GOING THROUGH THE SOLIDARITY MOTIONS

On December 9, 2025 By rebelbreezeIn Current Affairs Comment, Genocide, Imperialism, Indigenous or Original People, Internationalist Solidarity, Ireland, Irish Left, Irish Republicanism, Israeli Zionism, Middle East, Palestine, Political Analysis, Trade unions, ZionismLeave a comment

Diarmuid Breatnach

(Reading time: 4 mins.)

The week before last in Ireland we were led through motions of Palestine solidarity actions once more, motions without practical effect, first by the Irish trade unions, followed the following day by the Ireland Palestine Solidarity Campaign.

*Seen on the IPSC National march* (Photo by: *Participant*)

On Friday, the unions announced a ‘stand out for Palestine’ day – well, not a day exactly, more like a lunch break. It was not a strike, not even a work stoppage, rather some dedicated employees surrendering their lunch break to stand with Palestinian flags etc in front of their workplaces.

Not even a work stoppage of one day, half-day, or even an hour. The union leaderships, in most cases, organised nothing, leaving it up to their members to get together and to sacrifice their lunch breaks.

More of us went through the motions again on Saturday 29 November. From the Garden of Remembrance, down O’Connell Street, across the river, around by Trinity College, up Dawson Street and into Molesworth Street, facing Leinster House.

The Ireland Palestine Solidarity Campaign organised this ‘National Demonstration’ as it does roughly every month. It is supposed, presumably, to impress the Government with its numbers and pressure them to end their collusion with the ongoing genocide of Palestinians.

It has not done so — nor did it in any month or any year in the life of the IPSC, the longest-active Palestine solidarity organisation in Ireland. Nor have the monthly marches brought about any change in Irish Government collusion since the genocide of Gaza began in October 2023.

That is not the fault of the IPSC. What they are to be blamed for is not recognising that and adjusting appropriately to actions of greater pressure. Or, perhaps they recognised it indeed but nevertheless refused to change towards any effective pressurising methods.

The IPSC was for a long time near the ‘middle of the road’ but it has moved further into that position as the genocidal actions of the Zionist colony became worse and as awareness of Israeli crimes spread and grew in Ireland (which it did in part thanks indeed to the work of the IPSC).

*Section of the IPSC National march* (Photo by: *Participant*)

Solidarity work however is not about education in the abstract, raising awareness without using that awareness to bring about change. I am sure the IPSC leadership is aware of that and would wish much change but they do not adapt their actions, rather continuing with the monthly motions.

Probably they do not increase the pressure out of fear of losing their influence with the political class. Which would perhaps be well and good if the political class were delivering on ending collusion with the genocidal state – but they are not, nor is there any indication that they will.

Ireland remains the biggest single importer of Israeli products next to the USA and the biggest in the EU. The Irish Government permits military consignments to fly to Israel through ‘neutral’ Irish airspace and USA aircraft and military personnel to stopover and refuel at Shannon Airport.

*Seen on the IPSC National march as passing O’Connell monument* (Photo by: *Participant*)

Occupying the ground near the middle is only a good thing if it can be used to support action for change; it is a hindrance if the act of being there comes to be more important than the end objective: an end to genocide and the Occupation, with freedom and independence for Palestine.

The IPSC could use its mass base to blockade Dublin Port, through which Israeli products come into the country. It could also blockade other major stocking and distribution points.

The IPSC could organise mass days of action against retail and tech outlets handling Israeli exports and mobilise pickets in support of retail workers refusing to handle Israeli products, such as a Tesco worker currently facing disciplinary procedures (i.e punishment) for that very ‘crime’.

The worker in question, employed by Tesco in Newcastle, Co. Down is a member of the IWW and also of USDAW, main union for retail workers in the UK (as in the colony) but while the word is that his union is defending them, it is not seeking to extend and widen the boycott.

Defending a worker’s right not to act against their conscience is an individual and personal issue.¹ It is understood that the motivation of this worker is one of solidarity with the Palestinian people and against genocide, which is what the trade unions need to be promoting and mobilising.

Union leaderships become bureaucracies with buildings and paid officials, employing administrative staff, growing more and more cautious and afraid of State action (particularly against their funds), moving further away from the ethos that first led to the unions’ creation.

Organised workers in Italy have shown the potential in dock strikes and mass mobilisations but again it was not the mainstream unions that led the action. Canadian provincial trade union Federations have marked all ‘Israel’ goods and services as ‘hot’² and not to be handled.

Union membership in Ireland has declined as union leadership collusion with management and government escalated from the 1980s and resistance actions decreased; an increase in militant action is likely to boost recruitment but in any case organising resistance is the supposed role of trade unions.

Questions around solidarity with Palestine bring many other underlying issues to the fore: media partiality, government collusion, imperialist and colonialist influence, effective means of applying pressure, appropriate leadership, resistance to oppression, solidarity with prisoners.

We have been taught lessons of great importance – but at a terrible cost; we owe it to the Palestinians and to ourselves to apply them.

End.

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FOOTNOTES

SOURCES & FURTHER INFORMATION

Tesco worker facing hearing for refusing to sell ‘Israeli’ products

APPENDIX

From The Cradle news updates on Telegram 6 December 2025:

Ontario’s largest labor federation backs ‘hot cargo’ boycott of Israeli goods

The Ontario Federation of Labour has become the fourth provincial labor federation in Canada to adopt a “hot cargo” resolution against Israeli goods and services.

The move designates all trade ties with Israel as products and services workers will refuse to handle due to their connection to exploitation and oppression. The OFL’s decision follows growing momentum across the country as labor groups escalate solidarity actions.

The New Brunswick Federation of Labour first set the precedent in May when it voted to stop handling weapons destined for Israel. Similar resolutions soon followed in Nova Scotia and Newfoundland and Labrador, culminating in Ontario’s endorsement last week.

Together, these federations represent a significant portion of Canada’s organized labor movement.

The OFL’s stance signals a widening labor-led boycott effort, reinforcing a broader push within Canadian unions to apply economic pressure and support calls for accountability over Israel’s war crimes.

1Individual ‘conscience’ can object to many things we consider necessary, for example to give contraception methods information, or about pregnancy termination, to deal politely with migrants, to serving people in the national language, to sending children to integrated education or even to any school, etc. etc.

2‘Blacked’ was a common term for such cases in the recent past, as was ‘tainted’ further back still (á la Larkin and Connolly) – see Appendix.

THE FIRST WORKERS’ ARMY IN THE WORLD – FORMED IN DUBLIN

On November 19, 2025 By rebelbreezeIn 1916 Rising, Capitalism, Dublin Lockout 1913, Ireland, irish history, Irish Left, Irish Republicanism, National Liberation, Political AnalysisLeave a comment

Diarmuid Breatnach

(Reading time: 6 mins)

Last week saw the anniversary of the creation of the Irish Citizen Army, a militia formed initially to defend the workers from attacks of the Dublin Metropolitan Police on behalf of the Dublin capitalists but that went on to fight in the 1916 Rising.

The ICA was born in the struggle of the consortium of Dublin employers, led by big capitalist and Irish nationalist William Martin Murphy, to smash the militant and successful Irish Transport & General Workers Union in Dublin, where the union had its headquarters, in August 1913.

The workers were presented with a declaration to sign that they would not support the ITGWU but no union in Dublin at the time, whatever they thought of the targeted union and its founder,¹ could sign such a declaration. As workers began to be sacked, others came out in solidarity strikes.

Dublin entered an extended struggle between the organised capitalists and the organised workers. In such a struggle of course, the organised capitalists had on their side the magistrates, the hierarchy of the various churches, the mass media² – and the Dublin Metropolitan Police.

*Anti-WW1 banner across Liberty Hall, HQ of the Irish Transport & General Workers’ Union in October 1914, with the Irish Citizen Army parading outside.*

The DMP, a British colonial police force for Dublin would have needed no specific instructions to attack demonstrations of the ITGWU, their instincts as guardians of colonial ‘law and order’ sufficing but in addition, the attitude of the media would have outlined their ‘duty’.

