Around 80 people attended a concert in the back room of Dublin’s Cobblestone pub launching an initiative to “build a community of solidarity and resistance through culture”. Flags of Irish and other struggles around the world decorated the venue.
The evening’s entertainment consisted of five musical acts and one of poetry. The MC for the evening, Diarmuid Breatnach, told the audience that Irish struggles had always found an expression in culture and that culture itself encouraged further resistance.
He gave the example of Thomas Davis who founded with others the patriotic newspaper The Nation in the mid-1800s, publishing contributed songs and poems and his own, including The West’s Awake and A Nation Once Again, songs still sung in Ireland nearly two centuries later.
The first act of the evening was the folk duo The Yearners, specialising in harmonies around renditions of song covers and their own song about the Mary of the New Testament, as a woman pressured to bear a child because “How can you say no to God?
The audience joining in on Pearse’s Gráinne Mhaol was followed by some songs with hard satirical edges like the Kinky Boots song from the Irish Republican repertoire and their own Save A Landlord.
The Yearners during their performance. (Photo credit with thanks: Dermo Photography)Dúlamban during their performance. (Photo credit with thanks: Dermo Photography)
The MC introduced another all-female duo, Dúlamban, recently formed from two individual singer-musicians. Among their material, Sinéad on violin played two compositions of her own while Aisling sang her adaptation and translation of the Rising of the Moon: Ar Éirí na Geallaigh.
The one poet of the evening, Barry Currivan, performed a number of shorter and longer pieces of his repertoire. He was particularly applauded for his “anti-othering” piece Those People and his humorous concluding piece comparing himself to a good cup of tea or coffee.
After the break, the MC spent a few minutes outlining the Solidarity Sessions collective’s project and encouraging the audience to take part in it by spreading word of its events and supporting them in person, in addition to stepping forward to assist in organisation and in poster design.
Barry Currivan during his poetry performance at the Solidarity Sessions launch. (Photo credit with thanks: Dermo Photography)Section of the audience presumably during Currivan’s performance. (Photo credit with thanks: Dermo Photography)
Another female duo took the stage, Sage Against the Machine on guitar accompanied by Ríona on violin, performing a number of love pop covers and SAM’s own song against patriarchy.
Some remarks about Bob Dylan’s Zionism followed in Sage’s introduction of the former’s Masters of War which she performed with great feeling and followed with El Gallo Rojo, an anti-fascist song from the Spanish ‘Civil War’.
Sage Against the Marchine (right) and Ríona during their performance. (Photo credit with thanks: Dermo Photography)Jimi Cullen during his performance at the Solidarity Sessions launch. (Photo credit with thanks: Dermo Photography)
Breatnach then introduced Jimi Cullen who he said has been hosting a weekly musical protest picket for an hour on Wednesdays (2-3 pm) outside the US Embassy for a great many weeks, in which the MC had sometimes accompanied him amidst the solidarity beeping of passing traffic.
Jimi accompanied himself singing his Housing for All and Guthrie’s You Fascists Bound to Lose, then commenting on Bob Marley’s Zionism while introducing the latter’s One Love song, saying that love above all is what binds humanity together, a theme also of his We Are All Palestinians.
His monologue The Genocide Will Be Televised was much sharper and renewed an earlier Death, death to the IDF!1 chant from the audience.
Trad Sabbath during their performance. (Photo credit with thanks: Dermo Photography)
There was much irreverent comment about the name of the band to conclude the evening, Trad Sabbath, a four-piece band of guitars, banjo, bodhrán and fiddle, apparently in the context of the very recent death of the Black Sabbath band’s lead vocalist, Ozzie Osbourne.
Sardonic cries about “his poor widow”, Sharon Osbourne2 were also heard, a Zionist personality star in a ‘reality’ TV show about the late Ozzie’s family. To fill in the delay in their setting up with the sound engineer, Breatnach sang Kearney’s Down by the Glenside ballad.
The band concluded the evening with traditional melodies and some songs from Eoghan and Hat with others backing on choruses.
Poster advertising the event (Design: Ríona and D.Breatnach)
The MC thanked all for their attendance, performances and technical support before reiterating the Solidarity Sessions’ objective and encouraging participation. His comment that “Repression is here and more is coming down the road” was underlined by the presence there of a prominent victim.
In the audience was Richard Medhurst, the Britain-based journalist specialising in Middle Eastern coverage who was recently detained under anti-terror (sic) legislation and charged by British police as he returned from abroad and again later detained though not actually charged by Austrian police.
Richard Medhurst’s tweet during the evening at the event.
End.
FOOTNOTES
1Made famous by the Bob Vylan duo at Glastonbuy getting the audience chanting the slogan. The IDF is what the Israeli Occupation Forces call themselves.
2Who had called for the banning of the the Irish rap group Kneecap.
The Zionist state’s latest genocidal plan involves driving the inhabitants into a densely-packed area in the south of Gaza where they will be examined on the way in and then never allowed to leave unless to emigrate to another state.1
This plan was announced recently by ‘Israeli’ Minister of Defence (sic) Israel Katz and has been enthusiastically approved by a number of ‘Israeli’ politicians, including Finance Minister Smotrich.
It’s being suggested Katz’s plan is to be run by the GHF food-and-bullets organisation and to connect to Trump’s earlier remarks about turning Gaza into a seaside resort once the Palestinians had left. However, Trump and his administration have declined to comment on this latest plan.
The Gaza Humanitarian (sic) Foundation, responsible for the deadly food traps in Gaza, has been suggested as the organisation to run the concentration camp (also being called Humanitarian Camp). (Image: Cartoon by D.Breatnach)
But wasn’t Gaza previously a concentration camp? Well, it has been called “the largest open-air prison in the world”2 due to its intensified blockade since 2007 with Israeli control over who went in or came out.3 The intention was to make living intolerable but the Palestinians managed.
The refugees who came there from the Nakba in 1948 and 1967 Arab-Israeli War built houses, shops, community centres, mosques and churches, shops and markets, schools, colleges and university, farmed land and grew produce in polythene tunnels, dug wells, desalinated sea-water …
The IOF have destroyed nearly all of that (even roads and sewage treatment facilities) and now of course with water, fuel and food blockaded and frequent forced internal displacement, Gaza conditions are much much worse, with starvation andcontagious disease spreading.
This new plan however, is to compress the population into a smaller and smaller area, a concentration camp within that prison.
CIVILIAN CONCENTRATION CAMPS
The plan announced by the Zionazis is a concentration camp for civilians and this was in fact admitted by an Israeli journalist on one of their news channels. It’s fascist and racist but it’s not a new idea, having been practised by others including the British, USA and the Turks previously.
Concentration camps for civilians were used by the Nazis and Spanish fascists4 for example; in those cases their punitive function was clear. But during WWII the British interned Germans (including Jewish refugees) and allowed the Poles to run camps for dissidents in Scotland.
‘Concentration Camp’, drawing by David Ludwig Bloch. (Image sourced: Internet)
The British too built two Jewish concentration camps in Germany to prevent them from emigrating to the British Protectorate of Palestine, where the Zionists, encouraged to emigrate there by the British originally, were now destabilising British control and antagonising the indigenous people.6
The British also held Jewish civilians in a concentration camp in Cyprus, many of them Holocaust survivors who had tried to enter Palestine without British authorisation.7
During their war in Malaya (1948-1960) also the British ran civilian concentration villages, a model which the USA were to adopt later in Vietnam. These British measures were under the Briggs Plan and formed part of widescale repressive measures including forced deportations of Chinese.8
Those interned by the British in Frongoch concentration camp after the 1916 Rising were not all military personnel but included civilian members of Irish nationalist organisations.
The USA interned Japanese ethnic minority people during its war with Japan, allegedly as a purely security non-punitive measure. 1,862 deaths (out of 180,000) were recorded in those camps9 for which the USA did not apologise until 197610 or pay reparations until 1998.
The Imperial Japanese forces during the same war period established concentration camps in their conquered territories for civilians, mostly Dutch and British colonial settlers, administrative officials and their families. More than 140,000 of those died in the camps.11
Previously the USA had briefly used concentration camps against Native Americans but later shifted to removal and reservations policed by state-appointed officials. They also interned civilians, tens of thousands dying, in the US-Philippines War of 1898-1914.
In its war against the PKK (1978-2025) the Turkish State forced the evacuation of Kurdish villages where it felt unable to prevent guerrilla penetration, forcing relocation of the people and placing them under a collaborator administration in the new residential location.
The Turks also created a paramilitary police force to operate in the local areas but responsible centrally to the State which they called the Jandarma. In fact this was on the model of similar gendarmerie of the British in Ireland, of the Spanish, French and Italian states.12
Large rural areas of Turkish Kurdistan villages were cleared and relocated forcibly by the authorities. Arguably, despite the difficult conditions, the final defeat of the PKK was internal through adoption of a pacification process under the orders from captivity of their leader Ocalan.13
The village had Turkish-appointed guards and the headman was expected to ensure that the guerrilla forces did not enter and, if they did, to inform the South Vietnamese authorities (and through them the US military). Presumably he was also charged with informing them of ‘disloyal’ villagers.
Of course this put those recruited by the authorities in danger from the insurrectionary forces who viewed the guards and any collaborating headman as traitors. On the other hand, the headman might come under great pressure from the authorities to comply with their plan.
