Category: Internationalist Solidarity

SOLIDARITY AND RESISTANCE IN MUSIC AND SPOKEN WORD IN DUBLIN

On By rebelbreezeIn Cultural Comment, Current Event Report, Internationalist Solidarity, Ireland, National Liberation, Palestine, Police Violence, Political Analysis, Song, Song in Struggle, Workers' Struggles, World War OneLeave a comment

Clive Sulish

(Reading time: 3 mins.)

Thursday night (30th), with almost non-stop downpour of rain was a dreary and miserable one in Dublin. Not so however inside the Cobblestone’s back room where solidarity and resistance resounded in song, instrumental and spoken word.

The event organisers, Solidarity Sessions collective, an independent organisation founded late last year have declared a number of times that they wish to contribute to “creating a community of solidarity and resistance through culture.”

Certainly the flags on the stage of the Tricolour, Starry Plough and Palestine conveyed some of the context, as did posters of 1916 martyrs Connolly and Pearse with text pointing out that the first was a migrant and the second, son of a migrant.1

In addition a merchandise stall sold T-shirts figuring the Palestinian Resistance with funds raised going to Palestinian relief work on the ground. Solidarity Sessions have also donated to ‘buy’ a water truck from Uisce for Gaza and also donated to Streetlink Homeless Support in Dublin.

Mark Flynn performing at Solidarity Sessions No.3 in the Cobblestone. (Photo: R.Breeze)

The material performed on stage contributed much of solidarity and resistance also. This was the third event this year and the second at the Cobblestone pub, one other being at the International Bar and the fourth expected at the Peadar Brown pub on Southside’s Clanbrassil Street.

There was a lot of audience participation at times during the evening, with Alan Burke joined from the floor in the chorus of his spirited rendition of The Aul’ Triangle (to which he added a verse of his own) and Sive was accompanied on request by continuous refrain under her singing.

Mark Flynn was also backed by the audience in his adaptation of A Roving I’ll Go to a sailing to Portugal song he told his audience he had put together in minutes of a creative flash the like of which he ruefully admitted not having experienced since. Flynn also sang Bogle’s antiwar Waltzing Matilda.

Alan Burke performing at Solidarity Sessions No.3 in the Cobblestone. (Photo: R.Breeze)

The audience was extremely quiet during Dorothy Collin’s spoken word pieces about assassinations by the Zionist Occupation and Palestinian resistance, interrupting her performance with applause only after a haiku in Irish and at a point where she became visibly emotionally affected.

The Resistance Choir included in their performance an exuberant Bread and Roses, the lyrics originating in a speech at a mostly female textile workers’ strike in Massachusetts, USA in 1912 and Burke sang of an innocent miner framed on a murder charge and hanged – but pardoned posthumously.

Class struggle was also present in Burke’s singing My Name Is Dessie Warren, about a trade union activist with flying pickets2 during the 1970s construction workers’ strike in England. Some were tried under the Conspiracy Laws and jailed, including Ricky Tomlinson and Des Warren.3

The Resistance Choir about to perform at Solidarity Sessions No.3 in the Cobblestone, being introduced by the MC, Ru O’Shea. (Photo: R.Breeze)

ANNOUNCEMENTS

Three imminent resistance events were announced from the stage: Friday morning, due to appear in court4 were two Palestine solidarity activists attacked by Gardaí at Dublin Port and a good show of numbers in solidarity was requested.5

On Saturday a picket in solidarity with Irish Republican prisoners would be held outside Kilmainham Jail6 and on Sunday a demonstration to blockade Dublin Port was announced, people being requested to gather at The Point on the north Liffey quays.

Sive, who performed at Solidarity Sessions No.3 in the Cobblestone. (Photo sourced: Internet)

The organising collective, volunteers on door duty and the performers all donated their services free of charge. Further donations will be made to causes considered worthy, the collective assured their guests and supporters.

Ru O’Shea, MC for the evening, thanked all the performers who gave their services for free, the audience for their attendance, supporters staffing the door, the Cobblestone and sound engineer. The next Solidarity Sessions night will be at Peadar Brown’s on Thursday 4th December.

Ongoing “contributing to building a community of solidarity and resistance.” And outside, it had stopped raining for awhile.

End.
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FOOTNOTES

1James Connolly was born into the Irish diaspora in the poor area of Cowgate in Edinburgh and first came to Ireland as an adult in response to an invitation to found the Irish Socialist Republican Party. Subsequently Connolly went to the USA for a period before returning to Ireland (therefore 3 times a migrant). Patrick Pearse was born and raised in Dublin but his father was English. Both Pearse and Connolly were executed in Kilmainham Jail with another twelve by British bullets after their surrender of the 1916 Rising.

2‘Flying pickets’ operate in principle like the guerrilla ‘flying columns’, sending a large number of union picketers to specific locations chosen in secret, thereby reducing the opportunities for the police etc to mobilise at the spot in advance

3Ricky Tomlinson after release became a famous actor, mostly in comic roles. Warren developed Parkinson’s from forcible injections with restraining drugs and long periods in isolation in jail, dying not long after release. I remember the case and campaigns when I was working in England and a period afterwards when I was briefly active in the Construction Safety Campaign and read statistics about on average a construction worker killed weekly and one seriously injured daily on British construction sites.

4Yes, the Gardaí charging with criminal offences people they pepper-sprayed and batoned without warning.

5For report on that, see https://rebelbreeze.com/2025/10/31/strong-solidarity-support-for-arrested-port-blockade-activists/

6Kilmainham Jail was a British colonial prison in Dublin, also used for a while by the Irish Free State to imprison the Resistance during the Civil War/ Counterrevolution. It is now a very popular museum and holds the execution site of 14 prominent Irish Republicans after their surrender in 1916.

STRONG SOLIDARITY SUPPORT FOR ARRESTED PORT BLOCKADE ACTIVISTS

On By rebelbreezeIn Current Affairs Comment, Current Event Report, Internationalist Solidarity, Ireland, Palestine, Political Analysis, Zionism1 Comment

Diarmuid Breatnach

(Reading time: 2 mins.)

Many people endured heavy rain on Friday morning to support two Palestine solidarity activists in court as a result of the now-infamous Garda pepper-spray and baton attack on a peaceful march to Dublin docks on 18th October.

Small section of the crowd of supporters outside the Court on 31 October 2025 for the two pepper-sprayed and charged Palestine solidarity activists (Photo: D. Breatnach)

The Port march was a breakaway from a periodic Ireland Palestine Solidarity Campaign national march to Leinster House, the home of the State’s parliament; some IPSC stewards denouncing it as it diverged at O’Connell Bridge and called on others to march on Dublin Port instead.

From video and eyewitness reports it is clear that the Public Order Unit of the Garda determined not only to stop them but to ‘teach the protesters a lesson’. No sooner had the linked-arms marchers reached the police line than some of them sprayed pepper-spray on the Palestine solidarity activists.

So heavy was the spraying that it affected a number of the Gardaí themselves. Many also drew their batons and attacked the demonstrators reeling from the effects of the spraying. The POU unit had their ID numbers concealed and Gardaí pursued activists moving away, spraying them again.

The Gardaí later claimed they had given a warning before spraying as they are required so to do by their own regulations but both Irish Council for Civil Liberties observers and video evidence show this to be untrue.

Solidarity activists were arrested at the scene of the Garda attack and one other outside a special sitting of the court on Saturday evening. The charges were of the usual kind with police repression of demonstrations: offences against Public Order, resisting arrest and obstruction of traffic.

The Irish State is the 2nd-largest single importer of Israeli products, second only to the USA and clearly has no intention of moving from that situation.

Nor of demilitarising Shannon Airport nor of banning Irish airspace to overflights ferrying military supplies to Israel. Two years of giant solidarity marches and smaller ones up and down the country have not moved the Irish ruling class to any degree beyond making statements.

As people move to take actions that have the potential to force the Government to end their collusion it seems inevitable that the State will increase its repression, which will work towards intimidation but also to increased resistance.

