The Chief Commissioner of the police force of the Irish state is reputedly “quietly pleased” with the change of name for the force he commands. “It describes the work we actually do” he commented at a press conference earlier today.
There were suggestions that the widely-supported name-change might be held up by bitterness at a recent vote of no-confidence by members of the force against the Commissioner, formerly senior officer in a colonial police force and of MI5 membership but this was not to be.
“He’s used to changes in the names of forces where he comes from,” commented a senior officer. “Besides the new one fits better than the earlier name for the force” he continued but seemed flustered when asked was he referring to the Royal Irish Constabulary.
Others have remarked that the new name gives a much more rounded perspective than the earlier suggestion of Landlord’s Protection Force. “The excellent mobilisation to guard ATMs in the recent Bank of Ireland give-away crisis has justified the new name,” commented the Justice Minister.
“The mobilisation was even more remarkable given that no crime was actually being committed”, said the Minister.
The force will henceforth be known as The Landlords and Bankers Protection Force (with apostrophes ruled out of order). The new insignia or emblem will resemble a tall apartment block with a bank on the ground floor, carrying also the acronym LBPF.
Far-Travelling Rightists
The reported words of a Clare TD this week struck a chord among some far-Rightists. Cathal Crowe TD complained that tourists arrive by coach at the Cliffs of Moher, take selfies against the sights, climb back in and are driven off to Dublin, with no benefit all to the local economy.
“Why not flip the model?” he asked, suggesting that tours could be based in the West and set out from there to take in the sights elsewhere.
“We’ve been doing the kind of tourism recommended by Crowe for a long time”, exclaimed far-Right activist Dara O’Flaherty, “organising protest trips up to Dublin from Galway instead of tours the other way around. But of course we don’t get credit for it,” he concluded bitterly.
O’Flaherty blamed “freemasonry in the travel industry” for the lack of acknowledgement they receive.
Andy Heaseman, from Dublin but currently based in Mayo, stated that he has travelled on his own and with others to Dublin, down to Limerick and Cork “and not only by public transport and shared car”, he claimed “but also by boat – until it crashed,” he concluded with a sad face.
Niall McConnell has also visited Dublin as well as other spots with Farright Protest Tours, while Herman (‘Monster’) Kelly has been to Dublin, Limerick and Ballyjamesduff, though being obliged to leave each town shortly after his arrival.
Niall Nine Lies McConnell used to descend from his Donegal fastness to pray the Catholic Rosary on streets in Dublin and elsewhere, in close proximity to Muslims or people whose lives violate his ideas of gender and sexuality but who somehow continue to defy him.
McConnell was baptised “Nine Lies” for among other things, informing a European gathering of fascists that immigrants outnumbered the Irish-born in Ireland. He’s been taking a break and, “as a devout Christian, most emphatically not a Black Sabbatical” as he pointed out to our reporter.
The title “most travelled Farrighter” must surely go to Dublin-based Phil Dwyer, who claims to have been to every protest against migrants, Muslims, mask-wearing during Covid epidemic, Covid vaccines and anyone not 100% male or female-orientated according to genitalia.
Phil, also known affectionately as “Kick the Dog” gained the nickname “Lederhosen” for recruiting ‘real Irish men’ for hill-walking together, organising such activities to counter the feminising effect he believes female primary school teachers are having on Irish boys.
Phil “Kick the Dog” Dwyer was a recruiter of “heavies” for attacks on antifascists until expelled from the National Party for publicly violating the grave of a female victim of male violence. Dwyer is capable of carrying on his noble crusade even in a taxi home after having a skinful.
Farright Protest Tours (Ireland) on their website recently challenged anyone to name a place to which their service had not travelled or a democratic right which they had not opposed.
The successful respondent will be presented with a copy of the 1930s My Struggle, translated from the original into English and signed by the Austrian author.
The Petro government has reached the end of its first year in which it promised a lot, came through on some things and changed a lot of other things, particularly its position on certain issues.
Before taking a look at it, it should be pointed out that the Historic Pact (PH) is not the first left-wing government in Colombia. The country is still waiting for that. It is a remould of liberalism in the style of Ernesto Samper.
Even so, it is worth looking at its proposals and what it did in this year, as unlike Samper, it did give a lot of hope to the people.
It is generally accepted that Petro would not have been elected President if it were not for the big popular revolt that began on April 28th 2021, an uprising that cost the life of over 80 youths.
We don’t know the exact number of dead and disappeared and less still of the number of young women who were raped and sexually abused by the Police as part of the repression. Even the number of political prisoners is a matter of dispute.
Not due to the absence of the number of people detained but because the amongst Prosecutor’s Office, the press and sections of the PH there are those who seek to divest the detained youths of any political motivations.
They simply paint them as criminals and vandals, the last of these words having been covered in glory during those protests.1
The heroic ‘vandals’:Demonstrators clash with riot police during a protest against a tax reform bill launched by Colombian President Ivan Duque, in Bogota, on April 28, 2021. (Photo cred: Juan Barreto/ AFP). (Photo choice and caption by Rebel Breeze)
So, it comes as no surprise that Petro, like Boric in Chile, did not free the political prisoners from the revolt. He made a few lukewarm attempts to get a handful of them out, but a long way from all of them.
They are still in prison, despite his electoral victory being thanks to their struggle and actions that led them to prison.
It is perhaps the most symbolic transgression as it says sacrifice yourselves but don’t expect anything from me, not even when I owe you everything. Petro has defended himself by saying that it is not his decision to free or imprison anyone.
Recently he stated:
There are still many youths in prison and I get blamed, as if it were up to me to imprison or free them. State bodies and people inside them have decided that these youths should not be freed.
Not because they are terrorists, who would think protesting is terrorism? If not a dictator or Fascist. No, but because they want to punish the youths who rebel.2
Some may feel that he is right in a technical sense, i.e. that it is the Prosecution and the judges who imprison them. But that is to ignore reality.
He himself denigrated them when he referred to them as ‘vandals’ during the protests and since taking office, neither Petro nor the PH have been the visible heads of any initiative to free the prisoners. They washed their hands of the issue.
He didn’t even disband the specialised riot squad, the ESMAD. Unlike other proposals he didn’t even try to.
