not to be paid in its entirety to the Environment Agency; nor am I aware of any detailed examination of the alleged cost of £2,600 (€3,300) to remove a few painted slogans.
“Speaking outside the court Colr. Donnelly said he was ‘relieved’ that the case was finally settled. He said: “I am glad that I am now able to represent the voters of the Moor ward who elected me. There had been a lot of donations made towards this case by people in the city and I am glad that it is going to Foyle Search and Rescue.” He denied that there had been any brinkmanship in the case and said when first arrested they had been held for two days and police had tried to prevent them getting bail.
“Cnclr. Donnelly went on: “Graffiti has long been a tool of the working class for years and there was even graffiti on the walls calling for Home Rule1. More damage was caused to the Walls by the installation of lights and the building of the Millennium Form than by anything we did. “I have no regrets for anything I have done.”2
A previous use of Derry’s Walls to highlight a case of internment
The appeal hearing was attended by four TDs3: Éamonn O’Cuív (Fianna Fáil), Clare Daly (United Left Alliance), Thomas Pringle and Maureen O’Sullivan (both Independents). Also in attendance were numerous councillors from local authorities on both sides of the Border. This attendance, at the court case of one with whose politics most of them would not be in agreement, indicated perhaps some sense of solidarity among public elected representatives but probably more a rising concern among some (albeit not nearly enough) at the state of civil liberties in the Six Counties.
When Donnelly and the other two republicans had last appeared before another judge to answer a charge of “malicious damage” to the Walls (by painting the slogans), no money had been made available to the court and they had been sentenced to six month’s imprisonment. The judge hearing the appeal, Babbington, replaced that sentence with a conditional discharge for 12 months. This means that they will serve no prison term on this charge but if, within 12 months they are again arrested and convicted, this conviction will be taken into account and could result in prison terms.
The original sentence of six months’ jail for painting slogans, even at such an alleged cost of their removal, was excessive. But the impact of this sentence in the case of Gary Donnelly went far beyond that on him, his family and friends. Gary Donnelly is a Councillor, elected to the Derry & Strabane Super-Council and, according to the rules of that body, a sentence in excess of three months would cause him to lose his seat. That in turn would have disenfranchised those who voted for him.
Donnelly was one of four new Independent councillors elected last year, the other three being Darren O’ Reilly, Dee Quigley and Paul Gallagher (Strabane). Gary Donnelly, standing as an Independent, topped the poll in the Moor ward (home of the Deputy First Minister Martin McGuinness), out-polling former Sinn Féin Mayor Kevin Campbell by 50 votes. The three Derry-based Independent councillors have taken two SDLP and one Sinn Féin seat.
These new Independent councillors have a background of years dealing with issues affecting their local communities, often on a daily basis, such as poverty, anti-social behaviour and the growing addiction crisis. Judge McElholm had been made aware that Donnelly would lose his seat if the judge went ahead with his sentence but he was not to be swayed from his course.
Naturally, it is not being suggested that elected Councillors (or any others, including appointed judges) should be permitted to act as they please without consequences, merely because of their office. However, a judge behaving in accord with the principles of a democratic system would take care that the sentence leanedaway from disenfranchisement of voters if possible. And of course, it was possible, since a non-custodial sentence or one of anything up to three months’ jail would not have had Donnelly lose his seat or disenfranchised his voters.
For those who are aware of the history and current reality of the Six Counties, that colonial statelet often called “Northern Ireland”, associating it “with the principles of a democratic system” is bound to raise at least one eyebrow. The formation of the statelet was in itself a denial of democracy and self-determination to the Irish people in 1921 and its laws and practice were so undemocratic, so discriminatory against the large Catholic minority, as to give rise to the popular movement for civil rights that began in 1968. The infamous repression exercised by the statelet’s police and courts and its sectarian civilian allies on that movement led in turn to a war of 30 years. Not a single democratic reform was granted by the statelet until that war was well underway. Nevertheless, since its administrators claim it is democratic, it may be useful to subject it to the test of compliance with recognised democratic principles.
