Like that similar-sounding ailment affecting some males, most of us are not rising, at least not to the expectations of the electoral commission. Furthermore the problem appears to be no respecter of gender.
The issue, according to the Independent Electoral Commission, is that not enough of us are voting in elections. Only 49% turned out to vote in the Irish local (municipal) and European Parliament elections which means that more than half of registered voting age didn’t bother.
Well, so what? Why is that is troubling the IEC? It seems that generally, the authorities like to see a good turnout because it appears to signify that people believe that they really have a democratic choice through the electoral system and are actually exercising it.
If they don’t believe that they have a choice – or if the appearance of choice is not matched by the reality they perceive, the people might turn to other methods of deciding how the country should be run. And that might result in an outcome unwelcome to the ruling elite.
THE TWEEDLES
The Tweedledum and Tweedledee parties appear to give the electorate alternatives and though whichever party wins the capitalist system remains, it appears to give a choice – but a bet choosing between two horses of the same owner in a two-horse race.
Like both Tweedles in the folk nursery rhyme and in Lewis Carroll’s Alice Through the Looking Glass (1871), Tweedledum and Tweedledee are brothers and though they appear to be preparing for war with one another, they don’t actually fight, not in Western ‘democracies’.
Tweedledum and Tweedledee (or is it the other way around?). (Image sourced: Internet)
There are, after all, plenty of spoils to share between their masters. The creators of that wealth need to be controlled, fooled and, if necessary from time to time, repressed. “Red” social democrats and “Blue” conservatives have alternated to share power in the Western world for over a century.
In Ireland, the only European state which is a neo-colony and part of its land a direct colony, its national liberation unfinished, the Tweedles have been blue or green.
But for decades now the illusion of choice has been crumbling. There has not been a majority party government in Ireland since 1981, when Irish Republicans were elected during the hunger-strike campaign. All Irish governments since have been a coalition of one kind or another.
The Irish Labour Party, founded by Connolly and Larkin and far from their thinking for many a long year, has been in government a number of times but always in coalition – usually with the conservative Fine Gael, itself the product of a coalition that included the fascist Blueshirts.
Those years of government participation for Labour have thoroughly rubbed off the red paint of socialist opposition from the party. The Green Party, mixing a brand of concerns for the environment with those for society, has met a similar fate in coalitions.
Since 2020 the Irish state has had what is essentially a ‘national government’, a coalition of opposing parties normally only seen in times of war or under a fascist regime. The alleged political poles have joined in order to run the system for the Gombeen ruling class.
Though this gives stability for the Gombeen’s system their problem is that it has removed the illusion of choice. They might restore that illusion through the promotion of a third major party in opposition and the formerly revolutionary Sinn Féin has worked hard to fill that space.
In the 2019 General Election SF got the most representatives elected but insufficient to form a majority government, after which the Tweedles united, along with the Greens to make up the numbers to manage the State. But the Gombeens will hold SF in reserve, I’m thinking.
Harris of Fine Gael and Taoiseach (equivalent of Prime Minister) of the Coalition Government, commented on the closeness of his party and former Opposition party Fianna Fáil in votes, predicting “a Government of equals”1– but it’s not just in votes that they resemble one another.
Yes, I know I misspelled Government but I want to get this article out of the way. I’ll redo the cartoon sometime later and replace it.
RESULTS
I don’t think there is a great deal to be said about the actual results of the recent local and EU Parliamentary elections in Ireland but no doubt some commentators will be saying it anyway.
Of unwelcome interest is that five fascists of different groups got elected, three of them to Dublin City Council. The electoral Left lost some and gained some without big changes.
Independent socialists (and couple) Clare Daly and Mick Wallace both lost their EU seats but perhaps they and in particular Daly in Ireland would be more of an asset to the Left. Luke ‘Ming’ Flanagan in Midlands North West, another left Independent, kept his EU seat comparatively easily.
Sinn Féin had what was for them a disappointing run but had some new people elected to local councils and two seats in the EU Parliament, losing an existing one. Many of their enemies in the Republican ambit, often former comrades, rejoiced in their misfortunes.
Understandable though that may be one wonders how those who have some faith in the party at the moment are to be disabused of their illusions without having seen them in government. On the other hand their twists and turns on the road there may have disenchanted many already.
IT’S NOT A CHANGE OF PARTIES IN GOVERNMENT WE NEED
For most of my life I have been aware that it is not a change between political parties but between socio-political systems that is the issue. But I do vote sometimes in order to help keep a useful and decent voice in a parliament or a local authority.
An Irish community activist pensioner years ago in London, Co. Galway Teresa Burke, was a member of the British Labour Party. After a General Election, she asked me had I voted. I replied that I hadn’t; I’d not seen a candidate that stood anywhere close to that in which I believed.
“Well then, you must take responsibility for everything the Tories do if they get in!” Teresa remarked angrily.
“I’ll do that, Teresa,” I replied, “if you’ll take responsibility for everything Labour does in Ireland if they get in!”
Teresa’s lips twitched slightly. She knew as well as did I that the British Labour Party had sent the troops into the Irish colony to quell the struggle for civil rights in 1969 and supported the Tories in introducing internment in 1971 and massacres that year and in 1972.
In 1974 police under a Labour Government had killed the first anti-fascist on a demonstration,2 framed a score of Irish people in four separate cases for heavy jail sentences3 and had passed the fascist Prevention of Terrorism (sic) Act.
Whichever party is in government, the social-political-economic system is run by the capitalist class which it benefits and they will fight tooth and nail to maintain that system.
The alternative-party-within-the-system idea, so dear to social democrats, has failed time and time again. It betrayed its supporters by becoming like what it opposed, or consistently failed to get elected or was undermined, betrayed and destroyed, like Syriza in Greece, for example.
But in the unlikely event that route should ever show signs of being successful, for the ruling class there remains the military coup.4
2Kevin Gately, son of Irish immigrants, a student at Leeds University, died from injuries received from a mounted police baton during an antifascist demonstration in Red Lion Square, London on 15th June 1974.
4The serialised for TV A Very British Coup (1988) with Irish actor Ray McAnally from the Chris Mullins novel (1982) is well worth watching for this scenario.
Resistance to colonialism and imperialism takes many forms but there are those who try to downgrade, deny or even condemn its armed aspect and this has been happening recently in the case of the Palestinian struggle.
Historically, resistance has taken the form of strikes, sabotage, protest pickets, marches, rallies, placards, hunger strikes, songs, poetry, visual arts, arson, petitions, articles, books, leaflets, speeches, graffiti, clothing, language promotion, riots … and armed action up to and including revolution.
All have proved useful and the question of whether the prevailing circumstance favour some more than others is a tactical one, never one of principle. Those who seek to forbid some tactics to the movement in all circumstances are they who cannot be trusted in leadership of the struggle.
The facet of resistance that temporisers and outright opponents of the resistance movement most often seek to outlaw and remove from the struggle is the armed one, presumably because it is one of the least amenable to sidetracking into cosmetic reform.
Ruling classes of states regularly outlaw armed resistance activity including the organisations that espouse that, usually dubbing them “terrorists”, while of course ensuring they themselves have military forces which, even when aggressive invaders, they dub “defence forces”.
Indeed, those elites usually arm even their civil security forces, i.e their police. But arms and their use in the hands of working people or the invaded populations? No, that would be terrorism!
Joint press conference with representatives of different resistance organisations. (Photo sourced: Internet)
THREE-PRONGED ATTACK ON ARMED RESISTANCE
Recently a three-pronged ideological and propaganda attack was carried out on the Palestinian armed resistance from sources that are seen by some as friends of the Palestinian people: The Palestine BDS National Committee, the President of the Palestinian Authority and the Arab League.
The National Committee made their attack through a document advising on tactics and principles in presentation of BDS demands, in particular of the student campus encampments or occupations, advising activists that upholding the armed resistance was not advisable.1
Around the same time, the Arab League was having its summit meeting and, though not stupid enough to advocate giving up the armed struggle, long upheld by the Palestinian people, recommended the resistance to place themselves under the leadership of the PLO2 and the PA.
The PLO is controlled by the leadership of Fatah; their nominee, President of the PA Mahmoud Abbas, who was also at the Arab League summit, accused the October 7th attack by the Palestinian resistance of providing the Israelis the excuse for their genocidal war on Palestine.
In October 2023, during the genocidal war by “Israel”, Anthony Blinken, US Secretary of State and envoy to the Middle East, shakes hands with Mahmoud Abbas, “President” of the Palestinian Authority, who remains in office despite his term having concluded in 2009. (Photo sourced: Internet)
The Arab League is composed of the current 22 Arab states, i.e those for which the dominant language is Arabic.3 But the elites of the majority of those states are clients of imperialism, chiefly of the United States. In the case of Yemen, it is the overthrown ‘government’ that is a member.4
Apart from their weakness against imperialism, one must wonder at their impertinence in telling the Palestinian armed resistance, which they do not at all assist, who should be their leadership5 and that the “two-state solution” (sic) is the only option available and recommended.6
The leadership of Fatah under Arafat betrayed the struggle for an independent Palestine and the right of return of the millions of Palestinian refugees when they agreed to the Oslo Accords in 1993/’95, for which they received limited autonomy through a “Palestine Authority”.
The corruption of Fatah in the PA and their betrayal of fundamental objectives of the Palestinian struggle led to their ousting in the elections of 2006, which were won instead by Hamas, who then had to fight Fatah who were refusing to hand over administration in Gaza.
Fatah refused to recognise the electorally-expressed wish of the people in the West Bank too but Hamas chose not to enter into a civil war with them there. From that point onwards, Gaza was besieged by the zionist authorities and periodically bombarded.
Meanwhile the PA continued in their corruption, Abbas continued to be unelected President, occupying the office and sharing the funds coming in among his clique but using their security force primarily to control and repress the Palestinians of the West Bank.
During this week alone, Resistance News Network reported that the PA’s forces dismantled explosives prepared by the resistance in the home of Tamer Fugaha which was planned for demolition by the Israeli occupation forces, where the explosives would target them.
The zionist forces regularly demolish the homes of Palestinian fighters and Tamer Fugaha was killed, along with another four Palestinian comrades, in an epic 15-hour battle with the IOF early this month in Tulkarem.
The PA has Palestinian political prisoners and also identifies these for the IOF to arrest later. Naturally (as even admitted by western mass media) the PA is hated by Palestinians, yet the Arab League wants the armed resistance to place themselves under its rule!
The armed resistance movement, which is composed of a number of distinct organisations7 fighting in unity, has of course rejected any such move and instead continued its calls for the support of the Arab people and to break the zionist blockade at the Rafah gate of desperately-needed aid convoys.
