THE OTHER PATRICK

On By rebelbreezeIn History, Ireland, National Liberation, SongLeave a comment

Diarmuid Breatnach

 

According to Sean O’Casey, generations of boys after 1690 were named “Patrick” or “Pádraig” in memory not of the Christian saint, patron saint of Ireland (whose position was often less than St. Bridget’s) but instead in memory of Patrick Sarsfield, First Earl of Lucan.

 

Patrick Sarsfield Earl Lucan
Portrait of Patrick Sarsfield

Sarsfield, as a younger son of an aristocratic Anglo-Irish (“Old English”) family became a soldier. He fought in the English Royalist Army in England and took part in the suppression of the Monmouth Rebellion. During the Civil War he fought again briefly for the Royalist cause and went to France after the victory of Parliament. He had come into his inheritance by then due to the death of his older brother. Sarsfield came to Ireland from France with James II to raise an Irish army to support James against the British Parliament and their Dutch King William of Orange.

Ballyneety Raid Painting
“Sarsfield’s the word and Sarsfield’s the man!” Depiction of the raid led by Sarsfield on William’s waggon train of equipment and supplies for the First Siege of Limerick. Ironically, the English password that evening for the sentries was “Sarsfield”.

Up to this point he had an unremarkable military career (though an eventful personal one). The raid he led on William’s siege train at Ballyneety led to the defeat of the first Siege of Limerick. The password of the sentries of William’s siege train was “Sarsfield” which, as well as being a great irony, also indicates that his name was of some import in the ranks of the enemy. He was also mentioned in enemy accounts of the Battle of the Boyne where they praised his management of a fighting retreat after that great disaster for the Irish cause.

THE TREATY OF LIMERICK

Sarsfield negotiated the very generous surrender terms at Limerick which ended the Second Siege and the war — terms which however were broken by the English side “‘ere the ink …. was dry”. The Irish soldiers went off the France to serve in the French royal army and from there also to other armies on the Continent. The ships that were supposed to bring the women after them were never supplied, giving us Irish Jacobite songs of great romantic loss.

 

 

Sarsfield Statue Limerick
Statue of Sarsfield, Limerick City

AFTER LIMERICK

The Penal Laws followed, institutionalising religious discrimination against Catholics but also all non-Anglican sections of the Protestant faith which, a century later, led to the forming of the United Irishmen and the uprisings of 1798 and 1803. And so on … and on.

Fighting in the French royal army in the Nine Years’ War, Patrick Sarsfield was wounded at the Battle of Landen 1693, fighting once again against the armies of William (and of his allies). His rank was Lieutenant-General at the time. Sarsfield died days later at Huy, Belgium, where he is buried in St. Martin’s Church grounds; he was around 33 years of age.

There are a number of songs remembering Patrick Sarsfield and one of the finest, in my opinion, is “The Jackets Green” by Michael Scanlan. I don’t sing it to the air as recorded by the Wolfe Tones but instead to the air of Seosamh Ó hÉanaigh’s way of singing McAlpine’s Fusiliers (which is also much nicer than the usual McAlpine’s Fusiliers, in my opinion).

 

THE JACKETS GREEN

Michael Scanlan

When I was a maiden fair and young,
On the pleasant banks of Lee,
No bird that in the greenwood sung,
Was half so blithe and free.
My heart ne’er beat with flying feet,
No love sang me his queen,
Till down the glen rode Sarsfield’s men,
And they wore the jackets green.

Young Dónal sat on his gallant grey
Like a king on a royal seat,
And my heart leaped out on his regal way
To worship at his feet.
O Love, had you come in those colours dressed,
And wooed with a soldier’s mein,
I’d have laid my head on your throbbing breast
For the sake of your jacket green.

No hoarded wealth did my love own,
Save the good sword that he bore;
But I loved him for himself alone
And the colour bright he wore.
For had he come in England’s red
To make me England’s Queen,
I’d have roved the high green hills instead
For the sake of the Irish green.

When William stormed with shot and shell
At the walls of Garryowen,
In the breach of death my Dónal fell,
And he sleeps near the Treaty Stone.
That breach the foeman never crossed
While he swung his broadsword keen;
But I do not weep my darling lost,
For he fell in his jacket green.

When Sarsfield sailed away I wept
As I heard the wild ochone.
I felt then dead as the men who slept
‘Neath the fields of Garryowen.
While Ireland held my Dónal blessed,
No wild sea rolled between,
Till I would fold him to my breast
All robed in his Irish green.

My soul has sobbed like waves of woe,
That sad o’er tombstones break,
For I buried my heart in his grave below,
For his and for Ireland’s sake.
And I cry. “Make way for the soldier’s bride
In your halls of death, sad queen
For I long to rest by my true love’s side
And wrapped in the folds of green.”

I saw the Shannon’s purple tide
Roll by the Irish town,
As I stood in the breach by Dónal’s side
When England’s flag went down.
And now it lowers when I seek the skies,
Like a blood red curse between.
I weep, but ’tis not women’s sighs
Will raise our Irish green.

Oh, Ireland, said is thy lonely soul,
And loud beats the winter sea,
But sadder and higher the wild waves roll
O’er the hearts that break for thee.
Yet grief shall come to our heartless foes,
And their thrones in the dust be seen,
So, Irish Maids, love none but those
Who wear the jackets green.

 

end.

THE WOMEN STARTED IT

On By rebelbreezeIn Anti-War, Cultural Comment, History, Socialist Revolution, Trade unions, Women, Workers' Struggles, World War OneLeave a comment

(Reading time: 5 mins)

Diarmuid Breatnach

We celebrate International Women’s Day on March 8th but are we aware that on that day in 1917, women started the Russian revolution?  It was one of the many contributions of women the world over to the struggles of humanity.