And after representation from W.M. Murphy to Dublin Castle, the HQ of British control, the ‘duty’ of the DMP was outlined and they were reinforced by a number of the colonial gendarmerie,³ the Royal Irish Constabulary.⁴

On the evening of 30^th August a mass meeting of the ITGWU in Beresford Place, outside the union’s headquarters, Liberty Hall, was attacked by a baton-wielding force of the DMP, leaving two workers mortally wounded⁵ with resulting running battles towards city working class areas.⁶

The following day, the DMP again viciously attacked crowds in O’Connell Street in front of Clery’s from which Larkin attempted to address the crowd in a meeting banned by the city magistrate.⁷

Not long after, a marching music band leading a strikers’ parade was also attacked by the DMP with musical instruments damaged and members injured and the leadership of the union decided that a counter-strategy was required for self-defence and possibly the very survival of the union.

The Lawrence O’Toole Pipe Band’s website lays claims to having been the victims of this attack while other history talks and articles have claimed that the ITGWU’s Fintan Lawlor Pipe Band was the one attacked. It is not impossible that the DMP attacked both.

On 19^th November 1913 the Irish Citizen Army was born⁸ following a suggestion by Seán O’Casey and a call by Jim Larkin as a workers’ defence militia. After Larkin left Ireland for the USA in 1914, James Connolly took over leadership of the ICA and wielded it into a revolutionary force.

I recall attending a book launch or talk about the ICA in which it was described as “the first workers’ army in the world” but searching for that quotation I now find it refuted by AI online and replaced by “first working-class army”.⁹ I cannot agree with the latter.

Most armies, especially nowadays, are “working class” in that this most numerous social class will contribute the vast majority of its rank-and-file. In the past, the peasantry and landless labourers would have been the majority.

Despite the overwhelming worker membership of the ICA, its most important distinction was not in the social class of its membership. Nor was it totally working class, containing as it did some notable members of middle-commercial and one of a landowning classes.¹⁰

What made the Irish Citizen Army very different from other armies and qualified it, I maintain, for the title of “workers’ army” were the intentions and ideological perspective of its founders, the conditions of its birth, ethos of its members and – most of all – its declared purpose.

The ICA was founded with the express intention and necessity of defending a worker’s organisation which was resisting an attempt by the capitalist employers to break that organisation. The struggle was led by declared openly-socialist leaders who gave the call for the ICA’s founding.

In every respect, I maintain, even without a specifically socialist constitution, this was a workers’ army, formed by workers, in a workers’ struggle in defence of their organisation and of the right to organise, defending their previously-won improvements and their dignity.

And the lack of evidence of any such precursor qualifies the Irish Citizen Army as “the first workers’ army in the world.”

*The Starry Plough design of the Irish Citzen Army’s flag, created in 1914.* (In case of confusion about the design or colour *see* https://rebelbreeze.com/2025/06/05/changing-the-starry-plough-colour-and-sean-ocasey/)

However, none of the preceding makes it a socialist organisation, in my opinion. A socialist organisation would have as one of its principal objectives the attainment (whether by reformist or revolutionary methods) of a socialist organisation of society.

As to Lenin having allegedly called the ICA “the first Red Army in the world”, I have searched for the original reference without success, finding only it quoted by speakers, writers, organisations and authors – but never with a reference of where and when Lenin supposedly said it.

I strongly suspect that Lenin never said that. But even if he had, the ICA’s constitution does not support it, being rather of a democratic nationalist and anti-colonial character.¹¹

Socialist Republicans today approve of the Irish Citizen Army throughout the 1913-1916 period. But it is not unknown for them to go further and to characterise it as socialist republican in nature and orientation. I don’t see evidence of this in either the ICA’s constitution or in its membership.

Though certainly Irish nationalist in intention, the word ‘Republic’ is not mentioned anywhere in the constitution. One might argue that it was understood but I can’t see the evidence for that either. Some contemporary prominent Irish nationalists were not even wedded to the idea of a Republic.

The 1919-1921 IRA was not a socialist organisation. Nor was the monarchist Sinn Féin party, even after its founder Griffiths permitted its reformation as Republican in order for the disparate nationalist movement to contest the UK’s 1918 General Election on an abstentionist manifesto.

The political leadership of the Republican movement split over the British offer of dominion status with partition as against a unitary Republic. Churchill was quite adamant that the new Irish State could not be a Republic and it was not declared so until the 1937 Constitution.

Certainly the founders of the ICA were socialist Republicans but in the absence of its constitution being of a kind, for the organisation to qualify as such it must be shown to have been also the widely-embraced ethos of its membership.

Even if imagining that the membership of the ICA, like its founders and a number of its officers, were Irish Republicans, it is still a greater step to assert that they were socialist Republicans, in the sense of intending the socialist organisation of society and elimination of capitalism.¹²

Irish Citizen Army on the roof of Liberty Hall during a flag-raising activity.
(Photo sourced from Internet)

TODAY AND TOMORROW

Whereas these historical questions may fuel debate, no debate should be needed regarding the right of workers to organise to defend and improve their conditions, nor to change the dominant political shape and allegiance of their country, nor to defend their organisation from the police.

Indeed, not only can we take those rights as legitimate and necessary to exercise but it also becomes clear that at some point we will, as workers, as socialists and/ or as Republicans, need such an army. The ruling class has its physical force organisations in the Gardaí and the Irish Army.

The history of ruling classes bears testament to the fact they never relinquish power without using violence against challenges from the rising social forces; even such social and political rights as we have were won through hard struggle, sacrifice and indeed martyrdom.

*Commemorative postcard 1916, showing severe British shelling damage to the original Liberty Hall building, Beresford Place, Dublin.*

The Far-Right has also given ample proof of their readiness to employ violence against the vulnerable sections of our class and against also those they consider opposed to them ideologically; the history of fascism too warns us of the need to organise our defence.

In that respect too let me briefly comment on the false “ICA” recently proclaimed in a video which, while claiming a 32-County outlook and repeating that Britain has no right in Ireland, filled the rest of their video with racist anti-migrant rhetoric, conspiracy theory and lies.

Of course they contain nothing of the workers’ solidarity ethos of the ranks of the real ICA, not to mention the anti-fascist, anti-racist internationalist and socialist outlook of the ICA’s leadership.

The ICA developed as a force for physical defence of workers’ rights on the streets, which is where the DMP and RIC attacked them. It was some years later, in the course of inter-imperialist World War I that the ICA fought in an armed rising alongside other democratic national forces.

Some, usually only among Irish Republicans, have striven also to organise a fighting force. Typically they concentrated on gaining arms and planning armed actions. Isolated from the masses, they were easily infiltrated by State agents, resulting in activists going to jail.

*Captain White & Irish Citizen Army on parade on their grounds at Croydon House, Fairview, N. Dublin City.* (Sourced: *Internet*)

While needed, I believe a workers’ defence force should, in current circumstances, concentrate on street defence-and-offence fighting tactics, also that it should be based on the broad democratic political front, on unity in action against imperialism, colonialism, fascism and Loyalism.

Defence on a broad front basis can and should educate the whole resistance movement, in its disparate ideological influences, as it may be that similar recruits in the Irish Citizen Army were educated and trained under the leadership of revolutionary socialists and republicans.

End.

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FOOTNOTES

SOURCES AND REFERENCES

Click to access ConstitutionOfTheIrishCitizenArmy.pdf

Click to access obrien.pdf

Reprint of Sean O’Casey’s account of the formation of the ICA with a short anti-Irish nationalist introduction: https://libcom.org/article/story-irish-citizen-army-1913-1916-sean-ocasey

In important respects a different account from those by most socialists and Irish Republicans of the origins of the Irish Citizen Army: https://www.thepensivequill.com/2021/04/the-irish-citizen-army-james-connolly.html

St. Lawrence O’Toole Pipe Band: https://slotpb.com/about.html

1913 – A Policeman’s Lot and Murphy’s Law. Talk given at Garda Historical Society at Store Street Station, August 29^th 2013 and Dublin Castle at Police Memorabilia Exhibition, November 16^th, 2013 (speaker’s name not listed). https://1913committee.ie/blog/?p=1800

1Jim Larkin, a migrant and union organiser from Liverpool, had formed the ITGWU as a split from the British-based National Union of Dock Labourers after serious clashes with the latter’s General Secretary, ?????? Sexton (also an Irish nationalist). Larkin was very popular with the ITGWU’s members but much less so with other union leaders around Dublin.