THE JUDGES AND THE SYSTEM
During all that history of lack of democracy, institutional discrimination and repression in the Six Counties, judges played their part, faithful to the system. Today, despite some hard-won reforms especially in housing allocation and in voting qualification, the statelet continues to be a colonial one, undemocratic still in many ways, with a sectarian and repressive police force. And the judges continue to play their part.
The original judge dealing with Donnelly’s case, McElholm, revealed his own political bias on a number of occasions during the conduct of the case, even without taking into account the six-month jail sentence. According to media reports, when the three appeared before him again for non-payment of the fines, he said that the painting of the walls was a “wholly uncalled-for exercise”. He stated that “internment ended ‘a long time ago’, and that it was insulting to the entire legal system to say it continues.”4
Well, was the judge sentencing the three Republicans for “criminal damage”, the words appearing on their charge-sheet, or for carrying out what he considered politically or morally to be a “totally uncalled-for exercise” and for “insulting … the entire legal system”? I would have thought that his words are evidence of a clear political bias.
Nor was it the only occasion when the same judge expressed political bias in respect of Gary Donnelly. When the Irish Republican made his application for the abolition of his curfew (which he had accepted as a condition of being granted bail when first charged), he did so on the basis that having to be indoors by 8pm was a serious restriction on his campaigning work for election, an infringement on his democratic rights and on those who might vote for him. Again, Judge McElholm saw fit to express his political bias in heavy sarcasm. According to media reports, although he granted an exemption of two hours (i.e. until 10pm) on the curfew, Judge McElholm then asked: “Is he going to put up posters or paint his name on walls saying vote Donzo?” He went on to say: “It is clear the democratic process is very dear to Mr Donnelly’s heart”5 and “The great working class people I’m sure will now come flooding to his door.”6
BAIL CONDITIONS AND CURFEW AS A POLITICAL WEAPON
The issue of Donnelly’s bail conditions and curfew have been alluded to earlier. People in the West outside of the Six Counties (with the exception of people in other European areas of repressive colonial occupation, such as the southern Basque Country) may be surprised to learn that the imposition of a curfew has become customary as a condition of granting bail to Republicans in the colony. This might have made some sense in the case of slogan-painting, with which Donnelly was accused, and which one would imagine would take place at night. But even so, did a curfew have to be imposed? Would it not be enough that if he were caught doing it again before trial, that his bail would be revoked?
In a democratic system, since the accused are to be “presumed innocent until proven guilty”, they should be at liberty until such time as are tried and receive a verdict. That is the purpose of releasing those charged “on bail” while awaiting trial. They may be found “not guilty” at the end of their trial and even if found “guilty”, the sentence may be a non-custodial one. So, if the accused is thought not to require a custodial sentence, why should he already have spent time in jail? However it is a fact that many Irish Republicans have spent time in jail while awaiting trial. In Donnelly’s case, after two days in custody and against police advice, he was given bail but on a number of conditions.
The purpose of conditions being set for bail is supposed to be related to the specific case and to be reasonable. A financial surety is set in order to deter the accused from absconding before trial. Other than that, what conditions are reasonable? Well, a man accused of assault on another may have a bail condition not to approach his alleged victim and to stay away from that person’s home or place of work. Or to stay away from people who are to be called as witnesses. But how is it to be considered reasonable to set a curfew as a bail condition? And of wearing an electronic tag to ensure compliance? Or of not going to political meetings or meeting with political activists? Or to not reside in a particular town?
These conditions and variations of them have been imposed on a number of Irish Republican activists in the Six Counties. In fact, that same Judge McElhome also imposed a nightly curfew on Gary Donnelly on a previous charge, in August 2010, when he released him on bail to face charges under “anti-terror” legislation, relating to pipe bombs incidents in September 2009. In December 2010, the charges were dropped.
Martin Corey, a Republican prisoner released under licence under the Good Friday Agreement, had his licence revoked and after four years in prison (without even a police interview or charge, never mind a court appearance) was released on a kind of bail or licence under conditions which he is not permitted to divulge but are rumoured to include wearing a tag and not associating with “known dissidents”.
