(This article is reprinted from Socialist Democracy by kind permission of the author Gearóid Ó Loingsigh)
(Reading time: 3 mins.)
The USA has announced that it will supply cluster bombs to Ukraine as part of its support for the war against Russia.
On one level the move is not surprising, on another it reveals some fundamental truths about the course of the war and US intentions.
They are banned by international treaty, one which has not been signed by Russia or Ukraine, and of course, neither has it been signed by the US. The US has always dragged its feet on the question of the banning of certain types of weapons.
Cluster bombs, are simply put bombs that break up into smaller components leaving small explosive devices scattered over a large area of land. They are a
…conventional munition that is designed to disperse or release explosive submunitions each weighing less than 20 kilograms, and includes those explosive submunitions…
These weapons are designed for use against massed formations of troops and armour or broad targets, such as airfields. Cluster submunitions, however, sometimes fail to explode on impact and can kill or maim civilians who later come into contact with them. These unexploded submunitions may remain dangerous for decades.(1)
Cluster bomb capsule (Photo sourced
They have all the potential to leave Ukraine like the US left Cambodia and Laos in the 1970s.
According to Cluster Munition Monitor 23,082 casualties were confirmed by the year 2021, with around 18,426 resulting from unexploded munitions.
Biden has a long and chequered history on the use of the weapons.
His ambassador to the UN had condemned their use by Russia, stating they had no legitimate place on the battlefield, though two days later the State Department censored the official transcript of her intervention to remove the phrase.
Biden had criticised the use of and access to such weapons in the past. (2)
Whilst it is all very interesting and even of humanitarian concern that the US would wish to turn Ukraine in another Laos and Cambodia, though unlike Kissinger they will be telling no lies about their bombs, it is of greater interest what it says about the war.
Biden’s official reason is that Ukraine is running out of munitions and they need the cluster bombs. We have been told from the word go that this war is winnable, i.e. that Ukraine can win it.
This of course ignores that Ukraine is not the only warring party fighting Russia; NATO is part of the war, although it is not putting many boots on the ground, though it clearly has had a hand in some operations.
Every week we hear announcements that the counter offensive will smash Russia, almost there, one more push, the Russians have run out of weapons, their army is demoralised and deserting etc. Now it turns out that Ukraine needs these weapons or else.
These weapons are very useful in halting advances by your enemy, they are not as necessary in situations where your enemy is routed, unless you think it may regroup and retake the initiative.
Ireland has wholeheartedly supported the war in Ukraine, confirming to those who wish to see that it is not a neutral country. It has had little to say on the issue of these banned weapons.
They will make parts of Ukraine uninhabitable and make agriculture a dangerous profession as sowing and reaping become potentially life-threatening activities. If Biden will go to these lengths, what else will he do?
Children view unexploded cluster bomb sub-munition near their village, Laos, 2019 (Photo cred: Sarah Bronstein)
Despite the media talking about Putin’s willingness to use nuclear weapons, it really has to be asked whether the US is willing to go that far as well.
What then of the former leftists running round chanting victory for NATO, or as they would put it for Ukraine? None of them have said much either on Biden’s choice of weaponry. Is there no length to which the US will go that marks a turning point for them? The answer is no.
Should Biden propose facilitating large scale rocket attacks on Moscow they are as likely to cheer them on as to remain silent. What they will not do, ever, is oppose the escalation of the war. Modern day Kautskys.
A recent article appearing briefly on breakingnews.ie was packed with some of the typical anti-Russian propaganda of the current western mass media but also, unintentionally, revealed the purpose of the US/NATO proxy war in Ukraine.
Whether one is pro-NATO, pro-Russia or of some other position, it can be instructive to dissect this mass media propaganda to which we are subjected daily in western states.
Let’s take the headline first, which serves not just as an ‘attractor’ or ‘hook’ to draw the reader but also as a statement in itself and, in this case, very definitely as propaganda.
“NATO prepares military plans to defend against bruised but unbowed Russia” is the headline. So straightaway we are being told that NATO needs to defend itself against Russia, which is turning truth completely on its head.
Firstly, where in the world is the Russian Federation attacking NATO? In Ukraine? But then the Ukrainian state is not actually in NATO, is it? Unless what is meant is US/NATO’s plans to get the Ukrainian state into NATO, of course, which they’re generally vague about.
But if not there, where? Nowhere, of course.
Who threatens whom?
As to reversing reality, one look at a map of Europe with NATO states indicated makes it clear that it is not NATO that needs to defend itself but Russia — and bears out the Russian line that one of the reasons they went to war was to stop their encirclement by NATO.
Map of European states currently in NATO (Image sourced: Internet)
Then, we need to consider that NATO is not a country or one region in the world that could need defence. No, it is a military alliance of European states with the United States. And if it ever was a defensive alliance, that ‘reason’ for its existence disappeared with the fall of the USSR in 1991.
Far from scrapping NATO or even freezing its expansion then, US/NATO started collecting former USSR states into its alliance until nearly every state on Russia’s eastern borders had joined the alliance or was friendly towards it and hostile towards Russia.
The former Ukrainian regime was friendly towards Russia until the coup in 2014 by pro-NATO elements, which are the regime now in power and responsible for a decade of cultural attacks on – and artillery bombardment of – the ethnic Russian population of the Donbas area.
Moldovan troops in joint NATO military exercise in Ukraine, 2017. (Image sourced: Internet)
Only a propaganda-blinded fool or a liar could deny that Russia has been and is under threat from US/ NATO, rather than the reverse.
We could do with looking at the record of states in invasion of – and interference in – other countries.
The USA is the founder and leader of NATO; since the end of WWII, the USA has beeninvolved in 34 armed actions against smaller nations, not including coups and proxy wars. This includes initiating 81% of all global armed conflicts from 1945 to 2001.
The United Kingdom is a major NATO member and, with direct involvement in 35 armed conflicts since WWI, has exceeded the USA’s tally by one and France’s tally of 33, also an important NATO member, by two.
How many Russian Federation armed conflicts since it came into existence? Thirteen, mostly on or around its own state’s territory, whereas the armed conflicts of the USA, UK and France were mostly outside their own territories and far from their borders.
So who has more reason to fear attack from whom?
“What we see in general is that the Russians are careful around NATO. They are not seeking a conflict with NATO. I think that is a sign that they are very, very busy,” the article quotes NATO Chairman, Dutch Admiral Rob Bauer saying. “Busy” with what, is he inferring?
Nuclear weapons
“NATO, as an organisation, does not provide weapons or ammunition to Ukraine and has sought to avoid being dragged into a wider war with nuclear-armed Russia,” states the article.
True, as far as that goes but how many NATO states are supplying the Ukrainian state with military equipment? It would be quicker to list how many are not supplying it!
In that quoted sentence, there is almost an admission that were it not for Russia’s nuclear weapons, the US/ NATO forces would be willing to intervene directly to attack and invade Russia.
Indeed, they may still do so. NATO Chairman, Admiral Rob Bauer, in briefing the press, “laid out the biggest revamp to the organisation’s military plans since the Cold War” (of course for purely defensive reasons!).