Palestinian fighters from different resistance organisations. (Photo sourced: Internet)
The Palestine BDS National Committee headquarters is also, like that of the PA, in Ramallah (West Bank). A recent statement of theirs also advised organisations working for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions with regard to the Israeli State to drop mention of armed resistance.
Furthermore, they did so in the name of a host of organisations that sponsor Palestine BDS but the Boycott and Anti-Normalization Campaign, condemning the advice given,8 established that those organisations had not been consulted at all and if they had, would not have given approval.
The BANC criticised the offending committee not only for the original statement but also for acting as though they commanded the BDS movement.9 The statement in question was quickly withdrawn and replaced with another with the offending section on armed struggle removed.
Among the Palestinian groups that criticised the statement was the PFLP’s Haitham Abdo, head of the organisation in Lebanon, at the Popular Women’s Committees festival in Beirut on the occasion of Nakba Day, celebrating also the memory of a group of women fighters:
“Holding the resistance responsible for what happened after October 7 serves the zionist narrative and harms our people’s struggle and national fight. This statement is rejected, regardless of who says it.”10
In Yemen, the weekly “million-men march”11 sent a solidarity message to the Palestinians12 but also rebuked the participants in the Arab League summit with a non-too subtle hint as to where lie their allegiances:
“to the rulers of the Arab regimes meeting in Manama, near the embassy of the enemy entity: We regret to inform you that the enemy has committed more than 3,000 massacres to date, and even one massacre should have stirred your consciences.”13
Scene from Palestine solidarity demonstration in Vancouver, Canada. (Photo sourced: Internet)
OPPOSITION TO ARMED RESISTANCE IN IRELAND
The dislike of or even hostility to promoting the armed Palestinian resistance can be seen in Ireland. A Garda confiscated a demonstrator’s a flag of one of the resistance groups, the secular Peoples Front for the Liberation of Palestine, while another was asked by IPSC stewards not to fly it.
In one of the student encampments, the PFLP flag was taken down too. The PFLP is a secular resistance organisation while others are Islamist but all are fighting in unity.
In some cases this opposition could be seen as a reluctance to have the solidarity movement associated with one specific liberation organisation which would be understandable but then a compromise would allow the flags of all groups — or one non-specific one of armed resistance.
To restrict the solidarity movement to the Palestinian national flag only is the imposition of an undemocratic “unity” and removes one of the most salient features of the Palestinian resistance – its armed aspect, fighting now amid the ruins and alleys of Gaza and in the West Bank.
Every week RNN posts photos of fighter martyrs of different resistance organisations, killed as they fought tanks, IOF bulldozers and, more rarely, IOF troops on the ground. The fighters too have been killed by aerial bombardment as of course there is no Palestinian air force or air defences.
Yet every week RNN also lists IOF tanks, bulldozers, troop carriers and IOF ground troops hit by the resistance at close quarters or at remove by mortars and rockets. The IOF dead and wounded are evacuated by helicopters which – unlike Palestinian ambulances – are never fired on.
The western mass media is not reporting these engagements and Al Jazeera reports only some of them.14
Our internationalist duty to support the Palestinians means also supporting their right to resist and that means in effect to support the armed resistance, whether we elevate one organisation or more, or just the broad principle of the right to armed resistance.
An Israeli tank hit by Palestinian fire. (Photo sourced: Internet)
THE IRISH EXPERIENCE
In the struggle for Irish liberation we have used – in different combinations – all the forms of resistance listed in the second paragraph at the beginning of this article ; indeed one of those forms during the Land War gave the word “boycott’ to the world!15
But the armed aspect has been a part of that struggle from the time of the clans right down through eight hundred centuries, against even internal opposition. In July 1846, John O’Connell’s proposal to have the Union Repeal Association renounce the use of armed force split the organisation.16
At the meeting, Thomas Meagher, said that “There are times when arms will alone suffice, and when political ameliorations call for a drop of blood, and many thousand drops of blood. Opinion, I admit, will operate against opinion. But … force must be used against force.
“The soldier is proof against an argument, but he is not proof against a bullet. The man that will listen to reason, let him be reasoned with; but it is the weaponed arm of the patriot that can alone avail against battalioned despotism.”17
LONG LIVE THE RESISTANCE – IN ALL ITS FORMS!
End.
Palestinian youth respond to an Israeli raid on Beita in the West Bank Aug 2023 (Photo cred: Nidal Esthayeh/ Xinhua)
FOOTNOTES
1 We reiterate our firm position and call for a just and comprehensive peaceful settlement of the Palestinian issue, and we support the call of His Excellency President Mahmoud Abbas, President of the State of Palestine, to convene an international peace conference and to take irreversible steps to implement the two-state solution in accordance with the Arab Peace Initiative and resolutions of international legitimacy to establish an independent and sovereign Palestinian state on the lines of 4 June 1967 with East Jerusalem as its capital, and to accept its membership in the United Nations as an independent and fully sovereign state in common with other countries in the world, and to ensure the restoration of all legitimate rights of the Palestinian people, in particular, the right to return and self-determination, empowerment and support.
2At its first summit meeting in Cairo in 1964, the Arab League initiated the creation of an organization representing the Palestinian people. The Palestinian National Council convened in Jerusalem on 28 May 1964. After concluding the meeting, the PLO was founded on 2 June 1964. Its stated “complementary goals” were Arab unity and the liberation of Palestine. (Wikipedia) Under Fatah domination it banned Islamist groups from membership.
3 Algeria, Bahrain, Comoros, Djibouti, Egypt, Iraq, Jordon, Kuwait, Lebanon, Libya, Mauritania, Morocco, Oman, Palestinian Authority, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, Tunisia, United Arab Emirates and Yemen.
4 Rather than those in power, the Ansar Allah (“Houthis”) government, preferred by the vast majority of Yemenis to the western-recognised exiled government.
5We call on all Palestinian factions to join together under the umbrella of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), the sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people, and to agree on a comprehensive national project and a unified strategic vision to focus efforts towards achieving the aspirations of the Palestinian people to achieve their legitimate rights and establish their independent national State on their national soil, on the basis of the two state solution, and in accordance with the resolutions of international legitimacy and established references.
6 The 2-state option, supported by the imperialist powers, is of a much smaller Palestine state alongside an Israeli state at least the size of its current dimensions. However even this has arguably been made impossible by the spread of Israeli settlements and is rejected by most Palestinians and many Israelis. The 1-state option envisages the whole of historic Palestine under a democratic regime.
7 Iz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades (QQB) – Hamas; Al-Quds Brigades (AQB) – Islamic Jihad; Abu Ali Mustafa Brigades (PFLP) – People’s Front for the Liberation of Palestine; National Resistance Brigades (DFLB) – Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine; Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade – Fatah (not under Fatah political control); Al-Nasser Salah al-Deen Brigades (PRC) – Popular Resistance Committees; Lion’s Den; Mujahideen Brigades.
8The Boycott Campaign – Palestine condemns the statement issued by the Boycott National Committee, in Ramallah, which asserts the danger of supporting the Palestinian resistance on their work and the necessity to distance themselves from any positions that support the resistance, especially armed resistance.
This disgraceful stance comes at a time when the zionist enemy is committing the crime of genocide against our people in the Gaza Strip for over seven months, resulting in the killing and injury of more than 120,000 innocent Palestinians and the destruction of 70% of Gaza’s buildings.
Such dangerous statements provide cover and legitimacy for the enemy to continue its aggression.
What is more dangerous is that the BNC claims it issued the statement in consultation with a large number of national entities and organizations.
However, through our communications with several entities mentioned in the statement, it is certain that they were not presented with this statement nor consulted about it, and they would certainly refuse to sign such statements that promote non-national positions.
All struggles for freedom around the world have seen various forms of struggle side by side, with armed resistance at their core. Therefore, our Palestinian struggle strategy should reinforce different forms towards the major goal of dismantling this zionist project on our land.
Accordingly, we call on the BNC to revise its position and align with the authentic national stance that glorifies resistance in all its forms.
We also urge it to stop this approach that attempts to monopolize the legitimacy of international work for Palestine and issue top-down orders to everyone. Palestine is greater than all, and the global revolution today to support our people is greater than something that can be monopolized by anyone.
Boycott Committee — Palestine / Boycott and Anti-Normalization Campaign
11 For the 31st week, the Yemeni people turned out in massive crowds across various cities in Yemen in support of Gaza under the slogan: “With Gaza: Holy Jihad and No Red Lines.” A million-man flood took place in the capital Sana’a, a massive rally occurred in the city of Ibb, and marches were reported across 23 locations in Rima, among other cities. (RNN)
12 “The statement at the weekly turn out reiterated the legendary steadfastness of the fighting Palestinian people and the perseverance of its fighters in this critical phase. The people assured the American and British enemies that they will not be deterred from maintaining a steadfast stance.” (RNN)
14Electronic Intifada updates reports a number with analysis and RNN posts the reports of the groups themselves.
15 The word comes from the National Land League successful campaign of withdrawal of labour along with isolation of services (or even social contact) with Captain Charles Boycott, the agent of an absentee settler landlord who was planning to evict some tenants in 1886. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boycott Boycott is a non-violent tactic but the fact of the use of violence during the Land War by the Occupation and in response by the peasantry is often overlooked. The Fenians supported the campaign and landlord’s agents were shot at, police and bailiffs stoned and scab labour attacked.
16 The Repeal organisation’s leadership became dominated by the rising Catholic Irish bourgeoisie of which John and his father Daniel were leading members. The “split” became known as the Young Irelanders and contributed nationalist culture and journalism, in particular through The Nation newspaper and some long-lasting songs such as A Nation Once Again. The Irish Tricolour was first presented to Meagher by French women during the revolution in Paris in 1848; the Young Irelanders also staged an ill-fated uprising that same year.
Thirty-five people were killed by bombings on 17th May 1974, the most in one day during the recent 30 Years War but outside of Ireland and even within it, most people are unaware of that fact. That’s because the perpetrators were not the IRA.
And probably also because the victims were killed not just in Ireland but within the Irish state. Also no doubt because the perpetrators were Loyalists led by British Intelligence.
Section of westward end of attendance at event as President Michael D Higgins approaches (just out of view)(Photo: D.Breatnach)
Three bombs exploded on that day in the middle of a rush hour in Dublin City Centre: Talbot Street, Parnell Street and South Leinster Street. Somewhat later, a bomb exploded also in Monaghan Town. Altogether 35 were killed1 and “about 300”2 injured, some permanently.
The names of some of the victims being displayed at the premiere of the Anatomy of a Massacre documentary. (Photo: D.Breatnach)
Within days and perhaps hours a number of suspects among Loyalist murder gangs had been identified but they were not arrested or even questioned about the atrocity – no-one ever was. Despite that, the Gardaí closed the case investigation seven months afterwards that same year.