2Not least the editorial and management boards of the Irish Independent, owned by William Martin Murphy, leader of the union-busting consortium.

3An armed police force under central State control, like the Guardia Civil (Spain), Carabinieri (Italy) and similar in France and Turkey.

4A Policeman’s Lot and Murphy’s Law. https://1913committee.ie/blog/?p=1800

5James Nolan and John Byrne, which Wikipedia has for years erroneously recorded as killed the subsequent day in another DMP riot in O’Connell Street, known as Bloody Sunday (1913).

6South-eastwards along Townsend Street towards Ringsend and Northwards towards Corporation Street in the Montgomery (Monto) Street area. There the residents defended the strikers and attacked the police, an example of class solidarity for which they paid soon afterwhen a DMP force paid them a visit, smashing household furniture and ornaments and beating John McDonagh. Paralysed from the waist down and in bed, McDonagh was unable to effectively defend himself and when his wife attempted to do so, she also was beaten and McDonagh died shortly afterwards in Jervis Street Hospital. (see Police Retaliation [sic] in A Policeman’s Lot and Murphy’s Law https://1913committee.ie/blog/?p=1800)

7See a number of entries, including Wikipedia on Bloody Sunday Dublin 1913. Though some of those claim the deaths of James Nolan and Patrick Byrne were caused then, in fact it was the previous day that they received their fatal wounds from the police. Unmentioned in most is the case of Fianna Éireann youth Patsy O’Connor, knocked unconscious as he gave first aid to another victim of the police. Patsy O’Connor suffered repeated headaches thereafter and died on 15^th June 1915 at the age of 18. https://1913committee.ie/blog/?p=2293

8 https://www.nli.ie/1916/exhibition/en/content/stagesetters/other/jimlarkin/index.pdf

9 https://www.connollybooks.org/product/irishcitizenarmy

10I state this qualification despite Connolly’s remark in Workers’ Republic, 30 October 1915: Hitherto the workers of Ireland have fought as parts of the armies led by their masters, never as a member of any army officered, trained and inspired by men of their own class. Now, with arms in their hands, they propose to steer their own course, to carve their own future.

Constance Markievicz and Katherine Lynn were officers in the ICA but neither were born into the working class.

11See https://cartlann.org/dicilimt/2022/05/ConstitutionOfTheIrishCitizenArmy.pdf

12I am not unaware that a significant number of individuals and organisations claiming to be Irish socialist Republicans currently spend hardly any time at all discussing the socialist organisation of society.

“NO TO NATO” PROTEST AT DUTCH AND GERMAN WARSHIPS IN DUBLIN PORT

On October 20, 2025October 26, 2025 By rebelbreezeIn Current Event Report, Ireland, Irish Left, Irish Republicanism, National Liberation, National Sovereignty, NATO, OTANLeave a comment

Clive Sulish

(Reading time: 2 mins.)

Dutch and German warships docked in Dublin’s Liffey Port were met by anti-NATO protesters late Saturday afternoon with banners, an Irish Tricolour and Starry Plough flags and shouts through a loudhailer with passing traffic beeping in solidarity.

The huge Dutch naval landing platform Johann De Witt was immediately visible on the north Liffey quay just on the seaward side of the Tom Clarke Bridge and the protesters took their stand there in front of the security gates, visible to airport and south and northbound Dublin traffic.

*German NATO frigate FGS Hamburg entering Dublin Bay, bound for the Port security gate.* (Photo cred: *Afloat*)

The Dutch ship was flying Holland and NATO flags. Among the slogans the protesters periodically chanted were: No NATO troops in Ireland! NATO, NATO, NATO: Out, out, out! From Belfast to Killarney – We don’t want your NATO Army! NATO imperialism – Out of Ireland!

*Anti-Nato stickers being affixed to the Dublin Port security gate.* (Photo: *R.Breeze*)

The chants grew louder as military personnel (in street clothes) approached or emerged from the security gates behind the protesters but there was no physical confrontation from either side. No Gardaí attended either, unlike the protest at Ireland’s NATO HQ in April this year.

On that occasion Gardaí pepper-sprayed the peaceful protesters and broke the ankle of one of their number, in addition to arresting them. Some of the arrested were bailed and are due to appear in court in Dublin on 23rd February 2026.

*Anti-Nato protesters, the Dutch NATO naval ship clearly visible in background.* (Photo: *R.Breeze*)

NATO was originally claimed to be a western European military defensive force against the Soviet Bloc. However, after the Bloc’s collapse, NATO continued to expand until it has now an additional 17 member states (and the threat of Ukraine joining led to the current war with Russia).

The individual western member states, for example the US, UK, France have been waging imperialist wars for decades. But the NATO military alliance’s forces also fought imperialist wars in a number of countries: Bosnia, Kossovo, Afghanistan and Libya.

*Anti-Nato protesters.* (Photo: *R.Breeze*)

The protest on Saturday was organised at very short notice by Action for Palestine Ireland and Anti-Imperialist Action Ireland. Many passing vehicles, both private, company and taxi sounded their horns in support and also gave a thumbs-up or clenched fist salute.

Clearly the protest context was not only a lack of welcome for a member of the western imperialist military alliance but also fears that the Irish ruling class wants to join that alliance too and is currently trying to remove the ‘Triple Lock’ impeding its move in that direction.

End.

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*Anti-Nato protesters on Saturday, the Dutch NATO naval ship clearly visible in background.* (Photo: *R.Breeze*)

SOURCES

https://afloat.ie/port-news/naval-visits/item/69129-dutch-navy-visits-dublin-port-with-german-frigate-also-in-capital

https://ondisc.nd.edu/news-media/news/the-addition-of-nato-members-over-time-1949-2023/

https://www.tni.org/en/publication/saving-the-triple-lock

SAVAGE GARDA REPRESSION OF PALESTINE SOLIDARITY ACTION

On October 6, 2025October 26, 2025 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 (4^th 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

BLANKET, NO WASH AND HUNGER-STRIKE – FIVE YEARS OF REPUBLICAN PRISONER STRUGGLE AGAINST CRIMINALISATION

On September 27, 2025September 28, 2025 By rebelbreezeIn British imperialism, Guerrilla Action, History, Human Rights, Ireland, Irish Left, Irish Republicanism, National Liberation, Political Analysis, Political PrisonersLeave a comment

Diarmuid Breatnach

(Reading time main text: 4 mins.)

We’ve recently passed by the date of the start of a monumental prison resistance struggle when IRA prisoner Kiaran Nugent refused on 14 September 1976 to wear prison uniform.

The Hunger Strike of 1981 tends to be remembered as an isolated event in the history of the Irish Republican prisoners’ opposition to criminalisation. But it was five years of struggle through stages that ended eventually in the martyrdom of ten Republicans.

Irish Republicans had been in imprisoned in British jails since the late 18^th Century.¹ After the Irish national bourgeoisie accepted the British partition of Ireland, Republican prisoners were held in prisons in the Irish State and in the British colony of the Six Counties and at times in Britain too.

*Long Kesh/ the Maze Prison, in the occupied 6 Counties.*

This situation continued on low but constant level with higher points during the Civil War (1922-1923), the pogroms in the Six Counties, the 1930s,² the 1940s, the Border Campaign (1958-1962) and the Civil Rights campaign from the mid-1960s onwards.

The Wikipedia section on Special Category Status states that it was introduced for Republican prisoners serving sentences in the Six Counties in 1972³ but neglects to mention that it was already widespread among nationalist prisoners due to internment without trial a year earlier.

The British introduced internment without trial in their Irish colony in 1971 and one of the effects of that measure was to put a huge number of mostly nationalists from the Six County colony into jail. These prisoners were all accorded Special Category Status and wore their own clothes.

*British soldiers capturing and taking away a civilian in the Occupied Six Counties of Ireland* (Photo sourced: *Internet*)

Over the life of the measure, 1,981 people were interned without trial in the Six Counties (British Army’s Operation Demetrius). Of those detained 1,874 were from a Catholic/Republican background while, towards the end, 107 were from a Protestant/Loyalist background.

