Aistrithe ag D.Breatnach ó scéal ag Rebecca Black PA24/08/2023 (Achair léitheorachta 3 nóim.)
Tá caomhnóirí ag ceiliúradh tar éis dóibh teacht ar fhianaise gur phóraigh an t-iascaire coirneach in Éirinn don chéad uair le breis agus 200 bliain.
Bhí péire ag pórú ag láthair nead rúnda i gCo. Fear Manach, de réir Fiadhúlra Uladh.
Dúirt an eagras neamhrialtach go raibh an t-éan creiche sainiúil tar éis athchoilíniú go nádúrtha sa cheantar agus gur éirigh leis dhá scalltán ar a laghad a shaolú, b’fhéidir trí chinn – an chéad phéire scaltan fiáine den chineál in Éirinn sa lá atá inniu ann.
Ba é Giles Knight, comhairleoir scéime feirmeoireachta comhshaoil le Ulster Wildlife, a rinne an fionnachtain.
Tá sé ag breathnú ar an mbeirt phóraithe le trí shéasúr anuas le linn a chuairteanna feirme áitiúla sa cheantar.
“Tá an scéala seo á choinneáil gar do mo bhrollach agam le fada an lá chun sábháilteacht agus leas na n-éan iontach ach soghonta seo a chinntiú,” a dúirt sé.
“In éineacht le mo mhac Eoin, tá mé ag faire ar na héin fásta ag filleadh ar an suíomh céanna ó 2021, mar sin d’fhéadfá a shamhlú go raibh sceitimíní orm ar an nóiméad a chonaic mé trí scalltán agus dhá éan fásta i mbliana.
“Nóiméad cimil-do-shúile a bhí ann, ócáid eisceachtúil; an buaicphointe is mó de mo ghairm bheatha fiadhúlra 30 bliain – cosúil len a theacht ar thaisce atá caillte le fada.
“Le dhá scalltán ar a laghad ag teacht aníos an séasúr seo, is scéal an-rathúil caomhantais é seo agus léiríonn sé éiceachóras bogach sláintiúil le neart gnáthóg agus iasc oiriúnach chun an creachadóir géibhinn seo a thabhairt ar ais chuig ár spéartha agus ag tumadh ins na Locha Fhear Manach.
Iascaire Coirnech ar nead (íomhadh le: Wikipedia)
“Filleadh tuaithe beo i ndáiríre.”
Dúirt Fiadhúlra Uladh gur ceapadh go raibh na hiolair chreiche imithe in éag mar éan goir in Éirinn ag deireadh an 18ú haois mar gheall ar ghéarleanúint chórasach.
Cé gur minic a fheictear iad ar imirce chuig an Afraic Fho-Shahárach agus amach uaithi, ní raibh pórú deimhnithe in Éirinn do-ghlactha go dtí seo, agus Albain ina dhaingean pórúcháin sa RA.
Mhol an Dr Marc Ruddock, ó Northern Ireland Raptor Study Group, an “scéal iontach”.
“Tá na comharthaí agus na radharcanna go léir le blianta beaga anuas ag díriú air seo, ach anois tá fíor-rath póraithe dearbhaithe ar deireadh – nuacht iontach,” a dúirt sé.
Dúirt an tUasal Knight nach nochtfaí láthair an tsuímh le sábháilteacht na n-éan a chinntiú.
“Anois go bhfuil na héin seo ar ais in Éirinn agus ag pórú go rathúil, tá sé ríthábhachtach go bhfágfar faoi shíocháin iad ionas gur féidir leo leanúint ar aghaidh ag méadú trí phórú bliain i ndiaidh a chéile.
“Creidimid agus tá súil againn go bhféadfadh sé seo a bheith ina thús le ríshliocht éin chreiche,” a dúirt sé.
Iascaire Coirneach agus iasc gafa (Íomhádh le: Nick Brown)
“Ba ábhar misnigh agus croíúil é an t-úinéir talún, an pobal feirmeoireachta áitiúil agus ár gcomhpháirtithe a fheiceáil ag fáiltiú roimh fhilleadh na n-iolairí.
“Cuirfidh a dtacaíocht leanúnach ar chumas na nglún atá le teacht sult a bhaint as na héin iontacha seo i bhfad amach anseo.”
Ar fud na hÉireann, tá monatóireacht ag eolairí na n-éan creiche, tógáil ardáin neadaithe, agus pleanáil do chláir aistrithe agus athbhunaithe ar siúl le blianta anuas.
A post-Irish-Republican party prints a revisionist statement from a prominent British Republican at a festival it promotes.
Jeremy Corbyn spoke at the recent Féile an Phobail in West Belfast and Sinn Féin’s publication reported uncritically on his quoting of some words of James Connolly’s out of context:
“No Irish revolutionist worth his salt would refuse to lend a hand to the Social Democracy of England in the effort to uproot the social system of which the British Empire is the crown and apex.
And in like manner no English Social Democrat fails to recognise clearly that the crash which would betoken the fall of the ruling classes in Ireland would sound the tocsin for the revolt of the disinherited in England”.
James Connolly, quoted out of context by opportunists who ignore the rest of his writing. (Photo sourced: Internet)
People often pick and choose from revolutionary writings to find what they want and then quote out of context.1 In 1909 Connolly wrote the words Corbyn quoted at the Féile, clearly thinking that the large organised workers’ movement in Britain might bring about a revolution.
And also of the opinion that the revolution there would open the gates to a revolution in Ireland – or vice versa. Those are of course still possible outcomes but it seems to me more likely to occur with the Irish revolution giving the impetus to a British one.
In 1920 Lenin too recommended British revolutionaries to vote for Labour “as a rope supports a hanging man”.
That quotation has been repeated by social-democrats and some Trotskyists out of context and ad nauseam too, right up to the present. Lenin at no time argued that people should support the government of an imperialist state.
I think Lenin was mistaken because the British Labour Party had confirmed the imperialist ideology of its leaders at least six years earlier.
In 1914 most social-democratic parties overturned their earlier agreed declarations against war and supported their own national capitalist classes who were sending hundreds of thousands of working people out to slaughter the working people of other countries.
Connolly in Ireland, John MacClean in Scotland and the Bolsheviks in Russia were among the few who stuck to the flags planted earlier.
