There is a long tradition amongst NGOs, sectors of the reformist left, trade unionists and others in Colombia that someone outside the country will save us. The saviours are the North Americans (despite their role in the conflict), the European Union (despite their role as well and that of their companies), and international institutions such as the International Criminal Court, or the mechanisms set up in the peace accord (national ones but financed internationally). So, the decision by the ICC to shut down its preliminary investigation of Colombia was like a bucket of cold water to them. But it was to be expected.
Banner carrying faces and names of youth from Soacha and Bogotá murdered by the Colombian National Army. The banner was displayed in a march in Bogatá on the 6th March, the Day of Victims of State Violence. (Photo credit: GOL)
When Obama was elected as US president, various journalists and representatives of the left and NGOs announced that he would solve Colombia’s problems and now they have come back to say the same about Biden. A constant feature of this discourse of seeking a foreign saviour is the possibility of taking Uribe (not his Defence Minister, Juan Manuel Santos) to the ICC. They sold a false hope to the victims of the state that there they could obtain justice. They knew it was unlikely, as they knew what the ICC was like and its not very encouraging record in the matter.
To date the ICC has only convicted African leaders. It is not the case that these African leaders are saints or innocent, but rather that the ICC does not go after other criminals. It has procrastinated for many years on its case against Israel and has no authority to investigate the USA. The Court’s website currently indicates that it has 15 ongoing preliminary investigations, ten of them in African countries and five others in Georgia, Afghanistan, the Philippines, Bangladesh and the State of Palestine. This last case will not succeed, of that we can be certain. It has pursued a total of 30 individuals, resulting in 4 convictions.1 The ICC is the opium of the people, it has a soporific effect on people in the midst of their struggles and the NGOs promise Heaven and Divine Justice in a coming future.
A boy carries photos of victims in a march in Bogatá on the 6th March, the Day of Victims of State Violence. (Photo credit: GOL)
There were diverse reactions to the decision to shut down the preliminary investigation. Whilst the victims of the False Positives2 criticised the decision, others such as Senator Iván Cepeda and Eamon Gilmore, the EU envoy to the peace process celebrated it. The Movement of Victims of State Crimes (MOVICE) lamented the decision, though in a very confusing manner. It continued to praise the Special Jurisdiction for Peace (JEP), when it is precisely the existence of the JEP that the ICC used as an excuse to shut down the case.3
Iván Cepeda stated that:
A direct consequence of the agreement signed by Duque’s government with the International Criminal Court’s prosecutor is that once and for all the possibility of reforming the JEP has been discarded. It puts an end to that obsessive aim of the Uribistas. A victory for the peace process.4
A few years ago, he would have denounced the closure of the case as an act of impunity and now he claims it is a victory. As the Greek philosopher Plutarch put it, Another victory like this and all will be lost. Many of us denounced the impunity of the JEP, little did we think that not only would it guarantee impunity in the trials it deals with or excludes from its remit, but that its very existence would be the perfect excuse to shut down international cases against the regime. But the peace acolytes are determined to announce their defeat as a victory.
Protestors holding aloft photos of those murdered and disappeared in a march in Bogatá on the 6th March, the Day of Victims of State Violence. (Photo credit: GOL).
It seems that Senator Gustavo Petro didn’t have much to say about the matter and neither did Senator Alexander López. Piedad Córdoba, however, echoed the statements of Iván Cepeda and said:
They took issue with the JEP and tried to cut its budget, discredit it, dirty propaganda and all in order to cover their own backs. Today the ICC forced the government to strengthen it.5
A young woman carries photos of victims in a march in Bogatá on the 6th March, the Day of Victims of State Violence. (Photo credit: GOL)
It is clear that there are those who in the name of peace would justify any defeat, including a defeat of a proposal they themselves promoted. So, the ICC will not proceed against Colombia, but relax, we have the JEP where the military who, unlike the guerrillas, do not have to tell the whole truth about their crimes and where the businesspeople are excluded.
Of course, the president of the JEP, who once upon a time was the NGOs’ favourite said that he was very pleased with the ICC decision. According to Cifuentes the closure of the investigation against Colombia is a victory won by the JEP,6 i.e. those who for many years talked about how the ICC was going to put the Colombian State in its place, now tell us that the fact the ICC will not proceed against Colombia is a victory.
I really find it difficult to understand their logic, or better still I can’t understand their shamelessness. In the name of their pathetic peace accord, they justify everything and describe it as a victory. Poor Plutarch. If he had to deal with the leaders of the supposed left in Colombia today he would have been more vulgar, but he died many centuries ago, so allow me Plutarch: Another victory like this and the turncoats will be making money like never before.
So, to answer the question posed by this article, who will save us? The answer is no one, or rather, the Colombian people will save themselves, there are no international institutions, nor presidents in other countries who are going to fix the crisis that country has suffered for decades. The only ones who will put Uribe, Santos, Pastrana, Samper and the others in jail are the Colombian people.