He changed its name and promised a couple of human rights courses for its members, as if the problem was their lack of attendance at a course or two given by some NGO and not a deep-rooted problem. The ESMAD is a unit that murdered many youths.
It is a body whose name is synonymous with violence, torture, sexual abuse and murder. A name change won’t wash away the blood.
… the promise to put an end to the ESMD was just lip service during the presidential campaign.It wasn’t carried out and the government will fail to carry through on its commitment to the youths who brought the president to power, through the existence of a repressive violent force like this one.
The temptations to infiltrate the marches in order to justify confrontations with the kids will continue to be part of the landscape.3
Petro gives his voters a clenched fist on his inauguration as President in August last year but many remain in jail and the rest get little or nothing. (Photo sourced: Internet) (Photo choice and caption by Rebel Breeze)
In economic terms the government promised a lot during the campaign, but once in power, it quickly softened its proposals and in some other cases they didn’t get a majority of votes in Congress.
The lack of votes in Congress is not a simple one of not coming through, nor is it due to betrayals by the PH nor manoeuvres by other forces that Petro can’t control.
The PH is a coalition of sectors of the right with sectors of what passes for social democracy in Colombia. It was not inevitable, but rather Petro actively advocated that it be like that.
It is worth recalling that at first, he wasn’t going to choose Francia Márquez as his vice-president but rather a right winger like Roy Barreras.
However there are economic aspects that are under his control, but for the moment they remain as just proposals, rather than real policies that have gone through Congress. On the land question, Petro proposes monocultures and agribusiness.
This was clearly to be seen in the proposal to buy three million hectares from the cattle ranchers.
Petro’s vision of the countryside is one of it being at the service of big money and the promotion of cash crops, despite some references to the production of foodstuffs for internal consumption and the so-called bio-economy.
Something similar can be seen with his proposals for clean energy. He spoke a great deal about it during the electoral campaign and some of his proposals, or outlines as they stand, look good.
That Colombia no longer depend on oil and coal is not a bad idea and that it be replaced with alternative energy sources such as solar and wind power looks good, until we actually examine the details.
One of his first stumbles, in that sense, was with the Indigenous people, as La Guajira is a poor area that has suffered the consequences of coal mining.
He did not take them into account and they reminded him that what is proposed for their territory should have their support, though legally it is not quite the case, and that it should also benefit them.
He partially rectified the case, but the big question is, if he wants an energy transition why does he have to seek out French and other foreign capital to finance it. Does he want to hand over the wind and solar power as they are still doing with oil and coal?
It would seem so. According to Petro:
We need investments that help us carry this out: we would have a matrix of foreign investment centred on the construction of clean energies in South America, with a guaranteed market, if we have direct link to the United States and by sea with the rest of the world.4
If you substitute oil and coal for clean energy, you begin to see the problem: the resources of Colombia in the service of big money and the countries of the North.
If we are to have a real change and energy transition, we must end the idea of Northern energy consumption regardless of where it comes from as sustainable and that countries such as Colombia must supply energy for a planet-destroying consumption model.
Neither have there been great advances on the issue of peace. He did reactivate the dialogue with the ELN, but stumbled with something that is still an integral part of his policy, the so-called Total Peace.
In his proposal he compared the insurgent group, the ELN to the drug gangs and paramilitary groups such as the Clan de Golfo. It was not a mistake, Petro really does see the ELN as a criminal gang.
He made it clear in his speech to the military and he reaffirmed it when he named the blood thirsty Mafia boss and former Murderer-in-Chief of the paramilitaries, Salvatore Mancuso as a Peace Promoter.
With that he placed the ELN leadership on the same plane as the paramilitaries. And they have implicitly accepted it for the moment.
In Petro’s discourse Colombia is a violent country and there is no way to understand it and peace has to be made with everyone as they are all the same, the insurgency and the narcos. Not even Santos was that creative in delegitimising the guerrillas.
Mancuso took on his role and once again spoke of the land they had stolen, the disappeared etc. He has been telling us for two decades now that tomorrow he will reveal all, but tomorrow never comes.
When Uribe invited Mancuso to the Congress of the Republic, Petro had a different attitude.
His response was blunt and he described Uribe as a president that was captured by the paramilitaries and that Mancuso manipulated the Congress stating that “if under this flag of peace, dirtied by cocaine what is essentially being proposed is an alliance with genocidal drug traffickers and political leaders… then we are not contributing to any sort of peace.”5
And we end the year with a scandal. I have on many occasions compared Petro and the PH to Samper and the Liberal Party of the 90s. But not in my most fertile delirium could I imagine that Petro and his son would give us another Process 8000.
Samper managed to reinvent himself as a statesman and human rights defender, despite his government’s dreadful record, following the outcry over drug money in his election campaign. He has publicly supported Petro and the PH.
Now he can advise them on how to deny what is as plain as day. Illicit funds went into the PH’s campaign as has happened with all election campaigns.
Petro finds himself in the eye of the storm due to the manoeuvres of his son in asking for and receiving money. His ambassador in Caracas has boasted about obtaining 15,000 million pesos [3.3 million euros] that were not reported to the authorities.
Those on the “left” who gave Petro unconditional support defend him, saying that it all happened behind his back.
The only thing left to say about that is, a little bit of respect for Samper please! He established his copyright, authorship of that expression in relation to dirty money. They will have to come up with another one.
For the moment Petro says, I didn’t raise him, which is true. But his son is the beneficiary of a type of political nepotism. As was the case with Samper, the only doubt is whether Petro knew or not.
That a government which is supposedly progressive has found itself entangled in such a storm is revealing of a government in which politics is a family business.
Something similar happened to the FARC commander Iván Márquez with his nephew who turned out to be a DEA informant.
On the drugs issue it is clear that the discourse and reality do not match at any point. Petro went to the UN to announce a new drugs policy. He put forward various aims for his government and criticised the war on drugs.6
It seems like a bad joke that the said policy has not yet been published. What we have seen is that the fumigations continue, the Yanks smile on and occasionally there is talk of going after the big fish, without saying who they are.