The USA’s version in Vietnam, the Strategic Hamlet Program was practised in 1962 during their War through their proxy, the South Vietnam government.14 Villagers either had their hamlet fortified or more often, they were forcibly relocated to a fortified location.
The Program was reportedly sabotaged but it is doubtful if it would have succeeded in any case as the forced relocations alienated even those who did not already sympathise with the insurrectionary forces. It marked President Kennedy’s last attempt to fight their war in Vietnam ‘indirectly’.
The living conditions in Israel’s version currently being contemplated for Palestinians in Gaza will be intolerable and the clear intention is for those who survive to want to emigrate – so, once again ethnic cleansing within a genocidal framework.
Israel Katz, Minister for Defence (sic) in centre of photo on his sally with IOF into Lebanon with IOF occupying troops. (Photo sourced: Internet)
It will also be very dangerous for those trying to enter, especially men, having to pass the interrogation process at the gate. Those suspected of Resistance activities – or even related to such suspects – will be deeply interrogated and many no doubt interned without trial.15
Families which have survived the genocidal bombing and starvation will be broken up as some enter and some refuse to enter (or are refused).
Overall, the historical experience of people confined in civilian concentration camps has been oppressive but for many a death sentence also. Despite the suffering, as a measure of repression against insurgency amongst the population, it has largely been ineffective.
Actually, there is one recorded case of the civilian concentration camp being successful in a counter-resistance context and that was of the British (again!) against the Boers of South Africa. In the Second Boer War the British (who had been defeated in the first) killed Boer livestock and burned their farms.
The British constructed a civilian concentration camp16 in which they placed the abducted Boer women and children in order to get their menfolk to submit. (The IOF are not above using relatives also, frequently arresting relatives in order to coerce a ‘wanted’ resistance person to surrender.)
80,000 Boer civilians were interned and, in separate camps, 115,000 African servants of the Boers. Due to the conditions, between 18,000 and 28,000 Boers died, 80% of them children. The British kept no records of African deaths but their losses are believed to have been similar.17
However, the British-Boer wars were between one group of settlers and another. So far, for all the suffering it causes, the record of the civilian concentration camp as a repressive measure by an occupying state against a resistant nation is one of failure.
2David Cameron, Prime Minister UK called it a prison in 2010, as did others, including Omar Shakir, Israel and Palestine Director Human Rights watch in 2022. As late as 2023, so did British-Israeli historian and emeritus professor of International Relations at Oxford University Avi Shlaim who said it had evolved into “an open-air graveyard” at the time of his writing (there are numerous sources for the description by various people).
4The civilians in General Franco’ hugely overcrowded camps and jails contained large numbers of Basque, Catalan, Galician nationalists, Republican, Communist non-combatant nationalist civilians in addition to opposition military.
12The RIC (later RUC now PSNI in the British colony) in Ireland, the Guardia Civil in the Spanish state, Gendarmerie in France and Carabinieri in Italy. Those forces in the last three named operate throughout the different nations that are incorporated in those states.
The media and some British politicians have been in a furore about what a performer of one of the acts at the Glastonbury Festival1 called from the stage and got most of the audience to chant with him: Death, death to the IDF!2
The performer was not, for change, one of the Kneecap trio (who also performed at Glastonbury) despite British politician complaints after another anti-Zionist “controversy” (i.e. unlike daily Zionist genocide of Palestinians, supplied by UK weapons, which is not at all controversial).
The latest performer to raise the genocide-proof ire of British politicians and mass media commentators was a member of the Bob Vylan group and the call which caused such anger in pro-Zionist circles was uttered from the West Holts stage during the Festival on Saturday.
Bob Vylan lead singer performing on the West Holts stage during the Glastonbury Festival at Worthy Farm in Somerset. (Photo cred: Yui Mok/AP)
This call was not only denounced by right wing conservative and social-democratic figures such as the UK’s Prime Minister, Keith Starmer, who dubbed it ‘hate speech’ but also went too far for the liberal Glastonbury Festival management who issued a statement declaring it “appalling”.3
To call for the ‘death’ of an organisation or a power is to call for it to cease to exist, to end. So what is the IDF? Well, the acronym stands for Israeli Defence Force, often and more realistically referred to as the IOF, i.e. the Israeli Occupation Force.
Now this organisation is the military wing of the Zionist European settler colony which is ‘Israel’, and with a history of attacks on the indigenous Palestinians, in addition to the people of Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Syria and, the week before last, Iran.4
APPALLING OR MODERATE AND REASONABLE?
On that basis alone, surely it would be moderate and reasonable to call for such a military organisation to cease to exist, i.e. to call for its death?
But there’s more – a lot more! The IOF has since 9th October 2023 been enforcing a water and starvation blockade on Gaza, also depriving it of importation of medicines.5 The IOF ground and air forces have destroyed at least in part but mostly completely every hospital and medical facility in Gaza.6
Cartoon regarding the Israeli water blockade on Gaza (D.Breatnach)
In addition to starving the population of Gaza by military blockade, the IOF has, with the direct assistance of the USA, set up the “killing fields” in which hungry Palestinian people are sniped, machine-gunned and shelled as they queue for meagre GHF food parcels.7
The IOF has assassinated or caused the death of at least 54,607 Palestinians and wounded 125,341 between 7 October 2023 and 4 June this year,8 including hundreds of first responders and civil defence workers,9 over 230 journalists10 and many police and security workers.11
This same organisation is the one primarily responsible for the mass demolition in Gaza of Palestinian residential buildings and the displacement of 1.9 million people,12 along with destruction of water and sewage infrastructure, desalination plants, water tanks and agriculture.
Many massacres by the IOF have been carried out in areas they had declared safe whendisplacing Palestinians from another area. (D.Breatnach)
The evidence of daily genocide by the IOF is incontrovertible and even the weak and hesitant International Court of Justice in the Hague stated that there was a plausible case to answer.13 The court also ordered the arrest of some leading government ministers who control the IOF.14
UNCONTROVERSIAL, A DUTY
To call for the death of an army of genocide is surely not only not controversial but is instead correct, a duty, one which all reasonable institutions and individuals should emulate.
According to the Genocide Convention of 1948, all signatory states have a dutyto act to prevent genocide,15 not only not to collude with it. Bob Vylan is to be commended for their call and those who condemn them should, at the very least, face widespread opprobrium.
Bob Vylan’s call is absolutely correct and humanity awaits its implementation, not only death to the IOF but also to the regime and colonial state that gave rise to and which program it follows. Let us join our voices to the humanitarian call and expand upon it.16
Death to the IOF — and to the Zionist settler colony that spawned it!
End.
Sources:
1The Glastonbury music festival is an annual event of a liberal alternative ambience.
8Gaza health Ministry figures, quoted in https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c0r1xl5wgnko (which incorrectly quotes the Israeli figures on Israelis killed by Hamas on October 7th despite a number of Israeli sources indicating that an unknown number of those were killed by the IOF in implementation of the “Hannibal Doctrine”.
No Nations No Borders was the title of a meeting I saw advertised recently and also a slogan I had heard chanted some years ago1 on a counter protest to fascists and other racists. I wondered then and wonder now: Have they thought this through?
Clearly the utterers and followers of such a slogan see many negative things emanating from nations, probably war, oppression, repression, racism, even genocide. But are those things fundamentally attributes of nations – or even of states that are founded upon nations?
The definition of a nation is not universally shared among historians, philosophers and sociologists but they are generally agreed that it is applied to a people who share a territory and common history, along with a language and culture, incorporating customs and law.
Some argue that nations only came into existence historically in the 18th century, others maintain that they existed long before that, in the Middle Ages and even further back. In Ireland, Thomas Davis published the lyrics of A Nation Once Again in 1844, nearly half-way into the 19th Century.2
Davis, whose father was Welsh, drew on the classical Romano-Greek education of the British ruling class as inspiring his awakening nationalism:
When boyhood’s fire was in my blood/ I read of ancient freemen/ Of Greece and Rome who bravely stood/ Three hundred men and three men3/ And then I hoped I yet might see/ Her fetters rent in twain/ And Ireland long a province be/ A nation once again!
Plaque in Middle Abbey Street to mark the site of The Nation, a patriotic newspaper founded in Dublin in 1842 by leaders of a group that became known as The Young Irelanders. (Photo sourced: Internet)
However, the United Irishmen who rose in revolt in 1798,4 the first Republican uprising in Ireland, certainly conceived of their nation, the French too in their 17895 revolution and the 13 Colonies, the precursor of the United States of America, in the American Revolution 1765–1783.6
The leaders of the United Irishmen were mostly English-speaking while the majority of the population, indigenous clans and Gaelicised descendants of Normans and Vikings, were all Irish-speaking and they had earlier appealed to Rome in terms of an oppressed nation.7
It can be argued that in passing the Statutes of Kilkenny in 13668 the English occupation recognised Irish nationhood, albeit in the form of a malignant influence upon the Norman invaders who were ‘going native’, “the degenerate English” having become “more Irish than the Irish themselves”.
An Irish nation-building process may be perceived over three centuries earlier, with Brian Boróimhe trying to unify Ireland under his kingship and defeat the Dublin Viking colony. As Brian was killed9 at the Battle of Clontarf (sic),10 this remains unproven.