Small section of the crowd of supporters for the two pepper-sprayed and charged outside the Court on 31 October 2025. (Photo: D. Breatnach)

Those gathering at the court today were for the most part independent activists and activists of very small political organisations but many also of broad Palestine solidarity groups.

The two facing charges today had their cases postponed to January 2026, with talk of the Gardaí possibly returning shortly to court to press more serious charges, with the potential of heavier punishment — but conversely also of greater political statements made before a jury.

Solidarity with people fighting in struggles in other parts of the world often has a price of repression where the solidarity is originating, which makes solidarity to the targeted activists essential too. In that context, the numbers attending the court on Friday morning were very encouraging.

End.

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FOOTNOTES

FURTHER INFORMATION:

SAVAGE GARDA REPRESSION OF PALESTINE SOLIDARITY ACTION

SAVAGE GARDA REPRESSION OF PALESTINE SOLIDARITY ACTION

On By rebelbreezeIn Current Affairs Comment, Current Event Report, Internationalist Solidarity, Ireland, Irish Left, Irish Republicanism, Journalism, Mass Media Criticism, Police Violence, Political Analysis, US Imperialism1 Comment

Diarmuid Breatnach

(Reading time: 4 mins.)

PALESTINE SOLIDARITY MARCHERS PEPPER-SPRAYED AND BATONED WITHOUT WARNING.

An action on Saturday in an attempt to stop the genocide of Palestinians was brutally repressed by Gardaí pepper-spraying the marchers without warning before beating many with truncheons and threatening others, then issuing a lying statement.

On Saturday (4th October) the Ireland Palestine Solidarity Campaign had organised another of their monthly National marches from the Garden of Remembrance through Dublin city centre to Leinster House1 but a much smaller section departed for Dublin Port.

View of a section of the Palestine solidarity march on Saturday proceeding along O’Connell Street. (Photo: D.Breatnach)

In the context of port protest shut-downs in various parts of the world, Italy in particular, the intention seemingly was to blockade traffic into and out of Dublin Port; also in the context of the Irish state being a huge importer of Israeli products, second only to the USA.

The shut-down marchers left the main march at O’Connell Bridge and proceeded along the Liffey quays heading for the Port as IPSC stewards tried to discourage anyone from joining them, stooping as low as to accuse them over a loudspeaker of splitting the march and of betraying Gaza.

There had been a number of Port traffic blockade actions recently, all of which had ended without violence. No doubt the Irish ruling class were worried that they might escalate and spread and gave orders to the Gardaí to attack the marchers and to terrorise any others from emulating them.

As the marchers reached the Public Order Unit police line and stopped, some of the police began to push marchers, almost immediately some Gardai standing in a second row starting to pepper-spray marchers over the heads of their colleagues but the wind pushed some of it back in their faces.

POU Gardaí to the right of the crowd then drew their truncheons and started to strike viciously at the marchers, who were now pushing into the Garda line. Eventually the marchers broke, people staggering off to the side, eyes streaming, unsteady on their feet. Even then, they were pursued.2

At least two marchers were arrested at the event and another in a solidarity demonstration outside the Criminal Court building that evening. The charges include Public Order charges and resisting arrest. Once again, marchers complained they were forcibly strip-searched in the police cells.3

CAPITALIST MEDIA

RTÉ online’s report was clearly totally based on a Garda statement without any attempt to investigate, although video footage was soon circulating on social media. Try to contact participants for their side of the story? See whether there were photos or video clips available? Don’t be silly!

The Garda account is totally at variance with what can be seen on the video, as has often been the case. One recalls the assault with a length of wood by a fascist on an LGBT campaigner who was observing a National Party rally outside Leinster House and a Garda told her to leave the area.

The Garda statement to the media on that occasion was that there had been no incidents but unfortunately for them there was ample video recording of the event, the assault, the victim’s head streaming with blood, the senior Garda ordering her away … and they had to change their story.

A few weeks prior to that, unarmed antifascists counter-protesting an anti-masking protest organised by fascists on Custom House Quay were attacked by fascists wielding clubs and metal bars. As the antifascists fought back, the POU charged in and attacked the antifascists!

On that occasion too their statement to the press completely omitted that event.

The media is doing a good job of exposing themselves as not only keeping to the imperialist pro-Zionist discourse about events in Gaza and the rest of West Asia, but keeping also to the home front discourse that big business and cops are good and protesters a problem.

We appear in the Irish state to be entering a period of Garda repression backed up by media acquiescence, similar to what was passed through in the 1980s, with Garda repression on the street but also operations by the ‘Heavy Gang’, raiding and beating up detainees to obtain a ‘confession’.

The liberal civil rights sector was quite active then calling out Garda violence, framing of innocent people and judicial collusion. There is much less of that liberal resistance to be seen these days.

A rare enough sight – an Irish-language placard on Saturday’s march in Dublin. (Photo: D.Breatnach)

THE IPSC MARCH

The IPSC went ahead on Saturday with many thousands on their march, demonstrating once again, as over the past two years, that the Irish public is overwhelmingly in support of the Palestinians and totally against the genocide and ethnic cleansing by the Zionist state.

Over the years, the IPSC’s activities have contributed to that awareness and sympathy in Irish society but so too have the actions of the Israeli governments and their armed forces, captured in photos and videos by journalists and ordinary Palestinians and posted on social media.

But Israel has not ceased its genocide; not one Palestinian life has been saved by the marches. The Irish Government has not ceased any of its concrete collusive actions with Israel. The imports continue, the armaments fly through Irish airspace, Shannon airport continues militarised.4

The IPSC’s Chairperson admitted as much, speaking at their rally near Leinster House: “Simon Harris has called Israel’s actions ‘genocide’, ‘unconscionable’ and ‘unacceptable’ — yet the Irish Government is barely lifting a finger to end Ireland’s deep complicity in this genocide.”

A section of the Palestine solidarity main march in Dawson Street, while thousands more are already in Molesworth Street (out of sight to the right of photo). (Photo: D.Breatnach)

Had the IPSC mobilised the thousands to march down to the docks, it would have been a very different story on Saturday. Something to make the Government really reconsider its collusion. The IPSC could still do that. But will it? We can hope but current practice tells us otherwise.

Then others will have to do the deed. Others like Mothers Against Genocide, Action for Palestine Ireland and Saoirse Don Phalaistín, for example. And they will continue to be assaulted and arrested, facing fines, restrictions on freedom of movement and … ultimately, no doubt … jail.

Apart from the baton and pepper-spraying injuries, one of the marchers is reported to have a broken arm. Two were arrested at the Port and one at the court solidarity protest Saturday evening. Today others attended court in solidarity with one of the arrested (who had abrasions on her cheek).

We should be part of these disruptive actions and if we are not, for whatever reason, the least we can do is to call out those who denounce them and to organise support for those who are, in and out of the courts.

End.

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Gathering outside the Dublin Court in solidarity with one of the assaulted and arrested Port marchers. Her case was postponed. (Photo: D.Breatnach)

FOOTNOTES

1Sometimes another Government building.

2All of that is evident from the video footage shot from that side of the event. Violent shoving by Gardaí sent some people to the ground, including a disabled woman.

3There was outrage expressed when Gardaí compelled detainees at a Mothers Against Genocide protest outside Leinster House to strip in the police cells. The Minister for Justice claimed that Garda CCTV footage refuted those claims but strangely, it appears that no CCTV footage was available when lawyers asked to view it. https://www.instagram.com/mothersagainstgenocide/p/DJ_nOewxQAp/

4And the Irish Central Bank intends, after a pause, to offer Israeli war bonds once more.

SOURCES

Capitalist media: https://www.rte.ie/news/dublin/2025/1004/1536847-two-arrested-after-protest-near-dublins-port-tunnel/

https://www.breakingnews.ie/ireland/thousands-call-for-sanctions-on-israel-during-dublin-rally-1815092.html

Citizen video of the POU attack at the Port: Instagram

“A GREAT NIGHT” AT SECOND SOLIDARITY SESSIONS

On By rebelbreezeIn Cultural Comment, Current Event Report, Gaeilge, Internationalist Solidarity, Ireland, irish history, Irish Language, Irish Left, Irish Republicanism, Poetry, Political Prisoners, Resistance Art, Song, Song in Struggle, Traditions & Folk CustomLeave a comment

Clive Sulish

(Reading time: 3 mins.)