John MacLean photographed during a strike in 1919. The same year he visited Ireland which had a profound effect on the development of his revolutionary thinking. MacLean was one of the few European leaders of the social-democratic movement who, like Connolly and Lenin, stuck to the anti-war revolutionary stance during WWI. (Photo sourced: Internet)
THE BRITISH LABOUR PARTY’S ACTUAL RECORD
The British Labour Party leadership was represented in the WWI War Government and thus colluded in the suppression of the 1916 Rising in Ireland and the execution of 16 leaders, the news of which a number of Labour MP’s cheered in Parliament.
It might have been interesting to hear Corbyn commenting on that and on the subsequent history of the Labour Party. And has British social democracy uprooted “the social system of … the British Empire”? Not in the least, in fact propping it up time and again.
Since 1914 up to the present the party has shown itself, whenever it was not its actual executive, to be the social prop of the imperialist British bourgeoisie. But actually it has often been in government sending troops to suppress national liberation struggles in many parts of the world.
The struggles include those in Vietnam (recruiting Japanese POWs to fight the Viet Minh) so as to hand the country over to French colonialism, which they did. They rearmed Japanese POWs in the Dutch East Indies too in a bloody war against the national movement.
Because of how little-known this war is, I do not apologise from quoting extensively on it from socialist historian John Newsinger.2
Once again, British troops began arriving after Labour had taken office, and found themselves confronting a well-armed nationalist movement that had taken control of most of the country.
Fighting was so fierce that the British turned to the Japanese prisoners-of-war, rearming thousands of them and deploying them against the rebels.
The city of Semarang was taken by Japanese forces, using both tanks and artillery, killing over 2,000 rebel fighters and civilians, and driving the survivors out.
According to one account, ‘Truck loads of Indonesian prisoners with their hands tied behind their backs were driven into the countryside and never seen again.
When the Japanese handed over to the British on 20 October 1945, the British were so impressed that the Japanese commander, a Major Kido, was recommended for the Distinguished Service Order (DSO).
Such an award would, of course, have been political dynamite at a time when British prisoners were being liberated from Japanese camps and would have drawn unwelcome attention to the Labour government’s policy of imperial restoration.
Indeed, both Attlee and Ernest Bevin, the Foreign Secretary, lied to the House of Commons about the extent of the use of Japanese troops. The heaviest fighting took place in the port-city of Surabaya where some 4,000 British troops came under attack towards the end of October.
Over 200 British and Indian soldiers were killed, including their commander, Brigadier Mallaby. Reinforcements were poured into the city and on 9 November a full-scale assault, involving 24,000 troops supported by twenty-four tanks, was launched.
Surabaya was shelled by both land and sea and bombed from the air. On the first day of the assault, over 500 bombs were dropped on the city including 1,500 pounders. Two cruisers and three destroyers joined in pounding the city.
It was, according to one account, ‘one of the largest single engagements fought by British troops since the end of the Second World War’. Only after three weeks of heavy fighting were the nationalist forces driven from the city, suffering some 10,000 casualties in the process.
At the end of the fighting, ‘90 percent of the city’s population were now refugees’. Even today, this major battle is virtually unknown in Britain, although in Indonesia the first day of the British attack, 10 November, is still celebrated as ‘Heroes Day’ … (in) the Indonesian struggle for independence.
Although the Churchill Coalition sent troops and airforce to suppress the Greek Communist resistance after defeat of the Axis troops there, Labour in government continued the policy of restoring the discredited and largely unwanted Greek King against popular resistance.
In Malaya the British banning of strikes and opening fire on unarmed demonstrations of former allies led to armed resistance and war. In Kenya too, treatment of the people led to a war of resistance and British troops committed atrocities in both theatres, including rape and torture.
Later, the UK sent troops to fight in Korea, Cyprus, Aden, Oman, Afghanistan and Iraq and bombed Libya, always with Labour Party support whenever the party was not in the actual executive, i.e in government.
Now, perhaps the author of the article in SF’s publication is weak on international history (clearly the party has never spent any great effort in educating their membership in such areas).
But surely he would be familiar with the events of 1969 in Ireland and of the following three decades there?
Yes, it was a Labour Government that sent troops into the colony in 1969 to crush the struggle for civil rights there, civil rights by the way that were guaranteed by law in every part of Britain.
It was a Labour Government once again that brought in the Prevention (sic) of Terrorism Act in 1974, repressive legislation against the Irish community in Britain which led to intimidation and harassment of thousands of Irish people, raids on homes and deportations.
Under a Labour Government a score of innocent Irish people were framed on extremely serious charges in 1974 and the first antifascist on a demonstration was killed by police – coincidentally of Irish descent too (Kevin Gately, from Leeds, Red Lion Square, London).
In addition to the crimes abroad of British Labour while in government, it supported all the major crimes committed under a Conservative Government, including most definitely those in Ireland.
WHY DO THEY QUOTE THEM?
If social democrats and liberals politicians truly respect those revolutionaries they quote, why do they not follow their teachings? Because in reality, they fear revolution.
But why, in that case, do politicians quote revolutionaries in the first place, even if out of context? It’s because they know that the people love and honour the memory of those revolutionaries and they hope to use them to enlist the people in their reactionary projects.
Jeremy Corbyn, former leader of the British Labour Party with Gerry Adams, former leader of Provisional Sinn Féin, photographed at Féile an Phobail in West Belfast this year. (Photo sourced: Internet)
It should not surprise us to see promotion of British social democracy by a party that shares in the administration of a British colony and which is itself dabbling in social democracy — but it is sickening to see them welcoming the use of James Connolly in the course of that.
Connolly was quite clear on his attitude which set it down in song lyrics in Songs of Freedom, published in 1907 in New York3:
Some men, faint-hearted, ever seek Our program to retouch; And will insist, whene’er they speak That we demand too much. ’Tis passing strange, yet I declare Such statements give me mirth For our demands most moderate are: “We only want the Earth.”
“Be moderate,” the trimmers cry Who dread the tyrants’ thunder; “You ask too much and people fly From you aghast in wonder.” ’Tis passing strange, for I declare Such statements give me mirth For our demands most moderate are: “We only want the Earth.”
Our masters all, a godly crew Whose hearts throb for the poor; Their sympathies assure us, too If our demands were fewer. Most generous souls! But please observe What they enjoy from birth Is all we ever had the nerve To ask, that is, the Earth.
The Labour fakir, full of guile Base doctrine ever teaches And whilst he bleeds the rank and file Tame moderation preaches4. Yet in his despite we’ll see the day When with sword in their girths Workers5 will march in war array To claim their own, the Earth.