“US President Joe Biden and his Nato counterparts are set to endorse a major shake-up of the alliance’s planning system at a summit in the Lithuanian capital, Vilnius, next week,” we are told.
“About 100 aircraft take to the skies in that territory each day, and a total of 27 warships are operating in the Baltic and Mediterranean Seas, with those numbers set to rise. In new plans, NATO aims to have up to 300,000 troops ready to move to its eastern flank within 30 days.”
Of course, weapons and military transport require funding (a big source of profits for the arms industries). “In 2014, NATO committed to move towards spending 2% of GDP on their military budgets by 2024” (2014 was the year of the US/NATO-inspired coup, 8 years before the invasion).
“At their July 11-12 summit, the leaders will set the 2% figure as a spending floor, rather than a ceiling to aim for.”
“Russia bruised but unbowed”
When wishing to force the enemy to surrender, it may be sufficient to bombard it from the air and sea. But in order to extract its riches, the situation requires either invading troops on the ground or a compliant regime.
In this context it is significant that Admiral Baur commented that of Russia’s ground forces, around “94% is now engaged in the war in Ukraine”, meaning that the state’s principal ground defence forces are already engaged in war and presumably taking casualties.
But Russia’s armed forces are “bruised but by no means bowed” in the war in Ukraine, commented Admiral Bauer, which looks very much like an admission that pushing Russian forces into a proxy war in the Ukraine was intended to sap Russia’s military strength.
So that Russia can be invaded, carved up into US/NATO dependencies, its rich natural resources plundered for the benefit of western imperialist states? No, surely not, the USA, UK and France would never go to war for imperialist plunder, would they?
Recently the Taoiseach1 of the Irish State criticised people protesting the Government’s plans to slide the state into external military alliances of “misappropriating” the Irish Tricolour and, incredibly, even of “weaponising” it.
The Irish tricolour was a weapon from the moment it was sewn – a psychological weapon, laden with political meaning, sewn by French revolutionaries, presented to and flown by Irish Republican revolutionaries from generation to generation.
Painting by Philoppoteaux depicting the revolutionaries of the French 1848 Revolution outside the Paris Town Hall and Lamartine rejecting the Red Flag in favour of the French Republican one. Women participants in this revolution presented the Irish Tricolour sewn in silk to Young Irelanders including Thomas Francis Meagher (Source photo: Wikipeda) [When Paris rose again in 1871 under the Paris Commune, the preference was for the Red flag.]
Prior to the advent of the Tricolour, the Irish Republican flag was typically the gold harp on a green background2 but when a group of Young Irelanders went to Paris in solidarity with the revolution of 1848 there, the Tricolour sewn in silk was presented to them by revolutionary French women.
The symbolism of the Tricolour was firstly in its form; the French Revolution adopted a tricolour in opposition to the monarchist Fleur-de-Lison a blue background and different tricolours became popular as flags of new republics.
In the Irish Tricolour, the ancient Irish and the Norman-Irish, basically Catholics, were represented symbolically by green, with orange for the settlers (after William of Orange) of one sect or another of the Protestant faith; the colour white, symbolised peaceful national unity in an Irish Republic.
And it presented an equal unity, as opposed to the unity of Scotland and Ireland with England but under the clear domination of the latter, as represented in the Union Jack, which incorporates the St. Andrew’s and St. Patrick’s crosses with the English one of St. George.
THE TRICOLOUR UNFURLED IN IRELAND
The Irish Tricolour we know was first unfurled by Thomas Francis Meagher “of the Sword” at the Wolfe Tone Club in Wexford on 7th March 1848 and in Dublin in Lower Abbey Street on 13th April 1848.
Meagher’s nickname was due to his renunciation of the Gombeens of his day trying to deny the right to resort to arms if necessary to win freedom3.
Meagher and other Young Irelanders were arrested around the failed uprising of 1848, just after the worst year of the Great Hunger and, after wide-scale international and domestic protests at the sentences of execution, transported to penal colonies, from which many escaped.
Taking his Republicanism and inclusivity seriously, both in Ireland and abroad, Meagher raised and commanded the Irish Brigade (composed of five regiments4) in the United States, fondly nicknamed Mrs. Meagher’s Own, to fight for the Union against the Confederacy and slavery.
As the years of struggle progressed, the Tricolour took its place among the ranks of Irish Republicans alongside the older Harp on Green or, for some Fenians, the gold or orange Sunburst on a blue background and so it was in the 1916 Rising when it began to be the most chosen.
Other flags were flown during the 1916 Rising also but the Tricolour was one of two erected on the roof of the GPO, headquarters of the Rising and became the most prominent during the War of Independence (1919-1921).
The Irish Tricolour in modern times flying over the General Post Office building in Dublin City’s main street (Source photo: Internet)
During the Irish Civil war by the British-supported, armed and provisioned Free State Army against the Republican movement (1922-1923), it was flown by both sides. Even after the defeat of the Republican movement and repression, it was not immediately named the state’s flag.
Though it was displayed by the Free State when joining the League of Nations in 1923, and denounced by the Republican movement as an usurpation, it did not seem that the new state was too attached to it5 and some Irish ships flew the British Red Ensign until 1939 and WW2.
The first time the Tricolour was formally adopted by the Irish State was in the 1937 Bunreacht (Constitution) which was brought in by De Valera’s Fianna Fáil6 Government and even then it was under a pretence of Republicanism with claim laid to the whole of Ireland.
Display of the Tricolour was suppressed in the Six Counties colony from 1922 and officially banned under the Flags and Emblems Acts (1954). Many a battle was fought with the colonial police by people asserting their right to display it, the Act not being repealed until 1987.7
“A FLAG OF INCLUSIVITY, MISAPPROPRIATED BY A MINORITY”
One must agree with Varadkar that the flag signifies inclusivity and was misappropriated by fascists and other racists in recent years but it is shameful of him to attribute similar exclusivity to Republicans, who in many cases fought those same fascists to which he referred.
Leo Varadkar, current Taoiseach of the Irish Government, who accused protesters for Irish neutrality of “weaponising” the Irish Tricolour (Source photo: Internet)
Not only fought them in recent years but also back in the 1930s, when Irish fascists were called the Blueshirts. Surely Varadgar is familiar with the latter’s history also, since they were one of three reactionary groups that joined to create Fine Gael – yes, Varadkar’s own political party.
And the first Irish Republicans, the United Irishmen, sought the unity of “Catholic, Protestant (Anglican) and Dissenter (other Protestant sects)” for an independent Republic, an ideology carried on by all Republican groups thereafter and given expression in the 1916 Proclamation.
But this is not the first time that people in authority have tried to equate Irish Republicans with fascists, as a few years ago Garda Commissioner Drew Harris issued a press statement in which he accused Republicans of having organised a far-Right demonstration — which he later recanted.
One would think Drew Harris, ex-Assistant Commissioner of the British colonial police force, the PSNI8, well-known for their sectarianism and collusion with the colonial brand of fascism, the Loyalists, would be able to distinguish between Irish Republicans and fascists with ease.
Varadkar is ridiculous in accusing Republicans of “weaponising” the Tricolour since it wasalways an ideological weapon from the moment of its creation and then eventually used by the State to try, with monumental lack of success, to deny it to Republicans.