“Forget them? That would be a crime against conscience” with images and names of the “disappeared” since 1998. The banner was carried on a march in Bogatá on the 6th March, the Day of Victims of State Violence. (Photo credit: GOL)
Next year is an electoral one and some of those who told us the ICC would do miracles and now celebrate the slap in the face it gave to the victims, will be candidates. They will promise a thousand miracles and when some foreign institution or president says no, they will celebrate it and try to convince us that the defeat was a victory. Changing the saying by Mao, they go from victory to victory to final defeat. Plutarch is as relevant today as ever.
End.
“NOT FORGOTTEN” banner carried on a march in Bogatá on the 6th March, the Day of Victims of State Violence. (Photo credit: GOL)
California has long been home to the eccentric and free spirits, so naturally the highly eccentric Irish mystic, poet and Celtic mythologist Ella Young found a home there. The first woman to hold an endowed lectureship in the English Department at the University of California at Berkley, Young left several enduring legacies on the Golden State’s literature, counterculture, and environmental movement.
Nearing old age in Ireland, Young helped spark a new age consciousness in the Bay Area. Young lived the first fifty-eight years of her life in her native land, but even before leaving for America, she traveled far from her conservative Ulster roots. Born in December 1867, in Fenagh, a townland near Ballymena, Co. Antrim, Ella was eldest of five daughters of a Presbyterian minister. The family moved to Dublin at an early age and Young graduated with a BA in History, Political Economy and Law from the Royal University of Ireland. Abandoning Christianity, Ella’s interest in the spirit world led her to join the Hermetic Society, the Dublin branch of the Theosophical Society, which sought to awaken the power and presence of Ireland’s ancient spirits. Young was greatly influenced by fellow Ulster mystical poet AE Russell, and she soon became one of his select group of protégés known as the “singing birds.”
Ella Young in Oceano, California, image in Princeton University of Art Museum.
She found her muse and published her first volume of verse in 1906, and her first work of Irish folklore, The Coming of Lugh, appeared in 1909. Young mixed with luminaries of the Celtic revival including J.M. Synge, W.B. Yeats and Maud Gonne, with whom she might have had a romantic relationship. Like other writers of her day, Ella found great spiritual riches in the West of Ireland, where Irish was still the spoken language of the locals and where she was also able to hear what she called the Music of the Faerie, the ceol sídhe.
Ella completed a master’s degree at Trinity, but she would be drawn into the revolutionary fervor then sweeping Ireland. Young’s immersion in Celtic mythology and theosophy led her to promote a spiritually inflected Irish nationalism. A friend of Patrick Pearse, Ella became a member of Sinn Féin in 1912 and a founding member of Cumann na mBan in 1914. Ella witnessed the 1916 Rising in Dublin and is alleged to have hidden ammunition under the floorboards of her home and helped two fugitive Republican prisoners to escape Dublin. An anti-Treaty Republican, she strongly opposed the Anglo–Irish Treaty and, after supporting different sides, she and her mentor Æ Russell never spoke again. Because of her anti-Treaty stance, Young was interned by the Free State in Mountjoy jail and in the North Dublin Union.
An ardent cultural Nationalist, Young fervently believed the revitalization of Irish culture could be realized through a reconnection with its Celtic mythological roots. She taught in Dublin, but she came of age as an anti-Treaty woman at a time and in a state where her gender, politics and Protestant background severely limited her career opportunities. Young left Ireland for the US In the mid-1920s, where she would spend the rest of her life. Her emigration, she claimed, had been foretold in 1914 by a Romani fortune teller.
Ella Young 1930, Edward Weston Centre for Photography
Fortunately for Ella, Celtic studies scholar William Whittingham Lyman Jr. left his Berkley lectureship in 1922 and Young was hired to fill the vacancy in 1924. Ella, however, was almost forbidden entry into the United States. During an interview in Ellis Island, Young was detained as a probable mental case when the authorities learned that she believed in the existence of fairies, elves, and pixies. However, outrage by her American readers at the ban helped her finally gain entry.
Young fell in love with Berkley, California and Berkley loved her back. Young adored the college town, especially its exotic flora, breathtaking views, and its student culture. She quickly inspired a cult-like following in California. A striking woman, Young cut a dramatic figure with a noble forehead and face that seemed to shine with an inner light. She lectured in what she considered the traditional purple robes of a Druid bard, which she called her “reciting robes,” to visually portray an authentic Irish identity. She let her shoulder-length silver hair hang free and instead of shaking hands when introduced, she raised her hands high in the ancient druid greeting. Poet Padraic Colum compared her to the ancient “women who knew the sacred places and their traditions, who knew the incantations and the cycles of stories about the Divine Powers, and who could relate them with authority and interpret them wisely. . . She speaks of Celtic times as if she were recalling them.” A gifted speaker, Ella held her listeners spellbound with the heroic myths and sagas told in her lilting Irish voice – the voice of the bard, a keeper of the ancient teachings of her ancestors.