For workers1 long with sighs and tears To their oppressors knelt; Yet never yet to aught save fears Did heart of tyrant melt. We need not kneel, our cause is high, Of true hearts there’s no dearth And our victorious rallying cry Shall be: ‘We want the Earth!’
End.
FOOTNOTES
1It is even said that “the Devil can quote Scripture”.
2 Newsinger: War, Empire and the Attlee government 1945–1951 65
3No air was indicated for the song; in England I heard it sung to the air of A Nation Once Again, which gives the opportunity for a chorus of “We only want the Earth” etc and of all the airs to which I have heard it sung I believe that one suits it best.
4In my singing, I have reversed the order of ‘preaches’ and ‘teaches’ which to me seems more appropriate, particularly in this era.
5I inserted ‘workers’ rather than ‘labour’ for what should be obvious reasons.
The Chief Commissioner of the police force of the Irish state is reputedly “quietly pleased” with the change of name for the force he commands. “It describes the work we actually do” he commented at a press conference earlier today.
There were suggestions that the widely-supported name-change might be held up by bitterness at a recent vote of no-confidence by members of the force against the Commissioner, formerly senior officer in a colonial police force and of MI5 membership but this was not to be.
“He’s used to changes in the names of forces where he comes from,” commented a senior officer. “Besides the new one fits better than the earlier name for the force” he continued but seemed flustered when asked was he referring to the Royal Irish Constabulary.
Others have remarked that the new name gives a much more rounded perspective than the earlier suggestion of Landlord’s Protection Force. “The excellent mobilisation to guard ATMs in the recent Bank of Ireland give-away crisis has justified the new name,” commented the Justice Minister.
“The mobilisation was even more remarkable given that no crime was actually being committed”, said the Minister.
The force will henceforth be known as The Landlords and Bankers Protection Force (with apostrophes ruled out of order). The new insignia or emblem will resemble a tall apartment block with a bank on the ground floor, carrying also the acronym LBPF.
Far-Travelling Rightists
The reported words of a Clare TD this week struck a chord among some far-Rightists. Cathal Crowe TD complained that tourists arrive by coach at the Cliffs of Moher, take selfies against the sights, climb back in and are driven off to Dublin, with no benefit all to the local economy.
“Why not flip the model?” he asked, suggesting that tours could be based in the West and set out from there to take in the sights elsewhere.
“We’ve been doing the kind of tourism recommended by Crowe for a long time”, exclaimed far-Right activist Dara O’Flaherty, “organising protest trips up to Dublin from Galway instead of tours the other way around. But of course we don’t get credit for it,” he concluded bitterly.
O’Flaherty blamed “freemasonry in the travel industry” for the lack of acknowledgement they receive.
Andy Heaseman, from Dublin but currently based in Mayo, stated that he has travelled on his own and with others to Dublin, down to Limerick and Cork “and not only by public transport and shared car”, he claimed “but also by boat – until it crashed,” he concluded with a sad face.
Niall McConnell has also visited Dublin as well as other spots with Farright Protest Tours, while Herman (‘Monster’) Kelly has been to Dublin, Limerick and Ballyjamesduff, though being obliged to leave each town shortly after his arrival.
Niall Nine Lies McConnell used to descend from his Donegal fastness to pray the Catholic Rosary on streets in Dublin and elsewhere, in close proximity to Muslims or people whose lives violate his ideas of gender and sexuality but who somehow continue to defy him.
McConnell was baptised “Nine Lies” for among other things, informing a European gathering of fascists that immigrants outnumbered the Irish-born in Ireland. He’s been taking a break and, “as a devout Christian, most emphatically not a Black Sabbatical” as he pointed out to our reporter.
The title “most travelled Farrighter” must surely go to Dublin-based Phil Dwyer, who claims to have been to every protest against migrants, Muslims, mask-wearing during Covid epidemic, Covid vaccines and anyone not 100% male or female-orientated according to genitalia.
Phil, also known affectionately as “Kick the Dog” gained the nickname “Lederhosen” for recruiting ‘real Irish men’ for hill-walking together, organising such activities to counter the feminising effect he believes female primary school teachers are having on Irish boys.
Phil “Kick the Dog” Dwyer was a recruiter of “heavies” for attacks on antifascists until expelled from the National Party for publicly violating the grave of a female victim of male violence. Dwyer is capable of carrying on his noble crusade even in a taxi home after having a skinful.
Farright Protest Tours (Ireland) on their website recently challenged anyone to name a place to which their service had not travelled or a democratic right which they had not opposed.
The successful respondent will be presented with a copy of the 1930s My Struggle, translated from the original into English and signed by the Austrian author.
Socialist republicans and communists gathered on a traffic island in Dublin’s city centre to mark the International Day of the Prisoner. They flew flags to represent prisoners in Ireland (‘Starry Plough’), the Basque Country and Palestine.
They also displayed a number of placards.
(Photo: IAIC).
The choice of location, apart from being passed by road traffic in three directions, was because of the presence there of the Universal Links on Human Rights memorial sculpture with an eternal flame, commissioned by the Amnesty International organisation.
A plaque near the sculpture bears the following words: “The candle burns not for us but for all those whom we failed to rescue from prison. Who were tortured. Who were kidnapped. Who disappeared. That is what the candle is for.”
Plaque in the ground on the approach to the sculpture. (Photo: IAIC).
Somewhat ironically, one of the placards carried the words: “Amnesty International, do Irish Republican prisoners not have human rights too?” Irish Republicans have long complained that the organisation in question does not raise any issues with regard to Irish political prisoners.
Some have indicated as a possible reason or part-reason the location of the head office of Amnesty International being based in London, capital city of the occupying power. Its interventions on Ireland even during three decades of war in the colony have been very few indeed.
Other placards displayed referred to political prisoners from the liberation wars in India and in the Philippines, the innocent Craigavon Two still in jail and ongoing internment through refusal of bail to Republicansappearing before the no-jury special courts in both administrations.
Some leaflets were distributed about ongoing internment in Ireland through long remands in custody of Republican activists. Between convicted and awaiting trial there are close to 50 political prisoners in jails in Ireland between both administrations.