We know that he is not talking about the banks, and less still of the European companies that supply the precursor chemicals. The big fish will turn out to be middle ranking thugs in the cities of Colombia, at best.
So, it has been a year that wasn’t that different to others. Yes, there were changes, some proposal or other that was half interesting, but even the right wing does that occasionally.
The vote of confidence cast in the ballot box is still waiting to see the promised changes. But we increasingly see a government without a clear aim and reinventing old policies as new ones, with the same results as before.
End.
FOOTNOTES
1 See Ó Loingsigh’s article Long Live the Vandals – R.B.
Socialist republicans and communists gathered on a traffic island in Dublin’s city centre to mark the International Day of the Prisoner. They flew flags to represent prisoners in Ireland (‘Starry Plough’), the Basque Country and Palestine.
They also displayed a number of placards.
(Photo: IAIC).
The choice of location, apart from being passed by road traffic in three directions, was because of the presence there of the Universal Links on Human Rights memorial sculpture with an eternal flame, commissioned by the Amnesty International organisation.
A plaque near the sculpture bears the following words: “The candle burns not for us but for all those whom we failed to rescue from prison. Who were tortured. Who were kidnapped. Who disappeared. That is what the candle is for.”
Plaque in the ground on the approach to the sculpture. (Photo: IAIC).
Somewhat ironically, one of the placards carried the words: “Amnesty International, do Irish Republican prisoners not have human rights too?” Irish Republicans have long complained that the organisation in question does not raise any issues with regard to Irish political prisoners.
Some have indicated as a possible reason or part-reason the location of the head office of Amnesty International being based in London, capital city of the occupying power. Its interventions on Ireland even during three decades of war in the colony have been very few indeed.
Other placards displayed referred to political prisoners from the liberation wars in India and in the Philippines, the innocent Craigavon Two still in jail and ongoing internment through refusal of bail to Republicansappearing before the no-jury special courts in both administrations.
Some leaflets were distributed about ongoing internment in Ireland through long remands in custody of Republican activists. Between convicted and awaiting trial there are close to 50 political prisoners in jails in Ireland between both administrations.
The Universal Links sculpture by Tony O’Malley (welding by Jim O’Connor) commissioned by Amnesty International. (Photo: IAIC)
The Zionist Israeli state holds 5,000 political prisoners (almost all Palestinian), of which over 1,132 are not even charged (‘administrative detention’). There are 33 female Palestinian political prisoners and 160 child prisoners. Philippines has 803 political prisoners.
The Spanish and French states hold between them around 170 Basque political prisoners.
The event to mark International Day of the Prisoner was organised by the Ireland Anti-Internment Campaign and a spokesperson gave a short explanation on video of the reason for the event with the human rights sculpture in the background.
End.
Some of the flags displayed (Photo: IAIC).Passer-by in conversation with a leafleter. (Photo: IAIC). (Photo: IAIC).
The media has alerted us to a military coup taking place in an African country most of us won’t even have heard of: Niger.
Apparently Niger had a democratically-elected leader overthrown by the coup and many states, including France and the US, are very concerned about this. Naturally so. Military juntas are surely no fit replacement for democracy.
Map of much of Africa showing Niger in green and surrounding states (Source: Wikipedia)
But it turns out that the USA and France have other reasons to be concerned apart from questions of democracy: both states have military stationed there, the USA including in fact a major military installation producing and operating drones, some of which are armed.
But why are they there? Well, to defend Niger against fundamentalist Muslim jihadists. That’s good, right? Helping the Nigerien people. It’s true that some unkind (and possibly ungrateful) people accuse the US of having given birth to the islamist fundamentalists originally, but, well …
We learned just recently two very strange facts, side by side: 1) Niger is one of the poorest countries in the world and 2) it is the seventh-largest exporter of a highly-valuable material: uranium.
Niger also has gold mines (two years ago 18 people were killed in a mine collapse) but curiously, Niger has no gold reserves at all. France, on the other hand, which has no gold mines whatsoever had 2,437 tonnes of the metal in their reserves at the end of the second quarter of this year.
Uranium is valuable because it is used in the production of nuclear power which, in turn, in many parts of the world, is used to generate electricity. France being one of those countries, where 80% of its uranium comes from … Niger. And 20% of the EU’s electricity likewise.
Hmm. So there might be reasons apart from restoring democracy for France being so upset at the coup, especially when the coup leaders say they want to break with France.
Urban scene in Niger, exact location and date unknown (Source: Internet)
But going back to this country being one of the poorest in the world, at least they must have plenty of generated power, right? Well, no. It turns out that 80% of the people have no electricity supply whatsoever. Democratic government or not, that can’t be right, can it?
Anyway, France has ordered the coup leaders to reinstate the deposed president with a deadline of last Sunday or it would take stern action. The deadline has passed quietly without an invasion or other attack.
Niger was a colony of France and became independent in 1960 so it’s kind of strange that France has such a grip on the country still.
Another five states border Niger including Mali and Burkina Faso, also ex-French colonies, also under recent military coup juntas. Their leaders have said any attack on Niger would be considered an attack on them.
Algeria was also a French colony and fought a very hard liberation struggle for independence, since when it has friendly relations with Russia. Algerian armoured vehicles have moved to the border with Niger, in what will be understood as a warning to other states not to invade.
Chad is another ex-French colony in the region but it made some threatening noises against the military coup leaders in Niger; Senegal too is an ex-French colony loyal to France.
Senegal’s political opposition leader Ousmane Sonko is on hunger strike in jail and his lawyer Juan Branco, extradited from Mauritania is in jail too for defending Sonko but nobody seems to be shouting about Senegal’s lack of democracy – not that we can hear, at least.
The west-friendly (some say neo-colonial) state of Nigeria, the leading state in the pro-western African alliance COWAS has imposed sanctions and threatened to invade Niger if the previous regime is not reinstated. Nigeria is huge and with extremely valuable resources, including oil.
In 1995, in defence of British Petroleum’s operations, Nigeria hanged peaceful environmental activists in the Delta region, the Ogoni Nine. As many as 4 in 10 Nigerians live below the national poverty line with 133 million living in poverty, according to its own national statistics.