But Varadkar is right in that the Irish Tricolour has been misappropriated by a minority; but rather than Republicans, that minority is the Gombeen ruling class, foreign-dependent, neo-liberal, selling out the country’s resources and networks to foreign capitalist monopolies.
And causing homelessness, or rent and mortgage hopelessness, emigration and austerity for the vast majority of the people in the Irish state, both native and immigrant, for the benefit of a tiny minority of parasites incapable of even developing a viable Irish national economy.
Republican groups, like all groups are minorities but so are the elites, though even smaller. But in representation? Republicans, whatever faults they may have from time to time clearly represent a much larger and wider section of society than do the Gombeens.
This has been evidenced by the militant opposition of wide Irish society to triple water taxation and privatisation, repugnance for the celebration of British occupation forces and the wide opposition to joining a military alliance, all projects pushed by the Gombeens in different governments.
The Irish Tricolour has been commented upon in a number of Irish Republican songs, sometimes even in the song title: White, Orange and Green and Green, White and Gold.
Probably it is most appropriately referenced in the chorus of a song directed at the Gombeens, the very minority who have misappropriated it:
Take it down from the mast, Irish Traitors, It’s the flag we Republicans claim; It can never belong to Free Staters For you’ve brought on it nothing but shame9.
End.
The Irish Tricolour that was flown over the GPO in 1916 (Source photo: 1916 Rebellion Tours)
FOOTNOTES
1 Currently Prime Minister of the Coalition Government of Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael and the Greens.
2 Flag of the Society of United Irishmen, who led insurrections in 1798 and 1803.
3 Daniel O’Connell’s son intended to force a motion of that kind on the Irish Repeal Association founded by his father and also sought to have the motion passed without debate. O’Meagher said that while he did not exalt violence, neither would he allow his sword to be taken from him in case it should be needed. He and others such as Thomas Davis left the Association at that point and became known as “the Young Irelanders”, first mockingly and later with pride.
4 Including the 69th New York Infantry or “Fitghting 69th”. 7,715 men served in the brigade, 961 were killed or mortally wounded and around 3,000 were wounded. (Wikipedia The Irish Brigade)
5 A 1928 British document said: The government in Ireland have taken over the so called Free State Flag in order to forestall its use by republican element and avoid legislative regulation, to leave them free to adopt a more suitable emblem later. (Wikipedia)
6 The party was a split from the losers of the Civil War of which De Valera had been leader, formed in order to participate in elections for Government and presented itself as Republican. The 1937 Bunreacht also laid claim in Articles 2 & 3 to the whole of Ireland which were removed in
7 During a period of direct rule by the British Government.
8 The colonial gendarmerie, formerly the Royal Ulster Constabulary for the Six Counties, preceded by the Royal Irish Constabulary for the whole of Ireland.
9 Soldiers of ‘22 by Brian Ó hUigín, acclaiming the Republican resistance to the counter-revolution of the Free State during the Civil War.
A packed public meeting in Dublin city centre on Saturday listened to and applauded prominent people speaking against the Irish State becoming part of military alliances, whether PESCO1 (“NATO by stealth”2) or NATO itself.
The high-profile panel of speakers chaired by Irish MEP Clare Daly featured fellow MEP Mick Wallace, Sevim Dagdalen (MP Die Linke), Medea Benjamin (founder of Code Pink) and Anne Wright (ex-US Army Major and opponent of the US-Iraq War).
Celebrated anti-imperialist rapper Lowkey was also a speaker as was Yanis Varoufakis (ex-Syrza)3 who addressed the meeting by recorded video from abroad and applauded the Irish for their long resistance to colonialism and urged them to be proud of their state’s neutrality.
Yanis Varoufakis’ recorded speech video screened at the Neutrality Who Cares meeting on Saturday (Photo: Rebel Breeze)
BACKGROUND
There is a constitutional impediment to the Irish state’s participating in a war partnership with another state and during WW2 the state’s official position was neutrality.
However, it was always a pro-Allied neutrality with British downed airmen allowed to cross over into UK territory and US servicemen often crossing the UK border to visit the ‘south’, while German downed airmen were interned for the duration of the War.
The impediment is not absolute and is usually referred to as the ‘Triple Lock’, listing the three conditions which would enable to government to send more than 12 troops overseas:
In recent years some politicians and public commentators have floated the idea that the Irish state could rejoin the British Commonwealth and, since the war in the Ukraine, a discourse has arisen that the State needs to join an external military alliance in order to protect itself from Russia.
Sevim Dagdalen, Die Linke party MP, speaking at the Neutrality Who Cares meeting on Saturday (Photo: Rebel Breeze)
The Irish Times/Ipsos poll in April, amid criticisms of not following best practice in its design and even accusations of trying to steer respondents towards favouring joining some external military alliance, delivered two thirds clearly against the Irish state doing any such thing.
Russophobic propaganda has speculated on the activities of Russian trawlers in the Irish Sea. This is entirely a whipped-up alarm and discussion without the slightest foundation in fact since Russia has never presented the slightest threat, militarily or politically, to the Irish people.
On the other hand, Britain has invaded and occupied Ireland for over 800 years and is still in possession of one-fifth of its territory and has substantial economic and financial interests in the country as, more recently, have the USA and European Union states.
The UK’s Royal Navy frequently enters Irish national waters and the State has regularly permitted its ships, along with warships of other NATO countries, to dock in Irish harbours. And also the Royal Air Force, it has recently emerged, to patrol Irish territorial air space.
As part of this false alarm and discourse, the Irish Government5 recently founded the Consultative Forum on International Security Policy which was scheduled to meet last week in Cork and Galway, then for two days in Dublin Castle.
The President of the State, Michael D. Higgins, in an unusual intervention during an interview with the Examiner expressed concern at what he perceived as the “drift towards NATO” and criticised the composition of the speakers and chairperson of this organisation as being pro-NATO.
Michael D commented on “the admirals, the generals, the air force, the rest of it” and described its chair Louise Richardson, as a person “with a very large DBE – Dame of the British Empire”.
President Higgins apologised later for what he said was “a throway remark” about Richardson but did not withdraw his remarks about the overall composition of the Forum which has indeed been criticised by others, including Richard Boyd Barrett TD6 and Senator Frances Black.
THE DUBLIN MEETING
Varoufakis referred to Ireland as though the nation had won its independence, as was the case with every speaker that followed (with the exception of Lowkey).
A member of the audience was heard to remark ironically to another that he was grateful he had attended as heretofore he hadn’t been aware of Ireland’s ‘independence’.
Lowkey, the British-based rapper, tore the illusion of Irish state neutrality to tatters by recounting the use of Irish airports not only for US Army flights under Air America through Shannon, but also airlines run by the CIA and others using other airports in Irish state territory.
Lowkey, anti-imperialist rapper from London, speaking at the meeting in Dublin. (Photo: Rebel Breeze)
The rapper exposed the ‘neutrality’ of the Irish government in training soldiers going to fight in Ukraine and also in its continued support for the Israeli State and was cheered when he declared that, as an Iraqi, he was proud that his country had “kicked the ass of the British”.