All the attempts to achieve national independence starting with the United Irishmen until at least 1923 were built upon democratic formulations according to their time and – in the case of the 1916 Proclamation – in actual advance of it in terms equality of women and of civil and religious liberty.
Monument to Thomas Davis (1814-1845), writer, publisher (founder of The Nation newspaper) and composer, erected in Dublin’s Dame Street 1966. (Photo sourced: Internet)
NO NATIONS?
If nations are to be abolished, how might this be achieved? Presumably their languages, cultures and customs would need to be eradicated … and replaced with what? Actually, there have been ongoing attempts at that eradication for centuries – by colonialism and imperialism!
In those cases, the conquering power would seek to replace the language, culture and history of the conquered with their own – or with an allegedly ‘cosmopolitan’ culture (i.e allegedly independent of any national culture). It might be unpleasant for the “no nations” people to reflect upon that.
It was fashionable in the 1980s among certain intellectuals to claim that nationalism was moribund (and history too), quickly refuted even in Europe by the Balkan wars, not to mention by the Irish and Basque anti-colonial struggles.
A German movement among the Left known as anti-nationalismus in opposition to the nationalism of the German State, because of fears of return to nazism, extended its application of that to opposing national liberation struggles (e.g in Ireland, Basque, Palestine) and to support for Zionism.
I have heard John Hume quoted as saying that “We are all Europeans now”, understood to indicate the end of the various national entities in Europe – or at least their importance as nations.
I failed to find that quotation but he said something similar in his acceptance speech for the 1998 Nobel Peace Prize (shared with Loyalist leader Trimble)11 — a speech either hugely naive or reflective of imperialism at a time of its rampant reign and proxy wars across the world.
The eradication of nationalism, even were it possible, would entail the elimination of a huge reservoir of different languages and cultures around the world, the different ways of expressing being human as we understand that concept.
The replacement, if achievable, would be a sterile mono-culture. Or possibly even that culture might fragment over time into different forms of expression in parts of the world.
NO BORDERS?
Let us suppose that the people of a nation are not to be removed nor their culture eliminated but that it’s merely proposed that its borders be removed. If we do not agree – or it should prove impossible to – eliminate the nation as a political-cultural construct, what about just removing borders?
It would be wonderful to be able to travel around the world without ever encountering customs posts or border guards – wouldn’t it?
The monument to Charles Stewart Parnell (184 -1891), political party and Land League campaign leader, erected in Dublin at the junction of Sackville (now O’Connell) and Parnell Street in 1911. An inscription on the monument opposes borders or boundaries but in another sense, as a limit to the nation’s independence: “No man has a right to fix the boundary to the march of a nation. No man has a right to say to his country thus far shalt thou go and no further.” (Source photo: Wikipedia)
Of course it would and hopefully one day that will be a reality, without having eliminated nations. But in the era of imperialism and colonialism, nations that free themselves will need to maintain borders as part of the defences against their invasion by their former masters or prospective ones.
During that period, those borders will need to be defended and monitored in terms of financial, scientific and commercial exchanges, imports and exports and – yes — passport control. Not very libertarian, for sure but some idea of entrances and exits will be needed for a number of reasons.
This is the era of imperialism and colonialism on the one hand and national liberation on the other. To attack the idea of the nation at this time is to objectively side with the projects of those reactionary forces and progressive forces need to oppose projects against nationalism.
However, inside the nations, there are also necessary struggles to be fought: of class, of democratic rights and freedoms and these can and should be fought, while at the same time defending the rights of nations to exist and develop.
End.
FOOTNOTES
1This was by a small politically sectarian group which seems to have left the active stage for some years now.
3The ‘three hundred men’ men refers to the Spartans (who actually had other allies there too) led by Leonidas I at the battle at the Pass of Thermopylae to delay the Persian army’s invasion of Greece led by Xerxes I in 480 BCE; the “three men” is a reference to Horatio’s stand with two comrades on the bridge in 509 BCE in an attempt to deny an invading Etruscan army access to the city of Rome. Coincidentally or not, the story was published in McCauley Lays of Ancient Rome in1842, two years before the publication of Davis’ A Nation Once Again.
4Although the leadership was nearly all descended from settlers, they did seek a democracy enfranchising the indigenous Irish.
5The French Republic could justifiably claim to represent the French nation but what of the Breton and Corsican nations, along with parts of the Basque and Catalan nations over which La Republique claimed domination? Or the French colonies in Africa, Asia, America and the Caribbean?
6This is a most problematic concept of a nation, being entirely constructed of a minority of settlers imposed on the Indigenous population and the imported slave population, both of which were totally excluded from the polity.
7I have seen a copy of the appeal but now cannot find it, however at the time of post-WWI Paris Peace Conference Seán T. Ó Ceallaigh seeking Vatican support for Irish independence declared: Ireland’s righteous and time-honoured claims have been frequently recognised by Your Holiness’s Predecessors and even actively assisted by them as far back as the sixteenth century.https://www.difp.ie/volume-1/1920/appeal-to-vatican/35/#section-document page.
8Quotations from the preamble to The Statutes of Kilkenny 1366 legislation: “In essence its purpose was to codify laws passed over the previous decades which had sought to halt and reverse the Gaelicisation of English settlers in Ireland. For instance the use of Irish language, dress, and customs by all English and Irish subjects who had sworn loyalty to the king was forbidden.” https://cain.ulster.ac.uk/othelem/chron/ch1169-1799.htm
101014, the Battle lasting around 12 hours could not have been fought at present-day Clontarf, which did not exist then and that site is not mentioned in any of the early accounts of the Battle. The site has never been indentified but was likely around the Glasnevin/Drumcondra area.
11Awarded for his work in helping to create the imperialist pacification process in Britain’s colonial conflict in Ireland: If I had stood on this bridge 30 years ago after the end of the second world war when 25 million people lay dead across our continent for the second time in this century and if I had said: “Don’t worry. In 30 years’ time we will all be together in a new Europe, our conflicts and wars will be ended and we will be working together in our common interests”, I would have been sent to a psychiatrist. But it has happened and it is now clear that European Union is the best example in the history of the world of conflict resolution and it is the duty of everyone, particularly those who live in areas of conflict to study how it was done and to apply its principles to their own conflict resolution.https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/peace/1998/hume/lecture/
Thousands of marchers with flags, banners and three marching bands retraced the route of the anti-internment march in 1972 that ended in the infamous Derry Bloody Sunday1, a massacre of unarmed civilians by the British Parachute Regiment.
The nearest Sunday to the date of the original march, which this year fell on February 2nd has been chosen annually for the commemorative march over the 53 years since the massacre. People travel from different parts of Ireland and indeed from beyond in order to attend.
Section of the march coming down from the Creggan. (Photo: D.Breatnach)The colour party (bearing the flags) traditionally precedes the marching band. (Photo: D.Breatnach)
Derry is not well served by public transport from other parts of Ireland and there is no train station there.
There is a bus service from Dublin from the Translink company of the occupied colony but one would need to catch it at seven in the morning and then hang around in Derry for 3.5 hours waiting for the march to start. For this reason, many travel to Derry by car.
Equally, many others who would attend were the public transport available, stay home but an estimated over 7,000 participated in this year’s march. The theme this year was Palestine, once again as was last year’s too.
The day of the massacre
The original march was a protest against the introduction in August 1971 of internment without trial in the occupied colony. Almost immediately afterward the Parachute Regiment had massacred 11 people protesting against it in Ballymurphy, Belfast.2
Ballymurphy campaign banner in the Creggan awaiting start of march with Kate Nash centre. (Photo: D.Breatnach)
The 1972 march, along with many others, had been banned by the sectarian colonial administration. The Civil Rights campaigners knew that their legitimate demands3 were being obstructed by use of the Special Powers4 of the statelet and that they could win nothing if they were to acquiesce.
After the previous massacres it took considerable courage to march that day but perhaps they thought that with an advertised march, in daylight, with many film cameras covering, the Paras were unlikely to open fire. In any case, they decided to risk it.
At 4.10pm the first shots were fired by the Paras5 without warning and by around 20 minutes later they had killed 13 men and youths and wounded another 13, one of whom would die weeks later. According to the Saville Inquiry in 2010, they had fired over 100 rounds.
Not one of their targets was armed.
To justify the slaughter, the British Army claimed that they were fired upon and returned fire, killing IRA fighters. The British Government, in particular through Home Affairs Minister Reginald Maudling, repeated the lies as did the British media.
Bernadette (then) Devlin6 MP, a survivor, was prevented from speaking in the Westminster Parliament and she walked up to Maudling and slapped his face. In Dublin a general strike took place with schools closing and a huge crowd burned the British Embassy down.
In London, a giant march reached Trafalgar Square as its end was still leaving Hyde Park. In Whitehall the police prevented them from laying the symbolic coffins outside No.10 and in the scuffles the ‘coffins’ were eventually thrown at the police or knocked to the ground.
And a number of construction sites in Britain went on strike also.
The judicial response varied wildly. Coroner Hubert O’Neill, an ex-British Army major, presiding on the inquests in 1973, called it “Sheer unadulterated murder” whereas Lord Chief Justice Widgery in the ‘inquiry’ he led ignored all the local evidence and accepted the British Army’s lies.7
“The last Bloody Sunday march”
Provisional Sinn Féin organised and managed the annual march for many years but in January 2011 Martin McGuinness announced that year’s march would be the last, because of the UK’s Prime Minister David Cameron’s public apology to the relatives of the 14 killed in Derry.