Regarding Africa and coups, we Irish have cause to remember the Congo where Irish UN peacekeeping soldiers were killed, after a military uprising in a province against the elected patriot Patrice Lumumba was carried out in support of Belgian mining interests, supported by the USA.
And Uganda’s military rule under Idi Amin was generally OK with the western powers until he began to throw his weight around against the British, who had trained and supported him, so they had to bring him down.
Supporters in Niger of the military coup there demonstrating. (Photo sourced: Internet)
Elsewhere, for example in Latin America, military coups in many countries including Brazil, Chile and Argentina have been supported by the western powers or indeed instigated by them. As in what is now Iran, when the British overthrew the Shah in 1941 to replace him with his son.
Dictatorship from 1965 in Indonesia was widely seen by the western powers as necessary to stop the spread of socialist and national liberation ideas and, as in most such coups, the toll in massacres and torture by the new regime was huge. None such in Niger though, at least so far.
If we were citizens of Niger would we think ourselves better off under a military junta rather than a democratically-elected President? We might initially be more concerned as to whether the riches of our country were to be used to lift us from such poverty.
To give us education, hospitals, medicines, food, work, clean water, refuge from heat, power … or instead extracted and shipped out to some other country.
And what would we think of France, possibly backed by other NATO countries and their client states, coming to invade our land and bring back the old state of affairs?
End.
Niger’s National Council for the Safeguard of the Homeland Colonel-Major Amadou Abdramane, center, is greeted by supporters as he arrives for rally at the Stade General Seyni Kountche in Niger’s capital city Niamey, on August 6, 2023.(Photo cred.: Rebecca Blackwell, AP)
A new plaque commemorating James Connolly was unveiled on the morning of 31st July on 70 South Lotts, the house to which he returned from New York with his wife Lillie and children in 1910 and lived there until May 1911.
(Photo: D.Breatnach)
Connolly was born and reared in Edinburgh, left school at 10 and worked with his older brother John for the local authority as a carter, lied about his age and name to join the British Army, in which he first saw Ireland and where he met Lillie Reynolds; they were married soon afterwards.
Like his brother, Connolly became a militant socialist and trade unionist and returned to Ireland at the request of socialists to form the Irish Socialist Republican Party, the first socialist party in Ireland but left for the USA when the party failed to recruit significant numbers.
The ISRP’s office was in Middle Abbey Street, across the road from the premises of the Irish Independent, owned by Irish nationalist William Martin Murphy who was to become an arch-enemy from the Lockout and strikes of 1913 onwards1.
Connolly was a historian and journalist as well as a socialist, trade union organiser and a revolutionary. A report in Breaking News on the unveiling infers that he reluctantly committed to the Rising with the Volunteers; in fact, he had been pushing them to rise for months!
Unveiling speeches
The event started late and in rain. Dáithí De Róiste2, Dublin’s current Lord Mayor, opened the proceedings and commented that the plaque on the house was a reminder that Connolly lived a life in some ways like many ordinary Dubliners, living in a Dublin house and walking city streets.
Dublin Mayor Dáithí De Róiste speaking at the event. (Photo: D.Breatnach)Historian Conor McCabe, who did the research for the plaque, speaking outside No.70. (Photo: D.Breatnach)
Historian Dr Conor McCabe, of Queen’s University Belfast, proposed the plaque as his research established the background that Connolly was living at the address around the time that his most famous work, Labour In Irish History, was first published in book form.
In deference to those in attendance standing in the persistent rain, Conor McCabe kept his speech very short. This was not the case with every speaker.
Joe Cunningham, General Secretary of Siptu3, an amalgamation with other unions of Jim Larkin’s ITGWU which Connolly had led for six years, commented in his speech that it was Connolly who ensured that the interests of working people were incorporated in the 1916 Proclamation4.
Also that, at the ceremony of raising an Irish flag over Liberty Hall5 in April 1916, had declared that “The cause of labour is the cause of Ireland, the cause of Ireland is the cause of labour.”6
Section of crowd in front of No.70 waiting for event to begin. (Photo: D.Breatnach)
Dublin City Council Commemorations & Naming Committee was responsible for the placing of the plaque, in consultation with the house occupants and its chairman, Councillor Mícheál Mac Donncha7 welcomed suggestions from the public for commemoration of people and events.
Sinn Féin Councillor Mac Donncha also commented that James Connolly was a personal hero of his.
Jim Connolly Heron, great-grandson of James Connolly, was called to say a few words and invited family members present to join him in front of the house while he spoke and commented also on the importance of commemorative plaques in protecting historical sites.
He did so in reference to the plaque on a house in Moore Street that had disappeared and come to light in a property developer’s office, raising concerns that had led to the long Moore Street conservation struggle.8
Music and song for the event was performed by The Pullovers ballad group but the amplification system had been removed by then which was a pity as it was needed for the music.
Ballads were performed at the event by The Pullovers band. (Photo: D.Breatnach)
The 1913 Lockout
James Connolly and family returned to Dublin when Jim Larkin9 offered Connolly a post in the young breakaway Irish Transport and General Workers’ Trade Union, which he took up in 1910. Three years later the union was in a fight for its life.
It is sometimes wrongly claimed that the 1913 Lockout was an attempt by employers in Dublin to prevent workers from joining a trade union but there were other unions operating in Dublin during the period and they were accepted by most of the employers.
Apart from the ITGWU recruiting large numbers of ‘unskilled’10 manual workers, it pursued its objectives militantly, using sympathetic solidarity action by other workers to increase the effectiveness of the workers who were in industrial dispute with their employer.
In August 1913 a combination of around 200 employers presented their workforce with a declaration to sign which committed them to having nothing to do with the ITGWU. En masse, the workers refused to sign, were locked out while others struck work and were locked out too.
Right from the beginning the Dublin Metropolitan Police11 attacked the workers on behalf of the employers and in a baton charge on Eden Quay on 30th August fatally wounded two workers, also beating strikers and onlookers the following day in O’Connell Street (‘Bloody Sunday 1913’)12.
As a direct response, Connolly and Larkin set up the Irish Citizen Army as militant response to police attacks, dedicated also to Irish independence and their flag was the gold Starry Plough on a green background,13 which they flew over the Clery’s building in 1916.14
The only Starry Plough flag unfurled at the event, brought by a member of the attendance. (Photo: D.Breatnach)
Comment
The only Starry Plough to be seen at the event was one unfurled during the event independently of the organisers and speakers.