Young was above all a gifted storyteller and children’s author. She published The Wonder-Smith and his Son (1925), The Tangle-Coated Horse (1929), and The Unicorn with Silver Shoes (1932), stories for children, inspired by themes from Celtic myth, with beautiful illustrations and written in her delicate, carefully cadenced prose. The Unicorn with Silver Shoes was nominated for the American Newbery Prize for children’s literature in 1932; all her children’s stories were repeatedly reprinted until the 1990s.
(Image sourced: Internet)
Young was a frequent guest at the home of the celebrated California poet Robinson Jeffers, who was also deeply influenced by the Celtic revival. Jeffers and Young both identified the physical and spiritual similarities between California’s Big Sur and the West of Ireland. Ella considered dramatic Point Lobos in Marin County, where she communed with the dryads of the pine trees, the sea spirits, and the great guardian Deva who hovered over the sea with shining wings, to be the center of psychic power for the entire Pacific Coast. Young also became a close friend of Virginia and Ansel Adams, the renowned photographer of California’s wilderness, who made Yosemite Valley a symbol of the state. Adams took several dramatic portraits of Young in her “reciting robes.”
Ella Young lectured that an awareness of the supernatural world in Celtic folklore and literature could bring her listeners into a closer relationship with the natural world around them. Her love for the beauty of California made her an environmentalist long before it became fashionable, and also she saw the Earth as a great living being. She forged a close friendship with Dorothy Erskine, an early California environmentalist and advocate for limiting growth. Young also founded The Fellowship of Shasta, which became involved in environmental activism, working successfully to prevent developers from building on Point Lobos and also with the Save the Redwoods League, which preserved the remaining old-growth forests of California.
An enemy of materialism and egotism, Young espoused “the natural world and our relationship to it” as an alternative to consumerism. Ella moved to a Theosophic commune in Oceano, near San Luis Obispo in the early 1930s, and became part of a community of artists and writers living on the sand dunes, known as the Dunites. Thanks to her friendship with Ansel Adams, Ella stayed with the community of artists in Taos, New Mexico, where she met Georgia O’Keeffe and Frieda Lawrence and studied Native American and Mexican myths.
Back in California, Young assembled around herself a fascinating circle of artists, writers and freethinkers. She became close friends with the Irish-born landscape painter John O’Shea and other West Coast painters. Ella also became intimate with composer Harry Partch, who set several of her poems to music. Perhaps a lesbian herself, Young befriended California pioneers of sexual liberation, such as Elsa Gidlow, the British-born lesbian poet, and Gavin Arthur, a bisexual astrologer and sexologist whom Young first met in 1920s Dublin.
Young developed cancer. In the last year of her life, she claimed that she had been in communication with the occupants of a thimble-sized spaceship which came and hovered in her garden. Ella died in her cottage on July 23rd, 1956, aged eighty-eight. She was cremated, and her ashes were scattered in a redwood grove. She left the royalties from her books to a society that protected those redwoods.
From the window of the government building I worked in, I noticed a gathering of men. Mostly dressed in motorcycle leathers, many of them very overweight, and bearded, the crowd grew to perhaps 70 or 80. Some of the men were wearing maroon berets. They were a comedic spectacle: imagine a few score of Ken Maginnis-types in motorcycle leathers. They lined up in military formation, their physical condition making this pretence pathetic rather than sinister, and unfurled a very small banner which read “WE SUPPORT SOLDIER F.”
I couldn’t help thinking of protests against the injustices visited upon the Guilford Four and the Birmingham Six, protests held in England. How society seems to have changed, and not for the better.
Douglas Murray, a neo-conservative thinker and writer much respected and admired by many on the right, had this to say about Soldier F in his peerless account of the Bloody Sunday Inquiry: Soldier F — who fired 13 rounds on the day — whose performance in 1972 and 2003 was most disturbing. It always seemed to me that if anyone was deserving of prosecution, then it was him.
Murray also had this to say about the killers of 14 civilians on Bloody Sunday: “The soldiers of 1 Para weren’t just unapologetic killers, but unrelenting liars.”
“Support the Paras (Parachute Regiment) and Soldier F” — i.e any British soldier who has murdered people from the Nationalist community. (Image sourced: Internet)
Recently, former British solider Dennis Hutchings faced trial for the killing of John Pat Cunningham. Hutchings received much support, including high profile political support, from those who objected to his prosecution. The circumstances of John Pat’s death could scarcely be more upsetting:
A Benburb doctor said the victim, who was his patient, had been born with an incomplete development of mind, and had been declared a person requiring special care. The doctor said that about a year earlier, near the scene of the shooting, he had come across soldiers pushing John Cunningham into a Saracen armoured car. He spoke to the soldiers who said he had been hiding in the bushes and acting suspiciously. The doctor said he had told the young man’s mother about the incident and advised her to keep a special watch on her son’s movements, in view of his apprehension towards soldiers and their uniforms.