An Irish punk rock band, Mongolian throat-singers, a poet and Irish folk singers all performed at Solidarity Sessions No.2 to a good crowd in the International Bar, in in Dublin City centre Wicklow Street on Wednesday 17th..

An Irish and international resistance theme in decor was presented by flags of the Starry Plough and Palestine with Saoirse don Phalaistín as stage backdrop, while flags respectively of Cumann na mBan and Basque Antifa concealed the original decor’s ubiquitous photos of Michael Collins.

Flesh B. Bugged performing (Photo: Dermo Photography)

A PFLP1 flag was also taped to a wall. Hand-written signs on the stairs leading to the basement venue, alternatively in Irish and in English, asked for quiet/ ciúnas for the performance/ racaireacht. The Irish language was present too in some of the performances to follow.

MC for the night, Jimi Cullen, himself a singer-songwriter activist told the crowd the purpose of the organising collective was “to build a community of resistance and solidarity with our struggles and with struggles around the world” through culture in a social atmosphere.

Before the crowd — a flag temporarily changing the decor. (Photo: R. Breeze)

Themes of love, nature and emigration were covered in song; however the dominant theme was resistance – to prison regimes, foreign occupation, fascism, class oppression, racial discrimination – and solidarity with the struggles of others, near and far.

Diarmuid Breatnach, singing acapella kicked off the night with a selection of songs from the Irish resistance tradition and a couple of short ones from the USA civil rights movement. Some of the melodies however, of particular interest perhaps to Back Home in Derry2, were his own originals.

Diarmuid Breatnach performing (Photo: Dermo Photography)

Eoghan Ó Loingsigh, accompanying himself on guitar followed with more material from the same tradition, dedicating one to his late IRA father. A folk song Ó Loingsigh announced as ‘non-political’ performed acapella turned out to be very much political but on the issue of social class.

Áine Hayden followed with poems on a range of topics, from swimming in the Royal Canal during the Covid shut-down, deleting a personal relationship to a dedication to comedian and activist Mahmoud Sharab murdered with family in a “safe zone” tent by the Israeli Occupation Force.

Eoghan Ó Loingsigh performing (Photo: Dermo Photography)

The three performers were all introduced as activists as well as artists and the mostly-young crowd, apparently containing a strong representation of political and social activists, responded well to the performers with applause, yells of encouragement and often joining in on choruses.

More people arrived before, during and even after the break – including an elderly couple who had just arrived from the USA and could only pay in dollars but were admitted for free. Leaving later with thanks they promised a contribution to Palestine solidarity when they got home.

Before the crowd — a Cumann na mBan flag temporarily changing the decor. (Photo: Dermo Photography)

Also an activist, Ru O’Shea sang an Irish, Scottish, French and Italian selection, accompanied by bouzouki and guitar and performed a spoken word piece with a refrain of ‘Éire under attack’ before schooling the audience to sing the chorus of Robbie Burns’ Green Grow the Rushes Oh!

Áine Hayden performing (Photo: Dermo Photography)

Nomads were the next act. Composed of two Mongolian musicians playing violins in the style of the viola and a Dubliner modulating on a sound deck they were unusual enough but it was the amazing throat-singing of one of the Mongolians that had the audience enthralled.

It was amazing to learn that there are three different kinds of Mongolian throat-singing and then to hear them performed, one of which was a kind of whistling with a vibrating bass undertone wavering through it. The applause, particularly when they concluded, was rapturous and sustained.

Before the crowd — flags temporarily changing the decor. (Photo: R. Breeze)
Ru O’Shea performing (Photo: Dermo Photography)

The evening’s entertainment concluded with Flesh B. Bugged, a punk rock Irish duo of bass guitar and drums with spoken voice pieces in Irish from the bass guitar player. Their volume and beat got some of the crowd up and dancing and the wider crowd responded well to them too.

MC Jimi Cullen went up on stage for the last time to thank venue, performers, audience, doorkeepers, poster designers Ríona and Azzy O’Connor, also Diarmuid for original artwork. At a prompt from the crowd Cullen also got a round of applause from the audience for his MCing.

The Mongolian musicians of Nomads performing (Photo: D.Breatnach)

Remarking they’d “had a great night” and encouraging his listeners to follow the organising collective on its Instagram page, Cullen told them that details of Solidarity Sessions No.3 and the collective’s decisions on recipients of donations from money raised would be posted on there.

Diarmuid Breatnach told the audience that each individual could help build a community of resistance through attending the Solidarity Sessions and encouraging others to attend. He welcomed any ‘competion’ from solidarity sessions around the country.

Bass guitarist of Flesh B. Bugged (Photo: Dermo Photography)

The downstairs area of the International Bar is not perhaps the best layout for this kind of event but it worked out well enough for the collective, audience and performers on the night. Their next event will be back at their launch venue,The Cobblestone, Smithfield on Thursday 30th October.

End.

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The Mongolian throat-singer in Nomads (Photo: Dermo Photography)

FOOTNOTES

1People’s Front for the Liberation of Palestine, one of two specifically secular armed resistance organisations in Palestine.

2Irish mega folk singer Christy Moore had organised Bobby Sands’ poem into song to the melody of The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald by Gordon Lightfoot.

USEFUL LINKS

@solidaritysessionseire

OASIS, MANCHESTER & THE FENIANS

On By rebelbreezeIn Britain, Cultural Comment, Current Affairs Comment, Current Event Report, Internationalist Solidarity, Ireland, Irish Diaspora, irish history, Irish Republicanism, National Liberation, Political Analysis, Political Prisoners, Song, Song in Struggle, Workers' Struggles2 Comments

Diarmuid Breatnach

(Reading time: 4 mins.)


The Oasis rock band are performing on 16 and 17 August in Croke Park, the Gaelic sports stadium in Dublin, to a sold out capacity of 82,300. Brothers Liam and Noel Gallagher are the two leading members of the band.

Oasis-marked t-shirts and caps are being sold from stalls in the city and posters announcing the forthcoming concerts adorned shop windows and lampposts but how many fans know the Gallaghers’ background?

Liam and Noel Gallagher of Oasis (Source imag: Internet)

Liam and Noel were born in Manchester to Irish migrant parents but their mother Peggy split from her abusive husband and moved elsewhere in Manchester, taking the kids with her. Liam dedicated Stand by Me to her on Saturday night and gave a shout-out to her her birthplace in Co. Mayo.1

Ireland fed the British ‘industrial revolution’ and the Irish have a long association with Manchester. In 1845 the city’s factories were already attracting Irish workers and its farms probably also agricultural workers to replace English labourers deserting the farms for the factories.

Friedrich Engels wrote The Condition of the Working Class in England,2 published in 1845 (the first year of the Great Hunger) and mentioned the Irish migrants not too favourably. He was writing mostly about Salford, the subject of Ewan McColl’s Dirty Old Town,3 just outside the city then.

By the time Engels’ book was published, the Great Starvation was gearing up. Uncomplimentary references to the Jews can also be found in that work but whatever about that ethnic minority,4 Engels changed his mind radically about the Irish in Britain and came to admire them greatly.

Instrumental in learning about the Irish for Engels were two Irish sisters living in Manchester, Lizzie and Mary Burns, illiterate but intelligent and militant mill workers. Mary and Friedrich became life partners and, after her death, Friedrich became Lizzie’s partner thereafter.

The Irish, as the natives and diaspora of what is often referred to as “England’s first colony” were of considerable interest to the revolutionary partnership of Engels and Karl Marx and more so still as the Fenian movement, the Irish Republican Brotherhood, spread throughout Britain.5

Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, leading theoreticians and activists of the revolutionary socialist movement. (Source: Workers Liberty)

A largely proletarian movement, the Fenians were admitted to the First International Workingmen’s Association6; no doubt the Irish struggle against British domination greatly influenced the political opinions of Marx and Engels in relation to nations under colonialist rule by capitalist states.