Many who claim to admire Connolly or even to follow his teachings do so on occasion in words but never in action and if Connolly were alive and acting as he did when he was, most of the speakers at the unveiling event would call, if not for his shooting, certainly for his jailing.
SIPTU is much larger than the ITGWU was but it and other unions are much less effective; as a result of the lack of active resistance by the leadership, union membership in Ireland is at an all-time low in modern times. Nor would Connolly have ever agreed to the partition of Ireland.
The Irish Labour Party, which Connolly and Larkin formed in order to give the working class a voice in municipal affairs, has been in coalition government a few times, always capitalist and most often with the right-wing Fine Gael, when they have joined in attacks on the working class.
Joan Burton, while Tánaiste15 of the Labour-Fine Gael coalition government in 2014, complained about working class people being able to afford video-phones and tried to get people jailed for organising an effective protest against her in Jobstown.16 She too attended the unveiling today.
Joan Burton, who attended the event. (Photo: D.Breatnach)
Fianna Fáil is a party of the Gombeen client class and has been in government more often than any other, whereas Sinn Féin in its current incarnation is seeking to replace it with more of the same.
It is a tribute to the memory of James Connolly held so dearly among the working people that these types, so far from Connolly in their reality, are obliged to pay public homage to the man and to his principles while their daily practice is in opposition to all that he stood for.
End.
FOOTNOTES
1An editorial in his newspaper, The Irish Independent (still one of two main newspapers of the state), after a number of British executions of a number of 1916 leaders, called for continued executions of leaders prior to the execution of Connolly and Mac Diarmada, the last of the 14 to be executed in Dublin (Kent was shot in Cork and Casement hanged in London).
3The largest union in Ireland, owner of the current Liberty Hall which stands on the ground of the original union building.
4There is no record that this is the case but it is a natural and widely-held assumption. It is a fact that the Proclamation was printed in Liberty Hall.
5Cunningham said it was “the Irish flag” which most would think a reference to the Tricolour. However that flag had not yet been accepted by the majority as the primary flag of the nation, which really occurred after the 1916 Rising. The flag raised instead by teenager Molly O’Reilly at Connolly’s request had the golden harp on a green background, the essential flag of Irish Republicans from the 1790s until the 1916 Rising.
6This was not a random statement by Connolly but rather a strategic one; on an earlier occasion he had observed that of all social classes in Ireland, the working class remained “the incorruptible inheritors of the fight for Irish freedom”. Connolly wrote that in his foreword to his work Labour in Irish History, clearly indicating that only the working class could be trusted to lead the national struggle through to successful conclusion.
7A prominent member of one of the groups campaigning for Moore Street Battlefield conservation, the Save Moore Street Trust, of which Mac Donncha is Secretary.
8That occurred at the beginning of this century and the struggle has been ongoing since.
9Like Connolly, also a migrant and member of the Irish diaspora but from Liverpool. He founded the Irish Transport & General Workers’ Union after his departure from the British-based National Union of Dock Labourers, for which for a time he had been chief organiser in Ireland. Most of the NUDL’s members in Ireland left to join the ITGWU but in Belfast there was a division along sectarian lines.
10This is the general appelation for work not requiring long periods of training. However, anybody who has been employed in work of this category soon learns that such work requires skill to achieve the objectives set, to pace oneself and to guard against injury. This is the reason those recruiting for such ‘unskilled’ work prefer ‘experienced workers’, a code for ‘skilled’.
11A police force of the period for Dublin City, most of its members being without firearms, unlike the armed all-Ireland colonial gendarmerie of the Royal Irish Constabulary (of which the Police Service of Northern Ireland is a descendant body). DMP minimum height requirements were 5ft 9” in a city where many working people were of low stature; this disparity gave substantial momentum to the swing of a truncheon.
12The event wrongly named as leading to the death of two workers, whose deaths were caused by the previous day’s police attack on Eden Quay, just by Liberty Hall. However, a previously healthy Fianna Éireann boy, Patsy O’Connor, who was clubbed in the O’Connell Street police riot while he administered first aid to a victim, suffered frequent headaches thereafter and died in 1915 at the age of 18.
13The design has seven stars in the Ursa Mayor configuration, with the design of a plough following the stars and a sword as the ploughshare. There is also a plainer version flown by the Republican Congress of the 1930s, the outline of the Ursa Mayor constellation in white or silver stars alone on a blue background.
14The flag survived the shell explosions and raging fires along the southern half of O’Connell Street and is currently in the Military History Museum, Collins Barracks, Dublin, along with a number of other flags flown by the insurgents during the Rising.
15Title of the Deputy Prime Minister in the Irish government.
16A number of activists from different organisations, including Paul Murphy TD (member of the Irish parliament) were arrested in raids some time later and among the charges was “kidnapping” Burton. The untruthfulness of a number of witnesses for the Prosecution including a senior Garda officer were exposed (ironically by video taken by protesters) and the jury acquitted all the defendants of all charges.
Opposition leader Elly Schlein accused the prime minister of “historical revisionism” over her ambiguous language.
08/03/2023 PUBLICO / EFE (Translated by D.Breatnach)
Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni completely avoided using the word ‘neofascist’ in her message marking the 43rd anniversary of the Bologna Massacre, a terrorist attack by a far-Right organization that killed 85 people.
Meloni did not go to Bologna to participate in the commemoration.
“43 years have passed but, in the heart and conscience of the nation, the violence of that terrible explosion still resonates with all its force,” said the leader of the Executive and the ultra-right party Brothers of Italy.
Giorgia Meloni, the Prime Minister of Italy. (Photo: Fabio Frustaci / EFE)
In her message, she asked to “get to the truth about the massacres that marked Italy in the postwar period,” an ambiguous phrase that makes no direct reference to the far-right groups that carried out the massacre on 2nd August 1980.
The absence of specific terms in Meloni’s speech to refer to the attack has prompted opposition leader Elly Schlein, a progressive, to accuse Meloni of promoting “historical revisionism.”