Perhaps one of the most illustrative examples was that of Stephen Murney, an activist with the Éirigí group, who was arrested on spurious charges in November 2012 and refused bail. When his appeal against that refusal was heard after six months in jail, the judge granted bail but on conditions: Murney was to wear a tag, observe curfew, stay away from certain political activists and stay away from Newry — the town in which he lived and where his partner and child also lived. To his credit and taking an important stand for civil rights, Murney refused to accept the conditions and spent 14 months in custody awaiting trial. Eventually, some of the charges were dropped and he was found not guilty of all remaining charges.
CRIMINAL OR POLITICAL CONVICTIONS?
A member of the 32-County Sovereignty Movement, Gary Donnelly has been politically active for many years. Something has been made in reporting of the case that Gary Donnelly has previous criminal convictions – he has a police record and he has also had a number of charges eventually dropped. In March 2010, he was sentenced to seven months jail on a charge of assaulting a police officer. At one of his recent court appearances, a police officer said he he had criminal convictions also for public order offences and one for arson.
Garry Donnelly, Irish Republican and elected Councillor
In many societies outside the Six Counties this might seem extraordinary for an elected representative but I would submit that it is the system in the Six Counties that is extraordinary, at least with regard to what might be expected of a European democracy.
Donnelly’s “criminal convictions” would have been no secret and his voters put him in office despite those convictions and quite possibly even in part because of them. I do not have the details of the incidents that gave rise to them but any half-awake observer of life in the Six Counties knows that with a sectarian and repressive police force hostile to Republicans, acquiring convictions for “assault on police officers” may be the result of police concoction, self-defence by the charged or even actual assault but in all those cases, the likelihood is that the incidents are overtly political in nature.
Convictions for “public order offences” are probably the most easily-acquired by political activists and often mean merely that the person convicted refused to cease his or her protest when ordered to do so by a police officer. It is rarely possible, with any hope of success, to challenge the justification of the police officer in ordering the protest to finish.
“Arson” can also be a political offence and I once heard a Garda senior officer declare that burning a purchased US flag in a public protest was “arson”! And, as has been clearly demonstrated, the “criminal damage” which has now been added to Donnelly’s police record, both in its content and in its treatment, was political.
INTERNMENT – WHEN IS IT NOT?
Although no-one denies that the British implemented internment between August 1971 and December 1975, when 342 people were subjected to it7, there is far from universal agreement that the British are practicing internment in their colony today. One supposes that the socialists and social-democrats there at present don’t agree that it is being practiced — or surely they would be protesting against it! And, as we saw earlier, Judge McElhone declared that internment had ended back in the 1970s and that to state that it was still being practiced was “insulting …. to the entire legal system”. Sinn Féin don’t call it internment on the rare occasions upon which they refer to the victims but that may be more an issue of convenience than of terminology. Even a member of a Republican organisation which is opposed to the Good Friday Agreement recently argued with me that what is happening is repression but is not internment.
British soldiers detaining a man in the Six Counties during the internment operation in August 1971.
Well, I’m quite interested in correct use of terminology myself, so I thought I’d better look up the definition in a number of on-line dictionaries. It turns out that dictionary definitions of “internment” vary somewhat. Wikipediahas it as “the imprisonment or confinement of people, commonly in large groups, without trial, while for Dictionary.comit is “the act of interning or state of being interned, esp of enemy citizens in wartime or of terrorism suspects”.Dictionary.com goes on to elaborate that “Internment means putting a person in prison or other kind of detention, generally in wartime. ………….. Internment usually doesn’t involve a trial, so you’re being held because someone thinks you might be dangerous, but there’s no proof.”
Grammaristhas it as “the act of detaining a person or a group of people, especially a group perceived to be a threat during wartime,” while forCambridge Dictionaries on lineit is“the act of putting someone in prison for political or military reasons, especially during a war.”Macmillan Dictionarydefines it as “the act of putting someone in a prison without officially accusing them of a crime, especially when this is done for political reasons”.
Sifting through these definitions then, the most common aspect is that internment involves imprisonment without trial. It may be applied to many or a few (and let us remember that Oswald Mosley, of the British Union of Fascists, was interned by the British on his own during WW2 albeit in a house with grounds). Two definitions mention wartime, while some allude to “terrorism” and a few mention “political reasons”. On the basis of those definitions, internment is undoubtedly being practiced in the Six Counties.