In a masterful exercise in research-backed criticism, Lowkey went on to strip the pretence of independence and impartiality from the Government-founded “Consultative Forum”, exposing the imperialist and even NATO background of the main panel members and its chairperson.
All the members of the Neutrality Who Cares panel were effective speakers and made useful points although it was curious to hear one of them denouncing “Russian fascists” without commenting on the fascist units in the Ukrainian regime’s national army.
Medea Benjamin, founder of Code Pink, speaking at the Neutrality Who Cares meeting on Saturday (Photo: Rebel Breeze)
It was Lowkey who drove the sharpest and longest nails into the verbal crucifixion of the Irish Government’s drive towards NATO and who brought the loudest cheers from his mostly Irish audience.
Even celebrated speaker Daly did not come very close, though she too exposed the propaganda of the Government and pro-NATO cheerleaders. The MEP debunked the excuse of protecting underground communication cables, pointing out that 25% of them are out of action regularly.
The Irish MEP also lampooned the idea of any underwater cable being protected by NATO, considering where the responsibility for the blowing up of the Nord Stream gas pipeline lies!7
Finally she warned the audience to be on the look out for an attempt to remove the Triple Lock under some kind of excuse as a first step to permit the Government to enter a military alliance.
Clare Daly MEP speaking at the Neutrality Who Cares meeting on Saturday (Photo: Rebel Breeze)
A PART OF IRELAND ALREADY IN NATO
It was left to a youth member of the audience in the Q&A section, reading a statement on behalf of the Anti-Imperialist Action organisation, to point out that a part of Ireland is already in NATO, viz. the Six Counties, occupied by Britain and a part of the United Kingdom.
The youth called for a broad front to unite around opposition to becoming part of an external military alliance and imperialism (see full statement in appendix). Small flyers advocating the same course of action had been distributed inside the meeting earlier.
The People Before Profit party also distributed leaflets against joining NATO to people attending the meeting.
Indeed, it is hard to see why the presence of NATO in a part of Ireland should be so markedly missing from the panel’s speeches. Since it cannot have been accidental we must ponder what the rationale for its omission could have been.
Do those on the panel agree with the colonial occupation of a part of Ireland? That seems hard to believe, at least of some of them. Or perhaps they believe its discussion would be a distraction from the neutrality issue and if so, how can that be?
Or is it that they seek the support of sections of Irish society who are comfortable with the continued occupation and partition of Ireland? If so, they are seeking to build the movement against Irish membership of NATO in terms they think acceptable to timid sections of the middle class.
When resolute action becomes necessary or when reaction starts to bite, those sections will fade out of the anti-NATO movement. For practical as well as for ideological reasons, the campaign must appeal to the working class on an unashamedly anti-colonial and anti-imperialist basis.
Protest banner at Government’s Forum for International Security meeting in Cork while Tánaiste (Deputy Prime Minister, on far left of photo) was speaking (Photo sourced: Internet)
Wherever the Government’s Forum has gone, it has encountered public opposition. It was picketed at its Cork and Galway venues, while inside the former, an anti-NATO banner was unfolded and many in the audience denounced the Government’s direction.
Even after the protesters had been hustled out, another stood up to denounce the chairperson’s speech before he too was manhandled away.
In Dublin Castle, venue for the Forum on Monday and Tuesday with a long history as administrative centre of British occupation, people against NATO, war or militarism and for Irish independence displayed banners and placards of protest and flew national flags.
Protesters inside a Dublin Castle courtyard against the Government Forum on International Security held inside the complex this week. (Source photo: Anti-Imperialist Action)
AIA Tweet featuring National TV broadcaster RTÉ quoting Irish Government leaders’ ridiculous comments on the display of Irish Republican flags by protestors outside main pedestrian entrance to Dublin Castle in the city centre.
IN CONCLUSION
The general mass media silence on the Neutrality Who Cares meeting in Dublin and in downplaying the protests against the Forum at all its locations is part of the Irish Gombeen class drive to join NATO, despite the well-known opposition of the wide Irish population.
It is not forgotten that when tens of thousands thronged Dublin streets marching against triple water service taxation and privatisation, how the mass media reported participation merely by “several thousand” or even “hundreds”.
Nevertheless the comments of the President of the State and remarks by some journalists in the mass media do reveal that even in their own sections, the Gombeens do not have it all their own way. In the general population, however, the mood is clearly for non-militarisation of Ireland.
If the anti-NATO movement remains active and militant and adopts a generally broad anti-imperialist stance, going to most sections of society but especially to the working class, the Gombeens’ drive towards participation in PESCO and NATO will be decisively defeated.
End.
FOOTNOTES
1Permanent Structured Cooperation is the strange name of this proposed European Union-wide military alliance.
3Syriza is a Left social-democratic coalition party that was elected to government in Greece in 2015 on a promise to implement necessary social and economic reforms in the teeth of EU and other imperialist resistance. However, once the EU and the ECB began to tighten the screws, the resistance of the party’s leadership disintegrated. Varoufakis had been appointed finance minister and to give him his due, he tried to rally his cabinet colleagues around a program of non-compliance with EU diktats but was unsuccessful. Although it remains the main social-democratic opposition in Greece, the party has continued to slide in popularity in elections since.
4Irish UN peacekeeping forces exceeding 12 personnel have been sent overseas with those three conditions satisfied to many conflicts around the world, most notably Lebanon, where they have suffered some casualties and to the Congo, where they suffered many.
5The Irish Government is a coalition of two traditional main oppositional parties, Fianna Fáile and Fine Gael, with the Green Party. The Labour Party does not have a noticeably different position on external military alliance and Sinn Féin recently dropped their decades-long opposition to Irish membership of NATO and the EU.
6Barrett is a Teachta Dála (member of the Irish parliament) and member of the People Before Profit left-wing political party. Frances Black, with a successful career in singing, is an independent Senator in the same parliament who has sponsored a Bill to ban products from the illegal Israeli settlements. The Control of Economic Activity (Occupied Territories) Bill 2018 was passed in full by the Senate in 2018, and passed its first vote in Dáil Éireann in early 2019. It was then sent for detailed scrutiny in the Oireachtas Select Committee on Foreign & Affairs and Trade. This review took place over several months, hearing from expert testimony and input, and in December 2019 the Committee also voted in favour of the bill. Since then the Government is delaying bringing it forward.
7Although direct proof is not yet available, circumstantial evidence points towards US armed forces’ responsibility and journalist Seymour Hersh (Pullitzer Prize winner for exposing the US military massacre in Mai Lai, Viet Nam and its subsequent attempted cover-up) has confirmed the US military’s responsibility on the basis of inside knowledge from his contacts.
APPENDIX
Text of statement read out during Q&A period of Neutrality – Who Cares public meeting in Dublin 24 June 2023:
Anti Imperialist Action Ireland hold the revolutionary position that Britain, NATO and any other imperialist power is not welcome in Ireland. Anti-Imperialist Action have been active in opposing all forms of imperialism in Ireland and have been to the fore in opposition to NATO.