The struggle spilled over from Ireland into the Irish diaspora, particularly that in North America, Australia and Britain. In Australia the Fenians’ role seems to have been mostly in facilitating and escaping British jails there7 while in America, they invaded the British colony of Canada.8

The charge of the Fenians (wearing green uniforms) under Colonel John O’Neill at the Battle of Ridgeway, near Niagara, Canada West, on June 2, 1866. In reality, the Fenians had their own green flags but wore a very mixed bag of Union and Confederate uniforms (if they still had them, or parts of them left over from the Civil War), or civilian garb, with strips of green as arm or hat bands to distinguish themselves. (library and archives canada, c-18737)

In Britain itself, the Fenians went to war against the ruling class with dynamite. To spy on them, Scotland Yard created the Irish Special Branch which evolved into the Special Branch, the political police in Britain and in any colony the British had since then.9

The activities of the US Fenians intersected with those of Britain-based Fenians when two of the former, Thomas J. Kelly and Timothy Deasy, American Civil War veterans, were arrested in England. On their prison van’s journey to jail it was ambushed10 and both officers spirited away.

Artists’ impression of the rescue of the Fenian prisoners.
(Image source: Internet)

Unfortunately and entirely unintentionally, Constable Brett was killed during the breakout. Refusing to hand over the keys from inside the wagon, he was bending to look through the keyhole when in order to release the prisoners one of the Fenians fired at the lock, the bullet entering Brett’s brain.11

The British police swept vengefully through the Irish quarters of Manchester and Salford arresting at least 28 people but eventually sending five for trial on ‘murder’ charges. Three were hanged, all innocent of intentional killing and at least two probably not even present at the scene.

As sentence of death was passed upon them, all five cried “God save Ireland!” Although the sentences on two were commuted, Timothy Sullivan used those words for his ballad about The Manchester Martyrs, as the executed three became known among the Irish at home and abroad.

The song travelled quickly and became an unofficial national anthem of Ireland and the Irish until it was decisively supplantedafter the 1916 Rising by Peadar Kearney’s The Soldiers Song (latertranslated: Amhrán na bhFiann).12 A memorial to the three was erected in Mostyn Cemetery.

Artist’s impression of the trial of the five convicted including the three Manchester Martyrs.
(Image source: Internet)

Manchester continued to be a destination for Irish migrants, for factories still, including motor car production but also post-WW2 reconstruction and motorway building.

Manchester United FC, along with a number of other British soccer teams, recruited Irish players and Irishman Liam Whelan was one of the eight players killed in the Munich air crash of 1958. Another 30 Irish have played for the club at one time or another, some quite famous.13

The city is one of a number of British cities that has a name in the Irish language; Mancunians would probably be delighted to know that their city’s name in Irish is Manchuin.

From the late 1960s to late 1990s the city was host to an active branch of the Troops Out Movement in solidarity with Ireland, also from 1980s to an active branch of the Irish in Britain Representation Group; the Special Branch was active in monitoring and, from time to time, harassing their activists.

The Provisional IRA bombed the city in 1996 as part of its campaign against the British State and — despite a 90-minute warning — 212 were injured.

Today Manchester, alongside South Asian ethnic influences, continues its Irish ethnic presence with Irish traditional cultural activities14 and no doubt the sons and daughters of Manchester’s Irish diaspora will continue to contribute to other sport and artistic culture in Britain and in the world.

Footnotes

1https://www.breakingnews.ie/ireland/oasis-review-the-band-were-great-the-service-was-not-1793012.html

2https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Condition_of_the_Working_Class_in_England

3https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s11BuatTuXk here performed by The Pogues

4Given that Marx, a German Jew, became his closest political comrade and writing partner, it’s likely he changed his bias against Jews also.

5https://www.marxists.org/history/international/iwma/documents/1867/fenians.htm and Introduction to https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/030639688202400204

6https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Workingmen%27s_Association

7For example, the escape on board The Catalpa https://www.irishtimes.com/opinion/an-irish-diary/2023/11/01/the-greatest-escape-frank-mcnally-on-one-mans-mission-to-make-a-movie-about-the-catalpa-rescue/

8https://www.irishcentral.com/roots/history/irish-fenian-invasion-canada Unlike many other accounts easily available this one gives a reasonable assessment of the rationale for the invasion, including its potential and the reasons of its ultimate failure, the interests of the ruling class of the USA, which the Irish Republican movement should have learned from forever afterwards – but failed to do.

9Often referred to simply as ‘the Branch’ or ‘Branchmen’ (though the organisation of course also recruits women).

10The location, by an arch under a railway bridge, is still unofficially known as “Fenian Arch.”

11https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/God_Save_Ireland

12https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/God_Save_Ireland

13For example, George Best and Roy Keane.

14Manchester has a Comhaltas Ceoltóirí Éireann club (for Irish traditional music) and informal music sessions, also an Irish dancing school https://www.facebook.com/profile.php; Gaelic Athletic Association clubs  including St Brendan’s, St Peter’s, Oisín, and St. Lawrence’s.

Sources

The Fenian Ambush: https://ballymacoda.ie

The ballad: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/God_Save_Ireland

The First International and Fenians: https://www.marxists.org/history/international/iwma/documents/1867/fenians.htm

The Saturday concert in Croke Park: https://www.breakingnews.ie/ireland/oasis-review-the-band-were-great-the-service-was-not-1793012.html

A MOTHER’S HEART – A Review.

On By rebelbreezeIn Cultural Comment, Current Affairs Comment, Guerrilla Action, History, Internationalist Solidarity, Ireland, Palestine, Political Analysis, Song, Women1 Comment

Diarmuid Breatnach

(Reading time:4 mins.)

On August 1st singer Mary Black released A Mother’s Heart for Palestine, a soundtrack and video.1 The title and music built on the 1992 track by Mary Black and Eleanor McEvoy, A Woman’s Heart (title of album also).2

The voices are beautiful and the adaptations of the Arab women particularly so. Or at least, they affected me even more deeply.

Like actions by Mothers Against Genocide,3 the recording seeks to transverse borders in the mind, to represent Palestinians as humans, as human as ourselves, through the image of the mother, which almost all of us have had and which many women are or have been.

It is worth thinking about this a bit further. The image of the mother is a powerful one in all cultures for at least biological evolutionary reasons. The future of the human species depends on productive motherhood and in all cultures, in that capacity at least, pregnant women are protected.

The image is also overlain by personal affect, of ourselves nurtured (in most cases) by a mother or ourselves as a mother, nurturing in turn.

The image of the mother is also manipulated by all degrees of the Right, whether to uphold clerical control, to counter assertion of reproductive rights, or to deny the right of lesbian (and gay) sexuality. And ‘to protect ‘our women’’ from imagined migrant assault (or indeed intermarriage).

In Christian religious iconography, the Mother as Madonna is particularly prevalent and she is always passive, whether depicted serene or suffering.

A detail from the Madonna and child painting by Duccio, late 13th Century (Image sourced: on line)

The mother image is also employed by imperialists to send us to war and was crudely used for example in the UK (of which Ireland was then a part) in a WWI poster depicting a mother and child telling the man to go and fight (for them, of course – not for the imperialists, mar dhea!).

WW1 recruitment poster for Britain (Image sourced: on line)
A particularly offensive recruitment poster for the British Army in WW1 given that Ireland was under British occupation and only six decades after a British genocide of Irish people through starvation. (Image sourced: on line)

But in nearly all cases it is a passive representation of womanhood and is combined in the Mothers Heart video with images of sorrow – naturally, about all the children killed or starving, soon to die — which is also a passive emotion.

Many of the visual representations of Palestinian women are in domestic roles assigned to women around the world: food preparation, washing and drying clothes and of course child care.

Mothers are uniquely women but women are also more than mothers. Slightly more than one-half the human race, they are also workers,4 cultural producers, thinkers, leaders — and fighters. Even in revolutionary iconography we rarely see the woman, never mind mother, represented armed.