The apology followed quickly on the verdict of the Saville Inquiry8 which totally refuted the statements at the time by representatives of the Army and of the Political and Judicial establishments: the victims had been unarmed and the Army had not been “returning fire”.
One side of one of the marching band drums (Photo: D.Breatnach)Section of the march about half-way along its length. (Photo: D.Breatnach)
Despite the UK State’s acknowledgement that they had no excuse for the massacre, not one of those who planned, organised or carried out the atrocity had been charged, never mind convicted, nor had those who conspired to cover up the facts. To this day, only a low-level soldier has faced charges.
Nor had there been government admissions of wrongdoing in the other massacres by the Paras intended to crush the resistance to the repressive internment measure, at Ballymurphy and Springhill.
A number of relatives and survivors of the original march declined to have the annual march cancelled, among them Kate Nash and Bernadette McAlliskey. Kate Nash’s brother William was shot dead on Bloody Sunday and her father, William, was wounded trying to save his son.
Bernadette McAlliskey was a survivor of the massacre and also survived nearly a decade later an assassination attempt in her home, being struck by nine bullets of a Loyalist murder gang. Despite opposition by and denunciation from SF, volunteers have kept the march going every year.
Each year different themes have also been incorporated into the Bloody Sunday March for Justice, including ones in Ireland, such as the framed Craigavon Two prisoners but also ones from beyond, e.g. the resistance of the Broadwater Farm housing estate in London to Metropolitan Police attack.
Section of the march in Creggan waiting to start, showing the Palestinian national flag and the Irish Tricolour in close proximity. (Photo: D.Breatnach)Big drums of one of the marching bands getting a workout in the Creggan while waiting for the march to start. ‘Saoirse go deo’ = Freedom for ever. (Photo: D.Breatnach)
Since 2011 Sinn Féin have boycotted the march but also sought to mobilise public opinion against it, claiming that relatives of the victims didn’t want the march to continue. The truth is that some hadn’t wanted it even when SF were running it, some didn’t afterwards but some did.
Such an atrocity has of course huge personal impact on relatives of victims but its impact is also much wider on a society and beyond, historically and politically. That historical memory ‘belongs’ to the people of Derry but also to the people of the world (as do others such as Sharpeville SA).
Those in power in society are aware of that and the media outside of Derry gives little or no coverage to the annual march while promoting other events there of lesser numbers and significance.
The ‘Derry Peoples Museum’ ignores the march in its Bloody Sunday commemorative program.
This year’s march
Sunday just past was one of sunshine and little wind, as it was on the day of the Derry massacre. But regular marchers remember other Bloody Sunday commemoration days of pouring non-stop rain, of squalls, of snow and sleet, of wet clothes, socks and freezing fingers and toes.
The march starts in the afternoon at the Creggan (An Chreagáin) and winds down to just below the Derry Walls, then up a long slope again before eventually ending down at Free Derry Corner9, the destination of the original march, where speakers address the crowd from a sheltered stage.
Marchers underway, led by people carrying 14 crosses to represent the unarmed civilians murdered by the Paras on that day 53 years before. (Photo: D.Breatnach) The band members are itching to go up in the Creggan. (Photo: D.Breatnach)
The sides of residential blocks in this area are also painted in giant murals to represent scenes from the civil rights and armed resistance period while nearby stands a monument to the martyrs of Bloody Sunday 1972 but also another to the 10 H-Blocks’ martyrs of the Hungers Strikes of 1981.
In this area, one needs to be blind not to be at least peripherally aware of the icons of proud struggle and of loss, of sacrifice.
Eamon McCann and Farah Koutteineh addressed the rally at the end of the march. McCann, a journalist and member of the People Before Profit political party is a survivor of the massacre. He is an early supporter of the Bloody Sunday March for Justice at which he has spoken on occasion.
Farah Koutteineh is a Palestinian journalist who was herself the news when in December 2023 she and a few other Palestinians were ejected from a Sinn Féin-organised meeting in Belfast being addressed by the Palestinian Ambassador as a representative of the Palestinian Authority.
Koutteineh had been denouncing the Palestine Authority’s collusion with Israel when she and the other Palestinians were hustled out to applause from many of the attendance. Not surprisingly from the Derry platform on Sunday she too drew applause in criticising SF’s position on Palestine.10
Speaking to this reporter after the march, Kate Nash said: “There is no chance the march will be ended. It will go forward into the future, a beacon of resistance against the injustices and crimes of states around the world.
“There are millions of us … people come from around the world to commemorate this massacre with us.”
end.
Series of images from the march (Photoa by D.Breatnach)
Footnotes:
1There have been a number of Bloody Sundays in the history of Ireland under colonialism and therefore the location and year are often incorporated into the name for clarity as to which is being discussed.
2There was substantial State interference with inquests during the period of the 30-years’ war in the Six Counties (and in some cases in the Irish state also), in order to avoid inquest juries finding the state armed forces culpable of homicide unjustified in law. The original inquest in 1972 on the Ballymurphy massacre recorded an ‘open verdict’ but a 2021 reopened inquest found the British Army killings “unjustifiable”. Even after the Derry massacre, in July of that year, the Paras again killed five unarmed people and injured two in the Springhill area of Belfast and again an ‘open verdict’ was recorded into the fatalities which included three teenagers and a priest.
3The demands were all of rights that were in existence in the rest of the UK, including an ending to discrimination in allocation of housing and employment and general enfranchisement.
4The Special Powers (Northern Ireland) Act 1922 gave legal powers to the authorities similar to martial law. Allegedly temporary, as is often the case the Act kept getting renewed until made permanent and its repeal was one of the demands of the Civil Rights campaign. The Act was finally repealed in 1973.
5There was a unit of other British Army soldiers stationed on the Derry Walls with special rifles and there has been speculation that some of the shots might have been fired by them but this has never been confirmed to date.
6Now McAlliskey then Devlin, she had been a candidate for the People’s Democracy party of the time, the youngest MP elected.
7And that was the ‘official record’ until the Saville verdict 38 years later. A clever contemporary lampooning of Widgery and playing on a soap powder advert, with excellent alliteration, had it that “Nothing washes whiter than Widgery White!”
8Although the Saville Inquiry delivered its verdict in June 2010, it had been set up in 1998, taking an inordinately long time (and a bonanza in legal fees for judge, barristers, lawyers and clerks) to reach a verdict already obvious to all the nationalist people of the Six Counties, most of the Irish people and probably millions around the world. The date of its setting up so near to that of the Good Friday Agreement suggests that its creation (and eventual verdict) was part of the ‘sweeteners’ of the Pacification Process and the Good Friday Agreement.
9A reconstruction of the iconic gable end of a small local authority house in the Bogside area of Derry which had been painted in 1967, during the Civil Rights resistance period, with giant letters proclaiming: YOU ARE NOW ENTERING FREE DERRY. The house was demolished during redevelopment of the area but the gable end was reconstructed as a monument to the resistance of the people of the city.
10Sinn Féin support the corrupt and collaborationist Palestine Authority and its backing political party Fatah and also celebrated St. Patrick’s Day with (then) President Joe Biden while the US was supplying the Zionist genocide with weapons, money and political backing.
1There have been a number of Bloody Sundays in the history of Ireland under colonialism and therefore the location and year are often incorporated into the name for clarity as to which is being discussed.
2There was substantial State interference with inquests during the period of the 30-years’ war in the Six Counties (and in some cases in the Irish state also), in order to avoid inquest juries finding the state armed forces culpable of homicide unjustified in law. The original inquest in 1972 on the Ballymurphy massacre recorded an ‘open verdict’ but a 2021 reopened inquest found the British Army killings “unjustifiable”. Even after the Derry massacre, in July of that year, the Paras again killed five unarmed people and injured two in the Springhill area of Belfast and again an ‘open verdict’ was recorded into the fatalities which included three teenagers and a priest.
3The demands were all of rights that were in existence in the rest of the UK, including an ending to discrimination in allocation of housing and employment and general enfranchisement.
4The Special Powers (Northern Ireland) Act 1922 gave legal powers to the authorities similar to martial law. Allegedly temporary, as is often the case the Act kept getting renewed until made permanent and its repeal was one of the demands of the Civil Rights campaign. The Act was finally repealed in 1973.
5There was a unit of other British Army soldiers stationed on the Derry Walls with special rifles and there has been speculation that some of the shots might have been fired by them but this has never been confirmed to date.
6Now McAlliskey then Devlin, she had been a candidate for the People’s Democracy party of the time, the youngest MP elected.
7And that was the ‘official record’ until the Saville verdict 38 years later. A clever contemporary lampooning of Widgery and playing on a soap powder advert, with excellent alliteration, had it that “Nothing washes whiter than Widgery White!”
8Although the Saville Inquiry delivered its verdict in June 2010, it had been set up in 1998, taking an inordinately long time (and a bonanza in legal fees for judge, barristers, lawyers and clerks) to reach a verdict already obvious to all the nationalist people of the Six Counties, most of the Irish people and probably millions around the world. The date of its setting up so near to that of the Good Friday Agreement suggests that its creation (and eventual verdict) was part of the ‘sweeteners’ of the Pacification Process and the Good Friday Agreement.