BACKGROUND

          There were many causes of discontent with the ruling regime in Russia in 1917: it was monarchic, autocratic, repressive, incompetent. It had put the country into a war with Germany and Austria, which was in its third year. People were very hungry with food shortages for a number of reasons including the trains being used to transport war materials and soldiers rather than to bring food into the city. Nationalities within Russia and Greater Russia were denied self-determination.

Peasants were serfs to the aristocracy, who could beat, imprison and even hang them. Officers, always from the aristocracy or — to a lesser degree — from the professional classes regularly struck ordinary soldiers or had them whipped. The officers were also for the most part grossly incompetent.

The Christian Church (Russian Orthodox) was allied to the regime and corrupt. Free speech was suppressed and the secret police could be anywhere; the regular police were brutal and could not be challenged by ordinary people. Wages were often barely enough to live on.

START OF THE REVOLUTION

          Petrograd was the Imperial capital city of Russia (the name had been changed in 1914 from St. Petersburg, which sounded too German) and in February and March 1917 a number of factories there were on strike for better wages.   In particular, on March 7th (February 22 according to the calendar in use in Russia then), workers in the large Putilov works went on strike. The factory owners sacked the workers but not had not yet replaced them; there were some clashes with police.

The following day, March 8th (by our calendar), International Women’s Day, women in Petrograd organised a number of meetings and rallies. Led by no political party but in an atmosphere of deep discontent throughout the city, the women’s activities became increasingly energetic and militant. Demonstrations began to march, demanding bread and the women went to factories not yet on strike, calling on the workers to down tools and join the demonstrations. As as many as 50,000 did.

Two days later, a general strike had seized Petrograd’s manufacturing industries, much of the city’s services and even some commercial business, bringing clerks, teachers and students to swell the numbers in protests. Everywhere there were street meetings, marches; red flags and banners began to appear among the crowds. Slogans hardly considered before were shouted and became current, including calling for the monarch, the Tsar, to abdicate or to be deposed.

Demonstration during the "February Revolution" 1917. Note the prominence of women in the demonstration.
Demonstration during the “February Revolution” 1917

The Petrograd police were powerless to control the demonstrators who would have turned on them had they intervened. On the 11th, three days after the women’s mobilisation, the Tsar called on the Russian Army to intervene and to shoot demonstrators.

Russia had the largest single army in the world and despite the war, thousands were still in Petrograd. They had been used in the past against the workers and in 1905 had massacred people on a demonstration to petition the Tsar. But now, after three years of war and shortages, they were not keen to do so and particularly reluctant to open fire on women. Soldiers began to mutiny and, when threatened by officers, often shot them instead.

On that day, the Chairman of the Duma, the parliament which the Tsar Nicholas had kept powerless, sent an emergency telegram to the Tsar, who was at the Headquarters of the Russian Army, asking him for urgent action. The Tsar’s reply was dismissive – his wife, the Empress Consort Alexandra, had written to him that the problems in Petrograd were being exaggerated.

A Russian Army barricade during the "February Revolution" -- the soldiers refused the orders of their officers to shoot demonstrators.
A Russian Army barricade during the “February Revolution” — the soldiers refused the orders of their officers to shoot demonstrators.

But the garrison of Petrograd, including elite units, had mutinied by the 12th, four days after the women’s marches and demonstrations. In addition the Cossack troops, usually reliable in shooting and sabring demonstrators and rioters, were disobeying the orders of their officers to attack the people (although they had not joined the mutiny). Officers began to go into hiding as more of them were being shot by soldiers from their own units. Symbols of Tsarist rule were being torn down in public places.

Two days later, on the 14th, the socialist parties and organisations established the Petrograd Soviet, last seen there twelve years previously, in 1905, before it was crushed by the Russian army. The Petrograd bourgeoisie were frightened but were unused to ruling except as permitted to by the Tsar, who himself now seemed unable to control events. Their powerless Duma (parliament), although ordered closed down by the Tsar that morning, set up a temporary committee to restore law and order and later, their Military Commission as part of the Provisional Government they created.

Thus began a period of dual authority in the city – the revolutionary workers, soldiers (and later, sailors) through the Soviet on the one hand and the bourgeoisie through their Military Committee on the other.

The Petrograd Soviet set the tone for what was to come by approving a number of points in Order No.1, effectively the first law drawn up by the Soviet, point 4 of which stated:

“The orders of the Military Commission of the State Duma shall be executed only in such cases as do not conflict with the orders and resolution of the Soviet of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies.”

The Soviet was making sure it could not be overruled by the new unelected body which the bourgeoisie had set up, the Provisional Government, or by its Military Commission.  

Senior Army and political appointees advised the Tsar to do what just over a week previously would have been unthinkable – to abdicate. On the 15th, the Tsar abdicated on his own behalf and of his son, nominating instead his brother, the Grand Duke Alexandrovich, to be Tsar. But he in turn knew he had no support as things stood and refused the “crown”.

July Days Russia 1917
Demonstrating workers shot down by Army units in the Russian “July Days”, 1917

The Russian monarchy of centuries had been overthrown — only seven days after the women’s mobilisation in Petrograd.

Maneouvers by the different sides continued during May and June, including an attempted military coup by senior officers commanding army units away from Petrograd. The fortunes of the revolution swayed back and forth across the country until demonstrations in July supported by the Anarchists and the Bolsheviks were suppressed by army units loyal to the Mensheviks and Socialist Revolutionaries political parties in power.

Workers were being disarmed, soldiers re-submitted to the old discipline and revolutionary leaders were being hunted; the War was also ongoing.