This is despite the 1970s images of a Mozambican or Vietnamese woman carrying a gun and a child. Or the famous staged INLA photo of a skirted woman in the Six Counties aiming an automatic rifle. Such images are very much exceptions to the rule.5

Poster promoting the Mozambique People’s Liberation Army. (Image sourced: on line)
Poster from the Vietnam War. (Image sourced: on line)

The music video shows Palestinian women, among their domestic roles, lamenting, speaking on mobile phones, presumably worried about relatives, carrying belongings, on the move, displaced. The lyrics also are of lament.

As complete counterpoint in the Arab world we have only one image that I know of, which is Leila Khaled with an automatic rifle, because her society too insists on a largely passive role for women, even though their position in that society otherwise seems very influential.

The women shown in the video accompanying the music and lyrics are apparently Arab, Arab-Irish and mostly Irish. On the Palestine solidarity marches here my impression is that born women are the majority over born males and many have taken militant action, for which some are facing prosecution.

Women, in particular Arab women, often lead these marches, calling out the chants for others to respond.

Newsreels show Palestinian and other Arab women abroad marching, shouting slogans, clenched fists in the air. I have seen them denouncing ‘Israeli’ soldiers for invasion and occupation, for mistreatment of children, for demolition of houses, one slapping an armed Israeli soldier in the face.

In our own history (as distinct from mythology and legend) we had few female figures of armed action and Pearse mythologised Gráinne Ní Mháille6 in song to epitomise resistance when he had her represent the nation. But compare that to his poem The Mother!

In recent years Markievicz, Skinnider7 and to a degree Farrell8 have part-emerged from history’s shadows bearing weapons but there is still a long way to go in changing the image of women (through all their biological phases) in the struggle.

This song for all that it affects me emotionally does not do that nor is it expected to and, more to the point, I fear will be used to reinforce passivity in the assigned role of women in struggles — fortitude and solidarity in suffering no doubt, but passivity none the less.

It seems to me that social democrats and liberals perpetuate the mother aspect of the woman manipulatively in order to promote pacifism and much as I appreciate this cultural production, it will be used in that way.

While enjoying cultural productions visually, in sound or in print, we need also to be aware of the social packages they carry and their effects upon us, intended or otherwise.

End.

(Image sourced: The Beat.ie)

FOOTNOTES

1https://www.mary-black.net/

2https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Woman%27s_Heart_(compilation_album)

3Whose official stamp is also on the video.

4Industrial, agricultural, municipal, health services, technical and scientific services.

5There was some coverage of armed Kurdish women in Syria fighting ISIS (I wrote about some myself) but it is now clear that was in the context of NATO coordination in the war to overthrow the non-western aligned regime.

6A 17th Century female chief of the Uí Máille clan in Mayo who led attacks on her enemies by land and sea. Pearse adapted the ancient bride-welcoming song to bid her welcome with armed warriors to reclaim her land and disperse the English occupiers.

7Both Markievicz (nee Gore-Booth) and Skinnider were members of the Irish Citizen Army and both carried and fired weapons in the 1916 Rising.

8Though unarmed, she was part of an Active Service Unit of the IRA when she and her two comrades were gunned down in the British colony of Gibraltar on 6th March 1988.

SOURCE

https://www.mary-black.net/

1https://www.mary-black.net/

2https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Woman%27s_Heart_(compilation_album)

3Whose official stamp is also on the video.

4Industrial, agricultural, municipal, health services, technical and scientific services.

5There was some coverage of armed Kurdish women in Syria fighting ISIS (I wrote about some myself) but it is now clear that was in the context of NATO coordination in the war to overthrow the non-western aligned regime.

6A 17th Century female chief of the Uí Máille clan in Mayo who led attacks on her enemies by land and sea. Pearse adapted the ancient bride-welcoming song to bid her welcome with armed warriors to reclaim her land and disperse the English occupiers.

7Both Markievicz (nee Gore-Booth) and Skinnider were members of the Irish Citizen Army and both carried and fired weapons in the 1916 Rising.

8Though unarmed, she was part of an Active Service Unit of the IRA when she and her two comrades were gunned down in the British colony of Gibraltar on 6th March 1988.

Occupied Territories Bill: Too Little, Too Late, if Ever.

On By rebelbreezeIn Capitalism, Current Affairs Comment, Genocide, Human Rights, Imperialism, Internationalist Solidarity, Ireland, Middle East, National Liberation, Palestine, Political Analysis, Trade unions, US Imperialism, ZionismLeave a comment

Gearóid Ó Loingsigh (18/07/2025)

(Reformatted entire for publishing in Rebel Breeze from article of same title in his Substack

(Reading time: 6 mins.)

The saga of the Occupied Territories Bill (OTB) has been dragging on for years now. It was first put forward by Senator Frances Black in 2018 and was approved by both houses of the Oireachtas (parliament) but never enacted.

The Irish capitalist class that is resolutely on the side of the Israelis, despite the illusions of many and the odd PR stunt, dragged its heels on the issue, even boasting that it had effectively blocked it.

Simon Coveney who was the Minister for Foreign Affairs at the time said during a visit to the Zionist state in 2019 that:

We don’t believe that it is legally sound because trade issues are EU competence as opposed to national competence in Ireland. And because we don’t believe it’s legally sound we have effectively blocked the legislation from moving through parliament as it normally would…

It’s essentially frozen in the process and it isn’t making progress. And I don’t expect that it will make progress, either, unless the government supports it, and the government won’t be supporting it.1

A demonstration outside Leinster House, parliament of the Irish State recently. (Image chosen and sourced: by RBreeze on line)

This came as no surprise to anyone paying attention. Ireland is not an independent capitalist state; it is what Marxists term a neo-colony with 88% of all corporate tax paid by foreign companies and just three companies accounting for 38% of all corporate tax.

Foreign corporate tax in turn represents 29% of the total tax take in the country.2 It is entirely dependent on the US and also the British state.

Many months prior to Coveney’s boast, the then Taoiseach (prime minister), Leo Varadkar had written a grovelling letter to Joe Biden to apologise for the behaviour of Irish politicians who had voted for the bill. In it he stated:

The Government has consistently and strongly opposed the Bill on both political and legal grounds and will continue to do so… Can I take the opportunity to reiterate my deep appreciation for the strong bonds of friendship between Ireland and the US, including our growing and mutually economic ties.3

There is no world in which the Irish state will stand up to the US. It won’t stop US planes shipping arms to Israel through Shannon Airport, just like it allowed the US to use the airport during the Iraq war.

Putting the OTB to parliament was not a bad idea, believing that is how we would achieve something concrete was.

They are now attempting to water it down further and exclude services from its remit, limiting it to only goods. (Note: at the time this article was written campaigners were still fighting an attempt to limit the bill in that way – Rebel Breeze)

IBEC (the Irish Business and Economic Confederation) came out with a statement that it would harm the Irish economy to enact the bill, whilst paradoxically accepting that trade in goods with Israeli “settlements” in the West Bank only amounted to €240,000.4

On the radio the Government reminded us that we are a trading nation, as if any of us thought that everything we buy in the country was made here and we exported nothing.

The reason they can make these statements of course, is because of the limited scope of the bill itself and the intentions of those pushing for its enactment.

The Irish government was at great pains to say that it would only apply to the territories occupied in 1967 and not to Israel itself i.e. not to the territories occupied in 1948 during the Nakba and the foundation of the Zionist state.

If you accept the legitimacy of the state of Israel or if you are one of those liberals still prattling on about a Two State Solution then all of this makes sense. It could have even been argued when it was first proposed that it was a stepping stone to a wider boycott of Israel, not that any of them said that.

For those who believe in the two-state solution (sic) the map shows what’s available for a Palestinian State (sic). (Image chosen and sourced: by RBreeze on line)

Events have overtaken our liberal friends and they shudder at the consequences. There is no longer any case to be made for a bill that limits business dealings with modern Zionist invasions of the West Bank.

Francesca Albanese in her recent report made it abundantly clear that many companies doing business with Israel are profiting from or contributing to the genocide.5 Now is not that time for half measures. Israel, just like the Nazis is carrying out a genocide.