The Universal Links sculpture by Tony O’Malley (welding by Jim O’Connor) commissioned by Amnesty International. (Photo: IAIC)
The Zionist Israeli state holds 5,000 political prisoners (almost all Palestinian), of which over 1,132 are not even charged (‘administrative detention’). There are 33 female Palestinian political prisoners and 160 child prisoners. Philippines has 803 political prisoners.
The Spanish and French states hold between them around 170 Basque political prisoners.
The event to mark International Day of the Prisoner was organised by the Ireland Anti-Internment Campaign and a spokesperson gave a short explanation on video of the reason for the event with the human rights sculpture in the background.
End.
Some of the flags displayed (Photo: IAIC).Passer-by in conversation with a leafleter. (Photo: IAIC). (Photo: IAIC).
I slowed the car as we went past the Lotts but kept the engine running – the water was a foot high in the street and I didn’t want to have trouble starting it again.
What the jayzus are they building? asked Noah Parker (you can guess his nickname, though to be fair, his nose was hardly noticeable).
He was only voicing what was a general question in the neighbourhood. The Lotts, and I say the Lotts, because this was the acknowledged main branch of the clan here in Dublin, the other two being known respectively as the South Lotts and the North Lotts, were always a bit strange and secretive. And it’s not easy to combine those two qualities.
Strange but hard workers, all of them in one of the trades: carpenters, welders, electricians … Mrs. Lotts being the exception, into animal management. She had a nickname in the area from an idiosyncrasy of hers, of regularly glancing over her shoulder. ‘Backlook’ it was, though never mentioned in front of any of her brood, for self-preservation reasons.
Around their yard and their house there were cages, pens and runs for rabbits, chickens, geese and ducks but there was also an owl box on a tree, a pair of gaudy parrots flew around the house when it wasn’t raining, two llamas stared disconsolately from their pen at the rain and from somewhere a donkey brayed.
Holy Mother of God said, said Parker, will ya look at that giant rat?
It’s a coypu, replied Mary, who never took exception to the invocation of her namesake. They’re from South America.
Another one appeared and they began to run around one another playfully in the rain. Until one caught the other, climbed on top of it and began to … I blushed and looked in the rearview mirror, caught Mary’s stony glance and looked away hurriedly.
As well as all the animals, the yard was full of materials, sheets of metal and wood, planks, plastic sheeting and tarpaulin covering whatever the Lotts were building. I thought the shape was familiar in some way but couldn’t quite grasp what it was.
Stop the car a minute, will ya? said Parker, bringing down the window on his side. I tapped the brakes but kept the engine running.
You’re letting the rain in, complained Mary. He was too, but then he leaned the top half of his body out the window and, heedless of the rain on his head and shoulders, hailed the Lotts – or at least one of them.
Hey, Job, a fine soft day, wha’? called Parker.
Job Lott, trudging across their yard with some kind of machinery or tool clutched to his chest, his broad shoulder hunched, turned.
Ah, Noahsey, how’s it goin’? Then, peering into the car and nodding: Mary, Racker.
We nodded back.
What’re ya buildin’? Looks like a bloody big boat, Parker again, with a laugh and … something fell into place in my brain.
Job stopped dead, as if he’d been struck or walked into an invisible wall.
A moment stretched. The rain fell, a donkey brayed, parrots squawked.
Mister Lott – nobody called him anything but ‘Mister’ since he’d been a magistrate – hurried out with his wife from underneath a huge tarpaulin, put his big hand on his son’s shoulders and pushed him forward.
Sorry lads, we’re really busy right now, he called back over his shoulder. Job was glancing back at us as the three of them disappeared under the tarpaulin.
Parker pulled his wet torso back into the car and sent the window closed. We were silent in the car for a moment, the rain drumming on the roof and running down the windows, the engine idling.
Weird, commented Parker, unusually at a loss for words.
A new plaque commemorating James Connolly was unveiled on the morning of 31st July on 70 South Lotts, the house to which he returned from New York with his wife Lillie and children in 1910 and lived there until May 1911.
(Photo: D.Breatnach)
Connolly was born and reared in Edinburgh, left school at 10 and worked with his older brother John for the local authority as a carter, lied about his age and name to join the British Army, in which he first saw Ireland and where he met Lillie Reynolds; they were married soon afterwards.
Like his brother, Connolly became a militant socialist and trade unionist and returned to Ireland at the request of socialists to form the Irish Socialist Republican Party, the first socialist party in Ireland but left for the USA when the party failed to recruit significant numbers.
The ISRP’s office was in Middle Abbey Street, across the road from the premises of the Irish Independent, owned by Irish nationalist William Martin Murphy who was to become an arch-enemy from the Lockout and strikes of 1913 onwards1.
Connolly was a historian and journalist as well as a socialist, trade union organiser and a revolutionary. A report in Breaking News on the unveiling infers that he reluctantly committed to the Rising with the Volunteers; in fact, he had been pushing them to rise for months!
Unveiling speeches
The event started late and in rain. Dáithí De Róiste2, Dublin’s current Lord Mayor, opened the proceedings and commented that the plaque on the house was a reminder that Connolly lived a life in some ways like many ordinary Dubliners, living in a Dublin house and walking city streets.
Dublin Mayor Dáithí De Róiste speaking at the event. (Photo: D.Breatnach)Historian Conor McCabe, who did the research for the plaque, speaking outside No.70. (Photo: D.Breatnach)
Historian Dr Conor McCabe, of Queen’s University Belfast, proposed the plaque as his research established the background that Connolly was living at the address around the time that his most famous work, Labour In Irish History, was first published in book form.
In deference to those in attendance standing in the persistent rain, Conor McCabe kept his speech very short. This was not the case with every speaker.
Joe Cunningham, General Secretary of Siptu3, an amalgamation with other unions of Jim Larkin’s ITGWU which Connolly had led for six years, commented in his speech that it was Connolly who ensured that the interests of working people were incorporated in the 1916 Proclamation4.
Also that, at the ceremony of raising an Irish flag over Liberty Hall5 in April 1916, had declared that “The cause of labour is the cause of Ireland, the cause of Ireland is the cause of labour.”6
Section of crowd in front of No.70 waiting for event to begin. (Photo: D.Breatnach)
Dublin City Council Commemorations & Naming Committee was responsible for the placing of the plaque, in consultation with the house occupants and its chairman, Councillor Mícheál Mac Donncha7 welcomed suggestions from the public for commemoration of people and events.
Sinn Féin Councillor Mac Donncha also commented that James Connolly was a personal hero of his.