In October, the Bolsheviks seized power, ended Russia’s involvement in the War and began to construct a socialist state.

Two years later the people had to fight to defend it against a right-wing military uprising supported by eight states, including the Allies but were successful in the end.

But it was the women who had started the ball rolling seven months earlier on March 8th, with their rallies and demonstrations and calling the workers out from the factories. Henceforth too, they played their part in government, in building the country and in the armed forces, particularly during the war against fascism and in defence of the USSR from June 1941 to the fall of Berlin and Nazi Germany in 1945.

Nearly 200,000 women were decorated and 89 eventually received the Soviet Union’s highest award, the Hero of the Soviet Union. Some served as pilots, snipers (some of the ace snipers at the famous battle (or siege) of Stalingrad were women), machine gunners, tank crew members and partisans, as well as in auxiliary roles of nursing, construction, administration, factory work and of course food production.

end.

Soviet female combat pilots in WW2. The USSR was the only state to have female combat pilots.
Soviet female combat pilots in WW2. The USSR was the only belligerent state to have female combat pilots during WW2.

“BELIEVE” — short poem by Donal O’Meadhra

On By rebelbreezeIn Civil Rights, Creative writing, Human Rights, Ireland, Irish Diaspora, Irish Republicanism, Poetry, Political Prisoners1 Comment

From their homes stolen lives.
Injustice never new.
Not one crime done nor crime seen.
A sentence served undue.

Witness blind and judge astray.
Trial a kangaroo.
You want a reason to believe?
My friend, I’ll give you two.

Two sons of Craigavon Ireland,
Our voices now are due.
The cry should shout until it cracks
For justice to the two.

It happens time and time again,
Shadows of me and you.
Where once stood four and then the six,
The mirror shows the two.

Together we can make this right.
As one we’ll see it through.
You want a reason to believe?
My friend, I’ll give you two.

Believe poster J4C2

 

The poem is about the incarceration of the “Craigavon Two”, Brendan McConville and John Paul Wooton.  On the 30th of March 2012 both men were convicted and given life sentences.  They were accused of the fatal shooting of Constable Steven Carroll in Craigavon on the 9th of March 2010.  The evidence was a hotch-potch of questionable material including an “eyewitness” who only came forward a year later after both Republicans had been in jail for a considerable time, a man whose evidence was contested by that of his wife and of his own father.

The case against them was so riddled with inconsistencies and suspect material, alongside new evidence of police interference with witnesses for the Defence, that there were high hopes of both men being cleared and freed when the appeal concluded in October last year.  However, to the shock of many, including a number of Independent TDs (members of the Dáíl, the Irish parliament) and the late Gerry Conlon, their appeal was denied.

The campaign is on-going and supported by a number of organisations and individuals.  It was in support of the Two that Gerry Conlon, formerly of the Guildford Four (and a subject of the film In the Name of the Father), made his last public statement days before he died.

Their campaign website http://justiceforthecraigavontwo.com/we-are-innocent/

“Where once stood four and then the six” in the second-to-last stanza is a reference to the Guildford Four and to the Birmingham Six, ten people (all Irish save one) who in 1974 were wrongly convicted of bombings in Britain and were finally cleared only fifteen and sixteen years later.  Also wrongly convicted were the Maguire Seven (which included Giuseppe Conlon, Gerry’s father, and teenagers) and Judith Ward (a woman who was mentally ill at the time).

YOUNG WOMAN GOES TO TRIAL IN LONDON ACCUSED OF TRYING TO JOIN KURDISH WOMEN FIGHTING ISIS

On By rebelbreezeIn Current Affairs Comment, Current Event Report, Gender Equality, Guerrilla Action, Internationalist Solidarity, Kurdistan, National Liberation, Political Analysis5 Comments

C0mpiled with introduction by

Diarmuid Breatnach

An 18-year old woman of the Kurdish diaspora in London, Silhan Ozcelik, has been sent for trial at London’s Central Criminal Court (the “Old Bailey”) accused of trying to join the Kurdish-led resistance against ISIS (“Islamic State”).  A British journalist called the trial “disgusting” and said it left him “almost without words” to describe the travesty of justice.  (article below)

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/silhan-ozcelik-disgusting-trial-for-young-woman-who-tried-to-fight-against-isis-10105004.html

Face Paint Kurdish W Fighters
A different kind of face paint: female fighter of the Kurdish guerrilla YPG checks another female comrade as they prepare to go into action with their male comrades on the front line against ISIS in Syria.

This post contains:

  • An article about the trial by J0nathan Owen in yesterday’s British newsaper The Independent (see above)

  • A short article from pro-Kurdish PUK Media containing a discussion on the role of Kurdish women fighters in Syria, with quotes from a wide variety of sources (right at end of this post)

  • A video of an Australian documentary, “60 Minutes”, from the war zone, with war footage, interviews with women fighters and commanders, victims of ISIS (see further down)

  • Background comment or introduction from me (immediately below)

Background Comment:

The Kurds in the region, numbering around 28 million, have the right to self-determination.  They are divided by borders of states set up in the past by the colonial imperialists of Britain, France and the Ottoman Empire and also by ambitions of the states subsequently created: Turkey, Syria, Iraq, Iran and Azerbaijan (there is also a huge Kurdish diaspora in parts of Europe, the USA, Canada).  The Kurds in the region also face differences in political leadership, dialect and religious influence as well as containing among them other ethnic groups (many of these also oppressed): Arabs, Armenians, Azeris, Turkmen, Yazidis …. The whole Kurdish region extends across an area of great strategic importance (the gateway to Europe and to the East) and also of considerable natural resources, including water.  It is envisaged that an oil pipeline will cross this area and a number of dams have already been built there.