NATO is a great threat to Ireland and the Irish People, and in realisation of that, we urge and call on everyone here to vocally oppose the presence of NATO in Ireland whether you be an anti-war activist, a Socialist Republican, an anti-Fascist, a trade unionist, or just against the presence of a foreign power in Ireland, get behind this position and ensure that your sons and daughters aren’t sent off to be slaughtered in illegal wars of conquest.
While all the focus has been about the push towards NATO for the 26 Counties we cannot forget that the Six Counties are already occupied by NATO by virtue of Britain’s illegal occupation. Only a militant broad front of progressive forces all across the 32 counties can make a firm stand against NATO’s presence in Ireland. Everyone has a part to play in such a broad front which Anti-Imperialist Action and others are working hard to establish.
The collapse of multi-occupation buildings in Dublin’s Fenian Street killed two girls. A day from the anniversary of the tragedy sixty years later, local residents in a working-class block of flats organised a moving and informative commemoration.
On 12th June 1963, Marion Vardy and Linda Byrne, returning from a shop were killed when the buildings collapsed.
After another two people were killed in a Bolton Street collapse, a galvanised Dublin City Council inspection condemned many other buildings in the city and 155 families were rehoused immediately, though some in Army barracks.
And a number had to camp out for some days in the street. But it was not the first fatal building collapse in Dublin. On 2nd September 1913 (with the epic Lockout struggle only days old), two adjacent buildings had collapsed in Church Street, killing seven people.1
All the buildings in question were privately-owned with working class people paying rent to the owners. Emergency inspections by Dublin City Council inspectors in 1963 resulted in the condemning of 156 Dublin buildings as too dangerous for residence.
For years, other buildings in the Dublin inner city could be seen braced on a side by a massive timber frame.
Organisers’ panel photographed by D.BreatnachOrganisers’ panel photographed by D.Breatnach
COMMEMORATIVE EVENT
A display of panels describing the tragedy and panels of photos had been erected around the entrance to St.Andrew’s Court block of flats in Fenian Street, where a crowd had gathered for the well-organised commemoration.
Paul McKeown chaired the event speaking eloquently when he could be heard (there was no public address facility) about the actual tragedy and the context of housing provision for working class people in the inner city.
Paul McKeown, who chaired the event, speaking. (Photo: D.Breatnach)
As a Catholic priest had performed the religion’s Last Rites over the bodies of the girls in 1963, McKeown invited a priest to recite some prayers at the event, which he duly did, after which the MC introduced a representative from the Henrietta Street Tenement Experience.2
The Henrietta Street speaker provided interesting snapshots of what past life was like for working people of the inner city in terms of occupation, accommodation and schooling. Some women sewed shirts in a factory while others sold items in street markets, such as Moore Street.3
Speaker from the Henrietta Street Tenement Museum. (Photo: D.Breatnach)
The floors in the poorest homes had no covering and toilets were very few, their use often shared by a great many residents. Although virtually all children would end schooling at the age of 14, the eldest boy often left years earlier to work, as a newsboy or shop messenger, for example.
Labouring on the nearby docks and carting would be the main employment for the men. No doubt emigration, almost a constant in Irish history, played a part too. Rats and mice were endemic in the buildings.
Though alternative and eventually new housing was found for all, it was to Dublin’s outlying areas, breaking up communities and their ways of life, separating them from services used, employment, etc. Many felt isolated and took the long journey to return to the city centre for social contact.
Organisers’ panel photographed by D.Breatnach
ATTACK ON NEARBY REFUGEES
The local flats overlook the location in Sandwith Street that in May had seen an attack by fascists on refugees who had been living in tents because the nearby International Protection Office, a State body, had failed to allocate them accommodation while processing their applications.
A few locals might have joined in and certainly some had attended the crowd but the fascists were imported (as indeed were the refugees and subsequently their antifascist defenders). Some locals at least resented the way they were being portrayed in some social media subsequently.
Refreshments, some of which were provided by Dublin City Council, were served by residents in the inner courtyard after the speeches. (Photo: D.Breatnach)
“We’ve had generations of Travellers4 in the flats and migrant people too,” commented one. “We’re more ethnically diverse than Dalkey,” he added. “Middle class people don’t talk to us, they talk down at us,” was another comment.
They claim that they have been neglected for generations by all the government parties but also by small left-wing parties, also by people who were quick to criticise them and to see them in negative stereotypes. “Nobody talks about class prejudice”, commented McKeown.
The inner city working class population has been moved out of much of the city and this area, which was previously seen as the least valuable real estate in Dublin, as McKeown observes, is now attracting property speculators for gentrification.
Some of the residents and others in attendance in the inner courtyard after the speeches. (Photo: D.Breatnach)
McKeown feels his people are not wanted in the area and he’s probably right. It’s not just that they are not the typical users of the wine bars and coffee bars of gentrified areas but that their current location would take in big rents after construction of hotels and upper-market flats.
Past the site of the attack on the refugees there is a new block of apartments, two bedrooms for 3,000 euro a month, one bedroom for 2,000. An empty bloc across the road which people say was well-maintained, remains empty since Dublin City Council moved the residents out 5 years ago.
The local residents say that they have been promised that a new block of apartments will be built on the latter site and that all the units will go for “social housing”, presumably meaning for affordable rent.5They want that to be true but are not sure whether they should trust the authorities.
After the speeches of the commemoration people were invited to partake of food and music in the inside square of the flats which contains minimal playground facilities.
Shay Connolly (centre) and friends performing at the event (Photo: D.Breatnach)
The music was provided by a trio including Shay Connolly playing ballads with the food served by local residents, in a relaxed atmosphere. The area at the back of the flats had become a sun-trap and while some soaked it up, I and some others eventually fled the heat.
PAST, PRESENT AND FUTURE
The commemoration of historical events can be of great importance. The event in 1963 forms part not only of an older story but also of the present, which is the lack of decent housing provision for the population of Ireland, in particular for those living in the inner cities.
Some of the residents and others in attendance in the inner courtyard after the speeches. (Photo: D.Breatnach)
Working and lower middle class people were wanted in the inner city to work its industries and its shipping port and to service the houses of higher social classes. As industry and port declined and the higher social classes moved out, the need for their work declined.
When their poor areas are seen instead as development prize areas, there is even less demand for the people who have lived in these areas for generations.
One can see this as the inexorable play of impersonal market forces or as the operation of finance and rentier capitalism in a capitalist economy and more, a Gombeen capitalist state where everything is done for the foreign capitalists and as little as possible for the working classes.
From the latter viewpoint, voting different political parties in to government will make no essential difference; what is needed is a fundamental change in the economy which can only be brought about by an organised, conscious and militant working class seizing their rightful inheritance.
End.
Organisers’ panel photographed by D.BreatnachOrganisers’ panel photographed by D.Breatnach
FOOTNOTES
1 I recall reading that a number of Dublin City Councillors, including Nationalist ones, were slum landlords.
2 It is open for visits from Wednesdays through to the weekend, I am told.
3 The market and area are subject to a long war between property speculators and conservationists (see smsfd.ie)
4 An Irish indigenous nomadic ethnic group of at least five centuries existence, much discriminated against.
5 “Social housing” is often understood as provision for people unemployed and on state welfare provision. Perhaps “Public housing on affordable rent” is a better description, housing both people working and those on benefits, the rents adjusted to means. This was widely built in the middle of the last century but none has been built in Dublin for decades, all governments insisting that the “private sector” (i.e big landlords, property speculators and vulture funds) can solve the problem while the housing crisis intensifies year after year.