Jim Connolly Heron, great-grandson of James Connolly, was called to say a few words and invited family members present to join him in front of the house while he spoke and commented also on the importance of commemorative plaques in protecting historical sites.
He did so in reference to the plaque on a house in Moore Street that had disappeared and come to light in a property developer’s office, raising concerns that had led to the long Moore Street conservation struggle.8
Music and song for the event was performed by The Pullovers ballad group but the amplification system had been removed by then which was a pity as it was needed for the music.
Ballads were performed at the event by The Pullovers band. (Photo: D.Breatnach)
The 1913 Lockout
James Connolly and family returned to Dublin when Jim Larkin9 offered Connolly a post in the young breakaway Irish Transport and General Workers’ Trade Union, which he took up in 1910. Three years later the union was in a fight for its life.
It is sometimes wrongly claimed that the 1913 Lockout was an attempt by employers in Dublin to prevent workers from joining a trade union but there were other unions operating in Dublin during the period and they were accepted by most of the employers.
Apart from the ITGWU recruiting large numbers of ‘unskilled’10 manual workers, it pursued its objectives militantly, using sympathetic solidarity action by other workers to increase the effectiveness of the workers who were in industrial dispute with their employer.
In August 1913 a combination of around 200 employers presented their workforce with a declaration to sign which committed them to having nothing to do with the ITGWU. En masse, the workers refused to sign, were locked out while others struck work and were locked out too.
Right from the beginning the Dublin Metropolitan Police11 attacked the workers on behalf of the employers and in a baton charge on Eden Quay on 30th August fatally wounded two workers, also beating strikers and onlookers the following day in O’Connell Street (‘Bloody Sunday 1913’)12.
As a direct response, Connolly and Larkin set up the Irish Citizen Army as militant response to police attacks, dedicated also to Irish independence and their flag was the gold Starry Plough on a green background,13 which they flew over the Clery’s building in 1916.14
The only Starry Plough flag unfurled at the event, brought by a member of the attendance. (Photo: D.Breatnach)
Comment
The only Starry Plough to be seen at the event was one unfurled during the event independently of the organisers and speakers.
Many who claim to admire Connolly or even to follow his teachings do so on occasion in words but never in action and if Connolly were alive and acting as he did when he was, most of the speakers at the unveiling event would call, if not for his shooting, certainly for his jailing.
SIPTU is much larger than the ITGWU was but it and other unions are much less effective; as a result of the lack of active resistance by the leadership, union membership in Ireland is at an all-time low in modern times. Nor would Connolly have ever agreed to the partition of Ireland.
The Irish Labour Party, which Connolly and Larkin formed in order to give the working class a voice in municipal affairs, has been in coalition government a few times, always capitalist and most often with the right-wing Fine Gael, when they have joined in attacks on the working class.
Joan Burton, while Tánaiste15 of the Labour-Fine Gael coalition government in 2014, complained about working class people being able to afford video-phones and tried to get people jailed for organising an effective protest against her in Jobstown.16 She too attended the unveiling today.
Joan Burton, who attended the event. (Photo: D.Breatnach)
Fianna Fáil is a party of the Gombeen client class and has been in government more often than any other, whereas Sinn Féin in its current incarnation is seeking to replace it with more of the same.
It is a tribute to the memory of James Connolly held so dearly among the working people that these types, so far from Connolly in their reality, are obliged to pay public homage to the man and to his principles while their daily practice is in opposition to all that he stood for.
End.
FOOTNOTES
1An editorial in his newspaper, The Irish Independent (still one of two main newspapers of the state), after a number of British executions of a number of 1916 leaders, called for continued executions of leaders prior to the execution of Connolly and Mac Diarmada, the last of the 14 to be executed in Dublin (Kent was shot in Cork and Casement hanged in London).
3The largest union in Ireland, owner of the current Liberty Hall which stands on the ground of the original union building.
4There is no record that this is the case but it is a natural and widely-held assumption. It is a fact that the Proclamation was printed in Liberty Hall.
5Cunningham said it was “the Irish flag” which most would think a reference to the Tricolour. However that flag had not yet been accepted by the majority as the primary flag of the nation, which really occurred after the 1916 Rising. The flag raised instead by teenager Molly O’Reilly at Connolly’s request had the golden harp on a green background, the essential flag of Irish Republicans from the 1790s until the 1916 Rising.
6This was not a random statement by Connolly but rather a strategic one; on an earlier occasion he had observed that of all social classes in Ireland, the working class remained “the incorruptible inheritors of the fight for Irish freedom”. Connolly wrote that in his foreword to his work Labour in Irish History, clearly indicating that only the working class could be trusted to lead the national struggle through to successful conclusion.
7A prominent member of one of the groups campaigning for Moore Street Battlefield conservation, the Save Moore Street Trust, of which Mac Donncha is Secretary.
8That occurred at the beginning of this century and the struggle has been ongoing since.
9Like Connolly, also a migrant and member of the Irish diaspora but from Liverpool. He founded the Irish Transport & General Workers’ Union after his departure from the British-based National Union of Dock Labourers, for which for a time he had been chief organiser in Ireland. Most of the NUDL’s members in Ireland left to join the ITGWU but in Belfast there was a division along sectarian lines.
10This is the general appelation for work not requiring long periods of training. However, anybody who has been employed in work of this category soon learns that such work requires skill to achieve the objectives set, to pace oneself and to guard against injury. This is the reason those recruiting for such ‘unskilled’ work prefer ‘experienced workers’, a code for ‘skilled’.
11A police force of the period for Dublin City, most of its members being without firearms, unlike the armed all-Ireland colonial gendarmerie of the Royal Irish Constabulary (of which the Police Service of Northern Ireland is a descendant body). DMP minimum height requirements were 5ft 9” in a city where many working people were of low stature; this disparity gave substantial momentum to the swing of a truncheon.
12The event wrongly named as leading to the death of two workers, whose deaths were caused by the previous day’s police attack on Eden Quay, just by Liberty Hall. However, a previously healthy Fianna Éireann boy, Patsy O’Connor, who was clubbed in the O’Connell Street police riot while he administered first aid to a victim, suffered frequent headaches thereafter and died in 1915 at the age of 18.
13The design has seven stars in the Ursa Mayor configuration, with the design of a plough following the stars and a sword as the ploughshare. There is also a plainer version flown by the Republican Congress of the 1930s, the outline of the Ursa Mayor constellation in white or silver stars alone on a blue background.