A new documentary on the atrocities by Fergus Dowd was premiered in Dublin on Friday to two full screen auditoria in the Lighthouse Cinema, Smithfield, featuring interviews with witnesses, victims and relatives of victims, a former Taoiseach and a former State forensic scientist.
May-17-74 Anatomy of a Massacre is directed by Joe Lee and produced by Fergus Dowd.
The forensic expert had been given very little of the remains of cars containing the bombs since most had been sent to the RUC (colonial police) for their analysis (!) from which nothing useful emerged but he was able to determine that a high amount of amatol had been used.
At that time only the IRA among “paramilitary organisations” had the expertise to develop that explosive material which leads commentators to believe that the Loyalists received the necessary quantities from those seized from the IRA and held by the British armed forces.3
Given that many of the Loyalists involved were members of the Ulster Defence Regiment, a British Army unit, on the face of it the explosives could have been directly supplied by the British Army or indirectly obtained through the UDR as members of the British Army.
Nothing adverse is known about the Garda Commissioner who sent the exploded car remains to the colonial police but his Deputy and successor was Ned Garvey and whistle-blowing British spook Fred Holroyd claimed Garvey was a British Intelligence “asset” and to have met him in Dublin.
Confronted with this exposé years later Garvey admitted having met Holroyd but not to being a British spy – though he had not informed his superiors of his meeting with a foreign secret service agent. 4 Sadly this is not alluded to in the documentary.
As documented in Anatomy there had been a Loyalist bombing campaign of Dublin since 1969,5 with those in 1972 and 1973 killing between them three transport workers and no-one had been arrested by Gardaí or extradition sought in connection with even those fatal explosions.
No documentary about the bombing was made by RTÉ, the Irish broadcaster until 2004, thirty years after the atrocity.
However a much earlier documentary was by British company Yorkshire Television on ITV in 19936. RTÉ had declined the offer of joint screening and many people in Ireland who did not have access to ITV at the time missed it or had to go to a friend or relative to view it.
The British documentary was mentioned only in passing by one of the interviewees in Anatomy but without reference to RTÉ’s declining of the offer of joint screening.
British spook whistleblower Colin Wallace states that he was obliged to report on every meeting he had with Loyalists or others and his erstwhile bosses would have kept those papers, as they would have for the MI5 operatives who steered the bombing gang for Dublin and Monaghan.
The existence of MI5 documents that would throw much light on the bombings was referred to a number of times in Anatomy and the Justice for the Forgotten campaign keeps seeking them. Irish Government ministers regularly state that they have requested them but are always refused.
Missing from the documentary was what is now known of the secret contemporary memos of Arthur Galsworthy, British Ambassador to the Irish state: It is only now that the South has experienced violence that they are reacting in the way that the North has sought for so long …
… I think the Irish have taken the point.
Galsworthy also noted that the Irish Foreign Affairs Minister Garret FitzGerald told him that “the government’s view was that popular hostility appeared to be directed more against the IRA“.
In the immediate aftermath of the bombing, both Liam Cosgrave for the Government and Jack Lynch for the Opposition sought to widen the blame to include Irish Republicans.7
VIEWING THE DOCUMENTARY
Two screens at the Lighthouse cinema were fully booked to view the premiere.
The documentary is fascinating and some of the witnesses and relatives really excellent in their descriptions and commentary. Others interviewed pulled no punches in castigating successive Irish governments for closing the investigation and allowing it to remain closed.
Some, too, alleged a conjunction of interests between the Irish and UK states in ensuring the truth about the perpetrators and the Irish State’s reaction never surfaced.
Many people prominent in Irish political circles at different ends were present to see the premiere and after a few words from Margaret Unwin, Coordinator of the Justice for the Forgotten campaign, along with filmaker Dowd, the Resistance Choir sang their song composed about the bombing.
The Resistance Choir performing their song about the bombing massacre (Photo: D.Breatnach)Section of crowd from the Monument eastward (Photo: D.Breatnach)
Justice for the Forgotten organise a commemoration of the atrocity every year at which some music and poetry is performed, along with speeches by politicians representing the Irish State, and the local authority Councils of Dublin City and Monaghan and another individual or two.
Some of what is said there I have welcomed and some disliked but most of all I detest Ministers in the Irish Government coming there to tell us how they want the British State to release their secret documents regarding the event but never have any action to pressurise its Ministers in mind.
Cormac Breatnach playing low whistle at event (Photo: D.Breatnach)
This year, the 50th anniversary, the event took place after noon on Friday 17th May with a large crowd but only one speaker listed, President of the Irish State Michael D. Higgins, with traditional Irish music from Cormac Breatnach and Eoin Ó Dillon, a duo performing at the event for years.
Eoin Ó Ceannabháin sang The Parting Glass and poet Rachel Hegarty performed her poem about the bombing. But there was a surprise speaker also, an Italian from Breschia who also referred to state collusion in a bombing against an anti-fascist rally in his home town the same year, a few weeks later.
Poet Rachel Hegarty performing her poem about the event (Photo: D.Breatnach)
The MC of the event, Aidan Shields, son of fatal victim Maureen, told the audience to applause that Justice for the Forgotten would be sending a delegation to Breschia for the 50th commemoration of the atrocity in their town.
At left, Aidan Shields, son of fatal victim and MC at event, with Monument to the victims centre (Photo: D.Breatnach)
WHY THE BOMBING?
Trainee journalists are told to answer the ‘Five Ws’ in their reports: who, what, where, when and why.
The answers to four of those questions have been known for decades: Dublin and Monaghan is where; 17 May 1974 was the when; the bombing atrocity was the what. The who were the Loyalists and British Intelligence. But nobody seems to attempt to answer the why – or even to ask that question.
For the earlier 1972 bombing, the “why” is clear: to get the Irish parliament to vote for the Amendment to the Offences Against the State Act.
And they were successful in that since, all logic to the contrary, some of the Opposition decided to believe that the bombing was the work of Irish Republicans. So we now have that no-jury political court and senior Gardaí can give ‘evidence’ unseen by the accused from Garda “secret files”.
Apart from the guidelines of journalism, there are also those with regard to criminal investigations, which outline the importance of motive and opportunity. The British secret service certainly had opportunity – but what was their motive?
A bombing such as that in Dublin on 1974, in the Irish State’s capital city, is a message to the Irish ruling class (though the victims be different) were the. And from the British state through their intelligence service, which would hardly dare to carry out such an attack without at least the endorsement of their masters.
So the message was … what? “We will bomb your capital city if you don’t do what we want or if you do what we don’t want”? But the Irish ruling class was already cooperating about as fully as possible with the occupation in the Six Counties and repressing resistance in the Twenty-Six.
A similar campaign occurred in the 1980s, in the Basque Country within the French state (mostly). The Spanish Government waged a terrorist campaign8 of bombings, kidnappings and assassinations against suspected activists of the armed Basque liberation group ETA.
It seemed that what the Spanish authorities wanted was for the French to turn over Basque activists who were on the “French” side of the Border to the Spanish authorities, something the French had been unhappy to do, the Guardia Civil believed to be torturers even after Franco’s death.
After some of those bombings, the social-democratic French Government led by Mitterand began to hand over Basque activists to the authorities across the border, sometimes without even going through the official extradition procedures.
The Irish State did also permit extradition of Irish Republicans to the Six Counties (and later to Britain too) after the Dublin and Monaghan bombings, but not until ten years later, with Dominic McGlinchy, which hardly looks like the effect following its cause.
The Sunningdale Agreement had been signed in December 1973 which proposed some kind of power-sharing between nationalists and unionists with a role for the Government of the Irish state against which the Loyalists of the Ulster Workers’ Council had organised a general strike.
A British whistleblower, Colin Wallace claims that the bombing was a warning to the Irish ruling class to keep their fingers out of the colony.
VICTIMS AND RULING CLASS
Apart from not answering or even seeking the motivation for MI5 to arrange and oversee the bombing, I have not seen any discussion of the class nature of the locations. The bombings of 1972 and 1973 targeted transport workers.
But the bombings on the north side of the river in areas to the east of O’Connell Street also took place in areas where working and lower middle-class people worked, shopped and got on to the public transport buses. This hardly seems accidental.
Aftermath in Talbot Street facing westward with Connolly Station tower in far background (Photo: PA)
A part of MI5’s message could have been: “This time it was mostly the kind of people nobody (who are in power) cares about, so be thankful. Next time we might hit the north-east centre around Henry Street, or areas around Trinity College, Dame Street and Grafton Street on the south side.”
One other point that is rarely made is that the bombing and the State’s reaction to it showed the totally craven and foreign-dependent nature of the Irish ruling class, to allow their capital city to be bombed by another state without seeking revenge or even restitution.
The French state made a deal with the Spanish after some bombs exploded in territory to which it laid claim but does anyone believe the result would have been the same if the Spanish terrorist groups had bombed Paris?
End.
FOOTNOTES
1 Some accounts give a total of 34 or 35 dead from the four bombings: 34 by including the full-term unborn child of victim Colette Doherty, who was nine months pregnant; and 35 by including the later still-born child of Edward and Martha O’Neill. Edward was killed outright in Parnell Street.
4 When Fianna Fáil came into government, they sacked Garvey but presumably not wanting to expose British Intelligence penetration of the Irish State’s management upper echelons, gave as a reason only that they had no confidence in him. This opened the way for Garvey to claim wrongful dismissal and win, giving him a payout and retaining his pension. Garvey was also important in running the notorious “Heavy Gang” within the Special Branch.
5 The Wolfe Tone Monument in Stephens Green had been blown up and the O’Connell monument, the Glasnevin ‘Round Tower’ had also been bombed.
6 “Yorkshire Television broadcast a documentary entitled ‘Hidden Hand – the Forgotten Massacre‘ made as part of its ‘First Tuesday‘ series. The programme dealt with the Dublin and Monaghan bombings of 17 May 1974. [The programme came to the conclusion that the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) would have required assistance to carry out the bomb attacks. There was speculation as to where such assistance might have come from. While no firm conclusions were reached, it was suggested that the security forces in Northern Ireland were the most likely source of help. Allegations concerning the existence of a covert British Army unit based at Castledillon were considered; as well as alleged links between that unit and Loyalist paramilitaries. It was shown that Merlyn Rees, the former Secretary of Sate, had known of the unit’s existence. On 15 July 1993 the UVF issued a statement in which it claimed sole responsibility for the Dublin and Monaghan Bombings.]” https://cain.ulster.ac.uk/events/dublin/chron.htm
The anniversary on Sunday of the death on hunger strike of IRA Volunteer Bobby Sands was marked with a number of posts on social media. I would like to add an Irish migrant’s1 perspective and some analysis of his legacy.