Dennis Hutchings is alleged to have shot John Pat in the back as he ran away from an army patrol. There is simply no way that John Pat was a threat to them. British and Unionist politicians were outraged over a prosecution taking place. They were silent when the prosecution of Soldier F, a perjurer, multiple-killer, and perhaps the single greatest recruiting sergeant the PIRA ever had, fell apart.
From tragedy to farce, we can now look at the case of Donald MacNaughton, who was tried and acquitted of attempted murder in 1974. The case against him fell apart because of “inconsistencies” with the victim’s evidence, and the evidence of MacNaughton and his comrades “fitted together and was not mutually contradictory .” MacNaughton was a member of the Parachute Regiment, whose soldiers colluded with each other to lie to several British Government Inquiries, and indeed to British Army investigators. The farce in this case, I think, demonstrates something of the self-degradation of those on the English right: MacNaughton became a Brexit Party campaigner, and is widely believed to have thrown yogurt over himself to gain media attention.
Motorbike rally in Belfast in support of Soldier F, who admitted to firing 13 bullets during the 1972 massacre of unarmed protestors in Derry. (Image sourced: Internet)
Hutchings died before his trial, and will be given full military honours at his funeral. Soldier F was promoted and decorated several times in his military career. Just as their killings of Irish citizens did not unduly affect their lives for decades, was there any serious attempt at prosecuting them to the full extent of the law?
But their prosecution is not really the point. The level of support for them is.
What does it say about sections of society, and politicians, if they can support those suspected of murder, so long as it was committed by a uniformed killer, regardless of the status of the victim?
⏩ Brandon Sullivan is a middle aged, middle management, centre-left Belfast man. Would prefer people focused on the actual bad guys.
Michelle (Angeline Ball) runs a hairdressing salon in Piglinstown, a fictional Dublin city suburb that looks like Finglas3 and the area is suffering the attention of a local gang of thugs led by Deano (Ian Lloyd Anderson). The Gardaí4, represented by one individual played by Dermot Ward, are ineffectual in dealing with local crime and seem also well-disposed to a local politician, a Dublin City councillor, whose solution to the area is demolition of a parade of shops, including the hairdressing salon, followed by redevelopment. Michelle’s staff are Stacey (Ericka Roe), Chantelle (Shauna Higgins) and Gemma (Lauren Larkin).
Playing smaller roles are the local butcher Jonner (Aaron Edo), along with owners of the fish and chip shop, the local pub, pub entertainment organiser and three elderly ladies in particular.
Darren Flynn (Aidan McArdle) is the local politician, a Dublin City Councillor, who lets slip later in the film that he has a lot of property speculators waiting to get their hands on the area. Of course, in real life, nothing like that would happen in Dublin City Council, among the Councillors or the City Managers, would it? Quite apart from that, one must feel some sympathy for a certain Dublin City councillor who must surely wince every time he hears “Councillor Flynn” mentioned in the film’s dialogue.
(Image sourced: Internet)
If you know Dublin working and lower-middle class suburbs then some of the visual scenes will be familiar, the streets of housing, the green area, short strips of shops, including the chipper, the cheeky kids on bikes, the pub as a social centre. But for women the hairdressing salon plays a social role too as one can see from the varied ages and requirements of the customers. There was a time in some areas when the local barber shop played the same role for men, the waiting customers, the customer in the chair and the barber all taking part in the same conversation.
You’ll know too that unemployment tends to be higher in such areas and that there are social problems in particular with bored and disengaged youth, drug-taking and selling …. but not necessarily more of the taking than occurs in middle-class areas, particularly when the young people start clubbing.
Areas that could do with regeneration around the local community are not unusual in and around Irish cities but when that regeneration takes place it’s usually for another class – the gentrification project. That’s what’s in store for Piglinstown, if Mr. Flynn and his invisible property speculators have their way. This film is making its debut at a time when property speculators are visibly running wild over Dublin, building hotels, residential apartment and student accommodation blocks (of which most students can’t afford the rents), meanwhile destroying communities, cultural amenities and historical sites. And Dublin City Managers are giving the go-ahead for these planning applications while An Bord Pleanála regularly turns down appeals or moderates the application somewhat but rarely in essence.
The highpoint of the film both in tension and in flash and showbiz buzz is the Ahh Hair competition, which the Piglinstown hair dressing salon wants to win in order to boost their profile and avoid demolition by the speculators. Here Pippa (Victoria Smurfit) plays the vicious upper-class nasty with abandon, aided by her three familiars, the snooty Eimear (Sorcha Fahey) chief among them, many hands in the film’s audience surely itching to slap. Nor is the nastiness only verbal.