Special Category Status distinguished the internees from other political prisoners which were few in number at the time but its major impact was to distinguish them visibly from social prisoners or what are commonly called ‘criminals’ and was often called Political Prisoner Status.

In June 1972 other nationalists/ Irish Republicans⁴ charged and convicted were also accorded Special Category Status,⁵ which came to be seen as prisoner of war status for opponents of the British colonial occupation, despite Britain’s claims that the prisoners were just criminals.

Early protests in support of the prisoners ‘on the blanket’ in 1976. It was mostly women relatives, partners and their friends who launched the Republican prisoner solidarity movement. As the photo legend also illustrates, there was still another male political prison, Crumlin Road (‘the Crum’) and Armagh Jail for female Republican prisoners. (Photo sourced: *Internet*)

Internment without trial in the Six Counties, generally recognised as a failure from both political and military points of view, was formally ended after four-and-a half years on 5 December 1975⁶. As resistance continued, including now an armed aspect, more prisoners saw the inside of jails.

But they were still under Special Category regime and wearing their own clothes. The following year on 5 March 1976, Merlyn Rees as Secretary of State implemented the Labour Government’s⁷ decision to remove Special Category Status from any subsequently-convicted prisoners.

MERL

The first Irish Republican prisoner to be informed he would have to wear prison uniform under the new rules was Kiaran Nugent. His reply, though pithy has gone down in the records of Irish resistance statements: “You’ll have to nail it to my back.”

Stripped naked, Vol. Nugent was put in a cell, from which he found a blanket and wrapped it around himself. It was a natural act to cover his nakedness but he may also have known that Irish Republican prisoners of the Irish State in the 1940s had done the same.

The Blanket Protest had begun and spread as more prisoners coming into the prison system took the same stand. There it might have stayed were it not for the violence and cruelty of HM Prison regime by its warders regularly assaulting prisoners on their way to and back from the showers and toilets.

In 1978 the Irish Republican prisoners in the Maze H-Blocks⁸ resolved to remain in their cells, emptying their excreta out the window and their urine under their cell doors into the passageway. So the prison authorities blocked up their windows and warders pushed urine back under their doors.

The Irish prisoners then had nowhere to put their excreta so they smeared it on the walls. They built a dam of bread fragments around their door to prevent their urine being pushed back in. These conditions they endured until the prison riot squad beat them out of their cells for power-hosing.

Those who watched the film Hunger (2008) directed by Steve McQueen will have seen some of that and how they treated the naked prisoners too, beaten to the ground, anus probed for contraband messages or materials, the same gloved hand often opening their mouths to look inside also.

Their flesh was forcibly abraded with scrubbing brushes and they were often inserted into cells still wet from the hosing. Once back inside cells, they continued the protest.

On 27 October 1980 seven Republican prisoners, against the orders of IRA GHQ, embarked on a hunger strike included the Five Demands to break the system, which they terminated after 53 days on receiving promises from the authorities which were then reneged upon.

The 5 Demands:

The right not to wear a prison uniform;
The right not to do prison work;
The right of free association with other Republican prisoners, and to organise educational and recreational pursuits;
The right to one visit, one letter and one parcel per week;
Full restoration of remission lost through the protests.⁹

Outraged at the reneging, Republicans renewed the hunger strike with their previous Provisionals’ jail Commanding Officer¹⁰ insisting he be first. So was Bobby Sands the first to die and another nine martyrs behind, seven Provisional IRA and 3 INLA as they came on to the strike in sequence.

Photograph images with names of the ten Hunger Strike Martyrs of 1981 in the sequence of their death: Vols. Bobby Sands (IRA), Francis Hughes (IRA), Ray McCreech (IRA), Patsy O’Hara (INLA), Joe McDonnell (IRA), *Martin Hurson* *(IRA), Kevin Lynch (INLA), Kieran Doherty (IRA), Thomas McElwee (IRA), Mickey Devine (INLA).* (Photo sourced: *Internet*)

The effect of the hunger strikes of 1981 was huge in Ireland, Britain and further abroad. IRA Vol. Kieran Nugent had an important hand in pushing the process but so did Mervyn Rees, William Whitelaw, Brian Faulker and Edward Heath,¹¹ in a long process of repression and resistance.

Today the struggle continues with approximately 20 Irish Republican prisoners, male and female in prisons between the neo-colonial Irish state and the British colony of the Six Counties. They have essentially won the five demands, though official harassment in the colony’s jails is endemic.

End.
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APPENDIX: Brief biography of Kieran Nugent (12th September 1958 – 3rd May 2000).

Volunteer Kieran Nugent began his short life presumably in the occupied Six Counties of Ireland but all the references I have found so far begin with him at the age of 15 years of age, standing at a corner with a friend on the corner of Merrion Street and Grosvenor Road, West Belfast.

It was 20^th March 1973.¹² A car pulled up beside them asking for directions but an occupant of the vehicle then opened fire with a submachine gun. Nugent was seriously wounded, shot eight times in the chest, arms and back. His friend, Bernard McErlean, aged 16, was killed.

*Kieran Nugent, first of the Republican prisoners ‘on the Blanket’* (Photo sourced: *Internet*)

Another youth was seriously injured also.¹³ Local people reported that a British Army Saracen armoured car had crashed through a nearby barricade and that was what had allowed entry for the murder gang, later claimed by the UDA, a British proxy Loyalist militia.

“At some point afterwards, Nugent joined the IRA.”¹⁴ The youngest age for IRA membership was 17 and Nugent aged 16 was arrested by the British Army, automatically refused bail, and at trial, after five months on remand in Crumlin Road Prison, Belfast, case withdrawn, he was released.

Kieran became an active volunteer until his arrest and internment without trial, on 9 February 1975. He served nine months in Cage 4 of Long Kesh Detention Centre (later renamed The Maze) in the Six Counties, until 12 November 1975. But was arrested and imprisoned again on 12 May 1976.

Vol. Nugent was charged with hijacking of a bus, a frequent Republican resistance activity in Belfast where the vehicle would then be utilised as a barricade. His sentence was three years in jail which he was commencing when he began the blanket protest.

The cause of death for Kieran Nugent was given as heart attack. A number of his acquaintances remarked that he had sunk into alcoholism with some adding that the movement had given him no support. Whether true or not, many former Republican prisoners of the period had shortened lives.

FOOTNOTES

SOURCES

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special_Category_Status

SC status generalised for Republican prisoners: https://cain.ulster.ac.uk/events/bfriday/bac.htm

https://cain.ulster.ac.uk/events/intern/chron.htm

1Republican prisoners were held in British jails in Ireland, Britain and Australia – and for centuries before that Irish clan members had been incarcerated in Britain and Ireland.

2When the anti-fascist struggles also contributed to prisoner of the states.

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

4I am using the term “nationalists” as a broad and not strictly accurate term to describe the people of the Catholic ghettoes and areas of the British colony; of course many of them could have been also or instead mainly democrats, socialists. The term “Irish Republicans” I am using to describe those belonging to organisations nominally of Irish Republican kind but again how much each was truly Republican in ideology varied, for example in their opinion of the appropriate role of the Catholic Church in Irish society.

5Sentenced and remanded in custody Irish Republicans in jails went ona hunger strike for ‘political status’ in 1972 and the Provisional IRA during the Truce negotiations of June that year asked for political status for them which William Whitelaw conceded.

6 https://cain.ulster.ac.uk/events/intern/chron.htm However internment without trial in fact continued by charged Republicans being refused bail and remaining in jail for two years or more awaiting trial. Bail decision and trial would be in the special no-jury Diplock Courts.

7It is difficult to understand any Irish person or indeed any anti-imperialist putting any faith in a British Labour government. Apart from its long imperialist history, it formed part of the national government that executed leaders of the 1916 Rising, sent troops to the Six Counties to quell the civil rights struggle in 1969, introduced the Prevention of Terrorism Act in Britain in 1974 and framed a score of Irish people for bombings, removed Special Category Status in 1976 …

8A special male political prison containing panopticon-designed blocks in Lisburn, Co. Antrim, built in 1971 and closed in 2000, the future of the empty buildings uncertain. Female Republican political prisoners were kept in Armagh Jail and fought with different tactics, including taking the Prison Governor hostage at one point.