14The flag survived the shell explosions and raging fires along the southern half of O’Connell Street and is currently in the Military History Museum, Collins Barracks, Dublin, along with a number of other flags flown by the insurgents during the Rising.
15Title of the Deputy Prime Minister in the Irish government.
16A number of activists from different organisations, including Paul Murphy TD (member of the Irish parliament) were arrested in raids some time later and among the charges was “kidnapping” Burton. The untruthfulness of a number of witnesses for the Prosecution including a senior Garda officer were exposed (ironically by video taken by protesters) and the jury acquitted all the defendants of all charges.
26 July 2023 (First published in Socialist Democracy, reprinted by kind permission of author)
Sinéad O’Connor has died. Her death at the age of 56 was announced on RTÉ.
The evening news programmes went into overdrive to pay tribute to an incredibly talented musician. As with all such tributes, the great and good were asked for their opinions or they offered them in any case and they were carried uncritically.
Sinéad O’Conner and daughter Roisín on anti-racist demonstration, Dublin, 2000. (Photo sourced: Internet)
You are not supposed to speak ill of the dead in Ireland, but more than that, you shouldn’t speak ill of those who seek to praise the dead, no matter how hypocritical they are.
There were many milestones in her musical career, not least her rendition of Nothing Compares 2 U. The media highlighted her musical talent, her voice, sometimes describing her as controversial and outspoken and much loved by the public.
Yes, she was loved by the public, to a point, and also by other musicians around the world. However, she was also despised by many, written off and derided by commentators. As with many artists when they die, there is a tendency to rewrite history.
Her politics were sometimes erratic and lurched from one thing to another, though she was always honest and forthright when she did so, unlike many a coward. As erratic as some of her opinions could be, there were no smug self-serving platitudes to fall from her lips. She was no Bono.
She was honest, frequently angry and went after the powerful at times.
The famous incident where she tore up a photo of then Polish Pope, Wojtla in protest at his covering up and enabling of child sexual abuse, a topic she was painfully personally aware of in her own personal life did not go down well with some of those now praising and lamenting her passing.
Bono doesn’t do tearing up photos of popes, he sups with George Bush, the late senator McCain, toured Africa with the head of the World Bank, to name just a few of the scumbags he was not only too happy to rub shoulders with but positively revelled in.
Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael leaders have expressed their sorrow at her death.
They weren’t expressing any support when she denounced child sexual abuse, the entire Irish political establishment were busy helping the Catholic Church cover it up, and later facilitated the institution to evade its legal, financial and moral responsibility.
Their attitude is best summarised in a typical hypocritical Irish attitude when dealing with those who make us uncomfortable that goes through phases of saying, “She’s mad, isn’t she great gas altogether, she may have a point but…, fair play to her, didn’t she speak up at the time”.
All of this without ever examining their own role in it all. The fact that, as we speak, reports of the sexual trafficking of children in care are being ignored by the government, says all you really need to know about their attitude.
If a new musician of her talent and courage were to speak out now, she would be cancelled and silenced by many of those now praising her, including some of those on the left, who have grown quite fond of not breaking ranks and clamping down on those who did.
She always spoke about mental health issues, though she became much more public about her own issues as she got older. She even broke down on a video about it, locked away in a hotel, crying. The video led to many expressing their concern, but also a bit of “there goes that one again”.
We will no doubt get many commentaries on air and in print about her struggles with her mental health, many expressing concern and sympathy with her plight. Many of them will be hypocritical.
It is true that Irish society is more open now about people who have mental health problems, though there is still a stigma attached to it.
Sinéad O’Connor (Photo sourced: Internet)
Ironically RTE followed up the news of her death with another story on the shambolic, criminal (my word, not the words of the media cowards) state of the child mental health services in Ireland (CAMHS).
Micheál Martin and Leo Varadkar may even refer to her troubles in their tributes, but they never cared about them then, they don’t care now and the proof is not only the state of CAMHS, but mental health facilities in general, with long waiting lists, a rush to medication and forgetting about the patient model of care.
Her politics were erratic in many ways, though in fairness they weren’t much more erratic than others who are not judged as quickly. She flirted with republicanism, then broke with them, even applied to join the more recent incarnation of Sinn Féin in 2014, before withdrawing it.
It may be hard to take that seriously, but it was no less ridiculous than Bono condemning the IRA and then spluttering out nonsense about how he admired Bobby Sands. He didn’t, never, ever, when it mattered.
Sineád for all her failings took positions that were unpopular unlike some of the vomit inducing smug types that populate the modern music industry.
For my own part, her politics on racism were without fault. Her song Black Boys on Mopeds is excellent. It points out the hypocrisy of Thatcher criticising China whilst British Police like James Bond had a licence to kill.
“Margaret Thatcher on TV Shocked by the deaths that took place in Beijing It seems strange that she should be offended The same orders are given by her”
The song goes on to say something truer today than before.
“These are dangerous days To say what you feel is to dig your own grave”
And then a description of England, that the great and good would run a mile from.
“England’s not the mythical land of Madame George and roses It’s the home of police who kill black boys on mopeds.”
Now she will be lionised in death, praised, described as troubled, talented, controversial and much loved. We should ignore the sanitised version we will be given and remember the Sineád O Connor who was treated with contempt and disdain at times.
Aside from her incredible musical talent, that is the version that is worth remembering and celebrating, the version they weren’t too happy to celebrate when she was alive.
In Ireland we like to celebrate talented uncomfortable artists and writers in death in a manner we don’t do when alive. She deserves some coherence from us on this.
In all areas of endeavour and no less in revolutionary work it is essential to review our actions (and those of others) periodically in order that we may draw lessons to improve the success of future activity.
Irish history provides an abundance of material to revise.
The most recent period worthy of intensive review in my opinion is the three-decade war, mostly in the Six Counties but also having repercussions within the territory of the Irish State, in Britain and even further abroad.
An article in the July issue of An Phoblacht Abú1, monthly hard-copy newspaper of the Anti-Imperialist Action organisation, discusses the psychological and organisational problems arising from the way that three-decade struggle came to an end and its effects on the resistance movement.
That period in Ireland commenced with a struggle for democratic civil rights, not one of the demands of which were for more than was already well established in the rest of the ‘UK’. But it soon changed into a guerrilla war with huge numbers of political prisoners and jail struggles.