Asking for a boycott of goods from the Warsaw Ghetto, rather than Nazi Germany would have seemed stupid at the time and actual calls for a boycott of the Nazis were portrayed as anti-German.

Some Jewish organisations opposed the boycott and the US government response to violence against German Jews was that the

U.S. Secretary of State Cordell Hull issued a mild statement to the American ambassador to Berlin complaining that “unfortunate incidents have indeed occurred and the whole world joins in regretting them.” He expressed his personal belief, however, that the reports of anti-Jewish violence were probably exaggerated.6

We know how this ended. The Nazis in the face of the timorous and timid response from the US and other western powers would eventually enclose Jews in ghettos, then camps and then push six million of them through the ovens.

Now is not the time to repeat history but to be bold and decisive. Now it is equally ridiculous to meekly petition, those who grovelled to Genocide Joe in 2019, to restrict goods from the West Bank.

In the midst of a genocide there is only one option on the table: a complete and total severance of all trade, military and diplomatic ties with Israel. There are no “settlements” without the Nazis in Tel Aviv, without the Israeli military, without the companies that keep Israel going.

A Banner on the IPSC National March 19th April 2025 in Dublin, appearing to show a believed organic connection between the enacting of the OTB and ending the Zionist genocide in Palestine. (Image sourced and chosen: R.Breeze)

Total isolation of the entire regime is needed. Not an orange, not a single electronic component, not a kilobyte of software. Such isolation should continue not just till the acts of genocide have ceased.

They will cease when the repugnant reality that Israel has run out of Palestinians to murder comes to pass.

Israel should be isolated until all those involved have been tried, had all their assets confiscated, given lengthy prison sentences or hung until dead, depending on the actual degree of participation.

This is not an outrageous proposal, it is what was theoretically done at Nuremberg, though many of the businessmen were given back their assets after a number of years and only a handful of Nazis got the actual death penalty and most never saw the inside of a jail.

No such leniency should be shown to the Zionists.

Those campaigning on the OTB will never make such a call. They will continue to petition the government. They do have another weapon to hand in fighting the Nazis in Tel Aviv, but they won’t call for that either.

The Irish Council of Trade Unions denounced the government’s handling of the OTB and called on the Oireachtas to reject the “business lobby scaremongering” and to pass the OTB.7

Of course, the unions don’t need to persuade the Zionists who dominate the coalition parties, they could just have told their members in 2018 to refuse to handle all products coming from the Occupied Territories, or indeed the entire Zionist state and that would have settled it.

They would have to organise that and back all their members who engaged in such boycotts. But under no circumstances will the fat cat bureaucrats ever confront the government over this issue.

If they are not prepared to fight for decent wages, a proper health system, public housing etc, all of which directly affect their members, less still will they fight for Palestinians. They are traitors to their class and also betrayers of the Palestinian people, despite all their lofty statements.

The OTB was a nice propaganda measure whose time has passed. It is, in the midst of a genocide, no longer fit for purpose, neither is a solidarity movement which limits itself to half measures. We need to be bolder.

End.

NB: For more articles by Gearóid see https://gearoidloingsigh.substack.com

NOTES

1 The Times of Israel (03/12/2019) Visiting Israel, Irish FM says he’s open for ‘new thinking’ on peace process. Raphael Ahren. https://www.timesofisrael.com/visiting-israel-irish-fm-says-hes-open-for-new-thinking-on-peace-process/

2 Reuters (30/04/2025) Ireland’s reliance on foreign multinational taxes grew in 2024. https://www.reuters.com/markets/europe/irelands-reliance-foreign-multinational-taxes-grew-2024-2025-04-30/

3 The Irish Times (22/03/2019) Economics should not trump ethics when it comes to Occupied Territories Bill. Suzanne Mulligan. https://www.irishtimes.com/opinion/economics-should-not-trump-ethics-when-it-comes-to-occupied-territories-bill-1.3834221

4 The Irish Times (17/07/2025) ‘No real evidence’ Ocuppied Territories Bill would cost Ireland dearly, Amnesty Chief says. Colm Keena & Mark Henessy. https://www.irishtimes.com/ireland/2025/07/17/ibec-head-labels-occupied-territories-bill-symbolism-and-moral-positioning/

5 UN (2025) From economy of occupation to economy of genocide: Report of the Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967. Francesca Albanese. https://www.ohchr.org/sites/default/files/documents/hrbodies/hrcouncil/sessions-regular/session59/advance-version/a-hrc-59-23-aev.pdf

6 Feldberg, M. (n/d) U.S. Policy During World War II: The Anti-Nazi Boycott. Jewish Virtual Library. https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/1933-anti-nazi-boycott

7 ICTU (17/07/2025) Oireachtas must reject business lobby scaremongering and pass the Occupied Territories Bill. https://ictu.ie/news/oireachtas-must-reject-business-lobby-scaremongering-and-pass-occupied-territories-bill

“Building resistance through culture”: successful Solidarity Sessions launch in Dublin

On By rebelbreezeIn Cultural Comment, Current Event Report, Folk Custom, Gaeilge, Genocide, Internationalist Solidarity, Ireland, Irish Language, Irish Left, Irish Republicanism, National Liberation, Palestine, Political Analysis, Popular Resistance, Resistance Art, Song, Traditions & Folk Custom2 Comments

Clive Sulish

(Reading time: 3 mins.)

Around 80 people attended a concert in the back room of Dublin’s Cobblestone pub launching an initiative to “build a community of solidarity and resistance through culture”. Flags of Irish and other struggles around the world decorated the venue.

The evening’s entertainment consisted of five musical acts and one of poetry. The MC for the evening, Diarmuid Breatnach, told the audience that Irish struggles had always found an expression in culture and that culture itself encouraged further resistance.

He gave the example of Thomas Davis who founded with others the patriotic newspaper The Nation in the mid-1800s, publishing contributed songs and poems and his own, including The West’s Awake and A Nation Once Again, songs still sung in Ireland nearly two centuries later.

The first act of the evening was the folk duo The Yearners, specialising in harmonies around renditions of song covers and their own song about the Mary of the New Testament, as a woman pressured to bear a child because “How can you say no to God?

The audience joining in on Pearse’s Gráinne Mhaol was followed by some songs with hard satirical edges like the Kinky Boots song from the Irish Republican repertoire and their own Save A Landlord.

The Yearners during their performance. (Photo credit with thanks: Dermo Photography)
Dúlamban during their performance. (Photo credit with thanks: Dermo Photography)

The MC introduced another all-female duo, Dúlamban, recently formed from two individual singer-musicians. Among their material, Sinéad on violin played two compositions of her own while Aisling sang her adaptation and translation of the Rising of the Moon: Ar Éirí na Geallaigh.

The one poet of the evening, Barry Currivan, performed a number of shorter and longer pieces of his repertoire. He was particularly applauded for his “anti-othering” piece Those People and his humorous concluding piece comparing himself to a good cup of tea or coffee.

After the break, the MC spent a few minutes outlining the Solidarity Sessions collective’s project and encouraging the audience to take part in it by spreading word of its events and supporting them in person, in addition to stepping forward to assist in organisation and in poster design.

Barry Currivan during his poetry performance at the Solidarity Sessions launch. (Photo credit with thanks: Dermo Photography)
Section of the audience presumably during Currivan’s performance. (Photo credit with thanks: Dermo Photography)

Another female duo took the stage, Sage Against the Machine on guitar accompanied by Ríona on violin, performing a number of love pop covers and SAM’s own song against patriarchy.

Some remarks about Bob Dylan’s Zionism followed in Sage’s introduction of the former’s Masters of War which she performed with great feeling and followed with El Gallo Rojo, an anti-fascist song from the Spanish ‘Civil War’.

Sage Against the Marchine (right) and Ríona during their performance. (Photo credit with thanks: Dermo Photography)
Jimi Cullen during his performance at the Solidarity Sessions launch. (Photo credit with thanks: Dermo Photography)

Breatnach then introduced Jimi Cullen who he said has been hosting a weekly musical protest picket for an hour on Wednesdays (2-3 pm) outside the US Embassy for a great many weeks, in which the MC had sometimes accompanied him amidst the solidarity beeping of passing traffic.