9Prisoners disobeying prison rules are punished in a number of ways, one of which is loss of the remission off sentence normally expected.

10In a long tradition the prisoners of each political group in jail elect their leader and previous ranks are abandoned for the duration of the incarceration.

11In sequence: Labour Party Secretary of State; Conservative party Cabinet Minister; Unionist Prime Minister of the colony; Conservative Prime Minister of the UK.

12 https://www.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=672093692010347&id=100076291652304&_rdr

13Ibid.

14Various sources

“WHEN MY COUNTRY TAKES ITS PLACE AMONG THE NATIONS OF THE EARTH”

On September 22, 2025November 2, 2025 By rebelbreezeIn Cultural Comment, History, irish history, Irish Left, Irish Republicanism, National Liberation, Political Prisoners, Song, Torture, Uncategorized, USALeave a comment

Diarmuid Breatnach

(Reading time: 3 mins.)

Dublin Political History Tours Facebook page reminds us of the 20^th September anniversary of the public execution on of “Bold Robert Emmet, the darling of Erin”, leader of the unsuccessful Republican insurrection in Dublin on 23^rd July 1803.

*Coloured drawing: The executioner holds up Robert Emmet’s head to the crowd, sections of which demonstrate their repugnance of the act and are repressed English soldiers on horseback.* (Sourced: *Internet*)

I reproduce the Dublin Political History Tours text (reformatted for R. Breeze):

On Saturday we passed by the anniversary of the execution by the English occupation forces of Robert Emmet, United Irishman. Emmet had been condemned to death for planning an insurrection for Irish self-determination which the English Occupation called ‘treason’.

Leaving behind in Kilmainham Gaol his comrade Anne Devlin, who had endured torture and death of family members without giving the authorities any information, Emmet was taken to the front of St. Catherine’s Church.²

(This building is) on Thomas Street in Dublin’s Liberties area on the west side of the city centre. The site chosen was sending a message to the populace of the area that had nationalist and republican sympathies.

There, in front of a huge crowd and many soldiers, Emmet was hanged and then beheaded, the executioner holding up the dripping head to the crowd. His body was later returned to the Gaol before being later buried in Bully’s Acres in the grounds of the Royal Hospital Kilmainham.

Emmet’s corpse was later disinterred in secret and reburied elsewhere by friends or family and, despite a number of sites being speculated, its current location is unknown.

There is a monument to the execution inside the grounds of the St. Catherine’s building and a stone plaque on the wall outside it.

*The monument inside the ground at the front of St. Catherine’s Church, Thomas Street, Dublin.* (Source: *Kilmainham Tales*)

Robert Emmet was very popular in Ireland at the time and his memory is still. A statue in his honour stands in Dublin’s Stephens Green, a replica of another two at locations in the United States.

Anne Devlin endured three years in Kilmainham Gaol and according to Richard Madden (1798 – 5 February 1886), chronicler of the United Irishmen who sought her out, was followed everywhere in public by police.

(who were) observing anyone who she spoke to, as a result of which many were afraid to speak to her. Her body lies in Glasnevin Cemetery.

“Bold Robert Emmet” is a traditional ballad in the martyr’s honour and “Anne Devlin” also has a much more recent song in hers by Pete St.John.

(quoted passages end)

In the 1916 Proclamation of Independence, “the right of the people of Ireland to the ownership of Ireland” is proclaimed and that “six times in the past 300 years they have asserted it in arms”, probably referring to insurrections of 1641, 1689, 1798, 1803, 1848 and 1867.³

Historians have mostly dismissed the 1803 uprising as never likely to succeed but a minority have rated the preparations highly, including the innovations of signal rockets and folding pike handle for concealed personal carrying.

RH Madden, the first historian of the United Irishmen was of the opinion that the insurrection attempt was engineered by the English Occupation’s administration in Dublin Castle in order to justify continued repression of Irish republicanism and to eliminate some leaders.

Generally historians have tended not to give much credence to Madden on that issue but it is certain that the Occupation had a network of spies in operation in Ireland and that some had penetrated Emmet’s conspiracy.

Emmet on the scaffold with St. Catherine’s Church behind, the executioner beside him, the crowd in the street and many English soldiers, on foot and on horseback. The illustration was employed by Dublin Political History Tours but easily sourced on the Internet.

However it is not for the manner of the 1803 insurrection that Emmett has been fondly remembered in Ireland to this day 123 years later – and abroad for decades after his death⁴ – but for the calm manner in which he faced his enemies, including his executioner and for his eloquence at his trial.

Past insurrections contain lessons for us today and a serious evaluation should be attempted, perhaps with a number of submissions from historians of different opinions on the matter, to deal with questions around Emmet’s return from France and the planning of the insurrection in Ireland,.

For us today however, whether Republicans or more generally anti-colonialists and anti-imperialists, it is also necessary to revere the memory of revolutionary action for a democratic Irish Republican and to uphold his and Anne Devlin’s spirit of defiance in resistance.

End.

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*Statue monument of Robert Emmet in Washington DC, a copy of which stands in St. Stephens Green, looking across the road to his erstwhile home* *and other copies stand in Emmetsburg, Iowa and Golden Gate Park, San Francisco, California.* *Those in the USA were all cast by the artist Jerome Connor between 1916 and 1919.* (Photo sourced: *Internet*)

*Statue monument in Rathfarnham dedicated to Anne Devlin from Wicklow, a member of the United Irishmen conspiracy, tortured and jailed but never gave her captors any information.* Sculptor: Clodagh Emoe (*Gracies, Maria, for bringing this to my attention*).

FOOTNOTES

1From Emmet’s famous speech from the dock of the courthouse in Green Street that not until then should his epitaph be written. I have no doubt that Emmet meant “nation-states of the world” because Ireland was in his time more than what we would understand today from the vague term of “country” – it was clearly, though under foreign occupation, already a nation with its own unique culture and a long history. She has yet to take that place to which Emmet referred and aspired for her.

2Note that was the Anglican St. Catherine’s Church, as a Catholic St. Catherine’s is also located not far away on Meath St. The Anglican church was closed in the 1960s but later reopened and reconsecrated as an Anglican Church. The interior seems very untypical of Anglican churches. Emmet was raised in the Anglican faith.

3Believed to refer to, in sequence: the Irish and Norman Irish clans in the Confederation’s uprising, the Williamite War’s, United Irishmen’s, Robert Emmets’, Young Irelanders’, the Fenians’. Coincidentally, the large monument to uprisings in Ireland erected by the National Graves Association in the St. Paul’s section of Glasnevin Cemetery also includes only six dates but they are of Republican risings only, beginning with 1798 and ending with 1916.

4I read somewhere that even in England Radicals would read Emmet’s speech as a high point of their events including formal dinners.

SOURCES

https://www.facebook.com/profile.php

“A GREAT NIGHT” AT SECOND SOLIDARITY SESSIONS

On September 19, 2025November 2, 2025 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 17^th..

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 30^th 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

A SATURDAY IN DUBLIN: TWO MARCHES AND A CONCERT

On September 3, 2025 By rebelbreezeIn British imperialism, Guerrilla Action, History commemoration, Human Rights, Ireland, Irish Left, Irish Republicanism, National Sovereignty, Political Prisoners, Song, Song in StruggleLeave a comment

Clive Sulish

(Reading time: 4 mins.)

Dublin city centre on Saturday saw two marches scheduled to start at the same time from the Garden of Remembrance, both of which were drenched by heavy showers, as were fans attending the Robbie Williams concert in nearby Croke Park stadium.

The first march to set off was the largest, the Harvey Morrison protest, the Hunger Strike Commemoration organised by Dublin Independent Republicans waiting for the space to clear in order to assemble theirs, with pipers, band and various banners forming up.

*Supporters of both marches are mingled here though the majority are there for the Harvey Morrison march.* (Photo: *R.Breeze*)

The Harvey Morrison protest was about the long wait the named boy had for appropriate treatment from the Irish health service for his condition of spina bifada and scoliosis. As he waited, his spine continued to curve causing him pain and though underwent surgery last year died on July 29^th.