Snooty upper-class hair stylist Pippa, played by Victoria Smurfit, at the Ahh Hair competition. (Image sourced: Internet)
But it is also high satire, from Thommas Kane-Byrne as Kevin, the camp announcer and poseur judges with ridiculous hyperbole, including the star hairdresser D’Logan Doyle (Louis Lovett), to the cheering hooray henry and henrietta types in the audience. Even the finalist hairdressing creations would be to most people ridiculous, as are some of the creations and installations that win the annual Turner prize. Are the real hairdressing competitions anything like this?
Among the actors, it’s good to see Angeline Ball who charmed us in The Commitments (1991), 30 years ago and still looking good as the salon owner Michelle and Pauline McLynn who insisted in the eponymous series that Father Ted would have a cup of tea, “Ah, you will, you will, you will”. Comedienne Enya Martin, from Giz a Laugh sketches plays the staff’s somewhat sluttish friend.
The Deadly Cuts salon team in film promotion poster (Image sourced: Internet)
As I noted earlier, most reviewers have given the film high marks for entertainment value – not so Peter Bradshaw, who dealt it savage cuts in the Guardian and gave it only two stars out of five. “With violent gangsters, a gentrification storyline and a hairdressing competition, this movie can’t figure out what it wants to be.” Really, Peter? It seems to me that the film is all those things and manages them well within an overall comedic form, something like Dario Fo and the problem is that you just don’t get it.
The incidental music is a series of lively hip hop by clips from different artists, including the mixed English-Irish language group Kneecap. These should have your foot tapping and body swaying as you follow the plot and the dialogue, smoothly edited from scene to scene, laughing and occasionally shocked.
The resolution of the Piglinstown community’s problems in the film is as drastic as unlikely, (however much some viewers may agree with it). But the film is a very enjoyable and if you haven’t seen it already, I strongly recommend you do so.
End.
FOOTNOTES
1“Deadly” was a common Dublin slang expression which has fallen out of use but would still be recognised by many; in the way that much counter-culture slang uses the opposite from an accepted term, “deadly” meant “excellent” and is being employed here in that sense.
2Notably at the moment threats of demolition to the street market and historical site of Moore Street, part of the traditional music pub the Cobblestone and to the laneway at the Merchant’s Arch.
3In fact, Finglas’ in one of the communities acknowledged in the credits, the other being Loughlinstown.
Like many Brooklyn Jews of his generation, Howard Zinn, an icon of the American left, questioned laissez fair American capitalism and American nationalist glorification of country. He was the author of “A People’s History of the United States,” a best seller which sold more than two million copies and inspired a generation of high school and college students to rethink American history. He was also a strong supporter of the civil rights movement and an opponent of the Vietnam war, as well as being a much-loved professor. Proudly, unabashedly radical, Zinn delighted in debating ideological foes, including his own college president, and in attacking conventional ideas, not the least that American history was a heroic march toward democracy.
One of the many different jacket covers for reprints of Zinn’s most famous book — this one abridged for teaching purposes (Image sourced: Internet)
Born Aug. 24, 1922, Howard Zinn grew up in Bedford Stuyvesant. His parents were Jewish immigrants who met in a factory. His father worked as a ditch digger and window cleaner during the Depression. His father and mother ran a neighborhood candy store for a brief time, barely getting by. For many years his father was in the waiter’s union and worked as a waiter for weddings and bar mitzvahs. “We moved a lot, one step ahead of the landlord,” Zinn recalled. “I lived in all of Brooklyn’s best slums.”
“NO LONGER A LIBERAL”
His parents were not intellectuals and Zinn recalled that there were no books in his home growing up. At some point his parents, knowing his interest in books, and never having heard of Charles Dickens, sent in a coupon with a dime each month to the New York Post and received one of ultimately twenty volumes of Dickens’ complete works. He became interested in fascism and began to read about its rise in Europe and to engage in political discussions and debates with some young Communists in his neighborhood. Zinn was radicalized thanks to a peaceful political rally in Times Square, where mounted police charged the marchers, hit Zinn knocked him unconscious. Zinn explained, “From that moment on, I was no longer a liberal, a believer in the self-correcting character of American democracy. . . The situation required not just a new president or new laws, but an uprooting of the old order, the introduction of a new kind of society—cooperative, peaceful, egalitarian.”