The Kurds in Turkey (the largest population of Kurds) has been mostly led by the PKK (and various political organisations friendly to it), a communist-type national liberation organisation, largely secular (though some of their areas can be religiously conservative) and with a very large guerrilla force which has included many women fighters.  They have fought the Turkish armed forces for decades and remain undefeated.  Turkey’s nationalism under Kemal Attaturk declared that Kurds did not exist — they were just “mountain Turks”.  Kurdish has been forbidden, the flying of Kurdish national colours a crime, and state repression has included bannings of parties and newspapers, jailings of political and human rights activists, kidnapping, torture, assassination squads, creation of strategic villages, aerial bombardment, etc.  The imprisoned leader of the PKK, Abdullah Ocalan, last week from prison called on his followers to lay down their arms and to engage in a “peace process” in which however the Turkish Government shows no interest.  Ocalan enjoys an adulation among the PKK and its supporters somewhat as Chairman Mao did among Chinese communists and his portrait can be seen on demonstrations, in pickets and in their secure areas.

The Kurds in Iraq have mostly come under the political dominance of two political leaders with tribal following, Barzani and Talibani.  Iraqi Kurds are mostly Sunni Muslim with a minority Shia population (Fayli) in central and and SE Iraq.  The Kurds were oppressed by the Iraq regime and rose up against them a number of times only to be massacred, including when the US called on them to rise during the Kuwait war but left them on their own.  Their fighters, “peshmergas” are mostly male and during the Iraq Invasion by the US-led coalition, they fought the Iraqi Armed forces but entered Baghdad like bandits and set up various areas of control under different war lords, occasionally fighting even one another.  In the past on one occasion the peshmergas were also deployed against the PKK in conjunction with a Turkish attack on them.

The Syrian Kurds have their own fighters but have not been as prominent in the past as those of the Kurds in Turkey and Iraq.  The Syrian regime does not favour declarations of different ethnicity coupled to aspirations of self-determination and has suppressed expressions of Kurdish nationalism, including jailing singers and musicians whose work includes those expressions. In recent months, the Syrian Kurds and their fighting organisation, the YPG, have had the most success in halting and in places forcing back ISIS — the “Islamic State”.  The YPG rescued a large population of mostly Yazidis (including also some other ethnic groups) after ISIS swept aside the army of the NATO-client Iraqi regime, massacred tens of hundreds of civilians and kidnapped tens of hundreds more, including women which they took or sold as concubines.

The Kurds in Iran have been in recent times the most suppressed perhaps of all the Kurdish populations.  Under the Islamic clerical regime a number of Kurdish political activists have been executed for “crimes against God” (i.e. being atheists and socialists and sharing their political beliefs).  Under the Shah the repression was also heavy and Savak, the secret police, along with their informers, were almost everywhere.  Torture was endemic under the Shah and almost certainly continues under the present regime.

Although the NATO powers fear ISIS, they have also had a hand in its creation in the drive to overthrow regimes resisting NATO’s penetration of the area (and encirclement of Russia) by direct assault or by proxy: Libya and Iraq (already overthrown), Syria (under attack), Iran (constantly being threatened).  They are trying to bring the YPG into the fold but Turkey, an important member of NATO, would rather see the Kurdish fighters wiped out and seals its border to prevent fighters and supplies reaching the YPG.  The USA therefore confined itself to some bombings of ISIS positions around Rojava and diplomatic overtures to the Kurds.  They have not committed ground troops (which the YPG have not asked for) or supplied arms (which the YPG have asked for — repeatedly) and continue to support forces attempting to overthrow the Syrian state.  The YPG rarely fight alongside the state’s Syrian Army but at times both forces are simultaneously in action against ISIS, though seemingly not in coordination

.

The Kurds, as the largest force in their region of Syria and one of the largest ethnic group in the whole region, form a focus of resistance to assimilation and to repressive regimes of states but may be seen by other ethnic groups as themselves posing a threat of assimilating them.

Video documentary “60 Minutes” by Australian television containing Syrian war area footage of Kurdish women fighters and commanders and interviews (and also occasionally irritating comment by the interviewer)

Less Photogenic Kurd Women Fighters
Less photogenic perhaps than the images we are currently being shown of Kurdish female guerrilla fighters, this photo is probably of a female guerrilla unit of the PKK in Turkish Kurdistan taken perhaps a couple of decades ago. In order to counter accusations by the Turkish state of female guerrilla “immoral” behaviour, the PKK kept the genders in separate fighting units.

Two Kurdish Women Fighters kefiyah headscarf
Two female guerrillas of the YPG resting but ready to go into action. They are on the front line against ISIS in Syria.

A discussion on women in Kurdistan and Kurdish women fighters (note that there are two parts of Kurdistan under discussion here – Iraqi and Syrian; however there is also Turkey, where the majority of the Kurds live and Iran):

http://pukmedia.com/EN/EN_Direje.aspx?Jimare=22709

Kurdish Women Heavy Machine gun v ISIS N_Iraq
Female fighters of the guerrilla YPG with a heavy machine gun (light cannon?) in the front line against ISIS

Kurdish women guerrilas against FSA, Syria
Kurdish female guerrilla fighters opposing the Free Syrian Army, sponsored by NATO against the Syrian state, in 2011. The FSA has since been overcome or incorporated into ISIS.

STATE MURDER; GOVERNMENT LIES, BLACKMAIL AND CENSORSHIP; MEDIA SMEARS

On By rebelbreezeIn UncategorizedLeave a comment

Just missed the anniversary date to reprint this I wrote last year

rebelbreeze's avatarrebelbreeze

Anniversary

Sunday 6 March 1988

Three unarmed Irish Republican Army (IRA) Volunteers were shot dead by undercover members of the Special Air Service (SAS) in Gibraltar.  The three were Mairéad Farrell, Sean Savage and Daniel Mc Cann.