It emerged last year that Harvey had been removed from Children’s Health Ireland’s (CHI) urgent scoliosis surgery waiting list, without his family being informed. In 2017 Simon Harris declared that no child would wait for more than four months for scoliosis treatment.

Apart from those requiring specialist treatment for rarer medical conditions, people with much more common complaints face many hours in A & E before being seen by a doctor or having an X-ray taken, with an average of 500 people admitted to hospital on trolleys daily awaiting beds.¹

Seven different speakers addressed them at their rally on Custom House Quay, being well received by the crowd with a small exception, which was when a participant shouted ‘Traitor!’at Mary Lou Mac Donald, President of the Sinn Fein party, before being told by march stewards to keep quiet.

Calling SF (and any in Government) politicians ‘traitor’ is a frequent position of those on the Far-Right² in the Irish State, for racist reasons. Indeed, a number of Far-Right activists were spotted among the marchers but it seems they were unable to dominate the event.

THE HUNGER STRIKE MARTYRS COMMEMORATION

A handful of fascists were also observed watching the Hunger Strike martyrs’ commemoration gather and photographing them but when some of their targets began to photograph them in turn, they walked away, presumably to go and promote themselves and their lies on social media.

*Fascists who had been filming the Hunger Strike Commemoration moving off as a camera turns on them.* (Photo: *R.Breeze*)

Irish Republicans, who are opposed to (and by) the Far-Right, also call Sinn Féin ‘traitors’ but for the reason that they consider the party has left the struggle and colludes with the neo-colonial ruling class of the state and with the English occupation in the Six Counties.

*The pipers prior to setting off on the march.* (Photo: *R.Breeze*)

Two pipers led off the Hunger Strike commemoration organised by Independent Dublin Republicans followed by a full colour party and the James Connolly Republican Flute Band, from Derry. In traditional two lines style they marched through onlooking crowds in O’Connell Street.

The march crossed the Liffey into D’Olier Street, back up O’Connell Street and after a pause at the Government-threatened GPO, into Parnell Street, then around the western and northern sides of the Square and back into the Remembrance Garden for the commemoration ceremony.

*The Hunger Strike Commemoration march proceeding down from the Garden of Remembrance and just about to enter Dublin’s main thoroughfare, O’Connell Street.* (Photo: *R.Breeze*)

And it rained – it poured down rain. Which was bad enough on the audience but much much worse on the colour party in shirt and trousers, the RFB members and those holding the portraits of the ten hunger strike martyrs and a number of banners.

Dixie Elliot was introduced as the main speaker, well-known in Republican circles, former member of the Provisional IRA, an ex-POW and ‘Blanketman’.³

Seemingly undeterred by the pouring rain, Elliot spoke at substantial length though whether through lack of projection or faulty amplifier, much of what he said was lost to many in the audience. From snatches he could be heard going through the history of the recent three decades’ war.

The targets of his condemnation were not alone the British occupation and the Irish State’s complicity but also the leadership of the Irish Republican movement who had abandoned the struggle and become part of the colonial administration in the Six Counties.

Expressing solidarity with the Palestinian struggle and against imperialism, Elliot also condemned the far-Right in Ireland who claim to be ‘patriots’ in order to promote their racism and he counter-posed the example of Bobby Sands’ internationalism in his poem The Rhythm of Time.

*The Connolly Memorial Republican Flute Band setting out on the march from Garden of Remembrance.* (Photo: *R.Breeze*)

Both Elliot and the Chairperson called for solidarity with Irish Republican political prisoners and the framed Craigavon Two, convicted in a no-jury political Occupation court and still in jail 16 years later.

Finally chairperson Ado Perry thanked people for their attendance, the colour party and audience stood to attention and the piper played the air to the chorus of the song generally known as Amhrán na bhFiann (and of which the chorus melody is also the ‘National Anthem’ of the Irish State).

CROKE PARK CONCERT

The Gaelic Athletic Association stadium in Croke Park was the venue for a Robbie Williams concert in Dublin and the fans were flocking into town in rainproof macs that the marchers could have done with. The previous weekend it had been the Manchester Gallaghers, i.e. Oasis there.

The finals in Gaelic football for men and women and in hurling have been played in Croke Park in previous weekends and now it seems it’s rock concerts season.

The far-Right protested the couple of occasions that the stadium was rented to celebrate the Muslim feast day of Eid. Apparently English musicians and bands playing there are are not problematic for them. But then nor are the banks and property speculators causing the housing crisis.⁴

End.

*Main speaker, Dixie Elliot, speaking at rally in Garden of Remembrance at end of Hunger Strike Commemoration march.* (Photo: *R.Breeze*)

FOOTNOTES

FURTHER INFORMATION

https://www.irishtimes.com/politics/2025/08/13/family-of-recently-deceased-boy-harvey-morrison-sherratt-to-meet-simon-harris/

https://www.irishtimes.com/news/ireland/irish-news/adams-and-mcguinness-betrayed-everyone-a-former-ira-prisoner-reflects-on-troubles-1.4578091

https://www.facebook.com/p/Independent-Dublin-Republicans-100090801607007

1 https://www.inmo.ie/News-Campaigns/Trolley-Watch/

2It is also the position of a number of Irish Republican organisations and individuals for entirely different reasons. See e.g https://www.irishtimes.com/news/ireland/irish-news/adams-and-mcguinness-betrayed-everyone-a-former-ira-prisoner-reflects-on-troubles-1.4578091

3One of the Irish Republican ‘blanket protester’ prisoners who resisted the attempt of the colonial prison service to make them wear regulation prison uniform, wearing underwear and a blanket instead. This condition degenerated into the ‘no wash’ and ‘dirty protests’ which the prisoners sought to overcome with the hunger strikes of 1980 and 1981 when 10 prisoners died.

4Which the Far-Right blame instead on migrants.

REPUBLICANS, IRISH REPUBLICANS AND SOCIALISM

On September 2, 2025 By rebelbreezeIn Capitalism, Imperialism, Ireland, irish history, Irish Left, Irish Republicanism, National Liberation, Political AnalysisLeave a comment

Diarmuid Breatnach

(Reading time: 5 mins.)

I wish to briefly clear up what I believe to be some confusion about the terminology in the title, basing not so much on opinion but relying in the main on fact as illustrated by history.

I will attempt to show thereby that Republicanism and Irish Republicanism are different things ideologically and that socialism is different from both of them.

Republicanism entered the world as a political aspiration and, after revolutions in Britain, France and the USA, practised as a system of Government. It proclaimed electoral democracy for its citizens (at first men but later women) – but quite clearly the bourgeois class ruled society.

*George Washington, Republican, being presented with the flag of the early American Republic.* (Image sourced: *Internet*)

It was a democratic bourgeois (essentially capitalist) ideology characterised by individual choice,¹ opposition to feudalism and monarchy and separation of church and state. It was not essentially socialist nor even anti-colonial, as we can clearly see from its early examples.²

Republican government was overthrown in Britain (English and Scottish administrations), the monarchy restored and in time a kind of compromise monarchy-democratic system evolved. The republican system in France and the USA remained and is with us to this day.

*Painting of Oliver Cromwell, an English Republican whose name became part of a curse in Ireland (including for Irish Republicans!).*
(Image sourced: *Internet*)

Irish Republicanism also developed as a bourgeois ideology (drawing on English, French and US Republican thinking)³ but it was clearly also in favour of Irish sovereignty and therefore against the colonialisation of Ireland.⁴ Once measures of reform were blocked it became revolutionary.

This gave rise to the revolutionary organisations of the United Irishmen of the 1790s and early 1800s and the Young Irelanders of the middle of the 19^th Century; also of the Irish Republican Brotherhood of the later 19th.

The IRB or Fenians however had a strong working class character and were admitted to the First International Workingmen’s Association, the first international socialist organisation. However, Irish Republicanism remained a bourgeois ideology albeit democratic and revolutionary.

Socialism

The ideology of socialism has a long pedigree but was made more concrete under and in opposition to capitalist society. It found development on a scientific ideological and organisational basis particularly with the work of two German migrants to Britain, Karl Marx and Frederick Engels.