9A reconstruction of the iconic gable end of a small local authority house in the Bogside area of Derry which had been painted in 1967, during the Civil Rights resistance period, with giant letters proclaiming: YOU ARE NOW ENTERING FREE DERRY. The house was demolished during redevelopment of the area but the gable end was reconstructed as a monument to the resistance of the people of the city.
10Sinn Féin support the corrupt and collaborationist Palestine Authority and its backing political party Fatah and also celebrated St. Patrick’s Day with (then) President Joe Biden while the US was supplying the Zionist genocide with weapons, money and political backing.
Not only has the retaliation against the violence and racist and fascist provocation of a Zionist football team ultra thugs been misrepresented as ‘anti-semitism’ but the Dutch authorities send the provoked to jail.
And the western mass media continues to misreport the events. It’s an absolute disgrace.
What actually happened in Amsterdam is that many ultra fans of the ‘Israeli’ football team Maccabi, arriving in Amsterdam on 6th November, the day before the game, went on a provocative rampage through the city, celebrating the murder of Palestinian children and chanting anti-Arab slogans.
They armed themselves with bottles and material from a building site, chased people they identified as ‘Arabs’ and attacked a taxi driver’s vehicle. In addition they were filmed trying to tear down Palestinian flags from outside people’s houses, in one case successfully.
By and large the Dutch police did not intervene though one was later reported injured. The following day, that of the football match of Maccabi Tel Aviv Vs Ajax, the provoked responded and handed out retribution.
Separately, the city authorities had refused permission for a Palestine solidarity picket near the game and ‘dispersed’ those who attempted to demonstrate nevertheless1 which may have encouraged some rioting and some attacks on the police.
The media reports that 60 arrests were made of which only 10 had ‘Israeli’ addresses.2 Because of the clear bias in reporting and in the trials so far, one can almost guarantee that none of the latter will be handed prison sentences.
However the evidence of the true nature of the events was available in videos of the actions of the Maccabi Tel Aviv ultras and in reports of eyewitnesses and even in some media reporting, but usually far down the report after repeating the slurs of “anti-Semitism” and alleged crimes.
That follows the wide political media misrepresentation with such accusations of anti-Semitism by western political leaders from USA’s Biden to Amsterdam’s Mayor, Femke Halsema, (later admitting that accusation had been misused as propaganda in describing the events).3
However the Dutch premier Dick Schoof did not retract his accusations of “anti-Semitism”,4 even though he also referred to the violence and provocation by Maccabi ultras, conflating the retribution on the ultras or Israelis with attacks “on Jews” (as did the western media in general).
Of course, leader of the current ‘Israeli’ fascist and genocidal government Netanyahu was quick to make a similar accusation, even going so far as to compare it to the Nazis’ Kristalnacht in 1938, when Jewish businesses and homes were attacked and an estimated 91 Jews killed.
The German media had played its part assisting the climb to power of the Nazis in the 1930s, and the western mass media misrepresentation today also facilitates the repression of Palestinian solidarity and the continuation of daily Zionist genocide.
This is particularly egregious while Palestinian journalist colleagues risk their lives reporting the facts from the ground and over 141 have been murdered since October 2023.
Maccabi Tel Aviv ultras in Amsterdam for their team’s game against Ajax in which they were beaten 5-0. (Photo: AP)
The reputation of the Maccabi ultras did not contradict their actions in Amsterdam, having a name for violent behaviour and racist slogans.5 They were recorded in Amsterdam chanting in celebration that “there are no schools in Gaza because there no children left”6 and “Death to Arabs!”
The trials were in the context of wide-scale repression of Palestinian solidarity across the West, losing or threatening the livelihoods of academics, information technologists, journalists and the studies of students. Activists have been charged, fined, jailed or threatened by the authorities.
Despite the judge’s admission that the crimes alleged would have normally warranted sentence of community service, five of the accused were jailed because of “the seriousness of the offence and (in) the context … only imprisonment is appropriate.” 7
What is that if not a clear admission of political motivation and bias in the sentencing?
Why was the incident so blatantly misrepresented? What is the reason for the repression of Palestinian solidarity in the West? It is all simply so that the genocide in Palestine may continue without any obstruction from within the fortresses of western imperialism.
4“The images and reports for Amsterdam and what we’ve seen this weekend of antisemitic attacks against Israelis and Jews are nothing short of shocking and reprehensible,” he told journalists. https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c78dzr432x7o No reports of attacks “on Jews” as such had been verified, though certainly passports were examined to establish whether people were Israelis. It was their origin from the Zionist state that was the issue in the context of its ongoing genocide and the fans racist, arrogant and violent behaviour the previous dayl
Leader of the Dutch social-democratic minorities-based Denk party denounces the actions of the Maccabi ultras and the biassed response of the right-wing Government, also using the events for racist propaganda: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lwobmhPNu2g
Yahya Sinwar, head of the Palestinian resistance organisation Hamas, was killed in action by an Israeli Occupation Force in what was for them a routine operation in Gaza on 16th October, his last moments captured on video and broadcast widely.
From that event alone there is much for us to learn about Hamas and the Palestinian Resistance in general as well as about Sinwar himself — but also about the IOF, the way it fights and the extent of its self-discipline.
For the bare details as publicly shared, Sinwar was in military outfit, in tac vest, armed with a pistol and automatic rifle and accompanied by two local Hamas commanders in the Tal as-Sultan, Rafah area of Gaza patrolled by the IOF, very close to the semi-permanent IOF front lines.1
One may assume Sinwar was on a reconnaissance operation.
Sinwar with Hamas comrades in 2021 (photo cred: John Michillo)
Something gave away their position to a passing patrol in an area where, as far as the IOF were concerned, nothing should be alive except themselves. Pursued, they split up, local commanders in one building and Sinwar into another so the patrol called a tank to fire into each.
The patrol attempted to enter the building into which the individual fighter had gone but two grenades beat them back, injuring one soldier,2 so they retreated and called for a tank to put another shell in the building.
Still wary in the aftermath, they sent a surveillance drone into the building and the image it captured was what was seen in the widely-circulated video: a Palestinian fighter, apparently unarmed, right hand mangled. As they watched, he threw a stick at the drone with his left hand but missed.
So the IOF patrol had another tank round fired into the building and they went on their way.3
The last image of Hamas chief Yahya Sinwar alive. Right arm mangled he stares at the IOF drone videoing him in house ruined by IOF bombing in Tal Al-Sultan, Rafah, before throwing a stick at it. Moments later the IOF call a tank to put a shell in the building, collapsing it on top of him.
But unusually,4 they came back. Perhaps someone thought they recognised Sinwar in the camera video? It was then they discovered that one of the three fighters they had killed was Yaha Sinwar, confirmed by test results matching his DNA records they had from his years in captivity.
According to ‘Israeli’ postmortem, although he’d been hit by shrapnel and his right hand was mangled, what killed Sinwar was a bullet to the brain – which raises other questions.5
Whatever he was doing at that time, it was clear that he was there as a commander and Resistance fighter, armed and dressed for combat in a highly dangerous area, regularly patrolled by the IOF and only a short distance from their secured front lines.
That alone spoke of courage but also his and his comrades’ resistance in the face of superior numbers declared their courage and determination. But Sinwar’s continuing to resist while badly wounded and his comrades dead, spoke of heroism.
Although only weeks from his 62nd birthday and after 22 years in a Zionist jail, Sinwar seems to have been quite fit. However, according to the results of a postmortem examination carried out by the IOF, Yahya Sinwar had not eaten in 72 hours prior to his death – a period of three days.6
The event was revealing in outlining how the IOF infantry is accustomed to fighting. They are fine with killing civilians but when confronted with armed resistance fighters, they hold for a short while if at all before retreating and calling up artillery or air strikes.
Their dead and wounded are picked up by helicopter and rushed to undamaged ‘Israeli’ hospitals, well equipped and staffed less than an hour away, a journey that is never fired upon by the Palestinian Resistance.
The contrast could not be starker, as the IOF fire on Palestinian paramedics and their vehicles, blockade Palestinian hospitals from receiving fuel and other essential supplies, even bombing and occupying them, kidnapping and killing medical personnel.
What people saw in the video of Sinwar’s last moments exposed Israeli lying propaganda about Sinwar, accusing him of living safe and well inside the tunnels and never emerging or, if he does, going about in a burka, disguised as a woman, also of intending to flee to Egypt with ‘hostages’.7
Iconic photo of Yahya Sinwar in May 2021, sitting in an armchair outside his home in Gaza, ruined by IOF bombardment. He went there directly after concluding an interview with words to the effect that he did not fear assassination by the IOF, that they knew who he was and the route he would take and if they wanted to kill him “Be my guest … I won’t bat an eyelid.”
The quick circulation of the video by the IOF exposed also the renowned indiscipline of their military and their total lack of comprehension of the mental and emotional processes of the people they have been occupying and oppressing for seven decades.
Their indiscipline is attested to by the thousands of videos on social media posted by the IOF during their genocidal operations as, contrary to orders, they film themselves blowing up buildings including a university, humiliating and brutalising prisoners, even on occasion raping them.
The IOF are renowned too for leaving graffiti inside occupied houses and for prancing around houses they have destroyed, often wearing the intimate underclothing of Palestinian women, whom they have at least turned into refugees and may have killed.