“We are here in Bologna together with the families of the victims of the massacre to reiterate that we do not accept any further attempts to rewrite history. The judicial evidence already makes it clear that it was a neo-fascist massacre and also with subversive intent,” Schlein said.
In the message shared by the president, Sergio Mattarella, to commemorate the date, he did refer to “the neo-fascist matrix of the massacre.” Likewise, he recalled that in the subsequent trials “ignoble deviations, in which secret associations and treasonous agents of the state apparatus participated,” came to light.
Meloni has ruled out any anti-democratic nuance of her formation, but she maintains as a symbol of the Brothers of Italy the so-called “tricolor flame”, emblem of the youth organisation of the old and post-fascist Italian Social Movement (MSI) in which she was a member of her youth.
The Bologna Train Station, Italy, following the fascist explosion on 2nd August 1980 (Photo sourced: Internet)
The Bologna Massacre
The Bologna massacre was the most serious terrorist attack in Italy after World War II, in which 85 people died and more than 200 were injured and extreme right-wing militants belonging to the organization Armed Revolucionary Nuclei were convicted for it.
Comment by D.Breatnach: However, parts of the Italian State were implicated in the bombing and/or coverup too, with elements in the Italian police, judiciary and secret service but also with suspicions of CIA/NATO involvement. It seemed that the purpose of that bombing and others in the period was to create fear and confusion in which the State could return to fascism.
Original Breaking News article: DAVID YOUNG, PA (with commentary in italics by Diarmuid Breatnach)
The rededication of a memorial to the National Army soldiers killed in the Civil War enables their memory to be rehabilitated, a ceremony in Dublin has heard.
Defence Forces Chief of Staff Lieutenant General Sean Clancy paid tribute to the some 810 soldiers killed serving on the Free State side in the 1922-2023 conflict as he addressed the event at Glasnevin Cemetery on Sunday.
Descendants of some of those who died, representative of all four provinces, were invited guests at the ceremony, among them relatives of Michael Collins, the commander in chief of the National Army who under direction by Churchill, gave the orders that began the Irish Civil War and who was killed in 1922.
Taoiseach Leo Varadkar and Tánaiste Micheál Martin, the leaders of Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil, the two main parties forged from the divisions of the Civil War, also attended the rededication of the National Army Monument.
Sinn Féin TD Matt Carthy also attended the military commemoration, as did Dublin Lord Mayor Daithí de Róiste.
This neatly brought together political parties of the neo-colonial and neo-liberal Irish State with opposing histories: Varadkar to represent the pro-British and fascist neo-colonial origins of Fine Gael; Mícheál Martin and De Róiste representing Fianna Fáil, the allegedly Republican but in reality Irish Gombeen split from the previous iteration of Sinn Féin; Carthy for the current neo-colonial, neo-liberal and colonial servant Sinn Féin.
Taoiseach Varadkar (Fine Gael) and Tánaiste Martin (Fianna Fáil) unveiling monument to soldiers of the ‘Free State’ killed in the Civil War 1922-1923. (Photo cred: Brian Lawless/ PA)Matt Carthy TD, who represented his party Sinn Féin at the unveiling and dedication of the monument to soldiers of the Free State killed in the Civil War 1922-1923. (Photo sourced: Internet)
Prior to the ceremony, there was no monument in the country specifically dedicated to the soldiers of the National Army who fought against the anti-Treaty side in the Civil War.
Weeks after the war ended, on August 3rd, 1923, the Oireachtas passed legislation that led to the creation of the modern-day Defence Forces, Óglaigh na hÉireann. That is, the defence forces of the neo-colonial ruling class who created the Irish state.
The rededication event for the forgotten fallen of the National Army, which had already robbed the Irish language version name of the IRA, adopted the name Óglaigh na hÉireann during the Civil War, took place on the Sunday prior to the centenary of that date.
“It is appropriate then, in the spirit of real inclusiveness, of ethical remembering, and with a full desire to deal with some of the more uncomfortable aspects of our shared history, that we remember some of 810 uniformed members of Óglaigh na hÉireann who gave their lives in the service of the State during the tragic and critical period at the foundation of our democracy,” Lt Gen Clancy told the ceremony.
It is necessary, in order to bury any idea of achieving the Republic declared at the start of the 1916 Rising, that we honour some of the 810 men we recruited to bury that Republic in 1922, kitted out in uniforms, armed and transported by our ancient enemy. We wish to pass over quickly over not only the kidnappings, torture, murders, killing of disarmed prisoners and even sexual assaults by this fine body of men – the precursors to the current army of the Irish State – but also their terrorising of major part of the country with raids on homes and internment of men and women. Although this fine body of men were fighting to establish a neo-colony not even covering the whole of Ireland, we make no apology for calling them what they clearly were not, Óglaigh na hÉireann, i.e “Warriors of Ireland”.
The monument in Glasnevin to soldiers of the Free State killed during the Civil War – apart from the Free State Army having appropriated the name in Irish of the IRA, the legend claims they “died for their country”, a clearly inaccurate statement since at best they were fighting for the government and state of the 26 Counties, which excludes the UK colony of the Six Counties (‘Northern Ireland’ sic). (Photo cred: PA)
“For far too long there has been no memorial of any kind, nor any complete listing of the National Army war dead.” Understandably.
“Indeed, this year represents perhaps the last real opportunity to rectify that.”
As we prepare to commit this armed force to NATO at some point in the future and to PESCO in the nearer future, it is important to take a further step in legitimising this armed force of the neo-colonial state.
The remains of some 180 of the 810 soldiers who died serving in the National Army are buried at the plot in Glasnevin Cemetery. Uncomfortably close to graves of many of their victims.
“Sources at the archives show that the average soldier buried here was in his early 20s, was unmarried and from a working-class background,” said Lt Gen Clancy. In other words, the typical recruitment profile of lower-rank soldiers in capitalist and imperialist armies.
“Many had previously served in the IRA during the War of Independence, some even in the 1916 rising, many others had served in the British Army, underlying yet again how complex is the weave of Irish history.”
Actually, “many” is a questionable though vague estimate of the numbers who had “served in the IRA during the War of Independence”, though some had, including some of the most vicious, such as Major-General Paddy Daly, torturer and murderer.