GIBRALTAR 3
The episode sparked intense controversy and began a chain of events that lead to a series of deaths in the Six Counties.
The British government claimed that the SAS shot the IRA members because they thought a bomb was about to be detonated. Eyewitnesses said that those shot were given no warning.Magill Carmen ProetaBritish Intelligence and some media tried to discredit one of the witnesses, Carmen Proeta, whose flat overlooked the murder scene and who came forward to say what she had seen. A British newspaper claimed that she was a prostitute running an escort agency and later had to pay her damages in a libel case.
An undercover unit of the Spanish Guardia…

View original post 1,038 more words

POEM: THE NEW WAILING WALL

On By rebelbreezeIn Internationalist Solidarity, National Liberation, Palestine, Poetry1 Comment

Part of Gaza after Israeli bombardment July 2014
Part of Gaza after Israeli bombardment July 2014

There’s a new Wailing Wall:
It’s in Gaza, and here mothers and fathers wail
at the bloody bodies of their children;
children wail at the bloody bodies of parents;
all wail over the bodies of friends and neighbours;
the wailing rises and the tears fall.

 

At this Wailing Wall,
we wail the mendacity of Israel and the West,
we wail the complicity of the media in the West;
while rockets, shells and bombs rained down upon us
the lies fell faster and thicker than rain,
a torrent of lies that never stopped.
To surge in flood over the bodies of our slain.
You come now with your flag of peace
tramping along the bloodstained road
and up the mountain of our bones
and the rubble of our homes
and offer us business as before
or – bombardment once more.

 

Now that the bombs have stopped,
we too stop and look around us:
our schools gutted and bloodstained,
mosques and hospitals in ruins,
so many of our buildings rubble,
or with gaping shell-holes,
in the hell-hole
you have made of Gaza.

We had so little and you destroyed so much.

 

In the days to come, more will sicken and die,
of wounds on flesh and wounds on soul,
of lack of medicine, fuel or food
as even in pause you take your toll.

 

Many are numb, some try to forget,
some try to live without forgetting,
but there is a begetting,
for in many hearts too,
your phosphorus flakes are snowing,
the embers of hate are glowing,
their machine guns and bombs are mowing
you and your children for generations to come.

 

Against your Goliath
our slingshots were of no use;
yes, God was with you –
he’s no longer Hebrew or English –
He’s American now;
you shot us down like fish
in the shooting barrel
you made of Gaza.

 

You wish us to recognise you?
Of course we recognise you –
the imprint of your boots are upon our necks;
we carry them from cradle to the grave.
But we will never agree to accept
or agree that you should keep
what you have stolen and plundered
the land you have sundered
or that you can make us second-class
citizens in our own land.

 

While we struggle to endure
and to ensure
that you never defeat us
let it be that we do not learn to treat others
as you now treat us.
What did you learn from your oppressors?
If all you learned was how to also
do so much of what they did,
then truly have the six million died in vain
and you mock their memory by invoking them.

 

Diarmuid, Feabhra 2009

 

I began to write this just as the December 2008- January 2009 bombardment of Gaza by Israel was coming to an end and rounded it off in February.  That was the one they called “Operation Cast Lead”, which killed over 1,400 Palestinians, mostly non-combatants, including 400 children and injured over 5,300 — again, mostly non-combatants.  I little thought that so few years later Israel would unleash an even worse bombardment upon the beleaguered Palestinians in Gaza, as it did in July last year, during which it killed over 2,300, again mostly non-combatants and this time nearly 500 children.  The damage to infrastructure is colossal and the Israeli-Egyptian blockade makes significant repair impossible.

I noted recently that I had published this on Facebook only so published it here on the “Rebel Breeze” blog also.

 

UP TO TEN THOUSAND MARCH IN SOLIDARITY WITH JAILED AND ARRESTED WATER TAX PROTESTERS

On By rebelbreezeIn Capitalism, Civil Rights, Current Affairs Comment, Current Event Report, Ireland, Irish Left, Irish Republicanism, Water Tax & Metering1 Comment

Start of the march in Dame Street after rally in Central Plaza
Start of the march in Dame Street after rally in Central Plaza

On Saturday 21 February, at two days’ notice, somewhere between eight and ten thousand people gathered in Dublin in solidarity with those water tax protesters jailed by the State and those recently arrested.  They marched to Mountjoy Prison and packed the road outside it and in front of the local Garda (police station).

 

Dame St Start March V Repression Water Tax Protesters 21 Feb2015
The march gets going in Dame Street. Photo shows only the front of the march.

 

 

 

 

 

Parnell Square West from Granby Place. The front of the march has turned into Dorset Street and is marching there but the end has yet to come around the corner into the square from Parnell Street
Parnell Square West from Granby Place. The front of the march has turned into Dorset Street and is marching there but the end has yet to come around the corner into the square from Parnell Street

The crowd were addressed by relatives and friends of the jailed, anti-Water Tax campaigners as well as by Paul Murphy, Joan Collins and Clare Daly (both TDs of the United Left) and Dessie Ellis (TD of Sinn Fein).

All of the speakers denounced the politicians and the State for the jailing of the protesters while the bankers and politicians who created the crisis and colluded in the bank bailout went free. Most speakers called on the crowd not to pay the water tax and to build resistance on the streets. Dessie Ellis, in keeping with his party’s position, did not call for non-payment, though he did call for “unity of the Left”. The march was notable for the absence of SF banners and placards — apparerently they were having their own protest at Leinster House.