For decades the US Dollar has dominated financial transactions across the world – backed not only by the USA’s industrial and agricultural output but by its imperialist domination of many economies and its military power.
But perhaps no longer, for now there is a serious competitor in the field, one with the acronym BRICS, from the first letter of the states that created it (in order of no significance): Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa.
Apart from the backing of powerful economies with more applying to join, this currency standard is based on the price of precious and semi-precious metals. The UK’s Sterling (and the Irish state’s, for a while) was based on silver but the Dollar has for many years been backed by … debt.
A currency is based on the assumption that every unit will be payable and backed by a unit (e.g. gold) of the declared value. But if the value unit markers of the US Dollar, in coins, notes, cheques and credit transfers were to be presented to the US Treasury, it could never pay them.1
In fact, it could not even pay a significant percentage of them and has been running a national defaulting on debt currency for many years, this year once again deciding to continue doing so to the tune of $31.5 trillion.
But is it really “redeemable” if all are presented? (Image sourced: Internet)
The USA has been able to continue doing this to date because so many of the world’s economies have been dominated by US Imperialism or in alliance with it; they fear that calling in the debt would lead to the collapse of the USA system and to their own interlinked financial structures.
BRICS consists of a financial alliance of economies of which their leaders for one reason or another feel in their interests to end the world dominance of the Dollar.
Previously, South Africa’s Foreign Minister Naledi Pandor said that there are 12 countries interested in joining the initiative.
Of the 12, she mentioned seven countries specifically, namely Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Egypt, Algeria, Argentina, Mexico and Nigeria. In March this year Russia announced its support for Algeria’s bid to join BRICS.
In April the expansion of that list interested in joining to 19 states was announced with formal applications from Algeria, Argentina, Bahrain, Egypt, Indonesia, Iran, Saudi Arabia and United Arab Emirates.
And with expressions of interest from Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Mexico, Nicaragua, Nigeria, Pakistan, Senegal, Sudan, Syria, Thailand, Tunisia, Turkey, Uruguay, Venezuela and Zimbabwe.
(Image sourced: Internet)
COMMUNICATIONS, COMMON CURRENCY & LENDING BANK
Plans for an optical fibre submarine communications cable between BRIC members – partly motivated to avoid US National Security Agency spying on telecommunications in and out of the USA – have not advanced far since first discussed in 2012 but have not been abandoned.
Likewise, discussions of a common currency have not come to fruition yet either. However that may be more imminent.
As challengers to Western-led international currency, BRICS “in the order of the scale of GDP, now collectively outweigh not only the reigning hegemon, the United States, but the entire G-7 weight class put together” (former White House senior advisor Joseph W. Sullivan).2
The same commentator believes that such a common currency has a much greater chance of stability than the Eurozone, because of the geographic diversity of its members, which enables a broader range of goods and services.
(Image sourced: Internet)
The biggest attraction for applicants to join is probably access to loans from the New Development Bank to members for infrastructure projects, which is the NDB’s main advertised purpose. Heretofore, the IMF and the World Bank have been the main external lenders.
Both the latter institutions have imposed harmful changes on borrowing economies, often driving them further and deeper into debt and into greater dependency on western imperialism. Those lending institutions have also supported corrupt and oppressive regimes.
The NDB has authorised lending up to $34 billion annually, with South Africa the HQ for the African continent with a starting capital of $50 billion ($10 billion from each of the five founders) and so far has 53 projects underway worth around $15 billion total.
Should the NDB prove its ability to issue loans to nationally-desired projects without the penurious and destructive conditions currently attached to IMF and World Bank funding, many, many regimes in the underdeveloped world are likely to apply to BRICS for membership.
And should client regimes currently dependent on western imperialism refuse to jump across to BRICS, they may well face coups from more nationally-ambitious sections of their elites or insurrections from below.
IS BRICS A GOOD OR A BAD THING?
Some anti-imperialists, including some socialists, have been celebrating the creation of BRICS, some even proclaiming it as the financial reflection of a new anti-imperialist order.
Of the five founding economies, only one claims to be socialist. Capitalist economies, we know, tend to develop into imperialist ones, sometimes but not always invading the countries of other economies but always exporting surplus capital there to exploit labour and natural resources.
So some or all of the capitalist economies in BRICS currently are likely to become imperialist also.
That apart, having much or even all of the world’s economies divided between two blocs may give weak economies opportunities they would not otherwise have or at least a choice and perhaps the opportunity to bargain for the conditions of their relationship to world finance.
In other words, a return in many fundamental ways to the division of the world before the collapse of the Soviet Union.
A breakthrough the current financial structure to a new one?
THREAT OF WAR?
But does this bring the threat of world war, arms race, etc, as seemed to be always present between the USA and the USSR?
Possibly but the threat of world war is already very much with us, as US/NATO uses the Ukrainian regime as a proxy in its decades-long threatening encirclement of Russia, and also in its posture (not unrelated) towards Iran and the USA’s world competitor China.
The working class in countries that are part of BRICS will still be exploited and will need to overthrow their respective national ruling classes if they are to end that exploitation and also save the environment from destruction.
Imperialism always means war whether direct or by proxy, small or large, against competing economies or people resisting domination and exploitation. Since the end of WW2 alone the USA has been involved in 201 military interventions in 51 regions.3
In the same period, the UK has carried out 28 military interventions in Asia, Africa, Middle East, Caribbean and Europe4 and France 32 in similar regions.5 Competition for world resources between Germany and the UK and with France led to WW1 and again to WW26.
BRICS has been created anyway, whatever our opinion and is set to grow significantly, causing some big changes in the world as a result. In the short term this development is likely to be to the advantage of the smaller economies and even nations struggling for independence.
6. Other states were of course involved, including the imperial competition for the Pacific and Asia between the USA/ UK and Japan in WW2 with the SE Asian peoples, in particular communist-led Chinese fighting Japanese imperialism and of course in Europe the mighty contribution and sacrifice of the USSR against the fascist powers. But the initiation of both world wars was competition and contention between Germany, France and the UK.
The media announces that “the population of Ireland has reached 5 million … for the first time in 170 years”. Interesting – and a barefaced lie! The population of Ireland passed 5 million some time ago and is actually around 6.5 million now.1
Ireland remained with negative population growth until near the end of the last century – mismanaged for most of the population first by the British occupiers of the whole of the island, then by a combination of the native neo-colonial bourgeoisie and of the settler colonial ruling class.
Filling in a census form from which population statistics can be extracted (Photo sourced: Internet)
For more than a century the population of Ireland stood at around 5 million, static despite a high birth rate. This was mathematically possible only through continual massive emigration – mostly to English-speaking regimes: Britain, USA, Australia, New Zealand and Canada.