The movement experienced a number of splits and changes of leadership but for most of of the time it was led by the Provisional organisation’s leadership although changes took place inside its own leadership too.
Ruairí Ó Brádaigh, President Provisional Sinn Féin 1970-1983, speaking at GPO rally 1976. He led an unwinnable war. (Photo cred: Pat Langan/ Irish Times)
Some of the Provisional IRA leadership following the 1970s split: Martin McGuinness, Dáithí Ó Conaill, Sean Mac Stiofáin, IRA press conference 1972, Derry. (Photo cred: LarryDoherty)
The period ended with that leadership not only abandoning armed struggle but being coopted with its structures into joint management of the colonial occupation and preparing for joint management of the neo-colonial Irish state, a number of smaller splits in the movement a much disillusion.
The An Phoblacht Abú article concentrates on building or rebuilding trust in leadership through measures such as clear communication, discussion, organisational restructuring, collective solidarity, open discussion, transparent communication and education.
The article does not say this but in my opinion one of the basic educational needs is to acknowledge that in the circumstances, what happened was inevitable (and to consider how different circumstances might be constructed in future).
UNWINNABLE
It is essential in my view to acknowledge that the struggle, as it was waged, was bound to lose. Yes, unwinnable: an unassisted armed struggle against a world imperialist power fought primarily in one-fifth of our territory where the population is deeply divided – how could we think otherwise?
Clearly, the Provisional leadership did think otherwise. Assuming they were not insane or very stupid, on what could their belief have been based?
I can see only two rational possibilities:
1) They believed the British had no essential need to retain the 6-Co. Colony and would abandon it if put under enough pressure, or
2) that the Irish ruling class, through its government, would step in and join the struggle.
If they believed the first, their analysis was not historically-based. Since its invasion and occupation of Ireland in the mid-12th Century, the British ruling class has repeatedly gone to enormous efforts to suppress Irish self-determination.
When they had the opportunity to leave in 1921 they had cultivated a client bourgeoisie, then instigated a civil war and partitioned the land, leaving themselves a firm foothold in the country.
Their initial response to a call for simple civil rights in the late 1960s was violent suppression on the streets, abolition of habeas corpus and introduction of internment without trial – and army massacres.
If the previous lessons of history were not clear to the movement’s leadership, then those events up to 1972 should have made them crystal clear.
If the Republican leadership believed the Irish ruling class would step up, they failed to draw the lessons of history since at least 1921 and to understand the neo-colonial nature of the Gombeen class, amply illustrated in the preceding 50 years of the Irish State.
As embarked upon and fought, the war could not be won but a strugglewas potentially winnable.
However, to have a chance of winning, the struggle would have to be over the whole 32 Counties. And to engage the maximum number of people, it would have to take up the social, cultural, economic and political deficits across the Irish state and across the colony.
The social rights of women and LBG2 people were widely-acknowledged deficit areas, yet the Republican movement did not seriously address them. Of course, doing so would have put the Movement in direct opposition to the Catholic Church hierarchy and its followers.
Why should that be a problem? Hadn’t the Hierarchy been pro-British occupation since the late 1800s3 and anti-Republican since the 1790s? Wasn’t it one of the cornerstones of the neo-colonial Irish State, its social prop and social control mechanism?
Yes but the problem was that some of the leadership themselves were in that ideological ambit and were in any case afraid to disaffect many of their followers. A natural fear, of course. Yet only in that way could the struggle go forward across the Irish state’s territory.
It was left to campaigners mostly outside the Republican Movement, including social democrats and liberals, to fight for the rights to contraception, divorce, equality for women, LGB rights. And later, to take on the huge institutional abuses of the Catholic Church in Ireland.
Those issues affected directly well over half the population of the Irish state and the the leadership lacked the interest or the courage4 to take part in their struggles, never mind lead them, which it left to mostly non-revolutionary leaderships.
There were many other issues that affected people in the 32 Counties which a revolutionary leadership could take up and, I would argue, should have taken up.
The latter includes emigration, rights of the Irish diaspora (particularly in Britain), foreign penetration of the Irish economy, foreign land ownership, housing shortage, industrial struggles, academic freedom, Irish language rights, Church control of education and the health service …
Some of those issues were taken up for a while by the movement in parts of the 26 Cos. prior to the split in the Republican Movement but were progressively dropped as the armed struggle in the 6 Cos. took off.
When years later the Provisional leadership got interested in social democratic reformism, they found they could hardly make any headway in the unions against the Labour Party and the remains of the Workers’ Party – because of the Provos’ earlier overwhelming neglect of that area of struggle.
SUMMARY
The struggle in the Six Counties could not be won precisely because it was primarily confined to that area and also one in which a powerful enemy had seduced a huge section of the population.
When the leadership acknowledged the unwinnability of the struggle as being waged, instead of changing their methods and aims of struggle to take in the whole 32 Cos, they decided on capitulation and getting the most possible out of it for themselves.
A change in the top leadership of Sinn Féin and the IRA: Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness photographed in 1987. They recognised they could not win and set about managing abandoning it while getting something out of the system for the leadership. (Photo: PA)
The leadership of the Republican movement was unwilling to widen the struggle because they believed that it was unnecessary to do so and/ or they were unwilling to overcome their own ideological indoctrination and/or lacked the courage to confront prejudices among their following.
Some of the social struggles have now been won or hugely progressed but without the leadership of the Republican Movement, in fact by leaderships of mostly reformist trends.
Due to leaving the industrial struggle to social democrats, the trade union movement has degenerated hugely and is in a poor state to take on any substantial economic or rights struggle, to say nothing of a revolutionary one.
The surviving Republican movement seems unwilling to acknowledge those historical facts and its failure thus far in leadership. Admission of the facts is necessary in order to commence to repair the movement and to prepare for a struggle with a prospect of success.
End.
FOOTNOTES
1Page 9, entitled COMRADESHIP – GUARD AGAINST BETRAYAL; I intend to review the July issue of the newspaper separately some time soon.
2I have omitted the T from LGB because it is only comparatively recently that the transexual issue has gained wide acknowledgement, whereas the Gay, Lesbian and even Bi-Sexual issue were widely known about at the time under discussion.
3The Irish (settler) Parliament passed an act giving middle-class and higher Catholics the right to vote in 1793.
‘Wha’ – the Junior Minister for Education and his travel distance claims?’