One of the protesters made an emotional appeal on behalf of two of the five who received jail sentences, who have gone on hunger strike, and on behalf of another, Derek Byrne, also on hunger strike, but who has declared his intention of refusing to take fluids from Monday if he is not released. (NB: Since posting that paragraph it has emerged that the demand of all three hunger-strikers is a return to Mountjoy [they had been separated and sent off to a prison facility near Clondalkin] and an end to 23-hour lockup in their cells. These are basic human rights.)

Large sections of the crowd seemed taken aback by this information and unsure how to react.

Paul Murphy pointed out that this use of the police to attack people protesting injustice has been a feature of the State since its creation and mentioned the threats of jail to striking workers, the jailing of the Rossport Five and of Margaretta D’Arcy. Clare Daly asked the Gardaí which side they were on, that of the polticians and bankers or of the people, saying that if they chose the former it is they who would become isolated, not the protesters. Joan Collins, Murphy and Daly all pointed to the need to create a socialist society. They also, along with most other speakers, called for a build up and huge turn out of support for the demonstration scheduled for March.  Many speakers declared that the increased repression is a sign of the Government’s or the system’s weakness, not of their strength and called on the movement not to falter now.

Robert Ballagh, who also spoke, called for the release of the five and pointed out that the class of people who rule and profit out of this society are not those who find themselves in jails.

Section of the march in Dorset Street, looking west
Section of the march in Dorset Street, looking west (another section is behind the camera — see next photo — but a large section of the march has yet to come around the corner from Parnell Square.)

 

The same road, photo taken a few seconds later but looking east.
The same road, photo taken a few seconds later but looking east.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The mood of the crowd in general was of good-humoured determination. The composition seemed to cross social groupings, ages and genders and a number had brought their children along. Some had come from other parts of the country.

Crowd outside Mountjoy. some have left and many are still further down the north Circular Road
Crowd outside Mountjoy. some have left and many are still further down the north Circular Road (the Mater Hospital is to the right of photo).

CATHERINE BYRNE, DUBLIN FINE GAEL TD, SAID “WE SHOULD TAKE BACK OUR FLAG”. MAYBE SHE’S RIGHT ….

On By rebelbreezeIn History, Ireland, Irish Left, Irish Republicanism, Personal Blog, Political Analysis, Satire, Song, Water Tax & Metering, Workers' StrugglesLeave a comment

CATHERINE BYRNE, DUBLIN TD, SAID “WE SHOULD TAKE BACK OUR FLAG”. MAYBE SHE’S RIGHT ….

 

Dublin South-Central TD Catherine Byrne was warmly applauded when she said that they should ”take back our flag” from people who have been using it in protests against water charges and other issues.  She made the statement at the Fine Gael political party’s two-day conference in Castlebar, Co. Mayo, held under strict security.

Arts Minister Heather Humphreys supported that view and told delegates in a secret session on the 1916 commemorations (a session which exposed divisions in the party): ”Some have used our flag to portray a different message – it’s time to reclaim our flag.”

They are both right, in a way.

Listen to this:

WHAT SHOULD WE DO?

On By rebelbreezeIn Capitalism, Civil Rights, Ireland, Irish Left, Irish Republicanism, National Liberation, Political Analysis, Political Prisoners, Socialist Revolution, Water Tax & Metering, Workers' Struggles2 Comments

“What should I do?” The anguish reached out to me; I felt it empathically. The cry of a person who is prepared to act and wants to change things for the better, to resist what is wrong around us on so many fronts – and that’s the problem.

There so many issues: the Water Tax, the persecution of Republican activists including framing and jailing them, the harassment and torture of Republican prisoners, the threat of fracking, privatisation of resources and services, cuts in services, cuts in salaries, high cost of private accommodation and low social housing provision causing homelessness, the decline of the Irish language and of the Gaeltacht …. and others. And that’s without mentioning international solidarity – and not because I don’t consider that essential, either.

Of course, we can put all these problems down to capitalism and, in the case of repression of Republicans (and with regard to international solidarity), to imperialism …. so let’s just overthrow those systems and then we can sort out those problems! But that leads to the question of “How” which in turn brings one back again to that anguished question, or to its variant “Which problem should I prioritise?”

Indeed, it is a question that cuts to the heart of the matter. For the issues call to us to act and since we can’t be everywhere at once we have to make choices. It is a question as old as class society and speeches are always being made recommending this choice or that while books have been written attempting to answer it. Lenin wrote a series of articles in the revolutionary newspaper Iskra (“Spark”) and published later as a booklet under a title that echoes that very cry above: What Is to Be Done? It had a subtitle too: “Burning questions of our movement” (by which he meant the socialist movement in Russia at the time).

Whether we choose to believe that work was absolutely correct, partly correct or completely wrong is in some ways irrelevant, for it was written for the movement in Russia in 1902 and published in 1905. I happen to think that it contains many useful ideas, although I am aware that there is a view that it has been mistranslated but, even so, in many ways, all that is beside the point. The fact is that today we have no blueprint and nothing more than perhaps the equivalent of a trouble-shooting manual: “for this problem, try this; if that doesn’t work, try that; while doing so beware of that other.” And that manual is cobbled together from older and more recent history of struggles, of analyses of the capitalist system and of how it behaves.

Scary, surely, to go up against a system that has ruled for around four centuries, that has spread across the world, that controls education, mass media, the State with its police, judges, prison and armed forces – and all without us having a blueprint. Well, if it’s any consolation, the capitalists don’t have a blueprint either … or if they do, they keep having to ignore it and react to events which they have not been able to predict, as well as to the extent of resistance for which they were unprepared. And they clearly make mistakes. Still, 400 years is a long time … a long time for them to learn tactics and strategy and to get comfortable in control and a long time to make us think that we can’t defeat them.