This ideology emphasises communal over individual ownership of the means of production, distribution and use/ consumption and sees the socialist state as a stage on the way to communist society. Its mantra is: From each according to their ability, to each according to their contribution.⁵

In terms of implementation the Paris Commune of 1871 was the first socialist capture of a city and the October Socialist Revolution of 1917⁶ in Russia the first time a country was taken by socialists.⁷

Irish Republican ideology continued into the early decades of the 20^th Century with its military organisation first the Irish Volunteers of the 1916 Rising and later, the Irish Republican Army of the War of Independence, whose leadership split over the English offer of autonomy with partition.

Ireland had been kept under-industrialised by colonialism but socialist political organisation was developing slowly in some urban areas. In 1896 Connolly and others founded the Irish Socialist Republican Party in Dublin and in 1912 he and Larkin also the Irish Labour Party.

In 1911 Larkin had founded the Irish Transport and General Workers Union.

The employers strove to break the ITGWU and implemented a Lockout of union members or supporters in 1913; attacks on the workers by the Dublin Metropolitan Police led to the defensive creation of the Irish Citizen Army – the first workers’ army in the world.⁸

Some Irish Republican leaders and followers sympathised with the strikers and some did not but the Republican movement did not mobilise in their support with the exception of a number of members of Iníní⁹ na hÉireann, which would later split between the ICA and Cumann na mBan.

In 1916 the IRB organised an insurrection with the participation of its Irish Republican military forces of the Irish Volunteers, Cumann na mBan and Na Fianna Éireann united with the Socialist force of the Irish Citizen Army (including women members).¹⁰

The War of Independence 1919-1921 was led by the Irish Republican movement with some support, particularly in intelligence and arms smuggling, by the Irish Citizen Army.

The Civil War 1922-23¹¹ followed the British offer of autonomy with partition, as the leadership of the Irish Republican movement, including a section of the IRA split. The ICA had lost its leadership but did not join the neo-colonial side and in subsequent years faded organisationally.

The main opposition leadership to the State returned to being nationalist in the shape of Sinn Féin and the Anti-Treaty IRA, both of which split again with a substantial number joining the De Valera-led Fianna Fáil, which would soon show itself to be also neo-colonial in outlook and practice.

In this period a Socialist current grew within the Irish Republican movement, responding to international and domestic events including the growth of fascism. The short-lived Republican Congress attempted to combine the Socialist and Irish Republican currents in one broad front.

The Irish Republican movement leadership and substantial sections of its membership was however socially conservative and largely dominated by Catholic Church influence. The IRA responded to the Republican Congress with a new anti-communist rule and the expulsion of Congress members.

*Frank Ryan, IRA and International Brigades, Socialist* (Image sourced: *Internet*)

This sad part of the history of the Irish Republican movement illustrates very clearly the separate nature of Irish Republican and Socialist organisation. The IRA of the 1930s were Irish Republicans but anti-socialist and those who joined Congress had begun as Republicans but were now socialists.

Or Socialist Republicans perhaps but with the emphasis on socialism. Henceforth other variants would exist, of Republicans who were socially conservative, or liberal, or socialist-influenced … but Irish Republicans first and foremost.

Such an ideology would allow them later to unite to focus on a war against the colonial occupation of one-sixth of the nation but to largely neglect the social, economic and cultural issues arising from a socially conservative neo-colonial regime affecting the majority of the Irish population.¹²

There may be a tragic illustration of the difference between revolutionary Irish Socialism and revolutionary Irish Republicanism in the last of the Dublin 1916 executions, on 12^th May, of the socialist James Connolly and of the Irish Republican Brotherhood organiser Seán Mac Diarmada.

Connolly was one of the leaders of the ITGWU and its Irish Citizen Army which had fought the bitter eight months against the Lockout to smash the union. Mac Diarmada is reported opposing the workers’ action, believing that Irish manufacture and trade would lose out to English competition.¹³

CONCLUSION

There are Irish Republicans who are revolutionary socialists and Irish Republicans who are not. There are also some revolutionary Irish socialists who are not strictly speaking Irish Republicans. All can and should join in the struggle against British colonialism and other imperialism.

A sovereign Irish Republic on a united 32 Counties would be a great progressive step, for democracy and against imperialism and colonialism. It would not, however, be socialist just because it was Irish Republican, even if it adopted some socialist measures.

A socialist Ireland would be one in which the working class ruled and its measures would include socialisation of all productive enterprises including factories, agricultural and construction enterprises and distribution centres, i.e any which employed workers not of the owner’s family.

And socialisation of all transport and communication networks and social and health services in addition to financial services.¹⁴

If it did all the above the regime in Ireland would be socialist and would not even need to call itself ‘Republican’.¹⁵ If it were not socialist then it would be capitalist and the struggle for socialism would need to confront the Irish state which would in turn seek to repress the socialist struggle.

Republicanism and Irish Republicanism are different things and socialism is different from both of them.

If people wish a socialist society they should not expect Irish Republicans to present them with that but will instead need to educate, organise and lead their own revolutionary socialist forces while simultaneously participating in the broad anti-colonial and anti-imperialist struggles.

End.

FOOTNOTES

1And property, of course.

2English Republicanism did not in general envisage the right of Ireland to self-determination, nor France agree with the national rights of the Breton and Basque nations, nor of the colonies abroad for independence; nor the USA of the rights of the Indigenous not to have European settlers occupy their land.

3Largely adopted by sections of business and professional classes of the Occupation, i.e settlers and descendants of settlers.

4Many Irish Republicans were historically able to collude in English settler colonialism in Australia and early colonial occupation of America, as well as later USA settler colonialism into lands still held by the Indigenous Americans.

5However, in communist society, it was understood that the second half of that slogan would be ‘to each according to their needs.’

6The earlier February Revolution had been a workers’ strike and bourgeois uprising against war and the absolutist power of the Tsar. Incidentally it had been only the second revolution against world war, as the 1916 Rising in Ireland had been the first.

7I am not discussing its development or degeneration here, which would take us away from the central topic of discussion.

8Most armies chiefly recruit from the working class but the ICA was specifically for as well as of the workers.

9Modern spelling, meaning: ‘Daughters’.

10That they were distinct forces is clear in their development and leadership but in the membership the differences would not always be so clear-cut. The Constitution of the ICA was Irish nationalist but required all members to be trade union members and people chose an organisation to join on the basis of family and social circle loyalties.

11Also described as ‘the counter-revolution’.

12And eventually lose that always unwinnable war.

13 https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/heritage/the-sean-mac-diarmada-papers-this-blood-was-not-shed-in-vain-1.2524097 However Brian Feeney in the 16 Lives series is quoted as stating the opposite, which is true of Mac Diarmada’s mentor Thomas Clarke. I have not seen Feeney’s evidence for Mac Diarmada’s sympathies.

14Though transport and communication services have been socialised by capitalist states, the majority of financial services are rarely socialised.

15Though it could do so, of course and probably would.

“Smash Landlords and Vultures – Universal Social Housing Now!”

On August 19, 2025August 19, 2025 By rebelbreezeIn Capitalism, Current Affairs Comment, Current Event Report, Housing Struggle, Human Rights, Ireland, Irish Left, Irish Republicanism, Political Analysis, Socialist Revolution, SongLeave a comment

Diarmuid Breatnach

(Reading time: 4 mins.)

The Irish socialist Republican group Anti-Imperialist Action today issued a call to revolution centred around a need for universal social housing to resolve the chronic housing crisis in Ireland (and in particular in Dublin).

This housing crisis has at January’s count left nearly 15,300 living on the streets or in emergency accommodation¹ with another unknown number in inappropriate accommodation such as sofa-surfing with friends and relatives or in IPAS centres for refugees.

Rampant property speculation has made a handful of bankers and speculators very rich and along with the social misery of thousands, facilitated the demolition of buildings of historical and architectural importance and their replacement by usually unsightly glass and concrete.²

Well, so what of AIA’s call? Different organisations make various calls at different times but do they have any effect? However, this one has some important distinctions, one of which is that this organisation actively practised its preaching when it called for the occupation of empty properties.