The Irish diaspora was a powerful sector in solidarity for the Irish struggle not only because of their cultural background but also because of their numbers. Some British cities had an estimated diaspora population of 10% (Irish-born and 1st and 2nd generations).
Furthermore, the higher proportion of those in turn was of the working class, a section of society which, although they in no way had their hands on the standard levers of power, certainly had a strong potential of the kind the British ruling class had learned to fear.
Irish Republicans of course formed part of that sector and organised within it but on the other hand the IRA’s bombing campaign in Britain was of no help at all. The popular fear of being caught in an explosion greatly enabled the Government to tighten the screws under the guise of “security”.
Karl Marx, a strong supporter of Irish freedom had commented after the Clerkenwell prison bombing of 18672 that “One cannot expect the London proletarians to allow themselves to be blown up in honour of the Fenian emissaries” (i.e who they were trying to free from the jail).
In 1974 the Labour Government had repressive legislation ready and on 29 November, using hysteria arising from the Birmingham and Guildford pub-bombings they rushed through the Prevention of Terrorism Act (1974) which permitted the holding of suspects for two days without charge.
An underground cell in London’s Paddington Green police station – this is where Irish detainees under the Prevention of Terrorism Act might be kept and interrogated for seven days without visitors or access to solicitor. “The old cells were 12-foot square, contained no windows and were reportedly too hot in the summer and too cold in winter” (Wikipedia).(Photo: Posted in 2020 on Internet by Green Anti-Capitalist Front who occupied the empty building intending to turn it into community centre.)
That could be extended for another five days – and often enough was — by application to the Home Secretary. Access to solicitor was usually denied and though not lawful, the fact of the detention itself was often denied to concerned people making enquiries of the police station.
The prospect of disappearing for seven days into police custody somewhere was naturally terrifying and a ‘suspect’ could also be deported without trial to Ireland – even to the British colony of the Six Counties, which amounted according to their law to “internal exile”.
Snapshot of London police harassment and intimidation of Irish solidarity activists in 1981. (Photo sourced: Internet)
The framing of a score of innocent Irish people3 in five different trials4 with very heavy sentences added to the intended terrorising of the Irish community in Britain, the “suspect community”5, many of whom believed the victims to be not only innocent but most not even politically active.6
Irish solidarity activity in Britain diminished greatly after 1974 as state repression impacted across the Irish community. But the hunger strikes and concerns to save the lives of the strikers in 1981 broke the hold of state terror as people took to the streets in their thousands once again.
They were unsuccessful but never returned to that state of immobilising fear that had settled over the community.
The Irish in Britain Representation Group got its initial start in 1981 which happened as follows: the bourgeois Federation of Irish Societies had its AGM in May 1981 and one of the members proposed that a motion of sympathy to the Sands family be recorded when he died.
IBRG and Irish Republican POW Support Committee banners on march Birmingham 1984 (Source: Mullarkey Archive)
The meeting’s Chairperson ruled the proposal out of order and ‘the Fed’ continued with their ordinary business. The then Editor of the Irish Post7, writing in his “Dolan” column, found this disturbing and suggested there might be a need for a new type of Irish community association.
A number of individuals wrote in and the ball got rolling, though it took until 1983 to set up the branch-based organisation with a constitution and democratic safeguards in operational rules. The IBRG soon had a number of branches in London and others in the North and Midlands.
For the next two decades the organisation campaigned for the release of the framed prisoners, against the Prevention of Terrorism Act, strip-searching, all racism but in particular the anti-Irish and anti-Traveller varieties, for Irish representation in education, services, Census category, etc.
Lewisham Irish Centre Management Committee and Staff, possibly 1994. The Centre was campaigned for and won by the Lewisham Branch of the IRBG in conjunction with the Lewisham Irish Pensioners’ Association (which the IBRG had also founded).
The IBRG also called for British departure from Ireland and collaborated with other organisations in marches, demonstration, pickets, conferences, producing also a number of important report documents. The organisation’s officers were drawn from migrant Irish and those born in Britain.
Bobby Sands Mural on gable end of a house in Belfast (Photo cred: Brooklyn Street Art)
REPRESENTATION OF BOBBY SANDS
Bobby Sands was a man of great courage whose leadership qualities were recognised by his fellow political prisoners when they elected him as their Officer Commanding in the H-Blocks. He was also an accomplished writer and poet.
When the British reneged on the agreement that ended the 1980 hunger strike and a new one was planned, Sands insisted on being first on the list, which also meant that in the event of resulting deaths, his would be the earliest.
Most people will agree easily with all the above evaluation of the man but from that point onwards, his representation is manipulated to suit different agendas, in particular those of pacifists, social democrats, liberals and a variety of opportunists.
Some of them love above all his quotation that “Our revenge shall be the laughter of our children”. They forget many other things he wrote and seek to turn him into an angel or saint of pacifism.
Since they embraced the pacification process, Sinn Féin try to represent Sands as an advocate for and proof of the effectiveness of participating in the parliamentary electoral system, based on his success in a 1981 Westminster by-election with 30,492 votes, 51.2% of the total of valid votes.
What both these groups fail to recognise is that Sands was an IRA volunteer and was sentenced for possession of handguns in 1972 and again in 1976. If he was an angel, it was of the Archangel type, fighting against what he considered evil.
He was proposed in the Fermanagh-South Tyrone by-election mainly in order to support the campaign of the prisoners against criminalisation and for the political status recognition that they had previously. Saving the lives of the hunger strikers was of course part of the plan too.
Nine protesting Republican prisoners contested the general election in the Irish State in June. Kieran Doherty and Paddy Agnew (who was not on hunger strike) were elected in Cavan-Monaghan and Louth respectively, and Joe McDonnell narrowly missed election in Sligo-Leitrim.
But that is a long way from proving that the electoral process is a viable way of dislodging the ruling class and their system and, in fact, history has proven the opposite.
Nobody knows what position Sands and the other nine would have taken on the electoral process had they lived. Possibly some would have gone along with the SF leadership on that and some others would now be reviled as “dissidents” (as are indeed some H-Block survivors).
All we can say for certain is that they were men of courage in that all of them had joined the armed struggle for Irish national liberation. They had even higher courage of a level hard to imagine, to risk and then experience slow physical disintegration and death by the day and by the hour.
Long after their erstwhile prominent enemies are forgotten, their names will shine in our history and Bobby Sands’s, the brightest of them all.
2A bomb was planted against the prison wall to free a member of their group who was being held on remand awaiting trial at Clerkenwell Prison, London. The explosion damaged nearby houses, killed 12 civilians and wounded 120; no prisoners escaped and the attack was a failure. Michael Barrett was found guilty of the bombing despite his claim supported by witness testimony of having been in Glasgow during the bombing and was hanged on Tuesday 26 May 1868 outside Newgate Prison, the last man to be publicly hanged in England (the practice was ended from 29 May 1868 by the Capital Punishment Amendment Act 1868). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clerkenwell_explosion.
3Carole Richardson of the Guildford Four was not Irish but she was the girlfriend of one of three Irishmen.
4Birmingham Six, Guidford Four, Giuseppe Conlon, Maguire Seven and Judith Ward. They were not acquitted and released until decades later, by which time Giuseppe Conlon had died in jail.
5Suspect Community by Paddy Hillyard, Pluto Press (1993)
6Believing them innocent and not active worked even better to terrorise because if the likes of those could be framed and jailed, no-one was safe. But perhaps safest was to do absolutely nothing to draw the attention of the State.
7Brendán Mac Lua, co-founder of the Irish community newspaper in 1970 which is now a very different periodical.
8The lark is associated with Sands because he wrote a story about a man who had captured a skylark, a bird that unusually sings in flight. In the cage the bird would not sing so the man draped the cage with cloth and still the bird would not sing, nor would it do so when he refused it food and water until eventually, it died in the dark, silent to the last.
Although the 1916 Rising had been planned to take place on Easter Sunday, April 23rd, it was publicly cancelled by the titular head of the Irish Volunteers, Eoin Mac Néill and it went ahead instead on the 24th, the following day.
The 1916 Rising was unsuccessful but is considered the birth event of the Irish Republic and for some therefore Republic Day is on April 24th, the first day of that Rising and when Patrick Pearse, with James Connolly by his side, read out that remarkable Proclamation of Independence.
Banner of the Republic Day event organisers in Arbour Hill (Photo: R.Breeze)
Tom Stokes, an independent Irish Republican campaigned for some years for April 24th to be recognised as Ireland’s national day, replacing St. Patrick’s Day which is religious festival and now an excuse for excessive drinking and pseudo-Irishness.
Replacing too Easter Sunday and Monday, these being religious dates that move around on the calendar, never being on the same dates in any consecutive year.
Tom Stokes died in December 2018 and a small group of disparate independent Republicans have striven to keep his campaign going.
Stokes always held his Republic Day event at noon on the 24th in front of the GPO, the location of the first public reading of the Proclamation (as did also the Save Moore Street From Demolition one year) but this group carrying on his campaign have been holding their event in Arbour Hill.
This is the location of an old British prison containing the location of a mass grave into which had been put the bodies of 14 of those executed by British firing squads after the surrender of the leadership and majority of the fighters, their bodies covered in quicklime and earth.
The mass grave of 14 of the sixteen executed in 1916, with their names in Irish one side and in English on the other. (Photo: R.Breeze)
CEREMONY IN ‘ARBOUR HILL’
The name Arbour Hill is a corruption of the original Irish name for the location which meant something distinct from “arbour”: Cnoc (hill) an (of the) Arbhair (cereal crop). Today it is a quiet spot tastefully laid out, the names of the dead etched around the mass grave-site in both languages.
A little distance away is a tall flagpole bearing the Irish Tricolour in front of a high wall on which are chiselled the words of the Proclamation in their original English and also in Irish translation.
Dramatist Frank Allen welcomed those present, in particular members of Limerick Men’s Shed who had travelled a distance to be present at the event. He also referred to descendants who were present of martyrs of the struggle Cathal Brugha, Thomas McDonagh and Harry Boland.
Frank Allen as MC for the event (Photo: R.Breeze)
Allen also reviewed the history of Tom Stokes’ campaign for the marking of the date as Republic Day and a national holiday, outlining also the man’s background and his family connections to the struggle for Irish independence, along with his support for Palestine..
First to be called to perform was Pat Waters, professional musician and a regular contributor to the 1916 Performing Arts Club who accompanied himself singing his own composition Where Is Our Republic Day? composed at request from Tom Stokes.