Refusing Republicans bail (e.g. Stephen Murney, Colin Duffy and man others) and revoking licences (e.g. Marian Price, Martin Corey) have all resulted in imprisonment without trial – for periods varying from a year to four years. The individuals may be – and often are – eventually found “not guilty”, or their convictions overturned (as with Colin Duffy, Brian Shivers and, one hopes, the “Craigavon Two”) or released on “humanitarian grounds” but they will already have spent time in jail. This was the reasoning which no doubt lies behind a number of political activities against the current internment and certainly was expressed at the founding meeting of the Anti-Internment Group of Ireland (of which I am proud to be a member) which has organized public meetings, demonstrations and information pickets in various communities in Dublin and in other parts of Ireland. The non-party Group was set up by some of the campaigners in the also non-party Dublin Free Marian Price Campaign after the partially-successful conclusion of that struggle (Marian Price was released on “humanitarian grounds” but already in broken health). The AIGI can be found on https://www.facebook.com/pages/End-Internment/581232915354743?fref=ts
Information picket (with table across the road) organized by Anti-Internment Group of Ireland in September 2014 at Thomas St./ Meath St. junction, Dublin. They returned there in December and in January supported a picket in Cork, handing out leaflets on the Craigavon Two injustice.
Imprisonment puts a strain on the individual prisoner and also on friends and relations – and, indeed, on relationships. It disrupts the political work of the person jailed and of their organizations. And it serves as a threat to others considering becoming active in opposition to the State. Its purpose in these cases is primarily political. The deprivation of liberty without due cause is a violation of human rights and to do so for political reasons, which is clearly the case here, is a violation too of civil rights.
That the legal system in the Six Counties is being used in this way should come as no surprise to those familiar with the operation of colonial law or indeed to any readers of Brigadier Frank Kitson’s Low Intensity Operations (1971)8. Kitsoncompletedthe book while on military service in the Six Counties but mainly drawing on his experiences in repression of resistance in Kenya and in Malaya in the 1950s. In the Six Counties Kitson was commander of 39 Airportable Brigade from September 1970 to April 1972, with responsibility for one of the British Army’s three main regional sub-commands in the Six Counties, the greater Belfast and Eastern area.
One of the units under Kitson’s command, 1st Para, was the main actor in killing and wounding a large number of civilians in Ballymurphy in July 1971 and in Derry’s Bloody Sunday in January 1972.
The Military Reaction Force, a special covert operations unit, was based at Kitson’s headquarters in Palace Barracks outside Belfast. Last November (2013), a BBC ‘Panorama’ investigative program on British counterinsurgency in the Six Counties in the early 1970s featured members of the MRF admitting to the murder of suspects and unarmed Catholic civilians.
Back in April 1972, within a few weeks of Bloody Sunday and his receipt of a CBE for his service in the Six Counties, Brigadier Kitson was flown to England to head the Infantry School at Warminster and Low Intensity Operations would become a British Army manual on counterinsurgency and counter-subversion.
In that book, Kitson approvingly quoted another repression “expert”9:
“…the Law should be used as just another weapon in the government’s arsenal, and in this case it becomes little more than a propaganda cover for the disposal of unwanted members of the public. For this to happen efficiently, the activities of the legal services have to be tied into the war effort in as discreet a way as possible..”
And so it has been in the Six Counties (and long before Kitson described its operation): the legal system being “just another weapon in the government’s arsenal.” At the moment, the “unwanted members of the public” being “disposed” of are Irish Republicans who do not agree with the Good Friday agreement and who organise to oppose British colonialism, some with arms but most through political agitationn — “unwanted” by British imperialism and Six County capitalism, that is. Their treatment should be enough to bring democratic people out in oppositon to these state practices but should it not do so, those people may wish to consider that tomorrow those designated as “unwanted members of the public” may be people protesting cuts in services, fracking operations, privatisation, or militant trade unionists ….
end
Footnotes:
1 A movement for Irish autonomy within the UK (or, later, Commonwealth) between 1870 and 1914. Teachtaí Dála: Members of the Irish Parliament
7 Even now a case is being taken by the Irish state against the British state to the European Court of Human Rights, over the torture of 14 victims of that internment. The Irish Government took the case of the 14 “hooded men” to the ECHR in the 1970s and won a judgement that the men had been tortured; however the British state appealed the verdict and it was changed to “cruel and inhuman treatment” (!). The Irish Government left the case there but recently RTÉ, the Irish TV broadcasting service, screened their programme The Torture Files based on documentation uncovered by the Pat Finucane Centre, showing the British Government had lied to the ECHR. Amnesty International publicly called on the Irish Government to reopen the case with the ECHR.