In May 2022 the AIA founded a sub-group called Revolutionary Housing League that occupied empty buildings in Dublin, refused to comply with court orders³ to evacuate or, in court, to agree to bail conditions that they would desist from further building occupations.

*‘James Connolly House’ in occupation by the RHL in May/ June 2022.* Photo: *D.Breatnach*)

The first building targeted on May 1^st was a former Seamen’s Institute building on Eden Quay, renamed Connolly House, metres from O’Connell Bridge, empty for years since the Salvation Army, a religion-based charity NGO, had lost government funding for its youth homeless accommodation project.

On the morning of June 9^th 2022 over a hundred Gardaí, with an armed unit on standby and a helicopter overhead, stormed the building⁴ and arrested the only occupants, two RHL supporters. In court later that day, they were bailed without making any promise not to re-occupy buildings.⁵

It seemed that the State was sensitive to the dangers of creating martyrs around the housing crisis.

Instead, RHL renewed its call for mass action across the country to occupy empty buildings. And went on to occupy other buildings, including Ionad Sean Heuston near the eponymous Bridge and another in Belvidere Road, eviction here also including massive police forces and helicopter.

Seen from the north bank of the Liffey, the Starry Plough flag flying high over the ‘Ionad Sean Heuston’ occupied building. The Heuston train station is behind the photographer while the Bridge is out of frame to the right. (Photo: *D.Breatnach*)

Success for the RHA’s campaign depended on, if not a mass, at least a substantial take-up of its call to occupy empty buildings backed by civil disobedience to the courts. Neither happened and the AIA was far too small to carry the campaign on its own and so suspended it.

It is worth noting that though many organisations and individuals had agitated around housing, including the high-media-profile occupation of Apollo House in December 2016, backed by noted individuals,⁶ none had initiated the steps advocated by RHA/ AIA.

*‘Homes Not Hostels’ banner on Tara Street side of occupied Apollo House in December 2016 or January 2017. The building was later demolished and numbers of homeless people continued to rise.*
(Photo: *D.Breatnach*)

Amongst a general lack of social condition agitation among the post-GFA⁷ Irish Republican movement, only the socialist-Republican éirigí organisation had militantly taken up the housing struggle while calling for universal social housing — but it had not led a campaign of occupations.

The electoral left and some anarchists had occupied some empty buildings but had either left when threatened by the State or been evicted by security thugs backed up by Gardaí, without a follow-up of further occupations. Nor had they contextualised housing occupations as part of revolution.

So the record of AIA is stand-alone among the Republican and Socialist Left so far and therefore, one might speculate, failed to inspire a mass movement.

I am not ashamed to say that I supported AIA’s campaign although I did not take part myself in any of the occupations. However I did not view it as an immediate cause for revolution, nor do I now. The Irish gombeen⁸ State, I believe, can survive the supply of universal social housing.

The ‘rack-renting’ landlords, both big and small, cannot. But the Gombeen class, closely linked to the landlords and speculators will ditch them if they are confronted – not with the suffering of the masses, about which they care not, nor protests – but with the real alternative of social revolution.

The State has access to the means to fund such a campaign of new housing construction and of renovation/ repurposing of existing empty buildings⁹ by local municipal authorities.

In such a radical change of the Irish neo-colonial capitalist system, people would have more disposable income and purchasing would increase dramatically, stimulating production and expansion of goods and services and raising people’s living standards (and expectations).

Property speculation would be hugely reduced in scope but would continue – in hotels and office blocks, for example and big projects such as transport networks. And possibly in sale of land to State and local authorities for housing projects.

So, essentially a reformist project, not revolutionary at all, right? No, not at all necessarily. Reformist projects fought for with revolutionary intent and energy, teach the masses their potential when they unite in struggle. It also tests their leaders before their eyes, in their experience.

I see universal social housing therefore as a social necessity for the mass of people living on the streets, in hotel-rooms, sofa-surfing, in insecure and inappropriate housing, facing eviction from debt-mortgaged housing (the cost of which has already been paid several times over).

Universal social housing is a social necessity and an urgent one and it is an objective for which all true humanity in Ireland should strive. Revolutionaries should fight for it, pointing towards the evils of the capitalist system and the need for its replacement by a socialist system.

The struggle should be fought relying on the strength and capacity of the working people and will need to embody civil disobedience and sacrifice, while at the same the movement needs to safeguard capacity for other struggles such as against fascism, imperialism and colonialism.

In that context therefore, I think we should unreservedly support the call of the AIA’s statement today and the headline of this article.

End

FOOTNOTES

SOURCES

Anti-Imperialist Action statement on Telegram 19/08/2025

Homelessness statistics:https://www.focusireland.ie/press-release/homeless-figures-increase-to-a-record-high-of-15286-as-focus-Ireland-urge-government-to-prioritise-new-social-housing-for-vulnerable-families/

Empty property statistics: https://www.socialjustice.ie/article/vacancy-and-dereliction-ireland

APPENDIX

Text of Anti-Imperialist Action statement 19/08/2025:

Housing is a key part of the Republican struggle for National Liberation and Socialist Revolution in Ireland.

Housing is one of the key pressure points in the class struggle in Ireland today, due to the artificial housing crisis created by those in power, designed at driving up profits for landlords and imperialist housing vultures.

Since the days of Tone, Irish Republicans have recognised that land and housing are completely tied to the fight for freedom, and today it is by showing the Republican struggle will solve the land and housing issue once and for all, to the benefit of the working class, that Republicans can mobilise our class to join the fight.

There should be no doubt about the Republican position on housing. The 1916 Proclamation stated that ‘the ownership of Ireland by the People of Ireland’. The Democratic Programme placed public right above private property and stated, It shall be the first duty of the Government of the Republic to make provision … to secure that no child shall suffer hunger or cold from lack of food, clothing, or shelter’.

Landlords and foreign imperialist housing vultures have no place in the Republican vision of a Free Ireland, where homes would be provided by the Republic to all Citizens.

AIA advocates a system of Universal Social Housing as the Republican Housing System that guarantees all citizens a home, and rents based on ability to pay. This system is the death knell for landlords and vultures and it is why the garrison class resists it.

AIA has played a leading roll in the militant housing direct actions of recent years and will continue to do so.

If you want to fight the landlords and vultures and work to bring about the conditions for a Republican system of Universal Social Housing, then join AIA!

Raise the cry of the working class: Smash Landlords and Vultures – Universal Social Housing Now!

1 https://www.focusireland.ie/press-release/homeless-figures-increase-to-a-record-high-of-15286-as-focus-Ireland-urge-government-to-prioritise-new-social-housing-for-vulnerable-families/

2Taking history tour groups around Dublin I often comment that Dublin has suffered three period of architectural devastation, all in the last century: 1) the British artillery bombardment during the 1916 Rising; 2) the Irish neo-colonial State’s bombardment during its Civil War; 3) the property speculators’ rampage from the 1970s onwards.
Pete St. John, in his song Dublin In the Rare Aul’ Times:

“Fare thee well, sweet Anna Liffey,

I can no longer stay

And watch the new glass cages

Spring up along the quays …”

3In one of which I was wrongfully named myself since no evidence of my presence had been provided by the landlords to the court – merely an article by me describing the occupation of ‘Sean Heuston House’ reproducing some photographs taken inside. See https://rebelbreeze.com/2022/09/22/concert-in-occupied-building-murals-pickets-and-court-cases-the-revolutionary-housing-league-spreads-the-fight/

4 https://www.facebook.com/JamesConnollyHouse/videos/2172514896242639

5I passed by this building recently which, three years later, appeared to be still empty.

6The occupiers eventually agreed to leave under a mixture of threat and promises and the building was demolished.

7The Good Friday Agreements of 1999, the Irish instalment of the imperialist pacification process, following South Africa’s and Palestine’s versions, later to visit Colombia and Turkish Kurdistan.

8From the Irish word gaimbín, first applied to the hustlers opportunistically buying up Irish land in the midst of the disaster of the Great Starvation (1845-1849) but now applied to the Irish comprador or foreign-dependent native capitalist class.

9 https://www.socialjustice.ie/article/vacancy-and-dereliction-ireland