In those circumstances their release of the video before discussing it with their intelligence and propaganda department is not surprising but doing so underlines their failure to understand their enemy. They thought that killing Sinwar would undermine Palestinian morale.
They, colonialists and other oppressors in general fail to take account of the human will to resist and the potency of the memory and example of martyrs. This is an aspect we understand well in Ireland.
The Zionist intelligence services would surely have preferred not to have Sinwar’s last moments shared publicly and possibly would have liked the opportunity to lie about them.
Yahya Sinwar gives the victory sign with both hands while speaking from a rally in Gaza.
Sinwar was clearly a remarkable individual, Palestinian Resistance fighter, thinker and leader but the IOF made him a martyr and in their arrogance showed his heroism not just to the Palestinians — nor to Arabs alone — but to the world.
Yahya Ibrahim Hassan Sinwar (Arabic: يحيى إبراهيم حسن السنوار, romanized: Yaḥyá Ibrāhīm Ḥasan al-Sinwār; 29 October 1962 – 16 October 2024) was a Palestinian resistance fighter, former political prisoner and subsequently politician who was killed in action.
Sinwar served as chairman of the Hamas Political Bureau from August 2024 and as the leader of Hamas in the Gaza Strip from February 2017, until his death in October 2024, succeeding Ismail Haniyeh (assassinated by Israeli strike while on a fraternal visit to Iran) in both roles.
He was born in the Khan Yunis refugee camp in Egypt-ruled Gaza in 1962 to a family who were refugees from Majdal (Hebrew: Ashkelon) during the 1948 Palestine War. He gained a bachelor’s degree in Arabic studies at the Islamic University of Gaza.8
Sinwar’s first arrest was in 1982 for ‘subversive activities’, serving several months in the Far’a prison where he met other Palestinian activists and dedicated himself to the Palestinian cause. Though arrested again in 1985, upon his release he continued his organising trajectory.
Israeli propaganda has claimed that during this period his work in internal security against Zionist agents and informers earned him the nickname “Butcher of Khan Younis” but no-one who knew him or seriously studied him even heard of that alleged nickname until after his death.9
Ismail Haniyeh, leader of the Hamas politburo, welcomes Sinwar with a kiss after the latter’s release from jail in the prisoner exchange of 21 October 2021 (Photo cred: Abed Rahim Khatib/ Flash 90)
Sentenced to four life sentences in 1989, Sinwar spent 22 years in prison until his release among 1,026 others in a 2011 prisoner exchange for Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit. According to John Elmer10 Sinwar wanted others released before him but the prisoners insisted he be one of those leaving.
The prisoners had elected Sinwar as their leader in the prison11 and he was known for encouraging prisoners to use their time productively and to study – in particular to study the enemy. He certainly practised what he preached, becoming fluent in Hebrew and studying IOF tactics.
And also, incredibly, in writing a political novel, The Thorn and the Carnation.12
Sinwar (centre photo) photographed carrying the son of Mazen Faqha, a Hamas leader who was shot dead by unidentified gunmen in Gaza at martyrs’ memorial 27 March 2017. Another photo of Sinwar shows him carrying the child and an automatic rifle; yet another, carrying an automatic rifle and a child who might be a girl, perhaps the child of another martyred fighter. The child and the gun may be seen as symbolising the future through resistance.
On 21 November 2011, a month after his release, Sinwar married Samar Muhammad Abu Zamar and the couple had three children. Sinwar’s wife received a master’s degree in theology from the Islamic University of Gaza. His brother Mohamed remains active in the resistance and is being sought by the IOF.
Re-elected as Hamas leader in 2021, Sinwar survived an ‘Israeli’ assassination attempt that same year.
3All of this is according to the Israeli Occupation Force.
4 According to Jon Elmer, blogger and weekly podcast military analyst for the Electronic Intifada, also in discussion with Justin Podur https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dj43mbQ3AiE (at 1.23.3), that was so unusual because the IOF don’t usually go back to carry out battle analyses for intelligence.
11This seems not unusual among political prisoners:Irish Republican prisoners also elected their OC in the British Occupation jails: Mairead Farrell had been O/C in Armagh Jail and, before he entered his fatal hunger strike, Bobby Sands had been O/Cof the H-Blocks.
NB: Rebel Breeze shares this near the anniversary of the fascist military coup in Chile, the same date as the Twin Towers massacre years later.. The article is a year old but relevant as long as British imperialism exists.
As the Pinochet regime rounded up and murdered its political opponents after the 1973 coup, a UK Foreign Office propaganda unit passed material to Chile’s military intelligence and MI6 connived with a key orchestrator of the coup, newly declassified files show.
Foreign Office helped Pinochet regime to develop a counter-insurgency strategy based on British military campaigns in Southeast Asia
MI6 officer David Spedding was attached to British embassy in Santiago in 1972-4, and had relations with a key member of the military junta
The UK government assisted Chile’s military intelligence in the aftermath of the brutal 1973 coup against elected president Salvador Allende, newly declassified files show.
The assistance was authorised by the Information Research Department (IRD), a secret Foreign Office propaganda unit which worked closely with Britain’s secret intelligence service, MI6.
Foreign and Commonwealth Office building, Whitehall, London. Many a dark deed was planned here. (Photo accessed: Internet)
The IRD had long seen Allende as a political threat. As Declassified previously revealed, throughout the 1960s, the unit had sought to prevent Allende from ever becoming president through election interference and covert propaganda operations.
After Allende was elected in 1970, the IRD’s distribution of propaganda material became “strictly limited”, with the British embassy having fewer reliable contacts in the Chilean government.
This all changed after the coup.
In January 1974, the IRD began to “extend the distribution” of its material, which was now passed “to the Chilean Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Government information organisations” and, crucially, the dictatorship’s “military intelligence” services.
At this time, Chile’s security forces – including the country’s intelligence apparatus – were responsible for massive human rights violations, including the widespread use of torture as a political weapon.
The UK government was under no illusions about this. As Foreign Office official Christopher Crabbie noted three months after the coup in December 1973, “I do not think that anyone seriously doubts that torture is going on in Chile”.
Reliable figures indicate that, between 1973 and 1988, Chilean state agents were responsible for over 3,000 deaths or disappearances and tens of thousands of cases of torture and political arrests. This was in a country which, in 1973, had a population of only 10 million people.
Chile Army 1973 coup soldiers watch detainees – many were shot, many more tortured then shot, many more still ‘disappeared’, probably tortured and shot. Many, many more were jailed where they were also tortured; young children were also abducted and given to fascist childless couples. (Photo accessed: Internet)
‘Hearts and minds’
The nature of the information passed to Chile’s military intelligence remains unclear, though the files suggest it may have included material for use in propaganda, research reports on left-wing activity, and even manuals on domestic security operations.
For instance, newly declassified files show how the UK government secretly helped the Chilean authorities to develop a counter-insurgency strategy, using techniques refined during Britain’s colonial interventions in Southeast Asia.
The idea for such assistance was first raised during the visit of British navy chief Sir Michael Pollock to Chile in late November 1973, two months after the coup.
The timing of Pollock’s visit was “politically tricky”, noted the British ambassador in Santiago, Reginald Secondé, since there was “much critical attention” being given “to the Chilean Government’s treatment of their political opponents”.
However, there were “two frigates and two submarines for the Chilean Navy under construction in British yards” – an arms deal worth around £50m – and “this was not a moment to prejudice the historic tradition of Anglo-Chilean naval friendship”.
“This was not a moment to prejudice the historic tradition of Anglo-Chilean naval friendship”
In Santiago, Pollock and Secondé met with a number of regime officials, including navy chief José Toribio Merino Castro, defence minister Patricio Carvajal Prado, and foreign minister Ismael Huerta.
With Huerta, the British officials spoke about the UK government’s “hearts and minds” campaign in Northern Ireland, a counter-insurgency strategy inspired by Britain’s war in Malaya (1948-60).
Huerta “seemed impressed with the concept”, and Secondé “later twice heard him muttering to himself ‘hearts and minds’”.
Subsequent meetings were held between Secondé, British information officer Tony Walters, and Captain Carlos Ashton, the director of overseas information in Chile’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
Like Huerta, Ashton was “very receptive to the idea that this kind of approach to Chilean security problems might be the right answer”, and requested “details of what practical measures a ‘hearts and minds’ exercise would involve”.
Ashton’s request for assistance was forwarded to Rosemary Allott, the head of the IRD’s Latin American desk.
In a letter dated 15 February 1974 and marked ‘secret’, Allott agreed to provide the Chilean regime with counter-insurgency advice, but limited this to material on Britain’s past colonial interventions.
“In view of the delicate political considerations involved”, Allott wrote, “it would be best to confine, at this stage at least, the material we send you of insurgencies of the past, rather than those currently preoccupying HMG” such as Northern Ireland.
The Pinochet regime was soon issued with three books on British counter-insurgency strategy, alongside a “Manual of Counter Insurgency Studies”.
“Britain agreed to share its colonial policing methods with the Chilean junta”
Allott also tracked down “various official reports on Malaya” including “The Fight Against Communist Terrorism in Malaya”, the “Review of the Emergency in Malaya (1948-57)”, and “two booklets on the Philippines insurrection”.
Britain’s military campaign in Malaya involved the “resettlement” of over 500,000 civilians, aerial bombardment, and an intensive propaganda operation.