After graduating from Thomas Jefferson High School, Zinn became an apprentice shipfitter in the Brooklyn Navy Yard, where he and a few other apprentices began to discuss books and strategize about how to improve their dangerous working conditions. Excluded from the craft unions of skilled workers, they formed their own Apprentice Association. On an overnight boat trip he organized to raise money for the association, he met his future wife, Roslyn Shechter, who shared Howard’s progressive views and was also a Jewish child of immigrants. Zinn joined the Army Air Corps in 1943, eager to fight the fascists, and became a bombardier in a B-17. While in the Air Force he was disturbed by the race and class inequality among the servicemen. It wasn’t until years after the war that he questioned the necessity of the bombs that he dropped. But at the end of the war, back in New York, he deposited his medals in an envelope and wrote: “Never Again.”
View of students and faculty carrying signs during a strike by faculty and staff of Boston University, on Commonwealth Avenue, Boston, 1979. Historian Howard Zinn, then a professor at BU, is just visible in the centre foreground. (Photo by Spencer Grant/Getty Images)
“I would not deny that [WWII] had a certain moral core, but that made it easier for Americans to treat all subsequent wars with a kind of glow,” Zinn said. “Every enemy becomes Hitler.”
After the war, he went back to interview victims of the bombing, and later wrote about it in two books. His own experience and his subsequent interviews led him to conclude that the bombing had been ordered more to enhance the careers of senior officers than for any military imperative, and he later wrote about the ethics of bombing in the context of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Tokyo and Dresden, as well as Iraq.
Zinn and Roz married in 1944. While Zinn worked various jobs after the war, they lived on meager income in a rat-infested basement apartment in Brooklyn. Their daughter Myla was born in 1947 and Jeff in 1949. They moved to new public housing in 1949 and Zinn went to New York University for his B.A in history.
Thanks to the GI Bill, which paid the tuition of veterans, Zinn went to Columbia, where he earned an MA in 1952 with a thesis about a famous coalminers’ strike in Colorado, then obtained his PhD with a dissertation about the career in Congress of Fiorello LaGuardia, the reforming mayor of New York. He studied at Columbia under Richard Hofstadter who taught Zinn that American liberals were not as liberal as they thought they were, and that the two common threads in all American history were nationalism and capitalism.
PROFESSOR ZINN
In 1956, Zinn accepted a professorship at Spelman College, a traditionally black college for women in Atlanta, Georgia. Among his students were Maria Wright Edelman, the campaigner for children’s rights, and the future novelist Alice Walker, author of The Color Purple. At Spelman, he was a mentor to and later the historian of the Student Non-Violent Co-ordinating Committee (SNCC), the radical student wing of the civil rights movement. Zinn took part in many civil rights protests, and he encouraged his students to join him in these marches, which angered Spelman’s president. Zinn angered the authorities at Spelman over his insistence that its students should not be trained to be ladies, but should be actively involved in politics. “I was fired for insubordination,” he recalled. “Which happened to be true.” Zinn moved to Boston University in 1964, where he quickly became an outspoken critic of the Vietnam War. He angered many Americans, including Boston University’s president, by traveling with the Rev. Daniel Berrigan to Hanoi to receive prisoners released by the North Vietnamese, and produced the antiwar books “Vietnam: The Logic of Withdrawal” (1967) and “Disobedience and Democracy” (1968). When Daniel Ellsberg, a previously gung-ho John F Kennedy and Lyndon B Johnson administration official, came out against the war, he gave one copy of the Pentagon Papers (officially titled United States-Vietnam Relations, 1945–1967: A Study Prepared by the Department of Defense, the government’s secret history of the war) to Zinn and his wife, Roslyn. Zinn and Noam Chomsky edited what became known as the Mike Gravel edition, published in Boston in 1971-72 by the Beacon Press.
In 1980, he published his most successful work, A People’s History of the United States, which was a highly controversial revision of American history. Instead of the usual congratulatory tone of most American history textbooks, his work concentrated on what he saw as the genocidal depredations of Christopher Columbus, the blood lust of Theodore Roosevelt and the racial failings of Abraham Lincoln. He also highlighted the revolutionary struggles of impoverished farmers, feminists, laborers and resisters of slavery and war. Bruce Springsteen said the starkest of his many albums, “Nebraska,” drew inspiration in part from Mr. Zinn’s writings.
For decades, he poured out articles attacking war and government secrecy.
When President Ronald Reagan bombed Tripoli in 1986, Zinn wrote: “There is no flag large enough to cover the shame of killing innocent people for a purpose which is unattainable.” He denounced the invasion of Iraq and also criticized President Barack Obama’s intensification of the war in Afghanistan. He was sharply attacked in Israel and by many of his fellow American Jews for saying that war was morally the equivalent of terrorism.
Howard Zinn (Photo sourced: Internet)
Mr. Zinn retired in 1988, concluding his last class early so he could join a picket line. He invited his students to join him. Zinn also wrote three plays: “Daughter of Venus,” “Marx in Soho” and “Emma,” about the life of the anarchist Emma Goldman. All have been produced. Zinn died in 2010.