Diarmuid Breatnach (translation of material from Naiz and writing of article)
Julia Lanas Zamakola, 94 years of age, went shopping as usual in Gernika on Monday 15th December 2014 but ended up in hospital after the Ertzaintza, the Basque Police, raided the market to arrest a Basque political activist.
Julia Lanas, 94 years of age, struck and knocked to the ground by Basque police in raid to arrest a Basque activist in Gernika
Jone Amezaga, a young female activist of the Basque pro-Independence Left movement, had been sentenced to 18 months’ jail for allegedly hanging a banner which the State Prosecutor said “glorified terrorism”. Jone denied doing it and said the Ertzaintza, the Basque police, had framed her and declined to present herself to the authorities.
Many things are considered by the Spanish state to be “glorifying terrorism”, including putting up photographs of Basque political prisoners in a public place, bar, café or social centre.
Elderly pensioner Julia Lanas said she had been pushed to the ground by the police during the raid. “My wrist was broken. It was an invasion, of terror. …. The Ertzaintza does not belong to the Basque (Autonomous) Government, they are nothing less than managers for imperial Spain.” “It reminded me of the Civil War,” she said and went on to say that she had survived the dictatorship (Franco’s) and the war and had relatives imprisoned and tortured.
Julia Lanas was given first aid by people in the crowd and then taken by ambulance to the Gernika hospital but they had to leave there because it was full. “There was a lot of solidarity” said Julia Lanas, referring to the crowd in support of Jone Amezaga and to the help she herself received. The 94 year-old woman was treated by the paramedics who then took her home and her son took her to hospital in Bilbao the following day. “The injury was from a telescopic baton,” she said.
94-year-old Basque woman Julia Lanas’ broken wrist and arm injury after police raid in GernikaJulia Lanas’ injured leg after Basque police raid in Gernika
After a sustained tussle between uniformed and plain-clothes police and Jone Amezgaga, the Basque activist was taken prisoner by the Ertzaintza, some of whom used their batons on the crowd. Having secured their prisoner, the uniformed Ertzaintza then retreated backwards through the market, followed by the hostile crowd, until they gained the entrance, near to their vehicles and there stopped and faced their opposition.
Jone and her supporters had been expecting the police raid. In 2008 the Abertzale Left, the mass collective of organisations of the Basque pro-Independence Left, announced that they would henceforth use only peaceful methods in pursuit of their goal of self-determination, and the armed organization ETA subsequently declared their “permanent ceasefire”. The Spanish state’s response was to continue its repression of the movement.
The youth section of the Abertzale Left sought to find an appropriate method of resistance and developed the “human wall”. Some of the youth movement activists who had been sentenced by the State, instead of surrendering to the authorities or going “on the run”, presented themselves in public places, surrounded by supporters. The police – always the Basque police except in Nafarroa but sometimes backed by the Guardia Civil – then were obliged to spend a long time pulling people out of the “human wall” before reaching their quarry.
The first of these “human wall” resistance acts was at Donostia/ San Sebastian in April in 2013 when 500 mostly youth surrounded the six youths convicted of membership of SEGI, the Abertzale Left youth organization. SEGI is classed as a “terrorist organization” by the Spanish state and by the EU despite not a single conviction, even in Spanish courts, of an act of violence by the youth organization. The Donosti human wall was followed by another a month later on the bridge at the port of Ondarroa, when hundreds sat, arms linked, between Urtza Alkorta and the Ertzaintza. In October 2013 in Iruňa/ Pamplona, the Policía Nacional of the Spanish state had to dismantle another human wall of resistance to get at Luis Goňi, another youth convicted of SEGI membership. Last year there were two, one in Loiola (Azpeitia) for five youths and the one in Gernika. These “human walls” have now been constructed in three of the four southern Basque provinces (see video links below): Bizkaia, Gipuzkoa, Nafarroa – only Álava has yet to have one. Jone Amezaga’s arrest was the fifth occasion of the use of the “human wall” in the Basque Country and the second in the province of Bizkaia.