Embassy officials suggested that they were teaching Chilean officers “tactics of tolerance and magnanimity”. However, brutal repression often lay behind the UK government’s rhetoric about “winning hearts and minds”, and the Chilean authorities were only sharpening their repressive techniques.
None of the material given to the Pinochet regime was “for attribution to HMG”. This meant that the Chilean authorities could use the information but not source it to the UK government.
The extent to which Britain’s advice was acted upon remains unclear; the Pinochet regime was certainly not lacking in support from the CIA.
Nonetheless, it is clear that Britain agreed to share its colonial policing methods with the Chilean junta, with the goal of stabilising Pinochet’s regime against domestic opposition.
MI6 in Chile
Evidence of British assistance to Chile’s intelligence services raises further questions about what Britain’s own secret intelligence service, MI6, was doing in Chile.
In 1972, MI6 officer David Spedding was attached to the British embassy in Santiago – his only foreign posting outside of the Middle East throughout his career.
This was not Spedding’s first visit to Chile. As a postgraduate student at Oxford University during the mid-1960s, Spedding had spent his gap year in Santiago and found work as an assistant in the British embassy’s press office.
Spedding’s first role in the diplomatic service was thus in the same British embassy that had been directing covert propaganda operations against Allende throughout the 1960s. The job gave him “an entrée into SIS [MI6]”, historian Nigel West noted.
Spedding remained in Chile until September 1974. He was subsequently made responsible for MI6 operations across the Middle East, and would go on to become MI6 chief between 1994 and 1999.
‘Our relationship with Admiral Merino’
Spedding’s name rarely appears in declassified Foreign Office files on Chile.
Yet in one file, dated 4 December 1973, Spedding informed the Foreign Office that 2,800 civilians and 700 armed forces personnel had been killed during and after the coup.
“In order to protect our relationship with Admiral Merino”, Spedding noted, “we would not like these figures to be quoted, at least for the time being”.
Admiral Merino was one of the key orchestrators of the 1973 coup. He was head of the Chilean navy in September 1973, and remained in post until the fall of the dictatorship in 1990. Merino claimed responsibility for convincing Pinochet to join the coup.
Some of the culprits saluting (Photo accessed: Internet)
One of Spedding’s roles, then, was to ensure close collaboration with the Chilean junta by covering up its responsibility for massive political repression and human rights violations.
The MI6 station in Santiago was only closed down in 1974 amid the UK Labour Party’s return to government.
It would not be surprising if MI6 played a supporting role to the CIA’s covert operations against Allende during the early 1970s. It was recently revealed that the Australian Secret Intelligence Service (ASIS) had “opened a base in Santiago to assist in the US Central Intelligence Agency’s destabilisation of the Chilean government” in 1971.
Britain’s secret assistance to the Pinochet regime was consistent with the UK government’s position on the coup.
The Conservative government under Edward Heath had welcomed the coup and rushed to give diplomatic recognition and arms to the Chilean junta, with the Foreign Office noting that it had “infinitely more to offer British interests than the one which preceded it”.
The coup against Allende inaugurated a 17-year dictatorship under General Augusto Pinochet, who only left office in 1990.
end.
John McEvoy is co-directing a forthcoming documentary investigating Britain’s hidden role in the death of Chile’s democracy and rise of the Pinochet dictatorship. You can support the film’s production here.
April 2023: Leaked files reveal that British intel used local Yemeni NGOs and social media in a covert campaign to undermine the Sanaa government and influence the war-torn country’s peace process.
Kit Klarenberg
(Reading time: mins.)
The CradleEditor’s note:All Yemeni NGO employees, journalists, and other private individuals named in this article appear in the ARK documents seen by The Cradle.These Yemenis may be unaware of the UK’s role and/or intent in funding their activities.
Yemen’s civil war, considered the world’s gravest humanitarian crisis, appears to be nearing its end due to a China-brokered detente between Iran and Saudi Arabia, who support opposing sides in the bitter conflict.
Early signs suggest that the rapprochement between Tehran and Riyadh may not only end hostilities in Yemen, but across the wider region.
The US, Israel, and Britain have the most to lose from a sudden onset of peace in West Asia. In the Yemeni context, London may be the biggest loser of all.
For years, it provided the Saudi-led coalition with weaponry used to target civilians and civilian infrastructure, with receipts running into billions of pounds sterling.
During the entirety of the war, Yemen was struck by British-made bombs, dropped by British-made planes, flown by British-trained pilots, which then flew back to Riyadh to be repaired and serviced by British contractors.
In 2019, a nameless BAE Systems executive estimated that if London pulled its backing for the proxy war, “in seven to 14 days, there wouldn’t be a jet in the sky.”
A Typhoon at RAF Akrotiri, near Limassol in Cyprus, after striking Houthi targets in Yemen (Photo cred: Sgt. Lee Goddard/ AFP)
In addition to supplying weapons, the war also presented a golden opportunity for Britain to establish a military base in Yemen, fulfilling long-held fantasies of recovering the Empire’s long-lost glory days “East of Suez.”
Al-Ghaydah airport in al-Mahrah, Yemen’s far eastern governorate, has for some time quietly housed “a fully-fledged force” of British soldiers, providing “military training and logistical support” to coalition forces and Saudi-backed militias.
There are even indications that this involvement could extend to torture methods, which is a troubling reflection of one of London’s leading exports.
The Cradle has obtained exclusive information about a previously undisclosed aspect of London’s role in the proxy war against Yemen’s Ansarallah-led resistance.
It has been revealed that a multi-channel propaganda campaign, led by the intelligence cut-out ARK and its founder Alistair Harris, a veteran MI6 operative, has been operating in complete secrecy throughout the nine-year-long conflict – one that specifically targeted Yemen’s civilian population.
Anti-Ansarallah ops
Leaked Foreign Office documents have revealed that ARK’s “multimedia” information warfare campaign was designed to undermine public sympathy for the Ansarallah movement and ensure that the conflict would only end on terms that aligned with London’s financial, ideological, and geopolitical interests.
For instance, public acceptance of the UN’s widely unpopular peace proposal required propaganda support from local NGOs and media organizations that “support UK objectives” to “communicate effectively with Yemeni citizens” and change their minds.
It was also necessary to counter “new actors” in the information space that were critical of the Saudi-led coalition’s brutal bombing campaigns and the illegitimate, US-backed puppet government that the aerial assaults sought to protect.
Considering the high rate of illiteracy in the local population, ARK conceived the creation of a suite of “visually rich” products extolling the virtues of a Riyadh-dominated peace plan.
These products would be disseminated on and offline and would “deliberately include different demographics, sects, and locations to ensure inclusivity,” informed by focus groups and polling of Yemenis.
ARK’s campaign even extended to convening “gender-segregated poetry competitions using peace as a theme” and “plays and town hall meetings.”
Publicly, many of these propaganda products appeared to be the work of Tadafur – Arabic for “work collectively and unite” – an astroturf network of NGOs and journalists constructed by ARK.
Its overt mission was to “resolve local level conflicts” and “unite local communities in their conflict resolution efforts.”
The campaign began initially at a “hyper-local level” across six Yemeni governorates, “before being amplified at the national level.” Activities “[in] all areas and at both levels” had unified messaging across “common macro themes,” such as the slogan “Our Yemen, Our Future.”
In each governorate, a “credible” local NGO was identified as a messenger, along with “well-known” and “respected and influential” journalists who served as “dedicated field officers” across the sextet, managed by ARK.
In Hajjah – “a site of strong Houthi influence” – the Al-Mustaqbal Institute for Development was ARK’s NGO of choice; in Ansarallah-governed Sanaa, it was the Faces Institution for Rights and Media; in Marib, the Marib Social Generations Club.
In Lahij, ARK’s choice was the Rouwad Institution for Development and Human Rights; in Hadhramaut, Ahed Institute for Rights and Freedom; in Taiz, Generations Without Qat.
These local NGOs were instrumental in promoting ARK’s agenda and advancing the narrative that aligned with Britain’s objectives in Yemen.
The company’s roster of “field officers” comprised of individuals with various backgrounds, such as:
“Human rights abuse” specialist Mansour Hassan Mohammad Abu Ali, TV producer Thy Yazen Hussain, Public Organisation to Protect Human Rights press official and “experienced journalist” Waleed Abdul Mutlab Mohammed al-Rajihi,
Also producer from Alhadramiah Documentary Institute Abdullah Amr Ramdan Mas’id, editorial secretary of Family and Development magazine and the Yemen Times’ Taiz news manager Rania Abdullah Saif al-Shara’bi, as well as journalist and activist Waheeb Qa’id Saleh Thiban.
A Trojan Horse
Once ARK’s field officers and NGOs “successfully designed and implemented hyper-local campaigns,” coverage of “information around the related activities will then be amplified at the national level.”
A key platform for this amplification was a Facebook page called “Bab,” launched in 2016 with tens of thousands of followers who were unaware that the page was created by ARK as a British intelligence asset.
Under the guise of a popular grassroots online community, ARK used the Bab page to broadcast slick propaganda “promoting the peace process,” including videos and images of “local peacebuilding initiatives” organized by its NGO and field officer nexus.
“Campaign content will highlight tangible, real-life examples of compelling peacebuilding efforts that all Yemenis, regardless of their political affiliation, can relate to,” ARK stated.