‘Yeah. I mean, according to The Ditch he would’a hav’ta driven more than twice as much as the average taxi driver in Ireland, which averages at 30,352 kilometres a year. Collins claimed 73,807 kilometres.’
‘With a head for figures like that, he should be Minister for Finance!’
‘Heh, heh. But maybe he was moonlighting as a taxi super-driver on top of his parliamentary travelling.’
‘Could be. Those poor TDs only get €107,376 a year to live on.’
‘Apart from expenses. Like tax-deductible driving expenses.’
‘Exactly!’
‘Well, it does certainly look like he’s been taking the country for a ride.’
‘Ha, ha, ha. And ye can’t fault his drive!’
‘I think they’ll soon be calling him ‘Miles’ Collins.’
Late Tuesday night and early hours of Wednesday morning an operation with large numbers of Gardaí and their helicopter circling overhead disturbed residents in the north Dublin city centre area of Berkeley Road and surroundings.
It looked like drug bust, hostage rescue situation or siege, but it was none of those things, instead being an eviction of four housing activists.1
Supporters of the occupation by the RHL gathered at short notice by Berkeley Road during the Garda operation but were roughly pushed far back by Gardaí from the building under attack (Photo: RHL)
The building had been “acquisitioned” by the Revolutionary Housing League which for a couple of years has been occupying buildings lying empty around Dublin in order to house homeless people and to inspire people to take over empty buildings to end the homeless crisis.
One of those buildings was the red-brick building on Eden Quay and corner of Marlborough Street; it had been operated by the Salvation Army as a night shelter for homeless young people but left empty for years after losing funding.
Supporters in front of James Connolly House occupation over a year ago. (Photo: Rebel Breeze)
On 1st May 2022, RHL2 activists ‘acquisitioned’ the building, renamed it James Connolly House and repaired a leak in the roof. In the early morning of 9th June 2022, an estimated 100 Gardaí (some reportedly armed) stormed the building with a Garda helicopter circling overhead.
Two RHL activists performing overnight security on the building were arrested and brought to court, where they declined to be bound over or to give an undertaking that they would not return to the building.
The Salvation Army said that they were renovating the building in order to house Ukrainian refugees. Not only was there no evidence of that in the building when it was occupied but it is empty still, over a year after that eviction3.
Garda evictions have taken place around other acquisitions of empty properties and RHL activists have on each occasion refused to commit to an undertaking not to occupy other properties.
Rather, the RHL has called for empty buildings to be occupied around the country.
The eviction this week
The massive Garda operation this week, including road-blocks, to evict RHL occupants of the Berkeley Road house. (Photo: RHL)
After the eviction in Berkeley Road, four RHL activists were taken to Court where they followed the previous pattern of refusing to be bound over or to promise not to occupy other buildings. Nevertheless they were released with a threat of jail-time if they re-occupied.
The lessee of the building, advertising as Cabhrú and formerly Catholic Housing Aid Society (Chas), has faced allegations of improper use of that building and another, Fr. Scully House on nearby Gardiner Street, some of which were borne out in an investigation by Charities Regulator.4
Supporters of the RHL occupiers outside the High Court (Photo: RHL)
The housing crisis
The numbers of homeless people in the the Irish state passed 12,000 for the first time in May this year and over 4,000 of those are children,5 nor do those figures include people defaulting on their mortgage loans, sleeping on the street or ‘sofa-surfing’ with friends and relations.
According to figures published in April this year, there are over 100,000 empty homes within the Irish state, not counting holiday homes (the Berkeley Road one was empty for three years).
Housing the homeless on the face of it can be accomplished without the revolutionary overthrow of the State and its Gombeen6 ruling class. All that is necessary is a public housing program financed by the State, which it could easily accomplish.
However, the stubborn clinging of the Gombeens to keeping a wide high-return market for property speculators, bank funders and big landlords, year after year as the housing crisis worsens, seems to indicate that a revolutionary remedy is necessary.
This week the Taoiseach,7 Varadkar, inferred that a contributory cause of the housing crisis was that homeless people had turned down alternative accommodation, a nonsensical claim since one person’s declined accommodation could just be offered to the next.
Addressing him in the Leinster House parliament, Sinn Féin TD8 Pearse Doherty9 took him to task for inferring that the homeless were to blame for their situation, in response to which Varadkar denied accusing the homeless and ungraciously amended his statement to “some homeless people”.
He went on to say that homelessness has a number of causes but neglected to name the principal one, viz. that the State does not supply funds to municipal authorities to provide public housing, leaving property speculators, banks and big landlords free to exploit the housing ‘scarcity’.
According to media reports, Doherty neglected to take this opportunity to point out the real cause of the problem and the solution, which confirms the doubts of those who say that his party is “Fianna Fáil Mark II”,10 with no intention to fundamentally alter the economic system in the state.11
Revolutionary Housing League flag on top of the occupied building during the massive Garda operation (Photo: RHL)
In conclusion
The housing crisis shows no sign of being resolved and the ruling class have ridden high-profile ‘shaming’ token occupations such as that of Apollo House in January 2017 without changing anything. RHL occupations do seem to show a way forward if they are widely emulated.
Heavy Garda operations on the one hand and comparatively light treatment by the courts on the other seems to indicate a determination not to tolerate this kind of direct action on homelessness while at the same time moderated by a fear of creating housing action martyrs.
Meanwhile the numbers of homeless grows by the month without any other credible solution in sight.
End.
FOOTNOTES
1This is the police force that has been described by its chief, Commissioner Drew Harris (formerly Asst. Commissioner of the colonial gendarmerie PSNI and therefore also MI5), as his “gang” but which seems unable to prevent serious assaults in the city centre, even in its main street.
2Originally Revolutionary Housing Union, later became RHL.
4Some of those included a friend of the charity’s Chief Exeutive being accommodated in the building allegedly providing only for the elderly, rooms being let to short-stay students without proper guarantees or rights and one of the houses being used as a business address.
8Teachta Dála, member of the Irish Parliament, equivalent to “MP”.
9Deputy leader of the party in the Irish parliament. Holly Cairns, leader of the Social Democrats also attacked Varadkar on the statement.
10Fianna Fáil is one of the two main government parties; originally a split from Sinn Féin led by De Valera, it has been in government more than any other party in the Irish state.
11A number of SF party leaders including its current president have publicly stated that big business has nothing to fear from their party.
rebelbreeze 