Amezaga, who refutes the charge and the police “evidence’ of “glorification of terrorism”, has been refused permission to remain at liberty while her appeal is being considered. Also it has been the custom of the Spanish state, in cases where the sentence is less than two years, for the convicted not to be taken to jail. The state declined to apply this custom in Amezaga’s case.
Jone Amezaga surrounded by supporters in Gernika prior to police raid
That Monday morning of the 15th December in Gernika, the town containing the ancient meeting place of the Basque chiefs and victim of the infamous bombing by Franco’s German bombers during the Civil War, the stalls were set out for the weekly market as usual. However, a number of events of a political nature also took place and the town was draped in the orange colours of LIBRE (“free” in Spanish), an organization created in 2013 to expose and resist Spanish state repression. Around noon, Jone made her appearance, no doubt marked by undercover police and soon afterwards the police raid took place.
Jone Amezaga surrounded by supporters with orange (LIBRE’s colour) umbrellas prior to police raid in Gernika
It was plain-clothed police who led the assault, a number of individuals, some seen in the video dressed in black-and-white tops and one in a green top. There is no evidence of their identifying themselves by display of their police cards, for example, but it is clear that Jone’s supporters are in no doubt as to who they are. The Ertzaintza, masked and helmeted, in their red-and-black uniforms soon join the fray and eventually Jone is taken into custody. The crowd chants partly in Castillian and partly in Basque: “Jone libre!” (Free Jone!); “Guard dogs of the System!” “Hired killers!” “Abuse of power!”
Jone Amezaga’s face in the midst of the battle as supporters try to block the police arrest, 15 Dec 2014
While awaiting her appeal hearing, a wait which can take many months, Jone may be kept in any of the many prisons across the Spanish state (or across the French state, for those arrested there) throughout which political prisoners, most of which are Basque, are dispersed. She may also be transferred without warning to yet another jail. All this places an enormous strain on the visiting relatives and friends of such individuals — a financial, organizational, emotional and physical strain. And of course there are those who through infirmity are unable for journeys of thousands of kilometres. A number of serious traffic accidents occur on those journeys every year and to date twelve Basque prisoners’ relatives and friends thave lost their lives in those accidents..
STATEMENT AGAINST DEMONISATION OF WATER METER RESISTERS ISSUED BY COMMUNITIES AGAINST WATER CHARGES NETWORK — a very good statement apart from falling into the trap of agreeing to put “sinister, dissident republicans” in it and to separate themselves from political activists. “Standing together” includes “dissident republicans” and other political activists. Diarmuid Breatnach.
“Resisting the Water Charges and Defending Our Right to Protest.
“We are residents of a number of communities in Dublin North East. Over the last number of months we have come together to resist the installation of water meters in our areas, and to oppose this unfair double taxation that the government calls water charges.
“For most of us, this is the first time in our lives that we have engaged in any sort of protest and have only done so because we simply cannot take any more of this government’s austerity agenda. At all times we have sought to resist the installation of these meters in a peaceful, dignified and resolute manner.
“We are therefore appalled at the recent developments in how An Garda Síochána have policed our protests, and with the blatant campaign to vilify and demonise us that the government and Gardai, supported by segments of the media, launched in recent days.
“They have claimed that Gardai are routinely assaulted at protests, and that our movement has been infiltrated by a “sinister fringe” or by “dissident republicans”. We categorically reject these claims. In recent weeks we have been subjected to heavy handed and abusive policing by the Gardai. Men and women, protesting peacefully, have been pushed, pulled and punched by Gardai. To our knowledge not one of our fellow protesters has been convicted of assaulting a member of An Garda Síochána, and violent protest is not something we would endorse or tolerate.
“With respect to the claim that our movement has been infiltrated by sinister elements, we reject this also. We are the people on the streets, day in, day out, peacefully resisting these meters; we are mothers, fathers, parents, pensioners, workers and unemployed – we are not sinister, dissident republicans.
“In light of these developments, we are genuinely fearful that the Gardai, at the behest of the government, are preparing to become even more aggressive towards our protests and to eviscerate our right to protest.