Zinn always believed in standing up to injustice and fighting for oppression. He said near the end of his life, “Where progress has been made, wherever any kind of injustice has been overturned, it’s been because people acted as citizens, and not as politicians. They didn’t just moan. They worked, they acted, they organized, they rioted if necessary to bring their situation to the attention of people in power. And that’s what we have to do today.”
End.
POSTSCRIPT from Rebel Breeze:
TRUMP ATTACKS ZINN AFTER LATTER’S DEATH
“If you want to read a real history book,” Matt Damon’s character tells his therapist, played by Robin Williams, in the 1997 film “Good Will Hunting,” “read Howard Zinn’s ‘A People’s History of the United States.’ That book will knock you on your ass.”
It is very unlikely that President Donald Trump knew who Howard Zinn was before he saw the name on his teleprompter. And it is even less likely that he’s read “A People’s History of the United States.” But that didn’t stop him from saying — at the White House Conference on American History on Thursday — that today’s “left-wing rioting and mayhem are the direct result of decades of left-wing indoctrination in our schools. It’s gone on far too long. Our children are instructed from propaganda tracts, like those of Howard Zinn, that try to make students ashamed of their own history.”
Mohamed Fadel states that he was seriously injured last April by a Moroccan drone, during the same action in which the head of the Saharawi National Guard was killed. Morocco is silent on the use of these unmanned devices that have become the obsession of the Polisario Front troops.
Mohamed Fadel, ‘Mundi’, in a tent in the Saharawi refugee camp of Bojador, in Tindouf, Algeria, on October 15.
Mohamed Fadel can say that he has firsthand experience of the changes between the two wars against Morocco in which he was wounded. The first was in 1985, when a shell fragment hit him in the arm. But he recovered and returned to the front in no time. The second time was the recent April one and “it was more serious,” he says, showing the marks on his body under his military jacket.
Burns to his face, hands and arms, two scars the size of a coin on his right side and an incision of more than a foot long across the middle of his belly. “They had to open me up to remove the three pieces of shrapnel that I had inside. It took me three months to fully recover,” he explains in perfect Spanish. “It was a drone attack. That is now the big difference,” insists this seasoned 64-year-old Saharawi fighter.
But Mundi, as everyone knows him in the refugee camps in Tindouf, Algeria, does not like to talk about two different wars. This, he says, the one that the Polisario Front declared on November 13 after 30 years of ceasefire, “is just a continuation of the previous one”, the one that began in 1975, after the military occupation of the former Spanish Sahara by part of Morocco. “The enemy is the same and the objective is the same: the referendum that has not been held and the independence of the Sahara. The only things that have changed are the means, the technology,” explains the Saharawi fighter, in the shade of a tent in the Bojador refugee camp.
“They are neither seen nor heard, but they are there and attack at any moment”
Moroccan drones are the worst nightmare in this new stage of hostilities, according to all the Sahrawi fighters interviewed by Público during the Polisario-organized trip to the camps last week.
“They are neither seen nor heard, but they are there and attack at any moment,” insists Mundi, although at the moment they have not shown any documentary evidence certifying the presence of armed or surveillance drones. The two parties accuse each other of using them, although both deny it, according to the latest report on this conflict by the UN Secretary General, Antonio Guterres.
Saharawi women living in Gastheiz (San Sebastian) in the south-west Basque Country demonstrate in solidarity with their people’s struggle and the Polisario Front (“askatu” = “free”) in May 2020. (Photo source: Internet)
An almost paranoid obsession
After each Sahrawi attack against the defensive Wall built by Morocco, all eyes are on the sky. Drones feel close almost always, even if they are not there, like an almost paranoid obsession. One of the main military directives of the Polisario is to stay away from cars when they halt, because they are their main target. When they believe that a drone is following behind, the old Sahrawi vehicles separate, stop and the unit that was on board runs away.
Morocco has embraced the purchase of Turkish-made armed drones, according to ‘Reuters’
These unmanned devices make up much of modern warfare and have been instrumental in recent conflicts. One of the most recent, for example, was the capture by Azerbaijani troops of Nagorno Karabakh last year. They defeated the Armenians thanks to Turkish-made drones, deploying practically no soldiers to the front, recalls the arms trade expert Tica Font, from the Delàs Center for Peace Studies.
Font emphasizes that Turkey, Azerbaijan’s main ally in the conflict, is one of the few countries that manufacture and sell drones capable of loading and firing missiles, along with the United States, Rabat’s main military supplier, followed by France and Spain.
Indeed, as Reuters recently revealed, Turkey has expanded the sale of armed drones to Morocco. Specifically, several sources cited by the British agency speak of purchase requests from Rabat of the Bayraktar TB2 model, of which they would have already received a first batch ordered in May.