Jimi accompanied himself singing his Housing for All and Guthrie’s You Fascists Bound to Lose, then commenting on Bob Marley’s Zionism while introducing the latter’s One Love song, saying that love above all is what binds humanity together, a theme also of his We Are All Palestinians.

His monologue The Genocide Will Be Televised was much sharper and renewed an earlier Death, death to the IDF!1 chant from the audience.

Trad Sabbath during their performance. (Photo credit with thanks: Dermo Photography)

There was much irreverent comment about the name of the band to conclude the evening, Trad Sabbath, a four-piece band of guitars, banjo, bodhrán and fiddle, apparently in the context of the very recent death of the Black Sabbath band’s lead vocalist, Ozzie Osbourne.

Sardonic cries about “his poor widow”, Sharon Osbourne2 were also heard, a Zionist personality star in a ‘reality’ TV show about the late Ozzie’s family. To fill in the delay in their setting up with the sound engineer, Breatnach sang Kearney’s Down by the Glenside ballad.

The band concluded the evening with traditional melodies and some songs from Eoghan and Hat with others backing on choruses.

Poster advertising the event (Design: Ríona and D.Breatnach)

The MC thanked all for their attendance, performances and technical support before reiterating the Solidarity Sessions’ objective and encouraging participation. His comment that “Repression is here and more is coming down the road” was underlined by the presence there of a prominent victim.

In the audience was Richard Medhurst, the Britain-based journalist specialising in Middle Eastern coverage who was recently detained under anti-terror (sic) legislation and charged by British police as he returned from abroad and again later detained though not actually charged by Austrian police.

Richard Medhurst’s tweet during the evening at the event.

End.

FOOTNOTES

1Made famous by the Bob Vylan duo at Glastonbuy getting the audience chanting the slogan. The IDF is what the Israeli Occupation Forces call themselves.

2Who had called for the banning of the the Irish rap group Kneecap.

“70,000” IN DUBLIN MARCH DEMAND GOVERNMENT ACTION AGAINST GENOCIDE

On By rebelbreezeIn Current Affairs Comment, Current Event Report, Imperialism, Indigenous or Original People, Internationalist Solidarity, Ireland, Irish Left, Irish Republicanism, Israeli Zionism, Middle East, National Liberation, Palestine, Political Analysis, Uncategorized, US ImperialismLeave a comment

Diarmuid Breatnach

(Reading time main text: 4 mins.)

The fact that the Irish Times reported ‘tens of thousands’ on Saturday’s march in Dublin was telling, avoiding their usual euphemism of ‘thousands’ or even ‘hundreds’ for a demonstration’s great multitude.1

Even so, it was much larger, the organisers claiming 70,000 participants.

It was huge, without a doubt. From the D’Olier Street northern corner, the front of the march organised by the Ireland Palestine Solidarity Campaign had gone to the gates of Trinity College while the rest of it could be seen northwards the length of O’Connell Street and possibly beyond.

In the distance marchers may be seen along the length of O’Connell Street. Behind the photographer, a section of the march is proceeding while the front has reached the Trinity College gates. (Photo: D.Breatnach)

This was the 16th national mobilisation in Palestine solidarity since October 2023 organised to take place in Dublin, while many smaller marches, pickets, vigils, public meetings, talks, film shows and other solidarity events have been held weekly across the nation.

BANNERS, FlAGS & PLACARDS

In addition to local branches of the IPSC, banners on the march also proclaimed party, trade union and professional body allegiance, along with specific declarations and calls for actions.

Placards included the professionally-printed but also a wide range of the ‘home-made’ examples and these can be of particular interest, such as the one that declared that “Blaming Hamas for firing rockets at Israel is like blaming a woman for punching her rapist.” Indeed.

“Gaza is a death camp”. (Photo: D.Breatnach)

As the marchers passed the iconic General Post Office a small group organised by socialist Irish Republican organisation Éirigí held up giant letters spelling SAVE THE GPO.2 A group wearing blue tops with PRESS on the back marched and held up photos of individual journalists in Gaza.3

The PBP-Solidarity contingent carried a banner calling for the enacting of the Occupied Territories Bill which seemed a rather tame demand of the Irish State from an organisation claiming to be revolutionary socialist (see Irish State Options section).

A bagpiper playing amongst the marchers. (Photo: D.Breatnach)

The most popular non-party flag on the march was of course the Palestinian one but the Irish Tricolour has been making a greater appearance on these marches of late and not before time.4 I noted only one Starry Plough, in green with the Plough design in gold and white stars.

DESTINATIONS AND ROUTES

The IPSC marches tend to begin at the Garden of Remembrance and end near Leinster House,5 seat of the Irish State’s parliament, or occasionally at the Department of Foreign Affairs. Saturday’s march also went to Molesworth Street but through a longer circular route.

This route saw the march take in part of Dame Street, then the whole of South George’s St. and Aungier Street, turn left towards Stephens Green and proceed along the Green’s west side, then along part of its southern side before turning down Dawson Street.

(Photo: D.Breatnach)

Molesworth Street was full of marchers already but IPSC stewards hustled marchers off Dawson Street, eventually giving up their usual endeavour to push the crowd past the Schoolhouse Lane junction so the Gardaí could erect barriers across that section to enclose the marchers.

The unusual route on this occasion avoided the temptation to march up the pedestrianised shopping area of Grafton Street, which the Gardaí do not like and at which there was a confrontation during the previous IPSC march when a number of protesters tried to take that route.

One of the supporters of the march. (Photo: D.Breatnach)

Despite the crucial role of the USA as chief supplier of arms, funding and political cover for the genocidal Zionists of the ‘Israeli’ state, since 2023 the IPSC have approached Dublin’s US Embassy only twice, no doubt respecting the Gardaí wish not to have the main road outside blocked.

On those two occasions the IPSC halted the march in a street behind the Embassy and away from one of the main roads into Dublin from the south (and along which the ill-fated Northumberland Fusiliers marched in April 1916). Marches to the Israeli Embassy were rare during the period too.6

(Photo: D.Breatnach)

IRISH STATE & OPTIONS

Both leaders of the Irish Coalition Government7 have built up some kudos with many anti-genocide people around the world for publicly stating that Israel is committing genocide – the first leaders of an EU or indeed Western state to say so.

In addition, the Irish Government joined with those of the Spanish and Norwegian states in a failed attempt last week to have the EU remove ‘Israel’ from its preferential trade agreement for violation of the human rights conditions of the Agreement.8

(Photo: D.Breatnach)

However, as a number of speakers at the IPSC rally and some marchers’ placards declared, the Irish State is in fact complicit in genocide by allowing military equipment for ‘Israel’ to fly through Irish airspace and by not enforcing its neutrality on US military transit through Shannon Airport.

And in allowing the Central Bank of Ireland to process ‘Israeli’ war bonds, which was the target of a number of representations including its huge logo on the march and a speech by Gary Gannon, DCC Councillor of the Social Democrats party.

(Photo: D.Breatnach)

The glacial progress of the moderate Occupied Territories Bill,9 delayed and then attempted weakening of it by removing services from the ban,10 is another hallmark of the Irish Government’s collusion (notwithstanding expressed Zionist rage and bullying by some US Congressmen).

Next to the USA, the Irish state is the biggest importer of ‘Israeli’ goods and a ban on these would greatly affect the genocidal state not only morally but also practically. In the absence of government action, the trade unions could impose a ban on their members handling those goods.

The contradiction is that the Western state most overwhelmingly pro-Palestinian is the biggest importer of ‘Israeli’ products and having hardly any practical effect towards preventing the genocide against the Palestinians, contrary to what the majority in Ireland actually want.

End.
Note: For the photos in this report I concentrated on the more unusual of those participating.