Pat Waters performing his composition Where Is Our Republic? (Photo: R.Breeze)
Allen called on Glen Gannon also of the 1916 PAC to read the Proclamation and then on Shane Stokes to read one of his father’s articles which clearly outlined the man’s socialist Republican principles and their distance from the reality of the current national society and polity.
In succession Fergus Russell of the Goleen Singers organising committee was called to sing The Foggy Dew, a song about the 1916 Rising which he performs every year and Shannon Pritzel to read Patrick Pearse’s famous oration on the grave of Ó Donnabháin Rosa.
Aidan recited the eulogy poem to the 1916 fighters composed by an ex-British Army officer living in Ireland. Anne Waters of the 1916 PAC was asked to present red roses to a number of those present to lay on the named dead on the stonework surrounding the mass gravesite.
Larry Yorell (best known as a long-time activist of the National Graves Association)1, made an appeal for support for an initiative to build a monument to Patrick Pearse.
Aidan reciting a eulogy poem for the 1916 Rising fighters (Photo: R.Breeze)
Frank Allen declared total opposition to a trend seeking to eliminate Amhrán na bhFiann as the “National Anthem” for being thought too war-like.
The Anti-Imperialist Action group called a picket against imperialism to take place in the evening of the 24th outside the General Post Office, which had been the HQ of the Rising forces in 1916.
(Photo: R.Breeze)
While a number distributed leaflets, others lined out carrying a number of national flags of Palestine and one of the PFLP, in addition to a large Irish Tricolour, smaller Starry Plough and flags of the New Philippines Army.
Along with some of the standard Palestine solidarity slogans heard everywhere in Ireland on demonstrations, they called out “From Ireland to Palestine – Occupation is a crime!”; “There is only one solution – Intifada revolution!” and “Saoirse – don Phalaistín!”
Flag of the New People’s Army of the Phillippines displayed alongside other flags of anti-imperialist struggle. (Photo: R.Breeze)
A number of passers-by congratulated the picketers while some stopped to discuss. A representative of the organisers gave a short address regarding the background to Republic Day and the current situation in Ireland, commenting also on the zionist genocide in Palestine.
The event concluded with a youth reading the 1916 Proclamation out loud, followed by an acapella singer performing The Larkin Ballad which relates a compressed history of the 1913 Dublin Lockout but concludes with verses about the 1916 Rising.
A youth reads the text of the Proclamation of Independence near where Patrick Pearse read it out on 24th April 1916 (Photo: R.Breeze)
End.
Southward view of part of the group marking Republic Day with a statement against imperialism today. (Photo: R.Breeze)
FOOTNOTES
1The main organisation throughout Ireland maintaining and renovating and erecting monuments, graves, plaques in memory of Irish patriot men and women and battle sites; the NGA remains independent of political parties and declines to be in receipt of funding from government or political party.
2Kearney wrote the lyrics in 1907 in cooperation with musical composer Patrick Heeney. The music for the chorus was adopted by the Irish Free State as its national anthem. The lyrics were translated into Irish in the 1930s and unusually it is the Irish version that one most often hears, first verse and chorus. The opening sentence of the chorus “Sinne fianna fáil” (‘we are soldiers of destiny’) have been changed by some to “Sinne laochra fáil” (‘warriors of destiny) in order to avoid reference to a specific political party that called itself Fianna Fáil.
Recent revelations about British intelligence services being in possession of film evidence of Martin McGuinness being a leading member of the IRA but choosing not to prosecute adds to many suspicious incidents over the years regarding this man.
Indeed this is but one additional item to add to many things that have raised suspicions over the years. He had been arrested in the Irish State in 1972 but his sentence from the Special Criminal Court was only six months; however in 1974 he received the more usual 12 months’ jail.
However, over the years in the Six Counties he received a string of convictions for assault on police and for obstruction, for which fines were his only punishment, despite the State being aware of his position within Derry’s Provisional IRA, failing even to convict him of membership in 1976.
McGuinness leaving Belfast Court 1976 after charges of IRA membership dismissed (Photo cred: Paul Lewis)
Nor was there ever an attempt on his life though he moved around openly in Derry; how he was awarded £2,000 damages for an incident with British soldiers at a checkpoint – a practically daily occurrence for nationalists in the Six Counties – and that he had made the claim!
Most damning of all was the very low level of armed resistance actions in the area over which he was commander of the Provisional IRA.
McGuinness went from crude militaristic outlook to belief in electoral politics and the pacification process without a clear track of his progress (unlike that of Adams). No evidence of gradual change or of Road to Damascus conversion though he was reported favourable to a truce in 1972.
McGuinness (furthest right) in the clip of The Secret Army (1972) filmed beside a car being loaded with a bomb which is later filmed destroying a building and killing people. MI5 had access to the film.
The suspicions about McGuinness can be added to the known cases of agents and informers in top levels of the military and political leadership of the Provisionals: Freddie Scappaticci, Denis Donaldson, Martin Gartland. Derry in particular had Raymond Gilmour and Frank Hegarty.
“Spies and informers” have been quoted by many over the years as the reason for failure thus far to achieve Irish independence; indeed these complaints go back at least as far as the United Irishmen and as recently as July 2020, Denis McFadden bugged meetings of the New IRA for his handlers.
McGuinness announcing his replacement by Michelle O’Neill as SF leader in the British colony in 2017.
THE REALLY FUNDAMENTAL PROBLEMS
The fundamental problems in the Republican movement go far beyond the serious enough ones of faulty security permitting influx of agents and recruitment of informers. The very strategic concept of the 30 Years War was at fault which facilitated the subsequent sellout in the Pacification Process.
If one were planning a campaign to break Ireland from colonial occupation and control by the British ruling class, a major military power, why would one largely confine it to one-sixth of the nation? And worse still, one-sixth divided between nationalist and unionist communities?
One might say in its favour as the choice of main zone that the contradictions in the British colony were the most acute there, the Catholic population being discriminated against socially, politically, economically and culturally. And they were already in struggle for civil rights.
And that might be an important reason for diverting a certain amount of resources there. But the bald fact remains that logically the struggle against the British ruling class could not succeed if it were largely confined to that area.
Yet that is what the Provisionals did as they split from the organisation that then became known as “the Officials” in 1970. Nevertheless by 1972 they were proclaiming on their newspaper’s front page that Blian an Bhua, “the Year of Victory” was at hand.
In fact they appeared so sure of the impending victory that it seems they were attracted by the film company’s plans to record them – they would have a film for general release at the same time as their victory parade, star-studded (well, McGuinness-studded anyway).
What could have induced them to think that victory was imminent? Only two possible imaginary scenarios:
That the British didn’t really want to remain and by 1972 were beginning to get a good taste of what hanging on to the colony was going to cost them, or
That the Irish national ruling class were going to step in and help ease the British out in the cause of national unification.
If they believed the first, which a lot of people believe even today, they were not carrying out a historical analysis. At every possible juncture when they could have left, the British colonialists dug in deeper.1 Which is what they were doing in 1972, the bloodiest year of the War.
If the Provisionals considered the second a real possibility, they would have had to ignore the history and current reality of the Irish Gombeen2 ruling class, a totally foreign-dependent neo-colonial class.
Of course, to fight the war to win, they would have had to extend the struggle to the whole of the country and also build alliances with movements of nations within Britain and with the British working class, in particular through the mostly working-class Irish diaspora there.
Extending the struggle to the whole nation would have meant taking on the State, its social police the Catholic Church, equality for women, right to divorce, decriminalisation of contraception and pregnancy termination, of LGB, secularisation of education, full state health care …3
No. While Adams and later McGuinness recognised the fallacy of a quick victory in the occupied Six Counties, instead of extending the struggle to the whole 32 Counties, they opted instead for “the long war” – long and unwinnable (which made it ripe for a pacification process in a few decades).4
But this too had to be based on one or both of the same two presumptions:
The British didn’t really want to remain and by 1972 were beginning to get a good taste of what hanging on to the colony was going to cost them, or
The Irish national ruling class were going to step in and help ease the British out in the cause of national unification.
And those presumptions were just as fallacious for a long war as they had been for a short victorious one.
The other fundamental weakness in the Republican movement that made victory impossible in this scenario and by no means confined to the Republican movement’s leadership, is that of: “the leadership is right, they know best and only trouble-makers (or cowards) question them.”
Clearly an organisation must have discipline and at certain times decisions arrived at democratically or otherwise in emergency situations have to be carried out without a debate. But they should be open to discussion beforehand if possible and certainly to review afterwards.
That was not the style of the Provisionals and people disagreeing with the leadership’s line were labelled as “troublemakers”, censored from the letters page of their newspaper and isolated by warning others not to associate with the critics – for fear they’d be considered dissenters also.
And since the leadership was ‘always correct’ it followed that the organisation was always correct too. Critics had to shut up or face the fact of exile to the cold outside the movement. And why unite with other groups in a broad front when your leadership is the only correct one`?
All this happened in the past and the Provisionals are no more, just the SF electoral party now.
However, the majority of the current movement of ‘dissidents’, far from carrying out a critical review of past operational principles, seems to have to have learned nothing and to be happily replicating the style and content of the organisation from which many split.
End.
FOOTNOTES
1Even after the 1916 Rising, the electoral massacre of their client ‘nationalist’ party in the 1918 General Elections and the War of Independence 1991-1921, the British ruling class still insisted on retaining Ireland within the Commonwealth structure and even then, just in case, retaining six counties in a direct colony.
2From “gaimbín” in the Irish language, used to describe the opportunist creditors and land-buyers during and in the aftermath of The Great Hunger, now describing an Irish foreign-dependent capitalist class.
3Provisional Sinn Féin not only did not lead those struggles but in some cases opposed them.
4A long armed resistance war entails a heavy toll on the fighters (in deaths and jailings) and their community and, as the decades go by without any sign of victory, war-weariness sets in creating fertile ground for growing a pacification process.
Easter is the time of year in Ireland for Easter Egg hunts and/or for attendance at religious services but for the Republican movement it is one of commemoration of the Easter Rising and its martyrs, with parades and speeches.
The commemoration parade proceeding along Phibsboro and approaching the Cross Guns canal bridge. (Photo: Rebel Breeze)
Easter Monday in Dublin saw one of those commemorations organised by the Socialist Republican organisation Anti-Imperialist Action at the Citizen Army plot in the St. Paul’s section of the famous Glasnevin Cemetery at the Republican Struggle Monument1.
Participants rallied near the Phibsboro Shopping Centre to march from there to the Cemetery, a distance of around two kilometres, over the “Cross Guns” bridge over the Royal Canal, then passing the main entrance to the Glasnevin Cemetery on the right before turning left for St. Paul’s.