But it is true that 170 years ago it was more than 5 million – in fact it was around 8.5 million. And it is worth reflecting on how they were able to produce enough food domestically to feed that entire population while now, with a smaller population, we import as much as 80% from abroad.2
It was the Great Hunger that wiped out much of the earlier population, statistics somewhat hiding the pain and sorrow of millions of Irish in death, disease and emigration — and the great transfer of land for cultivation (and rent) to pasturage, with its dangerous environmental impact.
It provided an opportunity for growth of the Catholic Irish capitalist class, the Gombeens, huckstering money-lenders buying up the lands of afflicted neighbours.
The kind of class that the British could depend on in 1921 to manage the neo-colony and to murder and jail those of national liberation3.
Emigration kept population stats steady and, combined with unemployment, ensured a low internal home market for development. An educated workforce and natural resources could be developed but the Gombeen class opened it all to foreign multinationals rather than develop it themselves.
Even with foreign exploitation of the workforce at home, the education system turned out mostly emigration fodder: the Irish tax-payers funded an education system to provide a literate and numerate English-speaking workforces for capitalist exploitation abroad.
No wonder the Irish political class declined to give the Irish abroad a vote in the Irish state – unlike for decades any other state in the European Market. Yet during the 1930s through to the 1960s, money sent home by Irish migrants accounted for an estimated 30% of the Irish State’s economy.4
The Irish state remains a neo-colony with low taxation and other incentives for foreign companies to take over our few industries5 and local and foreign property speculators to rake in profits out of the despair of homelessness or of struggling to meet rent or mortgage payments.
A neo-colonial market for produce of foreign companies and to plunder not only our labour force, not only our natural resources on land, sea and wind and but even our infrastructures in transport and communication, energy, health service, water supply and even our city sanitation.
TRUNCATED
The announced statistics were truncated, appropriate perhaps for a truncated country, with the history behind those statistics not so much truncated as obliterated.
That is our present and our past but not how the future has to be – we can write our own future but we won’t do it by putting a mark on a ballot paper.
3The Irish Civil War or Counterrevolution, 1922-1923.
4I have read this in the past but am unable now to find the reference; however I have posted some references on the figures of remittances from Irish emigrants.
5 For a few examples of foreign takeover: Irish stout, beer and lagers (Guinness, Smithwicks, Harp); Irish whiskey (Paddy, Jameson, Bushmills); cigarettes (Afton); preserved vegetables (Erin); aviation (Aer Lingus); public transport (Transport for Ireland; LUAS); sugar (Irish sugar beet replaced by subsidised cane sugar from the USA); woodlands (Coillte).
The Irish State recently commemorated the end of the Irish Civil War but what it was really doing was celebrating its victory over the democratic national liberation forces.
The Irish national bourgeoisie, the Gombeen ruling class, armed and supplied by British Imperialism and colonialism, in 1922 launched a war against the forces that had brought the British Occupiers to the negotiation table.
In that short war or counterrevolution, the Irish State formally executed over 80 Irish Republican Volunteers – many more than had the British during the War of Independence 1919-1921. It also shot dead and blew up surrendered Volunteers and kidnapped, tortured and murdered others.
The Irish government of the day put the financial cost of the Civil War at 50 million sterling which today would be near to 3 billion euro.
A curtain of repression settled over Ireland, in the Irish state and in the colony in the Six Counties (in particular from the RIC re-baptised as RUC and the State-armed Loyalists of the B-Specials). Many Republicans were in jail and if not, could not find work and so emigrated.
The political party allegedly representing the Republicans, Fianna Fáil, led by a former leader of the forces attacked by the State, joined the Gombeen system and became in fact the preferred party of the Irish ruling class.
Though the Republican forces recovered and returned to the struggle in the 1930s (with the Communists against the fascist Blackshirts), again in the 1940s and onwards, they never again came close to winning control over the State.
What the Irish State has given us since its inception, even after the Civil War, has been generations of underdevelopment; unemployment and emigration; a huge decline in the Irish-speaking areas; inequality and social repression of women and LGBT people.
The latter was due to Catholic Church domination in every sphere of life, resulting in institutional physical, mental and sexual abuse, along with censorship in printed, audio and visual media and in banning of contraception.
The ruling class of the Irish State, the Gombeens, tolerated the foreign occupation and control of more than one-fifth of the island’s land mass and abandoned the large Catholic minority in the colony to discrimination and pogroms.
It tolerated also institutional and media racism against the Irish diaspora in Britain, the repressive legislation of the Prevention of Terrorism Act and the jailing for long sentences of a score of innocent Irish people in five different cases in the 1970s.
The Irish State tolerated Loyalist/ British Intelligence bombing inside its territory, failed to protect its citizens from terrorist bombing in the 1970s and covered up its complicity, for example with regard to the Dublin and Monaghan Bombings.
In addition, it used a Loyalist bombing to disarm the opposition to repressive legislation, not against Loyalists but against Irish Republicans, sending Republican activists to jail on the unsupported word of a senior police officer.
More recently this Irish State that we inherited has given us a housing crisis while it makes the territory a rich hunting ground for property speculators, bankers, landlords and vulture funds and also sells off/ gives away our natural resources, public transport and other infrastructures.
The selling-off includes our health service which is also in crisis while the private companies chop off parts of it and sell service back to the State at a profit. And a country that was able to feed 8.5 million prior to 1845 (and export foodstuffs) cannot now feed 5 million without huge imports.
They have given us nothing to celebrate but as always, there is a choice. We can bemoan the situation or we can “take back the nation they’ve sold” (Soldiers of Twenty-Two). And that cannot be done through electing any party or parties into the system.
Text from ONA FALCO@ONA_FALCO in Publico.es (translator D.Breatnach note: CUP = United People’s Candidature)
(Reading time: 4 mins.)
The head of the CUP-Alternativa candidate list for Barcelona, Basha Changue, declared this Saturday that, after “four years out of the City Council”, but “fighting from the streets”, they will return to the assembly on May 28.
They intend to “retake their place” and to “combat the lukewarm policies” developed, in her opinion, by the (regional Catalan) government of Colau.
Once inside, says Changue, anyone who seeks their support (trans. note: e.g for a coalition) will have to be in favour of “a Barcelona committed to national and linguistic rights”, for the “decrease in tourism” and the “radical defence of housing”.
“Gentlemen and Ladies Maragall, Trias, Colau and Collboni, there are no half measures: it is the capital or the neighboring ones”, she declared.
Her voice was heard by dozens of people in Barcelona’s Can Fabra square, in the Sant Andreu district, in the central act of the campaign for the municipal elections on the 28th.
Carles Riera, the Deputy in the Catalan Regional Parliament has indicated that “the only candidature for independence in the Catalan Countries is the CUP” and that “they will return to the Barcelona City Council to combat big capital and the bosses’ agenda”.
“Junts (trans. note: Puigdemont’s party) has renounced the independence movement in its program: it wants to go back to being Convergència i Unió” (Convergence and Unity,right-wing Catalan nationalist party preceding formation of Junts – trans. note) — Carles Riera.
Riera was combative, encouraging the public to mobilize for a “vote to confront the State, the vote that does them the most damage.”