The chief of staff highlighted the “poignant example” of two young Belfast-born Dublin-raised brothers – Frederick (18) and Gerald McKenna (16) – who were buried in Glasnevin after being killed together in action in Cork in August 1922 only a month after joining the National Army.
Aye, two men born in Belfast, a city which the Free State was fighting to ensure remained a direct colony of the United Kingdom.
“Whatever the often very legitimate reasons our forebears may have had for forgetting in the intervening 100 years, I think it’s appropriate now that I as the 32nd Chief of Staff of Oglaigh na h Eireann should finally take this opportunity to rehabilitate their memory,” said Lt Gen Clancy.
Especially as I try to establish a legitimate background to the armed force of an illegitimate State preparing to enter foreign imperialist wars and suppression of legitimate uprisings.
After all, we have great experience in all that, as the history behind this monument shows.
26 July 2023 (First published in Socialist Democracy, reprinted by kind permission of author)
Sinéad O’Connor has died. Her death at the age of 56 was announced on RTÉ.
The evening news programmes went into overdrive to pay tribute to an incredibly talented musician. As with all such tributes, the great and good were asked for their opinions or they offered them in any case and they were carried uncritically.
Sinéad O’Conner and daughter Roisín on anti-racist demonstration, Dublin, 2000. (Photo sourced: Internet)
You are not supposed to speak ill of the dead in Ireland, but more than that, you shouldn’t speak ill of those who seek to praise the dead, no matter how hypocritical they are.
There were many milestones in her musical career, not least her rendition of Nothing Compares 2 U. The media highlighted her musical talent, her voice, sometimes describing her as controversial and outspoken and much loved by the public.
Yes, she was loved by the public, to a point, and also by other musicians around the world. However, she was also despised by many, written off and derided by commentators. As with many artists when they die, there is a tendency to rewrite history.
Her politics were sometimes erratic and lurched from one thing to another, though she was always honest and forthright when she did so, unlike many a coward. As erratic as some of her opinions could be, there were no smug self-serving platitudes to fall from her lips. She was no Bono.
She was honest, frequently angry and went after the powerful at times.
The famous incident where she tore up a photo of then Polish Pope, Wojtla in protest at his covering up and enabling of child sexual abuse, a topic she was painfully personally aware of in her own personal life did not go down well with some of those now praising and lamenting her passing.
Bono doesn’t do tearing up photos of popes, he sups with George Bush, the late senator McCain, toured Africa with the head of the World Bank, to name just a few of the scumbags he was not only too happy to rub shoulders with but positively revelled in.
Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael leaders have expressed their sorrow at her death.
They weren’t expressing any support when she denounced child sexual abuse, the entire Irish political establishment were busy helping the Catholic Church cover it up, and later facilitated the institution to evade its legal, financial and moral responsibility.
Their attitude is best summarised in a typical hypocritical Irish attitude when dealing with those who make us uncomfortable that goes through phases of saying, “She’s mad, isn’t she great gas altogether, she may have a point but…, fair play to her, didn’t she speak up at the time”.
All of this without ever examining their own role in it all. The fact that, as we speak, reports of the sexual trafficking of children in care are being ignored by the government, says all you really need to know about their attitude.
If a new musician of her talent and courage were to speak out now, she would be cancelled and silenced by many of those now praising her, including some of those on the left, who have grown quite fond of not breaking ranks and clamping down on those who did.
She always spoke about mental health issues, though she became much more public about her own issues as she got older. She even broke down on a video about it, locked away in a hotel, crying. The video led to many expressing their concern, but also a bit of “there goes that one again”.
We will no doubt get many commentaries on air and in print about her struggles with her mental health, many expressing concern and sympathy with her plight. Many of them will be hypocritical.
It is true that Irish society is more open now about people who have mental health problems, though there is still a stigma attached to it.
Sinéad O’Connor (Photo sourced: Internet)
Ironically RTE followed up the news of her death with another story on the shambolic, criminal (my word, not the words of the media cowards) state of the child mental health services in Ireland (CAMHS).
Micheál Martin and Leo Varadkar may even refer to her troubles in their tributes, but they never cared about them then, they don’t care now and the proof is not only the state of CAMHS, but mental health facilities in general, with long waiting lists, a rush to medication and forgetting about the patient model of care.
Her politics were erratic in many ways, though in fairness they weren’t much more erratic than others who are not judged as quickly. She flirted with republicanism, then broke with them, even applied to join the more recent incarnation of Sinn Féin in 2014, before withdrawing it.
It may be hard to take that seriously, but it was no less ridiculous than Bono condemning the IRA and then spluttering out nonsense about how he admired Bobby Sands. He didn’t, never, ever, when it mattered.
Sineád for all her failings took positions that were unpopular unlike some of the vomit inducing smug types that populate the modern music industry.
For my own part, her politics on racism were without fault. Her song Black Boys on Mopeds is excellent. It points out the hypocrisy of Thatcher criticising China whilst British Police like James Bond had a licence to kill.
“Margaret Thatcher on TV Shocked by the deaths that took place in Beijing It seems strange that she should be offended The same orders are given by her”
The song goes on to say something truer today than before.
“These are dangerous days To say what you feel is to dig your own grave”
And then a description of England, that the great and good would run a mile from.
“England’s not the mythical land of Madame George and roses It’s the home of police who kill black boys on mopeds.”
Now she will be lionised in death, praised, described as troubled, talented, controversial and much loved. We should ignore the sanitised version we will be given and remember the Sineád O Connor who was treated with contempt and disdain at times.
Aside from her incredible musical talent, that is the version that is worth remembering and celebrating, the version they weren’t too happy to celebrate when she was alive.
In Ireland we like to celebrate talented uncomfortable artists and writers in death in a manner we don’t do when alive. She deserves some coherence from us on this.
‘Wha’ – the Junior Minister for Education and his travel distance claims?’
‘Yeah. I mean, according to The Ditch he would’a hav’ta driven more than twice as much as the average taxi driver in Ireland, which averages at 30,352 kilometres a year. Collins claimed 73,807 kilometres.’