Garda POU van parked extremely dangerously, hiding left turn from view of eastbound traffic, as they chat with other Gardaí and a ‘Branch man.As is said, “one rule for the people …!” In the laneway between houses visible in the background, a cameraman lurked taking photos. (Photo: Rebel Breeze)
In a marked departure from the previous year, the State’s political police, plainclothes Gardaí of the “Special Branch”2 did not approach the participants to attempt to intimidate them and gather intelligence, demanding their names and addresses under the Offences Against the State Act.3
That had been followed up by a raid on the home of one of the leading activists. Sunday’s police behaviour was an even greater difference from Saturday’s, when a different Republican group, Saoradh, had their Easter Rising commemoration in Dublin’s city centre.
Around 300 police, including many in riot cop uniform (Public Order Unit) had harassed the participants demanding names, addresses and other information, attempting to intimidate them. At least seven police vans had been in attendance also to the bemusement of onlookers.4
(Photo: Rebel Breeze)
LOCAL 1916 HISTORY
The Phibsboro/ Glasnevin area also figured in the 1916 Rising, with an insurgent barricade in Phibsboro and a Fianna youth, Sean Healy, mortally wounded at the crossroads by a British artillery shell fragment (a plaque on the ground at the SW corner commemorates his death.
Earlier, Irish Volunteers had guarded the canal bridge briefly; these were seen by the dozen Volunteers that marched along the canal from Maynooth, slept in Glasnevin Cemetery and got into the headquarters garrison at the General Post Office on Tuesday.
Later British soldiers set up a barricade on the Bridge preventing even foot traffic across and shooting dead a deaf and dumb man who could not hear their challenge.
EYE IN THE SKY? (Photo: Rebel Breeze)
PARADE THROUGH STREETS TO CEMETERY
The parade from Phibsboro on Sunday was led by the Glasgow Republican Flute band (formerly the Garngad RFB, which is where most of them are based) playing the airs of known Republican ballads, muted to regular tocks on their drums as they entered the housing estate.
(Photo: Rebel Breeze)
Also leading was the colour party dressed in white shirts, black trousers, jackets, berets and sunglasses, carrying the traditional flags for Republican colour parties: the Tricolour, Starry Plough, Sunburst, followed by the flags of the four provinces of Ireland: Connacht, Leinster, Munster and Ulster.
Over the marchers the flags of the Tricolour and the Starry Plough, flag of the Irish Citizen Army flew in the breeze while those of the Basque nation, Palestine and of the People’s Front for the Liberation of Palestine lent an international flavour to the commemoration of the Irish Rising.
There was some beeping of passing traffic and cheering from bystanders at the entrance to the laneway that leads to the bridge across the railway tracks to the St. Paul’s section of the graveyard. The marchers filed in and proceeded to the monument.
The Chair of the proceedings welcomed the attendance before reading from the 1916 Proclamation of Independence and calling a singer to step forward. Revolutionary activist Diarmuid Breatnach introduced the two songs he was going to sing as emphasising the role of the working class in the Rising.
(Photo: Rebel Breeze)
“The decision to go ahead with the Rising on Easter Monday was taken in Liberty Hall, the headquarters of the working class at the time,” he reminded the gathering, “which is also where the Proclamation of Independence was printed.”
He sang the “JimLarkin Ballad”: In Dublin City in 1913, the boss was rich and the poor were slaves; The women working, the children hungry, till on came Larkin like a might wave …
Diarmuid Breatnach singing(Photo: Donated by participant)
Pausing to focus on a different key, the singer followed the ballad with Patrick Galvin’s Where Is Our James Connolly?
After applause, floral tributes were laid on behalf of Anti-Imperialism Action Ireland and of Dublin Republicans Against Fascism.
(Photo: Rebel Breeze)(Photo: Donated by participant)
The chairperson asked for a minute’s silence in honour of those men and women who had given their lives in the struggle for freedom in Ireland. The colour party lowered their flags slowly in homage to the fallen, raising them again slowly to signify the continuation of the struggle.
(Photo: Rebel Breeze)
John Heaney, Republican ex-prisoner from Armagh was called to give the oration for the event, which he dedicated to all those men and women who had opened their doors and their homes to fighters in the struggle, whether the latter were in hiding or just resting – his audience applauded.
The speaker also congratulated on those who came forward to carry on the struggle, youth, women and stated he was proud to see the traditions of struggle being upheld in the process to achieve the Republic for which so many gave their lives.
The speaker, John Heaney delivering his oration. (Photo: Rebel Breeze)
The marching band then played the air of Amhrán na bhFiann/ The Soldiers’ Song, verse and chorus and the formal part of the event came to an end. Band members lined up in front of the Monument for photos and a little later played the air of “Black Is the Colour” on whistles, to general applause.
SECOND 1916 COMMEMORATION FOR AIA THIS EASTER
This was the second 1916 Rising Commemoration to be attended by Anti-Imperialist Action as they had also participated in another organised by the Seamus Costello Memorial Committee in Bray on the previous day.
AIA is a young organisation, founded by socialist Republicans unhappy with the direction of the Republican organisation of which they had been members but now containing many young people.
AIA gave rise to the Revolutionary Housing League that occupied empty buildings in a campaign against homelessness and called for a general occupation campaign across the state. A number of court cases against them followed but sadly their lead was not followed.
(Photo: Rebel Breeze)
AIA have also been very active against NATO, picketing promotional meetings and a number have been charged following a demonstration against a visiting British Navy ship in Dublin last November.5 They have also been active as part of the Saoirse don Phalaistín activist group.
Following the event in Glasnevin, many of the participants relaxed at a social evening in a different part of the city where many songs of struggle were sung.
(Photo: Rebel Breeze)
OTHER EASTER COMMEMORATIONS
Other Easter Rising commemorations have been held around this time, for example: Lasair Dhearg held one in Belfast on Easter Monday, while Independent Dublin Republicans held theirs in the capital, marching from Liberty Hall to the GPO, then to Moore Street to lay a floral tribute.
On Monday too the Derry 1916 Memorial Committee held an event in its city.6
Former revolutionary Republican party Sinn Féin held theirs in Arbour Hill7 cemetery on Sunday; a large part of their President’s address was devoted to justification of support for the EU and a plea to support the party whenever the state’s general elections are held (this year or next)8.
1My name for the Monument in the St. Paul’s part of Glasnevin Cemetery which stands in recognition of six periods of Irish Republican-led insurrectionary activity in Ireland: 1798-1916.
2Now officially the Special Detective Unit, they were previously known as the “Special Branch”, a name they inherited from the British occupation which had set up a political intelligence unit, the Irish Special Branch, to spy on and disrupt the Fenian movement among the Irish diaspora in British cities. Most political activists in Ireland continue to call them “the Special Branch” or simply “the Branch”. Their equivalent in Britain today and in a number of its colonies and former colonies continues to officially bear the name “Special Branch”.
3As amended in 1972 after a British Intelligence bombing killing two public transport workers in Dublin but blamed on the IRA; the amendment also permitted the setting up of no-jury Special Courts which are in existence to this day.
4In the context of assaults on persons in the city centre there have been regular complaints in the media and in the Parliament about the lack of Gardaí visibly patrolling the area.
7Where the 14 Dublin 1916 executed were buried, now a national monument in a former prison and church graveyard around the back of the former military barracks and now National Museum of Collins Barracks
The 1916 Rising is usually seen as a nationalist Rising of Irish Republicans with perhaps some socialist involvement. Even Connolly is often portrayed as a patriot only (see the song James Connolly the Irish Rebel) with socialist views.
Of the six organisations that participated actively in the 1916 Rising1 only one of them was specifically of the Irish working class. Perhaps that’s why the great influence of the working class on the Rising tends to be generally overlooked.
As is well-known, James Connolly is one of the Seven Signatories2 of that wonderful and progressive document, the 1916 Proclamation of Independence. However, Connolly only became part of the planning committee for the Rising a very short time before the scheduled date.3
That is true but we should ask ourselves why they included him at all. The Irish Volunteers had a nationwide organisation with the also nationwide Cumann na mBan as auxiliaries, whereas Connolly could perhaps mobilise a couple of hundred fighters.
(Photo sourced: Internet)
It is said he was brought on board because the IRB believed that his constant demand for a Rising during WWI and the military exercises of the Irish Citizen Army indicated that Connolly was likely to lead the ICA to rise on their own and would spoil their schedule.
How likely was he to do that? It’s true that as a socialist Connolly was horrified by the slaughter of war, where workers of one state are sent to kill and be killed by workers4 of another and perusal of his writings do show that he thought an uprising to sabotage war was desperately needed.
Would he have gone ahead alone with the roughly 250 men and women of the Irish Citizen Army, hoping perhaps to inspire a popular upsurge and to encourage the Irish Volunteers to join it, in spite of even their leaders?5 It’s hard to believe so but of course it’s possible.
However, from the moment the Republican planners of the Rising took Connolly on board, we can see a significant organisational shift towards the working class in Dublin and nowhere more so than around Liberty Hall, where the first flag for an uprising was hoisted and the Proclamation printed.
Liberty Hall was of course the headquarters of the Irish Transport & General Workers’ union,of which James Connolly was the leader at that time and also editor of its newspaper,The Irish Worker.
And for a person brought in to the planning so recently, how extraordinary that Connolly was given the rank of Commandant General! A responsibility he took seriously, sending couriers around the country and attempting to direct defence preparations around the various Dublin garrisons.
The first battle flag of the Rising
A week before the Rising Connolly and the Irish Citizen Army had an Irish Republican flag raised above Liberty Hall as a flag of war and the one chosen to do the raising was a girl of 16 years, Molly O’Reilly.6
The associated circumstances are worth retelling, if only to illustrate the difference between the Liberty Hall of then and today. Adults took classes in Irish language and cultural activities there while their children and those of union activists waited for their parents, took dancing classes or played.
In playing, Molly O’Reilly accidentally broke a window and in terror and shame, ran home.
When Connolly sent a message to her home that he wanted to see her, she went to Liberty Hall expecting a severe telling off. Instead he told her not to worry and what he was asking of her. She was proud to do it but so small she had to stand on a chair to pull the cord raising the flag.
Remnant of the flag raised on Liberty Hall (Image sourced: National Museum)Commemoration ceremony “Women of 1916” with relatives of Molly O’Reilly in place of honour (note the uniforms are of Irish Volunteers rather than Irish Citizen Army).(Photo: D.Breatnach)
Of course we know that flag was not of the revolutionary workers but instead the harp on green which was that of the early Fenians and was very similar to that of the United Irishmen, the first revolutionary Irish Republican organisation.7
Those early Fenians were mostly composed of working class members and their 1867 proclamation to the world was largely proletarian in outlook. In Britain, the Fenians formed part of the First International Workingmen’s Association which was led by Marx and Engels.