(Photo: D.Breatnach)
(Photo: D.Breatnach)
Molesworth Street, the destination, is full from one end to the other. (Photo: D.Breatnach)

FOOTNOTES

IRISH MEDIA REPORTING

Irish Times: https://www.irishtimes.com/ireland/2025/07/19/this-war-took-my-entire-life-from-me-thousands-attend-pro-palestine-march-in-dublin

RTÉ: Thousands take part in march for Palestine in Dublin

1https://www.irishtimes.com/ireland/2025/07/19/this-war-took-my-entire-life-from-me-thousands-attend-pro-palestine-march-in-dublin Nevertheless, that was the national broadcaster RTÉ’s approach.

2https://www.businesspost.ie/politics/plan-for-gpo-to-house-offices-and-retail-to-be-signed-off-by-government/

3https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killing_of_journalists_in_the_Gaza_war

4The Irish far-Right of fake patriots has been permitted illegitimately to almost monopolise the Irish Tricolour.

5‘Near’ rather than at Leinster House, because the Gardaí set up a crowd barricade at the end of Molesworth Street across the street from the House and that is as far as the march goes and also where the speakers’ platform is set up.

6This was so even before the Israeli Ambassador abandoned her Dublin post in disgust at popular Irish hostility to genocide and prior to the reputed closure of the Embassy (despite which the site has a 24-hour Garda guard).

7Taoiseach (Prime Minister equivalent) Mícheál Martin of the Fianna Fáil party and Tánaiste (Deputy PM equivalent), also Minister of Defence Simon Harris of the Fine Gael party. The Green Party is also a member of the Coalition.

8The European Union as a body and economic area is the largest consumer of Israeli exports https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/5/22/which-countries-trade-the-most-with-israel-and-what-do-they-buy-and-sell

9https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occupied_Territories_Bill

10https://www.trocaire.org/news/what-you-need-to-know-about-the-occupied-territories-bill/

“DEATH TO THE IDF” IS A HUMANITARIAN CALL

On By rebelbreezeIn Cultural Comment, Current Affairs Comment, Genocide, Human Rights, Imperialism, Internationalist Solidarity, Israeli Zionism, Journalism, Palestine, Political Analysis, Popular ResistanceLeave a comment

Diarmuid Breatnach

(Reading time main text: 3 mins.)

The media and some British politicians have been in a furore about what a performer of one of the acts at the Glastonbury Festival1 called from the stage and got most of the audience to chant with him: Death, death to the IDF!2

    The performer was not, for change, one of the Kneecap trio (who also performed at Glastonbury) despite British politician complaints after another anti-Zionist “controversy” (i.e. unlike daily Zionist genocide of Palestinians, supplied by UK weapons, which is not at all controversial).

    The latest performer to raise the genocide-proof ire of British politicians and mass media commentators was a member of the Bob Vylan group and the call which caused such anger in pro-Zionist circles was uttered from the West Holts stage during the Festival on Saturday.

    Bob Vylan lead singer performing on the West Holts stage during the Glastonbury Festival at Worthy Farm in Somerset. (Photo cred: Yui Mok/AP)

    This call was not only denounced by right wing conservative and social-democratic figures such as the UK’s Prime Minister, Keith Starmer, who dubbed it ‘hate speech’ but also went too far for the liberal Glastonbury Festival management who issued a statement declaring it “appalling”.3

    To call for the ‘death’ of an organisation or a power is to call for it to cease to exist, to end. So what is the IDF? Well, the acronym stands for Israeli Defence Force, often and more realistically referred to as the IOF, i.e. the Israeli Occupation Force.

    Now this organisation is the military wing of the Zionist European settler colony which is ‘Israel’, and with a history of attacks on the indigenous Palestinians, in addition to the people of Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Syria and, the week before last, Iran.4

    APPALLING OR MODERATE AND REASONABLE?

    On that basis alone, surely it would be moderate and reasonable to call for such a military organisation to cease to exist, i.e. to call for its death?

    But there’s more – a lot more! The IOF has since 9th October 2023 been enforcing a water and starvation blockade on Gaza, also depriving it of importation of medicines.5 The IOF ground and air forces have destroyed at least in part but mostly completely every hospital and medical facility in Gaza.6

    Cartoon regarding the Israeli water blockade on Gaza (D.Breatnach)

    In addition to starving the population of Gaza by military blockade, the IOF has, with the direct assistance of the USA, set up the “killing fields” in which hungry Palestinian people are sniped, machine-gunned and shelled as they queue for meagre GHF food parcels.7

    The IOF has assassinated or caused the death of at least 54,607 Palestinians and wounded 125,341 between 7 October 2023 and 4 June this year,8 including hundreds of first responders and civil defence workers,9 over 230 journalists10 and many police and security workers.11

    This same organisation is the one primarily responsible for the mass demolition in Gaza of Palestinian residential buildings and the displacement of 1.9 million people,12 along with destruction of water and sewage infrastructure, desalination plants, water tanks and agriculture.

    Many massacres by the IOF have been carried out in areas they had declared safe when displacing Palestinians from another area. (D.Breatnach)

    The evidence of daily genocide by the IOF is incontrovertible and even the weak and hesitant International Court of Justice in the Hague stated that there was a plausible case to answer.13 The court also ordered the arrest of some leading government ministers who control the IOF.14

    UNCONTROVERSIAL, A DUTY

    To call for the death of an army of genocide is surely not only not controversial but is instead correct, a duty, one which all reasonable institutions and individuals should emulate.

    According to the Genocide Convention of 1948, all signatory states have a duty to act to prevent genocide,15 not only not to collude with it. Bob Vylan is to be commended for their call and those who condemn them should, at the very least, face widespread opprobrium.

    Bob Vylan’s call is absolutely correct and humanity awaits its implementation, not only death to the IOF but also to the regime and colonial state that gave rise to and which program it follows. Let us join our voices to the humanitarian call and expand upon it.16

    Death to the IOF — and to the Zionist settler colony that spawned it!

    End.

    Sources:

    1The Glastonbury music festival is an annual event of a liberal alternative ambience.

    2https://www.rte.ie/news/2025/0629/1520889-kneecap-glastonbury/

    3Ibid.

    4https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wars_involving_Israel

    5https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israeli_blockade_of_the_Gaza_Strip_(2023%E2%80%93present)

    6https://english.almayadeen.net/news/politics/uk-s-channel-4-to-air-gaza-medics-documentary-rejected-by-bb

    7https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2025-06-27/ty-article-magazine/.premium/idf-soldiers-ordered-to-shoot-deliberately-at-unarmed-gazans-waiting-for-humanitarian-aid/00000197-ad8e-de01-a39f-ffbe33780000 and https://www.breakingnews.ie/world/charities-call-for-end-to-israeli-backed-aid-group-as-dozens-more-die-in-gaza-1779018.html

    8Gaza health Ministry figures, quoted in https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c0r1xl5wgnko (which incorrectly quotes the Israeli figures on Israelis killed by Hamas on October 7th despite a number of Israeli sources indicating that an unknown number of those were killed by the IOF in implementation of the “Hannibal Doctrine”.

    9https://www.aa.com.tr/en/middle-east/over-1-500-humanitarian-workers-killed-since-start-of-israel-s-war-on-gaza-media-office/3524966

    10More since this published https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/4/2/gaza-war-deadliest-ever-for-journalists-says-report https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/4/2/gaza-war-deadliest-ever-for-journalists-says-report

    11In particular to facilitate food looters under IOF protection https://www.nbcnews.com/world/middle-east/israeli-strike-kills-18-palestinians-central-gaza-turmoil-mounts-food-rcna215479

    12About 90% of the population, some of them many times https://www.unrwa.org/resources/reports/unrwa-situation-report-177-situation-gaza-strip-and-west-bank-including-east-jerusalem

    13https://www.npr.org/2024/01/27/1227397107/icj-finds-genocide-case-against-israel-plausible-orders-it-to-stop-violations

    14Prime Minister Netanyahu and (then) Minister of ‘Defence’ Gallant https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Criminal_Court_arrest_warrants_for_Israeli_leaders

    15See States’ Obligations in https://www.un.org/en/genocideprevention/documents/Genocide%20Convention-FactSheet-ENG.pdf

    16https://x.com/BobbyVylan/status/1940015727743815986