We can defeat them, of course and the indications from history and the internal workings of capitalism — and of its offshoot imperialism — are that we will. But what to do to make that happen? Yes, back to that question. And to the one that logically follows it: which issue to prioritise? For none of us is capable of being everywhere at once and even stretching over a few issues at a time begins to tear at our fabric.

The Marxist-Leninist approach argues for the creation of a revolutionary party that will make decisions on prioritisation and allocate resources to those struggles it chooses as it does so. Of course, the party will make mistakes from time to time and it will learn from those, getting better as it goes along. That’s the theory anyway. In application, or in alleged application, the results have not vindicated the theory – not in the long run, or even in the medium-term. Sure, we have been at it for less than 200 years: the first time workers captured a city was in 1871 and the first successful overthrow of the State was in Russia in 1917, very nearly a century ago. Much less time to learn, to make mistakes and to correct them but still ….

Of course, the alternative method of organising has even less to recommend it on results: amorphous, disparate collectives have not ever successfully overthrown a State and even their success in capturing a city (Barcelona, 1936) is debatable.

So, what is to be done? How to decide which struggle to prioritise? This is not a question I think can be answered by pointing and saying “That one and no other” or even, except at rare junctures, “That one and no other for the moment”. Individuals, collectives and parties will need to choose from the selection as a painter chooses from a palette: “this colour now, then that, no, scrub that one, now mix this with that, no, a bit more light …” and so on, always working towards the desired result which, although in the head, is also taking place on the canvas and making its own demands as it does so.

The truth is that all of those issues I mentioned in passing at the start of this piece, all of those, need addressing. All of them need people to fight in them. That is because they are all part of the same problem and also because we can’t just allow a cancer to grow unchecked in one part of the body while we address the tumours in another. Some individuals and perhaps even collectives are better suited to fight on some issues than on others: for example, a factory shop committee is probably not best placed to lead the struggle against fracking in a rural area, while a rural environmental collective is probably not in the best position to lead the struggle against the Water Tax. Individuals will need to pick and choose according to their own situation, their locality, their own knowledge.

And that would be fine, if the resistance movement as a whole were integrated enough to make creative use of that disparity – for particular struggles to be able to call for temporary additional resources and to be heard by the whole resistance movement, so that it could try to allocate those resources to one or other sector as seemed appropriate. But the resistance movement is far from integrated – it is fragmented and, even worse, it suffers from something akin to schizophrenia.

There a number of ways to imagine schizophrenia and the most popular is to see it as the development of two or more personalities in the one individual. But another is to see it as a disintegration of the personality – where the various aspects in our minds break free and appear as distinct personalities in themselves. The voices that speak in our heads to say things like “You shouldn’t have done that” or “Please make that happen” break free and seem to become different personalities. At times they conflict with one another while the central core personality tries to make sense of what is going on. Something like that, anyway. It is in that sense that I think the resistance movement in Ireland suffers from schizophrenia.

The splitting off of aspects of the revolutionary movement in Ireland has been towards two major poles of attraction: the Socialist one and the Republican. Of course there are some elements who incorporate both to one degree or another but I think examining them as distant poles of attraction is useful and much closer to their concrete manifestation within the revolutionary movement.  In order to examine them as opposite poles I think it is also useful to imagine a stereotype individual inhabiting each pole. Let us then imagine a stereotypical Irish Republican and a stereotypical Irish Socialist.

The Irish Republican is probably working class or maybe lower middle class; he may or may not have done well at secondary education but in any case he is unlikely to have gone to university. He sees himself in a tradition of resistance to British Colonialism and Imperialism stretching back at least to the United Irishmen and perhaps even back to the Norman conquest which began in 1169. His priority is the removal of the British from Ireland. He experiences “political policing” (of which some socialists are now complaining) practically from the moment he becomes publicly active – he has had his name and address taken by Special Branch and/or RUC/PSNI and they have opened a file on him. The Republican’s recent predecessors have been jailed (as are some of his contemporaries now), beaten or even shot dead; they were engaged in armed struggle against the colonial and imperial armed forces in the Six Counties for 30 years and perhaps he looks forward to take the gun up again some day, to strike back at the colonial overlord. He will turn out on demonstrations and pickets against repression of Republican activists, in support of Republican prisoners, including framed ones. He will almost certainly attend mass demonstrations against the Water Tax and may participate in local direct action against it. The Republican’s idealogues are Wolf Tone, Patrick Pearse and Bobby Sands.

The Irish socialist is probably medium or lower middle class and has finished secondary education; she has almost certainly gone on to university. She sees herself as belonging to a tradition of only a couple of centuries, with an Irish tradition going back to the early part of the 20th Century, in particular to the 1913 Lockout and the Limerick Soviet of 1919. She may or may not give a high place in her history to the Irish Citizen Army in the 1916 Rising. Her priority is the defeat of the capitalist class, probably in Ireland first but will turn out in demonstrations against racism, gender discrimination and homophobia in Ireland. The Irish Socialist aspires to a general strike giving rise to a revolutionary take over of the State; in the interim she may or may not think electing left-wing TDs or trade union officials an important activity. She probably can’t conceive of taking up a gun. The Irish Socialist has never had her name taken by the Special Branch or been framed by the RUC/PSNI and may never even have been detained by the police, though she has probably been pushed around by them. She will almost certainly attend mass demonstrations against the Water Tax and may participate in local direct action against this Tax. Her idealogues are Karl Marx, Lenin, possibly Trotsky and James Connolly.