“These will offer inspirational examples for others to emulate, demonstrating practical ways to engage with the peace process at a local level. Taken together, these individual stories form the broader campaign with a national message: Yemenis share a collective desire for a peaceful resolution to the conflict.”
When “high engagement levels” with this content were secured, Bab users were invited to submit their own, which demonstrated “support for the peace process.” They were explicitly asked “to mirror content ARK has produced, such as voxpops, short videos, or infographics.”
This was then “shared by the project and field teams through influential WhatsApp messaging groups, a key way of reaching Yemeni youth.”
ARK’s “well-connected communications team” would then “strategically share packaged stories with broadcast media or key social influencers, or offer selected journalists exclusive access to stories.”
Creating a constant flow of content was a deliberate ploy to “collectively be as ‘loud’ as partisan national political and military actors.” In other words, to create a parallel communications structure to Ansarallah’s own, which would drown out the resistance movement’s pronouncements.
ARK’s role in Yemen’s peace process
While one might argue that the non-consensual recruitment of private citizens as information warriors by British intelligence was justified by the moral urgency of ending the Yemen war quickly, the exploitation of these individuals was cynical in the extreme.
It amounted to a Trojan Horse operation aimed at compelling Yemenis to embrace a peace deal that was wildly inequitable and contrary to their own interests.
Multiple passages in the leaked files refer to the paramount need to ensure no linkage between these propaganda initiatives and the UN’s peace efforts. One passage refers to how campaign “themes and activities” would at no point “directly promote the UN or the formal peace process.”
Another passage says concealing the operation’s agenda behind ostensibly independent civil society voices “minimizes the risk” that “outputs are perceived as institutional communications stemming from or directly promoting the UN.”
Yet, once ARK’s campaigns began “performing successfully at the national level,” the company’s field officers planned to “build a bridge” between its local foot soldiers and national “stakeholders” – and, resultantly, the UN.
In other words, the entire ruse served to entrench ARK’s central role in peace negotiations via the backdoor.
Diminished western influence
At that time, the ceasefire deal proposed by the UN required Ansarallah and its allied forces to virtually surrender before Riyadh’s military assaults and economic blockade of the country could be partially lifted, along with other stringent requirements that the Saudis refused to compromise on.
Newly recruited Houthi fighters gathered for training outside Sana, the capital of Yemen – they became the Ansarrallah Army. (Photo credit: Yahya Arhab/EPA, via Shutterstock)
The US aggressively encouraged such intransigence, viewing any Ansarallah influence in Yemen as strengthening Iran’s regional position.
However, these perspectives are no longer relevant to Yemen’s peace process.
China has now encouraged Riyadh to offer significant concessions, and as a result, the end of the war is within sight, with critical supplies finally allowed to enter Yemen, prisoners returned, Sanaa’s airport reopened, and other positive developments.
Evidently, Washington’s offers of arms deals and security assurances are no longer sufficient to influence events overseas and convince its allies to carry out its agenda.
The failure of ARK’s anti-Ansarallah propaganda campaigns to coerce Yemenis to accept peace on the west’s terms also highlights Britain’s significantly reduced power in the modern era.
Whereas wars could once be won on the coat-tails of well-laid propaganda campaigns, the experiences of Yemen, Syria, Iraq, and Afghanistan show that the tide has turned. Subversive information campaigns can confuse and misdirect populations but, at best, can only prolong conflict – not win it.
On Monday 2nd September the largest ‘Israeli’ trade union, along with a number of other organisations have called a strike in support of the ‘Hostages’ relatives’ organisation1 in order to force Netanyahu to stop blocking a ceasefire agreement.
Two months ago, the Palestinian Resistance leadership accepted the 3-stage terms for an end to the current war in Palestine proposed by then US President Joe Biden, which he claimed to have been agreed by the Zionist Government.2 However Netanyahu sabotaged the negotiations.
The Resistance is clear that a) no IOF can remain within the Gaza strip, b) there must be no impediment to the return of displaced people, d) the gates have to be opened to allow food, medication etc. to enter and those requiring special medical treatment to leave.
In addition, the Palestinian prisoners nominated for release in exchange of the ‘Israeli’ prisoners held in Gaza cannot be vetoed by Netanyahu, nor can the war resume once the ‘Israeli’ captives have been returned, two essentials with which the Zionist Prime Minister disagrees.
Netanyahu has also stipulated that it’s essential for State security that the IOF must remain in the ‘Netzarim Corridor’ in Gaza, which crosses a red line for the Resistance and which the IOF intelligence sector deny is necessary for security.
At the same time, Zionist government Defence Minister Yoav Gallant has called on military chiefs to resign and some high-rankers of the Intelligence sector of the military have indeed already done3 while another is reportedly about to do so.
Some ‘Israeli’ media commentators have reflected the dissension and openly criticised their government, not only because of the failure to prevent the October 7th Palestinian breakout but also to defeat the armed resistance and rescue the ‘hostages’.
The latter has been one of the major drivers of huge protest demonstrations, including some against Netanyahu himself and some against his more fascist cabinet supporters, such as Benny Gantz.
Also adding to the dissatisfaction are the many ‘Israeli’ settlers who are in hotels or camps at Government expense, having left the northwestern occupied region due to Hezbollah bombing (mostly) the military there in support of the Palestinians facing genocidal IOF attacks.4
Northwestern occupied Palestine was also the producer of significant amounts of food for the general ‘Israeli’ population which it must now do without.
Seen from Lebanon, Hezbollah rockets hit IOF installation 15 December 2023but could be a scene from almost any day since October 8th. (Photo cred: AFP)
Then there’s the problem of replacing the numbers of dead and injured IOF, the true extent of which has been concealed by the Zionist state. This has led to the June removal of the exemption from military service of Haredi Jews , resulting in their protest demonstrations.5
One of the state’s main ports, ‘Eilat’ has declared bankruptcy6 due to radical reduction in shipping as a result of Yemeni targeting and Haifa is also suffering. In addition Zionist-friendly companies abroad are being boycotted and some have abandoned the Zionists as a result.7
This cannot be seen as any kind of opposition to Zionism within ‘Israeli’ society but rather as a reflection of deep divisions within Zionism itself; the state and the occupation project remains one of European settler colonialism, fundamentally expansionist and genocidal at its core.
Running alongside these elements is that of declining military confidence, both among the general population and in the IOF itself. This is a state that once felt itself invincible in the Middle East with its air force, intelligence services and ground forces – and of course huge US backing.
Despite all this, it has been unable to prevent the October 7th breakout or subsequently in 10 months of genocidal bombardment and military invasions to defeat the Palestinian resistance nor to curtail Hezbollah’s attacks on the northwestern region from Lebanon.
The settler population is aware its much-vaunted air defence systems were unable to prevent Iran’s retaliation8 on 13th April from hitting three military bases,9 or Hezbollah from hitting a number of military targets in its recent retaliation for the assassination of its senior officer Fouad.
Large numbers of ‘Israeli’ citizens, many of which hold dual citizenships are also leaving the Zionist state and reportedly the highest proportion of these are of Ashkenazi background, i.e eastern European rather than middle Eastern, African etc.
The monolith of Zionism in the Middle East is disintegrating but it will yet require some further pushing and blows to collapse it completely. This is the time for escalation of all kinds of activities to push the process to its logical and desired conclusion.
CAUSES OF THE EFFECT
What has brought about this state of affairs? Certainly a number of things but first and foremost we must applaud the Palestinian Resistance, comprising both its armed factions and the determination and resilience of a population in the midst of ten months of genocidal attacks.
The resilience of the population across the age and gender profiles, the resistance of the prisoners in the face of daily torture and slow starvation and the work of social and medical services have formed a solid background to fighters and development of effective weapons matching their targets.
To that has been added innovation in planning ambushes and in methods of attack, along with daring and sacrifice in carrying them out.
Secondly, the active support of the rest of the Axis of Resistance, first Hezbollah in Lebanon and the armed forces in Yemen, followed by the state of Iran and resistance groups in Iraq.
Next we must also acknowledge the solidarity front in particular in western states demonstrating, boycotting and sabotaging Zionist businesses and businesses and states colluding with Zionism.
In particular in the latter front stand the radical and revolutionary youth who have continued and even escalated their resistance in the face of state and Zionist violence, arrests and trials, fines and imprisonment, restrictions on and expulsions from their studies and loss of accommodation.
End.
FOOTNOTES
1The recent recovery by the IOF of the bodies of six of the Israeli prisoners taken by the Resistance on October 7th seems to have been the impulse to convert months of protest demonstrations into a general strike. The bodies were found in a tunnel and original reports said they had died from suffocation, assumed to be from IOF bombing. Later a Resistance statement said they had been shot by the IOF in a rescue attempt while the IOF said the prisoners had been executed by the Resistance. It seems now that the Resistance’s statement was a metaphor as they say that since the Nusserat Massacre when in order to rescue four ‘Israeli’ prisoners the IOF bombed and shot nearly 300 Palestinians, mostly civilians, the Resistance guards now have different instructions in the event of an IOF attempt to rescue the prisoners.
8For Israel’s air strike on the Iranian Consulate in Beirut, Lebanon. Another Iranian retaliation is expected daily, for the August 4th assassination of Hamas leader (and peace talks negotiator) Ismail Haniyeh on diplomatic visit to Iran.
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