“We therefore call on all of the people of Ireland to come out and support us this coming Monday, 10 November 2014, in Dublin North East. We fear that GMC Sierra will attempt, with heavy Garda support, to enter our areas and install meters that we do not want. It is our intention to continue to resist this unjust tax in a peaceful and dignified manner, but we fear that the decision has been made to strip us of a meaningful right to protest.
“Each and every one of us has resolved to resist this tax and these meters, we will continue to do so in a peaceful way, but if we are to succeed we need the support of other communities. If we all stand together, we can resist these charges, retain water as a public good and human right, and vindicate our right to protest.
communitiesagainstwatercharges@gmail.com”
Video against water charges — excellent lip-synching dubbing of excerpt from The Fiield film:
Video of Garda Armed Response Unit attending in support of Irish Water at housing estate in Clonmel:
DID YOU KNOW IT WAS A ‘RED’ WHO WROTE “BROTHER CAN YOU SPARE ME A DIME?” WELL, NOT SO SUPRISING, MAYBE. BUT HOW ABOUT THE SONGS FOR “THE WIZARD OF OZ” and “FINIAN’S RAINBOW”?
Yip Harburg, author of lyrics of many songs, including those in The Wizard of Oz musical.
Yip Harburg, born in the poor Lower East Side Manhattan to Russian Ashkenazi Jew migrants, was a socialist and the writer of the lyrics of the songs in The Wizard of Oz and worked on the music too.
In fact, a lot of the production team and actors were “pinkos” of some kind, including Judy Garland. The “Brother Can You ..” melody was based on a Russian lullaby. In this Amy Goodman interview on Democracy Now TV (see link bottom of piece), Yip’s son Ernie Harburg talks about his father and included is quite a bit of footage of Yip himself, talking and singing, as well as footage of the first Wizard of Oz film.
When some people think it appropriate, while supporting the Palestinians, to synonymise the words “Jew” and “Israeli”, confusing the ethnic grouping of Jews with the fascist, racist and colonist ideology of Zionism, they are ignorant of or forget not only those Jews who combat Zionism today like Finkelstein and Chomsky but also the public criticisms of Zionism and the creation or actions of the state of Israel expressed by Albert Einstein, authors Erich Fromm, Howard Zinn, Isaac Asimov, Philip Roth, I.F. Stone; violinist Yehudi Menuhin; journalists Joe Klein (Time magazine), Roger Cohen (NY Times); Richard Falk (UN Special Rapporteur), historian Gabriel Kolko and many, many others. Those Jews are following a tradition: political and religious dissidence was endemic in Western Jewry and Jews have been to the forefront in socialist movements in Europe and in the USA, as well as in the struggles against racism and for civil rights in the latter.
“Music makes you feel; words make you think; songs make you feel the thoughts,” said Yip Warburg. At the time of the Depression in the USA (caused by the financiers, surprise, surprise), with massive unemployment and poverty, the authorities and some of the public wanted songs like “Happy Times Are Here Again” and no-one was writing songs about the suffering except for his father, says Yip’s son Ernie Harburg. Not on Broadway, maybe, but in some speakeasies, in some bars and on some radio shows, the blues and folk singers were composing and singing those songs, some writers like Steinbeck were writing their stories and photographers like Dorothea Lange, Jack Delano, Gordon Parks and others were recording their faces.
People were out on the streets and picket lines too, shouting, marching, holding placards, getting their heads busted by cops and sherrifs and goons and breaking some of their heads back too. Sometimes the protesters and campaigners were shot and sometimes even executed. As the financiers swing us around to those times again, we celebrate the victories and learn from the defeats, take pride in the courage of all those who fought and mourn those who fell, whether they fought against the police and municipal authorities, the witch-hunters like McCarthy and the ignorant red-haters, the National Guard, the FBI …
Scene from the Musical Theatre production of Americana, which featured Warburg’s song “Brother Can You Lend Me a Dime?”
And we singers, singing the lyrics and melodies of others and of our own, written in the past or in the present, give honour to the fighters in whole periods of struggle even as, in the book of history, the first lines in the next chapter are being written.
rebelbreeze 