Their flag was flown over at least one of the 1916 Rising garrisons, I believe at theJameson Distillery in Marrowbone Lane.
Similar flag to that hoisted over Liberty Hall (Photo sourced: Internet)
The other flags of the Rising included the Tricolour, presented to the Irish Republicans of the ‘Young Irelanders’ by women in revolutionary Paris in 1848, which was one of two flown on the roof of the GPO, the headquarters of the Rising.
Sharing the GPO roof with the Tricolour was the flag made only days before from domestic material and painted with the words “Irish Republic” in the house of Constance Markievicz, an officer in the Irish Citizen Army, shortly before the Rising.
The Irish Citizen Army’s own flag, the Starry Plough, flew over the Clery’s building facing the GPO. Sadly today most Irish people do not know that flag, though awareness of it and its background is growing among the indigenous Irish and the migrant community.
The design of the Starry Plough, flag of the ICA as it was in 1916 (Image sourced: Internet)
The Irish Citizen Army was formed as a workers’ militia during the great Lockout and strike of 1913-1914, to defend against the attacks of the police, the physical repressive front line of the capitalist class; the ICA’s flag was placed above Murphy’s Imperial Hotel in Clery’s.9
The Irish Citizen Army on exercises at their grounds near what is Fairview today (Photo sourced: Internet)
Though its constitution was more nationalist than socialist, the ICA was in its membership and purpose the first workers’ army in the world and when reorganised a few years later, represented also working class feminism, recruiting women, some of whom were officers commanding men.
Once the preparations for the Rising were in tatters with MacNeil’s countermanding order, where did organisers gather to discuss what to do? In Liberty Hall, the building of the Irish Transport and General Workers Union and it was there that the decision to rise on Monday instead was taken.
It is hard to overstate the importance of the fact that the decision to go ahead with insurrection was taken in the building which had become de facto the HQ of the revolutionary working class in Dublin, with an illegal flag of rebellion flying and where the Proclamation was to be printed.
The writing and text of the Proclamation
The wording of the Proclamation is thought largely composed by Pearse but influenced by Connolly, including its address to “Irish men and Irish women” and perhaps “We declare the right of the people of Ireland to the ownership of Ireland, and to the unfettered control of Irish destinies”.
Another section which could bear Connolly’s fingerprint reads: The Republic guarantees religious and civil liberty, equal rights and equal opportunities to all its citizens, and declares its resolve to pursue the happiness and prosperity of the whole nation and of all its parts, cherishing all the children of the nation equally.
(Image sourced: Internet)
But, whoever composed or influenced the Proclamation text, it was printed in Liberty Hall. An Irish Citizen Army member went to Stafford Street (Wolfe Tone St. today) to borrow the print type from a printer there to bring back to Liberty Hall, which was under daily 24-hour armed guard.
Having printed the Proclamation in Liberty Hall under armed guard and having decided there to rise on Easter Monday, where did the assault groups for Stephens Green, Castle and the GPO, including the Headquarters Battalion, meet on the morning of the Rising? …. Again, at Liberty Hall.
An early non-combatant casualty of the Rising was Ernest Kavanagh,10 who drew cartoons for the newspaper of the ITGWU, The Irish Worker. For some reason he went to Liberty Hall on Tuesday and was shot dead on the steps of the union building, presumably by a British Army sniper.
The working class in armed resistance
Once the Rising was in motion, the Irish Citizen Army had primary responsibility for two areas, the Stephens Green/ College of Surgeons garrison and the Dublin Castle/ City Hall garrison but also fought in other areas, for example on Annesley Bridge and in the GPO/ Moore Street area.
All who fought alongside them commented on their courage and discipline. After the surrender, many, along with Irish Volunteers were sentenced to death, most being commuted to life imprisonment. But two leaders of the Irish Citizen Army were shot by firing squad.
One of the areas from which the British forces were sniped at for days after the Rising was the docks area, then predominantly surrounded by working class residential areas.
A question we should ask ourselves is why the forces coming from Britain to suppress the Rising landed at Dún Laoghaire, from where they had to march nearly 12 km (approaching eight miles) to Dublin city centre, instead of at the excellent Dublin docks on the Liffey.
Hugo McGuinness, who specialises in history of the North Wall area, believes that the British expected Dublin to be in the hands of the working class resistance and that it was simply too dangerous to land British troops there, though gunboats could fire from the Liffey.
Certainly, the British believed Liberty Hall and buildings along Eden Quay were occupied as fighting posts by the Irish Citizen Army and they fired artillery at the union building from Tara Street, as photos of shell holes in that building and right through to the next testify.
Photo shell-damage Liberty Hall (first building with corner towards the camera, viewed northwards from Butt Bridge) as one of a set of commemorative postcards. (Photo sourced: Internet)Another postcard with closeup of shelling damage to Liberty Hall and to the building next to it. Interestingly, in this one Liberty Hall is labeled “the Rebel Headquarters”. (Photo sourced: Internet)
Much is made in some historical accounts of the opposition to the Rising from sections of the Dublin population, during and immediately after the Rising. The city was the capital of a British colony, only just over a century earlier spoken of as “the second city of the British Empire”.
A substantial proportion of the wealthy and middle classes were Loyalist, including some Catholics; even ‘nationalist’ sections were committed to supporting the UK in WWI and John Redmond, leader of the ‘nationalist’ political party had openly recruited for the British Army.
Also, among the working class and the lumpen elements, many were depending on “Separation Allowances” with regard to males serving in the British Army. It is true that the insurgents in some places had to threaten, club or even shoot some civilians who tried to obstruct the Rising.11
These incidents during the Rising were not many but afterwards there were insults and other things thrown at prisoners being marched to imprisonment (or firing squad). The city was under martial law but even so a Canadian journalist reported the insurgents being cheered in working class areas.
There were also other individual witness accounts, such as a man on a tram saluting prisoners in Parnell Street until threatened by soldier escorts and a firefighter in the GPO doing likewise. A year later most of even the earlier hostility had changed to admiration and pride in the fighters.
Leadership of the working class
James Connolly wrote and said many things of importance but surely, with regard to the struggle for Irish national independence, the greatest of these was: “Only the Irish working class remains as the incorruptible inheritors of the fight for freedom in Ireland.”
By that he meant — and I agree — that all other social classes can gain something from selling out the interests and resources of Irish nationhood but that the working class can gain nothing from that.
The Irish working class staked their claim on the struggle for Irish independence in 1916 but have not succeeded in leading it and because of that, that struggle remains to be won.
Today and in other days, remembering that long struggle and the class whose leadership revolutionary socialists seek to represent and to uphold, we declare the need for that leadership over a broad front of all others who wish to struggle to advance.
In doing so, we declare that far from the working class having to wait for socialism, in the course of national struggle it must also shapeits own demands around the economy, natural resources, infrastructure, social services, social questions, culture and, above all, to the fruits of its labour.
End.
FOOTNOTES
1Irish Republican Brotherhood, Irish Volunteers, Irish Citizen Army, Cumann na mBan, Na Fianna Éireann, Hibernian Rifles.
2All of which were executed by British firing squad, along with another seven in Dublin and yet another in Cork. The 16th execution was by hanging in London.
3(See Sources: Cooption of James Connolly etc) Connolly was a lifelong socialist and a revolutionary throughout his adult life, author, historian, journalist, song-writer, trade union organiser; active politically in Scotland, Ireland, New York and back in Ireland.
4The international socialist movement viewed the imperialists’ movement towards war with horror and in international conferences vowed to oppose it with all their might, including turning war resistance into revolution (“War against war”). However, once imperialist war was declared that resolve collapsed in most states, Russia, Germany and Ireland being notable exceptions and each saw a rising against war, in Ireland’s being the first.
5Joseph E.A. O’Connell (Jnr.) suggests a possible intention of goading of the State into attacking him and the ICA which might spark the general rising.
9It was a good central location but more than that – the Hotel was one of the businesses of William Martin Murphy, chief organiser of the employers’ bloc to break the Irish Transport & General Workers’ Union.
10Kavanagh was a supporter of the workers, of votes for women and against participation in the imperialist war, contributing cartoons also to the Irish Citizen, Fianna and Irish Freedom publications, also to accompany poems of his sister, Maeve Cavanagh McDowell.
11I do not include in this the three members of the Dublin Metropolitan Police who were a force for the British occupation and also for the Dublin capitalists. The Irish Citizen Army in particular had good reason to settle accounts with them for attacks on them including inflicting mortal baton injuries on two workers during a charge on a union meeting on 30th September 1913 on Eden Quay and beating people and smashing up furniture in Corporation Street a little later.
Original Latuff cartoon. West Belfast mural. Mural blacked out.
Once upon a time, Belfast was famed for its murals, so much so that even now a part of the tourist industry depends on a plastic paddy tour of the current murals on display in nationalist areas of Belfast.
It was the 1981 hunger strike and its aftermath that saw an explosion in political murals in nationalist areas. As the 1980s went on, the technical and artistic quality of them improved dramatically and the politics they sought to represent expanded.
Some of them were very militaristic, others much more political in content. On international issues, murals sprang up on South Africa, Palestine and figures from revolutionary struggles around the world were to be found on gable ends all over the city and indeed in other cities throughout the North.
Nelson Mandela, Steve Biko, Camilo Torres, Che amongst others looked down at the wandering revolutionary tourists who would come over in August. The message was clear: Ireland was part of an international struggle against imperialism.(1)
After the peace process the quality continued to improve, but the politics went for a walk. Twee Celtic murals abounded, young girls dancing a jig displaced images of women holding an armalite aloft for International Women’s Day.
about Imperialism were softened, when not blunted entirely or removed. So, it comes as no surprise to see what has happened to recent murals.
Sinn Féin supporters recently unveiled murals in solidarity with Palestine. They are of good quality and try to capture the suffering of the Palestinians through the images and poignant quotes.
However, they say nothing about who is causing the suffering: the US and Israel, though there are silhouette ghostly like images of soldiers standing over dead children.
There was once a mural on the White Rock Road which pictured a US Indian superimposed over a US flag saying Your struggle, Our struggle. No references are to be made now to the US role in exterminating a people. That is strictly Verboten.
However, someone decided to reproduce a cartoon from the artist Carlos Latuff in mural form in Belfast. It depicts Joe Biden, standing with bloodied hands in front of Mary Lou, who is clearly identifiable in the image, and the leaders of FG and FF, who can be identified from the initials FG and FF on their backs.