Granted these are stereotypes but they are not so far from reality as to be unhelpful in describing in turn many and perhaps most Irish Republicans and Socialists and therefore in identifying one of the principal fracture lines in the Irish movement of resistance.

If the Republican and the Socialist parts of the Irish resistance movement were to be combined, or at the very least to work on a more collaborative basis, the “What should I do?” question would be easier to answer. It would be simpler to be on a picket for prisoners one week and resisting water meters the next, even if one’s main sphere of activity were among Republicans. The socialist could attend a picket against cuts one week and one for the human rights of Republican prisoners on another, even if her main sphere of activity was among Socialists. But that is not the situation that exists at the moment and, though a number of attempts have been made to combine the two trends in one organisation, they have not met with any great success to date.

So, I have not yet answered the question, have I? Am I saying that what we should be doing is creating some kind of synthesis or at least a collaborative alliance between the the socialist and republican parts of the resistance movement? Well, yes, certainly. But also, and as a contribution to that, as individuals we should try and spread our activity between the areas of greatest concern of each of those sections of the resistance movement. We should, I think, take some time to support resistance to the water tax, demonstrations against cuts etc. in their own right but also find some time to support resistance to British colonialism and its repression of Republican political activists. “If we are not part of the solution, then we are part of the problem” may be a glib truism but it is particularly applicable in this case.

So, how will we find the time to spread ourselves around? How do we ever? We balance and juggle priorities between our politically active and our social lives, with employment thrown in when we have a job. Or upskilling or studying. And possibly cultural or sporting or other activities. But how to choose, how to prioritise? Each of us has to make those decisions herself and himself. Not a very helpful answer? Well, I did state earlier on that there wasn’t a blueprint, so I couldn’t have one myself, could I? This however I feel fairly confident in predicting: if we don’t find a way to support both those parts of the resistance movement to some degree, it will always be fractured. And while it is so, it cannot be successful in either ridding Ireland of our capitalist classes or in finally throwing off the colonial yoke.

end

New Song: They’re Stealing Our Water

On By rebelbreezeIn Capitalism, Current Affairs Comment, History, Ireland, Irish Left, National Liberation, Song, Water Tax & Metering, Workers' Struggles1 Comment

Black n Tans lorry plus RIC
British colonial police in Ireland, Auxilliaries and RIC in Dublin raid during War of Independence 1920 or 1921.

Cromwellian Massacre at Drogheda
Drawing depicting Cromwellian troops massacre at Drogheda 1649

A little bit rough in places but think I should get it out now and hopefully get people singing it ASAP.  I am surprised no-one seems to have used this tune, The Sea Around Us, and the mention of “water”, already.  Thanks to Ruairi O’Broin at the February session of Song Central for suggesting the “bank guarantee” line in the chorus, much better than what I had there originally.

Amended a little again since I wrote the above but still not sat down and really consistently worked at it.  Amended yet again slightly in 2020.

THEY’RE STEALING OUR WATER

Diarmuid Breatnach (To the air of “The Sea Around Us”, also known as “The sea, Oh the sea”)

Chorus:

The sea, oh the sea, a ghrá gheal mo chroí,

‘though long it may roll between England and me,

We’ve still got our gombeens* with a bank guarantee

and they’re trying to steal our own water!

(The chorus can go in after each verse, or each second, as people prefer).

1.

The Norse came to Ireland right outa’ the blue,

took us as slaves and plundered and slew;

But their days were all numbered from Clontarf they knew

— they never troubled us much for the after.

2.

Then the English came over our patience to try,

our land for to steal and our culture deny

And they took all that we had … I tell you no lie —

but at least they left us our water!

3.

‘Twas many a hard battle with the English we fought,

as used be our wont and indeed so we ought;

but as time went by, it all came to naught

and they put poor aul’ Éire in a halter.

4.

But we rose up once more and again and again —

we had stalwart youth and women and men;

We fought them in city and mountain and glen

and forced them their plans for to alter.

5.

Then those who at our struggle took fright

stepped in and took over the fruits of our fight;

The Gombeens and Church turned our dawn into night

and in a wink we were back under the halter!  

6.

The parasites live off our sweat and our blood — 

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

they’d tax the very air that we breathe if they could;

But our media says to resist is not good …

and compliance would get us much further.

7.

Our resources are for the people to share in —

is linne ar fad é, uisce na hÉireann;

and it’s now the baton and prison we’re darin’ —

they’ll not steal from our sons and our daughters!

8.

The people are standing firm and steady —

they know that we’ve paid for the water already!

Our banners unfurled and more things ready:

You can be sure this time we won’t falter!

February 2015.

Dennis O Brien
Denis O’Brien, a billionaire widely believed to have plans to buy Irish Water if/when it becomes privatised. He is a major shareholder in Sierra Construction, the company installing water meters and also in Independent Newspapers. The Moriarty Tribunal found that he had benefited from information from the Irish Minister for telecommunications whom O’Brien had paid €50,000 through circuitous channels. The information had assisted him in bidding for the mobile phone contract, which he later sold at a personal profit of €317 a few years later.

Brian Cowen
Brian Cowen, former Taoiseach (equivalent to Prime Minister) in the Fianna Fáil-Green Party coalition Government 2011, which began the bank bailout.

Joan Burton angry maybe
Joan Burton (Labour), Minister for Social Protection in the Labour-Fine Gael coalition Government at time of writing

                         

Enda Kenny winking
Enda Kenny (Fine Gael), Taoiseach (equivalent to Prime Minister) in the Labour-Fine Gael coalition Government at time of writing

 

!

Water Tax Demo crowd

* “Gombeen”, from the Irish “Gaimbíneach” is a profiteer, a venal person, a moneylender, a capitalist.