‘With a head for figures like that, he should be Minister for Finance!’
‘Heh, heh. But maybe he was moonlighting as a taxi super-driver on top of his parliamentary travelling.’
‘Could be. Those poor TDs only get €107,376 a year to live on.’
‘Apart from expenses. Like tax-deductible driving expenses.’
‘Exactly!’
‘Well, it does certainly look like he’s been taking the country for a ride.’
‘Ha, ha, ha. And ye can’t fault his drive!’
‘I think they’ll soon be calling him ‘Miles’ Collins.’
Late Tuesday night and early hours of Wednesday morning an operation with large numbers of Gardaí and their helicopter circling overhead disturbed residents in the north Dublin city centre area of Berkeley Road and surroundings.
It looked like drug bust, hostage rescue situation or siege, but it was none of those things, instead being an eviction of four housing activists.1
Supporters of the occupation by the RHL gathered at short notice by Berkeley Road during the Garda operation but were roughly pushed far back by Gardaí from the building under attack (Photo: RHL)
The building had been “acquisitioned” by the Revolutionary Housing League which for a couple of years has been occupying buildings lying empty around Dublin in order to house homeless people and to inspire people to take over empty buildings to end the homeless crisis.
One of those buildings was the red-brick building on Eden Quay and corner of Marlborough Street; it had been operated by the Salvation Army as a night shelter for homeless young people but left empty for years after losing funding.
Supporters in front of James Connolly House occupation over a year ago. (Photo: Rebel Breeze)
On 1st May 2022, RHL2 activists ‘acquisitioned’ the building, renamed it James Connolly House and repaired a leak in the roof. In the early morning of 9th June 2022, an estimated 100 Gardaí (some reportedly armed) stormed the building with a Garda helicopter circling overhead.
Two RHL activists performing overnight security on the building were arrested and brought to court, where they declined to be bound over or to give an undertaking that they would not return to the building.
The Salvation Army said that they were renovating the building in order to house Ukrainian refugees. Not only was there no evidence of that in the building when it was occupied but it is empty still, over a year after that eviction3.
Garda evictions have taken place around other acquisitions of empty properties and RHL activists have on each occasion refused to commit to an undertaking not to occupy other properties.
Rather, the RHL has called for empty buildings to be occupied around the country.
The eviction this week
The massive Garda operation this week, including road-blocks, to evict RHL occupants of the Berkeley Road house. (Photo: RHL)
After the eviction in Berkeley Road, four RHL activists were taken to Court where they followed the previous pattern of refusing to be bound over or to promise not to occupy other buildings. Nevertheless they were released with a threat of jail-time if they re-occupied.
The lessee of the building, advertising as Cabhrú and formerly Catholic Housing Aid Society (Chas), has faced allegations of improper use of that building and another, Fr. Scully House on nearby Gardiner Street, some of which were borne out in an investigation by Charities Regulator.4
Supporters of the RHL occupiers outside the High Court (Photo: RHL)
The housing crisis
The numbers of homeless people in the the Irish state passed 12,000 for the first time in May this year and over 4,000 of those are children,5 nor do those figures include people defaulting on their mortgage loans, sleeping on the street or ‘sofa-surfing’ with friends and relations.
According to figures published in April this year, there are over 100,000 empty homes within the Irish state, not counting holiday homes (the Berkeley Road one was empty for three years).
Housing the homeless on the face of it can be accomplished without the revolutionary overthrow of the State and its Gombeen6 ruling class. All that is necessary is a public housing program financed by the State, which it could easily accomplish.
However, the stubborn clinging of the Gombeens to keeping a wide high-return market for property speculators, bank funders and big landlords, year after year as the housing crisis worsens, seems to indicate that a revolutionary remedy is necessary.
This week the Taoiseach,7 Varadkar, inferred that a contributory cause of the housing crisis was that homeless people had turned down alternative accommodation, a nonsensical claim since one person’s declined accommodation could just be offered to the next.
Addressing him in the Leinster House parliament, Sinn Féin TD8 Pearse Doherty9 took him to task for inferring that the homeless were to blame for their situation, in response to which Varadkar denied accusing the homeless and ungraciously amended his statement to “some homeless people”.
He went on to say that homelessness has a number of causes but neglected to name the principal one, viz. that the State does not supply funds to municipal authorities to provide public housing, leaving property speculators, banks and big landlords free to exploit the housing ‘scarcity’.
According to media reports, Doherty neglected to take this opportunity to point out the real cause of the problem and the solution, which confirms the doubts of those who say that his party is “Fianna Fáil Mark II”,10 with no intention to fundamentally alter the economic system in the state.11
Revolutionary Housing League flag on top of the occupied building during the massive Garda operation (Photo: RHL)
In conclusion
The housing crisis shows no sign of being resolved and the ruling class have ridden high-profile ‘shaming’ token occupations such as that of Apollo House in January 2017 without changing anything. RHL occupations do seem to show a way forward if they are widely emulated.
Heavy Garda operations on the one hand and comparatively light treatment by the courts on the other seems to indicate a determination not to tolerate this kind of direct action on homelessness while at the same time moderated by a fear of creating housing action martyrs.
Meanwhile the numbers of homeless grows by the month without any other credible solution in sight.
End.
FOOTNOTES
1This is the police force that has been described by its chief, Commissioner Drew Harris (formerly Asst. Commissioner of the colonial gendarmerie PSNI and therefore also MI5), as his “gang” but which seems unable to prevent serious assaults in the city centre, even in its main street.
2Originally Revolutionary Housing Union, later became RHL.
4Some of those included a friend of the charity’s Chief Exeutive being accommodated in the building allegedly providing only for the elderly, rooms being let to short-stay students without proper guarantees or rights and one of the houses being used as a business address.
8Teachta Dála, member of the Irish Parliament, equivalent to “MP”.
9Deputy leader of the party in the Irish parliament. Holly Cairns, leader of the Social Democrats also attacked Varadkar on the statement.
10Fianna Fáil is one of the two main government parties; originally a split from Sinn Féin led by De Valera, it has been in government more than any other party in the Irish state.
11A number of SF party leaders including its current president have publicly stated that big business has nothing to fear from their party.
rebelbreeze 