He also accused the parties Junts per Catalunya and ERC, “which are the construction force”, those behind the “macro-projects that carve up the territory” – citing the Winter Olympic Games, the Quart Cinturó, the expansion of the airport and the tourist complex of the Hard Rock.
04/2023 – The leader of the CUP for Barcelona, Basha Changue.
Basha Changue: “Barcelona is designed to be projected as set for Instagram, not for those who live in it.”
She added that they already understood “why Junts has renounced the independence movement in its program: it wants to go back to being Convergència i Unió and wants to put the town halls at the service of big capital in exchange for power.”
28th MARCH AS A “TURNING POINT”
Deputy in Congress Mireia Vehí pointed out that they are “the alternative to the model that replaces the public with the private, that stands up to the Trias of the red carpet and the Collboni of the shop window”.
Referring to the voters who are dissatisfied with the pro-independence parties, she assured that “free Catalan Countries are also made from municipalism” and that “voting for the CUP is a vote of pride and revolt”.
The CUP wants to guarantee its presence in plenary session and reverse the results of most of the polls that leave them out of the assembly.
CUP ELECTORAL CAMPAIGN
The CUP candidate in Barcelona, Basha Changue; Member of Congress Mireia Vehí and Member of Parliament Carles Riera, Barcelona, 05/20/2023— Jordi Pujolar / Marta Vidal / ACN
Changue stated that the CUP are made “invisible” because those in power are “afraid”.
The candidate added that the transformation of Barcelona “will not be possible as long as those in power continue to open the doors of the institutions to fascism and whitewash their speeches in the town halls and in the parliaments”.
Along the same lines, the number two on the list in Barcelona, Jordi Estivill, has emphasised that there is “a strategy” to silence them, but that they will respond “with more determination and a vote of punishment, which will bring miseries to the centre”.
04/25/2023 – The Deputy in Catalan regional Parliament Laia Estrada and the mayor of Sant Boi, Jordi Barbero, in the presentation of the CUP campaign for the municipal elections.
The event in the Can Fabra square, where the number three in Barcelona, Adriana Llena, and the mayor of the CUP in Sant Cugat del Vallès, Marco Simarro, have also appeared, took place simultaneously to another act of the CUP in Palma.
Parliamentary Deputy Eulàlia Reguant made it clear: “We are at a turning point. We are going all out. We are in San Andreu and Palma because the CUP has faith and we are Països Catalans.” (the Catalan Countries’, which includes Valencia, Balearic Islands along with Pau in the French state – trans. note).
BACKGROUND
Translator: The nominally pro-independence Catalan parties in the regional part-autonomous Catalan Parliament include ERC (Republican Left of Catalonia) which is currently in government; Junts per Catalunya (Together for Catalonia), a varied coalition to which Puigdemont belongs, formerly more militant than the ERC); along with the CUP, a more left-wing coalition which has voted for independence motions but declined to join with ERC in coalition or with the previous Junts/ ERC ruling coalition.
After the vote for independence in the 2017 Referendum and Spanish police attack on the voters, it was Puigdemont as previous President of the Parliament that declared Catalan independence but almost immediately suspended it, to great Catalan confusion.
Apparently this was on a promise of support from within the EU which was reneged upon and Puigdemont has since declared his regret for the suspension.
Subsequently the Spanish State tried and jailed a number of ERC and Junts Members of Parliament and officials of the Catalan Government while others, including Puigdemont and a CUP leader, went into exile in the EU and UK.
The Spanish State unsuccessfully tried to extradite them to face charges of “rebellion and fraud”.
Hundreds of Catalans, including municipal officials, elected representatives and protesters face Spanish state charges and possible jail arising from those days of mobilising for independence and in protest at police repression.
While the Gardaí face accusations of treating far-Right violence too lightly, the State plans to increase the maximum sentence for assault on members of the force to 12 years in jail, nearly double the current maximum of seven years.1
Minister for Justice Simon Harris was seeking approval today for the increase as amendments to the Criminal Justice (Miscelaneous Provisions) Bill which has passed all stages in the Irish Parliament and is now going through the Seanad.
Irish Government Minister for Justice, Simon Harris (Photo sourced: Internet)
The increase in maximum sentence lumps emergency services such as paramedics and firefighters with State repressive forces of police, prison officers and armed forces.
This is a disguising measure since forces of repression are not the same as those of emergency services, even if in the event of a disaster all may be employed together. The State expects increased resistance from working people and therefore feels a need for increased repression.
According to some media reports there have been complaints that the Gardaí have been failing to respond adequately to crimes committed by fascists and other far-Rightists, including threatening behaviour and arson.2
Garda Commissioner Drew Harris, former British colonial police (PSNI) Assistant Commissioner3 responded that getting tough with the far-Right would be playing into their hands and that the Garda response is measured appropriately.
One must wonder how permitting threats of violence, acts of assault and arson against refugees and their supporters can be considered appropriately measured from any viewpoint other than that of the perpetrators.
Much harder Garda responses have been seen through the years to striking workers, water-meter and housing protesters, Irish Republican events and – yes – antifascist counter-protests against fascists and other far-Rightists.
Not giving the fascists the confrontation they’re allegedly looking for might disappoint some of them but on the other hand many will be encouraged and get to feel that they can do more or less what they like without repercussions from the Gardaí.
According to Saturday’s Irish Times, some of the criticism of Garda tolerance of far-Right crimes comes from confidential sources within the force itself.
The discourse that policing these protests is ‘complex’ is a distraction from the fact that vulnerable people who are harming no-one are entitled to live without fear of violence to their person or to their meagre belongings, about which there is nothing ‘complex’ at all.
Having to live on the street due to the failings of the State is bad enough without being subjected to additional threats.
On a number of occasions Gardaí have attacked and threatened antifascists confronting the far-Right, revealing where the general sympathies of the State lie, despite condemnations of the far-Right by Government Ministers, politicians and the Garda Commissioner.
Garda not going lightly here but then it’s directed at ANTI-fascists counter-protesting Irish Yellow Vests on Custom House Quay, after they were attacked by fascists armed with metal and wooden clubs, many disguised as flags (note the captured Tricolour) 22 August 2020.(Photo: Rebel Breeze)Garda Commissioner Drew Harris (Photo sourced: Internet)
Historically, capitalism has turned to fascism to suppress the resistance of the working class to being made to pay for crises in the system. And fascists have often enough been found within the police force themselves.
Indeed, in Ireland it was the ex-Commissioner of the police, Eoin O’Duffy, who led the fascist Blueshirts, while the religous sectarian, racist and murderous nature of the colonial police in the Six Counties is a long established fact.
The police are the first physical force agency of the State and the armed forces its second. Increasing the penalty for assaults on these means the State is anticipating an increase of assault charges in days to come, quite probably as people defend themselves from police attack.
In fact, it is well known that if the police assault people, they regularly charge their victims with assault, so that the police can explain the injuries of their victims as inflicted in ‘self-defence’ or in measures taken against a person ‘resisting arrest’.
End.
FOOTNOTES
1Sentences for assaults on gardaí to rise, Irish Times, 23 May 2023.
rebelbreeze 