The British Army and the RUC used to deface republican murals, not any more. Very quickly, Sinn Féin, officially or unofficially (no pun intended, though it is apt) painted over the mural. It was quickly restored by others, who the artist Latuff described as real republicans.(2)
Sinn Féin are clearly uncomfortable about the issue in the run up their fest in Washington with Biden and not only are they content to throw Palestinians out of public meetings, they will now supress any public artistic attempts to draw people’s attention to the Slaughter Soirée they will have in the White House.
Many Palestinian voices such as the Electronic Intifada have called on Sinn Féin not to go to Washington, the calls in Ireland have been much more muted and tamer on the issue. However, it is a clear issue, what is colloquially called a no-brainer.
You don’t have to think very deeply to understand that Sinn Féin shouldn’t go to Washington DC, that they should tell Genocide Joe they don’t want to meet him. They will go and they will say nothing about Palestine.
Their erasure of a mural criticising them, tells you everything you need to know about their real attitude to Palestine.
Whatever you say, say nothing used to be a catchphrase about loose talk and informers, now it means never to mention Joe Biden and the Palestinians in the same breath, unless you are green washing genocide.
Meanwhile Sinn Féin does its part, emulating the British army and vandalising political murals.
Notes
(1) A selection of images can be seen on Bill Rolston’s website. Rolston has chronicled and photographed murals going right back to the 1970s. See https://billrolston.weebly.com
In Dublin’s south docklands the property developers and the corporations dominate city planning and therefore the landscape. And the working class community there feel that they’re being squeezed out.
I’ve met with some concerned people from parts of this community in the past to report on their situation and concerns for Rebel Breeze and did so again recently.
A view eastward of a section of the south Liffey riverfront, showing a very small amount of more traditional buildings squashed between or loomed over by the “glass cages that spring up along the quay”. (Photo 1 March 2024: D.Breatnach)
YOUNG PEOPLE – education, training, socialising
“There’s nothing here for our young people” said one, expressing concern over the attraction for teenagers of physical confrontations with other teens from across the river which have taken place on the Samuel Beckett Bridge over the Liffey.
A young man training as an apprentice in engineering attends a mixed martial arts club but has to go miles away to another area to attend there. Between his industrial training, travel and athletic training he has little time to spare for socialising.
I comment that those sporting activities tend to concentrate on male youth and only some of those also but he tells me that nearly half the regular membership of his club is female. A community centre could provide space and time for such training but they say they have no such centre.
St. Andrew’s Hall is a community centre in the area and there are mixed opinions in the group about it but I know from my own enquiries that the available rooms are committed to weekly booked activities (and our meeting had to take place in a quiet corner of an hotel bar).
As a former youth worker and in voluntary centre management, I know that a community centre can serve all ages across the community, from parents and toddlers through youth clubs to sessions for adults and elders.
Discussing youth brings the talk into education and training. As discussed in a previous report of mine, the youth are not being trained in information technology, which is the employment offered in most of the corporations in “the glass cages that spring up along the quay.”1
Section of the south Liffey docks showing some of the few remaining older buildings as they are swamped by the “glass cages”. The building on the far right of photo, very near to Tara Street DART station, once an arts centre, is already targeted for demolition and replacement with commercial building. (Photo sourced: Internet)
“If they’re lucky, they’ll get work in the buildings as cleaners or serving lattes and snack in the new cafes”. Some opined that the corporations in the area should be providing their youth with the training while others thought Trinity College should be doing so.
HOUSING – price and air quality
Universal municipal housing in the area has declined due to privatisation of housing stock and refusal to build more. A former municipal block in Fenian Street, empty for years is now to be replaced but the “affordable” allocation has been progressively reduced, ending now at zero.
Pearse House in south Liffey docklands, believed earmarked for demolition and site sold to property speculators. (Photo 1 March 2024: D.Breatnach)
Property speculators (sorry, “developers”) with banker support are building office blocks and apartment blocks in the areas, the latter units priced beyond the range of most local people. The average rent for a two-bed apartment in the area is €2,385;2 to buy a 3-bedroom house €615,000.3
The Joyce House site and attached ground area could provide housing and a community centre but appears planned to go to speculators.
Continuation of ‘Pearse House site’ in south Liffey docklands, believed earmarked for demolition and site sold to property speculators. (Photo 1 March 2024: D.Breatnach)
The Markievicz swimming pool near Tara Street has been closed and the local people are told they can go to Ringsend for swimming, an area which already has better community facilities than are available to the communities further west along docklands
A huge amount of traffic goes through the area and one person stated that Macken Street tested as having the worst air quality in Ireland. “I have to close my windows to keep out the noise and pollution,” said another; “the curtains would be black.”
Townsend Street side of ‘Pearse House site’ in south Liffey docklands, believed earmarked for demolition and site sold to property speculators (prospective property speculators must be salivating). The gambling advertisement coincidentally erected there seems to show the likely social types to benefit from these kinds of deals. (Photo 1 March 2024: D.Breatnach)
‘They want us out’
If some town planner were intending to establish a community somewhere, s/he would plan for housing, obviously, so the people would have somewhere to live. But a proper plan would provide also for education and training, along with social facilities — and employment.
But if someone were intending instead to get rid of a community, s/he would target exactly the same elements, whittling them down or removing them altogether. This what some local people feel is intended for their community.
“We feel we’re not wanted here,” said one and others agreed, “They want us to move out.” “But we’re not going! We’re staying,” said another, to grim nodding of heads around.
HISTORY of struggle … and of neglect
In the late 1800s and early 1900s, Dublin had the worst housing in the United Kingdom and many of its elected municipal representatives – including a number of Nationalists of Redmond’s party – were themselves slum landlords.
When the Irish Transport and General Workers Union was formed by Jim Larkin with assistance from James Connolly and the Irish Women Workers’ Union founded by Delia Larkin, many of the dockers, carters and Bolands Mill workers who joined them came from the south docklands.
And when the employers’ consortium led by William Martin Murphy set out to break the ITGWU in 1913, many of those workers
… Stood by Larkin and told the bossman We’d fight or die but we would not shirk. For eight months we fought And eight months we starved, We stood by Larkin through thick and thin …4
And the women of Bolands’ Mill were the last to return to work, which they did singing, in February 1914.
They also formed part of the Irish Citizen Army, the first workers’ army in the world,5 to defend the striking and locked-out workers from the attacks of the Dublin Metropolitan Police and which later fought prominently in the 1916 Easter Rising.6
Many also joined the larger Irish Volunteers which later became the IRA, along with Cumann na mBan,7 fighting in the Rising, the War of Independence and the Civil War, supporting resistance of class and nation for decades after.
The Irish Republican Brotherhood (the Fenians) was founded in the area; Peadar Macken8 was from here and has a street named after him; Elizabeth O’Farrell9 is from the area too with a small park named after her and Constance Markievicz10 also lived locally.
The Pearse family lived in the area too and Willie Pearse and his father both worked on monumental sculpture at the same address; Connolly and his family for a while lived in South Lotts.
Home of the Pearse family and monumental sculpting business (Photo: Dublin Civic Trust)
The working class communities in urban Ireland suffered deprivation throughout the over a century of the existence of the Irish state and the colonial statelet. The communities in dockland suffered no less, traditional work gone, public and private housing in neglect in a post-industrial wasteland.
The population of Ireland remained static from the mid-1800s until the 1990s, despite traditionally large families — emigration in search of employment kept the numbers level. Married couples lived with parents and in-laws while waiting for a house or flat – or emigrated.
In the 1980s, like many parts of the world, Ireland fell prey to what has been described as the “heroin epidemic” and the neglected urban working class worst of all, with the State assigning resources to fight not so much the drug distributors as the anti-drug campaigners.
One of those in the meeting became outwardly emotional when he talked of “the squandered potential” of many people in the local community.
A workers’ day out trip on the Liffey ferry (Photo sourced: Dockers’ Preservation Trust)
The heirs of these then are the marginalised and abandoned that are targeted with disinformation and manipulated by the far-Right and fascists, to twist their anger and despair not against the causes of their situation but against harmless and vulnerable people.
But the Left has to take a share of the blame, for leaving them there in that situation, for not mobilising them in resistance. After all, issues like housing, education and employment are supposed to be standard concerns for socialists, of both the revolutionary and the reformist varieties.
Republicans cannot avoid the pointing finger either. These communities provided fighters and leaders not only in the early decades of the 20th Century but again from the late 1960s and throughout the 30 years war.
The Republicans led them in fighting for the occupied Six Counties but largely ignored their own economic, social and educational needs at home. Perhaps this is why the people are now organising themselves.
Protest placard by housing block in Macken Street protesting noise and dirt from nearby construction (Photo: Macken Street resident)
“THEY DON’T VOTE”
A number of the local people to whom I spoke quote a local TD (Teachta Dála, elected representative to the Irish parliament) who commented that most of the local residents don’t vote in elections.
Whether he meant, as some have interpreted, that therefore they don’t matter or, that without voting, they cannot effect change, is uncertain. However, community activism is not necessarily tied to voting in elections.
Protest placard by housing block in Macken Street protesting noise and dirt from nearby construction. (Photo: Macken Street resident)
As we know from our history and that of others around the world, voting is not the only way to bring about change and, arguably, not even the most effective one.
Whatever about that question, people are getting organised in these communities and those who hold the power may find that they are in for a fight.
End.
The landscape (and airscape) viewed from a housing block in Macken Street (Photo: Macken Street resident).
FOOTNOTES
1From song by Pet St. John, Dublin in the Rare Aul’ Times.
4From The Larkin Ballad, about the Lockout and the Rising, by Donagh McDonagh, whose father was one of the fourteen shot by British firing squad after the 1916 Rising.
5Formed in Dublin in 1913 to defend strikers and locked-out workers from the Dublin Metropolitan Police; members were required to be trade union members. The ICA was unique for another reason in its time: it recruited women and some of them were officers, commanding men and women.
6Historian Hugo McGuinness based on the other side of the Liffey believes that the reason the British troops sent to suppress the Rising disembarked at Dún Laoghaire rather than in the Dublin docks was because they feared the landing being opposed by the Irish Citizen Army and its local supporting communities.
7Republican Female military organisation, formed 1914.
8Fenian, socialist, trade unionist, house painter who learned and taught Irish language, joined the Irish Volunteers, fought in the Rising and was tragically shot by one of the Bolands Mill Garrison who went homicidally insane (and was himself shot dead).
9Member of the GPO Garrison in the 1916 Rising, subsequently negotiator of the Surrender in Moore Street/ Parnell Street and courier for the 1916 leadership to other fighting posts.
10Member of multiple nationalist organisations, also ICA and in the command echelon of the Stephens Green/ College of Surgeons Garrison. Also first woman elected to the British Parliament and first female Labour Minister in the world.
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