The Moroccan Army attack on the protest camp at Guergat on 13 Nov. 2020 which sparked the long-delayed renewal of Polisario armed struggle (Photo source: Internet)
As we moved away, a drone followed us
Although that was two months after the attack Mundi is talking about. According to him, the bombing that wounded him was on April 11. “In broad daylight, at four in the afternoon. We were near the Wall, we had just carried out an operation against a Moroccan base and they responded. First with artillery and, later, when we were moving away, a drone followed us,” he described.
His vehicle stopped and his three companions followed the rules of dispersing, but Mundi had no time to get to safety. “The missile landed very close to the car and I was level with the front wheel,” he recalls. He claims that that afternoon he was able to see one of the aircraft in the air, although he did not see it fire. He believes there had to be more than one, “because eight or nine missiles were launched, and that cannot be carried by a single drone,” he maintained.
Mohamed Fadel ‘Mundi’, wounded Saharawi Fighter photographed in Saharawi refugee camp, Tinduf, Algeria 15 Oct 2021 (Photo cred: Jairo Vargas)
In that Moroccan bombardment, Mundi explained, the esteemed head of the Saharawi National Guard, Adah el Bendir, 61, a noted military strategist expert in engineering and combat, died. The Polisario announced the important loss. Morocco, for its part, opted for its most effective tactic since the resumption of hostilities: silence and indifference. Only the Alawite news portal Le Desk reported that an Israeli-made Harfang model drone had participated in the attack on El Bendir. Morocco did not even want to claim a goal in a war that does not exist for Rabat.
However, the Delàs Center expert warned that most of the marketed drones are for surveillance and monitoring, and that they do not need to carry weapons to attack a target. “Many have all kinds of built-in radar and sensors that send information to a central computer. With that data, you can open fire with precision from any platform, be it a ship, an aircraft or a ground unit. Tens of kilometers from the target” says Font.
Saharawi struggle supporters in Bordeaux, France on 11 December 2020 (AFP). France is a Permanent Member of the UN Security Council and is the main European state supporting Morocco.
That’s Le Desk‘s version of the attack in which Mundi was wounded and El Bendir killed. According to this Moroccan portal, the drone laser marked the target and an F-16 fighter launched the projectiles.
“They do not scare us, because with fear nothing is done in war. But there is a lot of uncertainty, a lot of anxiety and tension,” he affirms after 46 years as a soldier in the Saharawi people’s army.
Mundi is confident that sooner or later they will find the formula to detect and demolish the Moroccan aircraft. “We learned to fight them when they raised the wall, we learned to shoot down their planes and we learned to capture their armour,” he says. “We are still starting. At the moment we are using a tactic of attrition. We attacked bases and retreated. In the 80s we also started that way when they built the wall. Until 1984 we did not carry out large-scale attacks. War has its times,” he says. This one has already lasted more than 40 years.
DRHE threaten to clamp down on food tables feeding the homeless
Diarmuid Mac Dubhghlais
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Rebel Breeze editorial introduction: Through its agency Dublin Regional Homeless Executive, Dublin City Council recently threatened to close down the charity services delivering food and bottled water to homeless and hungry people. On the back of scandal about the alleged sexual predation of the deceased founder of the Inner City Homeless organisation, the Council issued a press statement which implied the threat, supported also by indications of Garda cooperation. Diarmuid Mac Dubhghlais, founder and organiser of the Éire Nua Food Initiative, one of the many charity services engaged in the work, has responded in a detailed article, reprinted here with the author’s permission.
THE 26-County State released figures on September 24 showing that there are currently 8,212 people accessing emergency accommodation in the State, a total of 6,023 adults and 2,189 children who are homeless.
A homeless person’s bed outdoors, cardboard as insulation underneath sleeping bag, this one located under the arch of the GPO (the building that was the HQ of the 1916 Rising). (Photo: Éire Nua Initiative)
These figures of homelessness have long been disputed by many others who work within the homeless sector as the State refuses to count those who are couch-surfing, or otherwise sharing accommodation with friends/family. The vast majority of the nation’s homeless are in the capital with 4,220 people accessing accommodation. 953 families are homeless in Ireland, according to the report.
Homelessness charities have warned that more families face losing their homes in the coming months due to private rental market constricts and evictions rise. This has already been borne out with reports of new faces showing up at the many soup runs/food tables that are in the city centre. Pat Doyle, CEO of Peter McVerry Trust, said “Any increase is disappointing because it means more people impacted by homelessness. However, we are now at the busiest time of year for social housing delivery and we would hope that the number of people getting access to housing will significantly increase in the coming months.”
Dublin Simon CEO Sam McGuiness cited the toll on the physical and mental health of people trapped in long-term homelessness. He said: “This population is desperate to exit homelessness and yet they are spending longer than ever before in emergency accommodation. This group deserves far better lives than the ones they are currently living. We see first-hand the toll this is taking in the increased demands for our treatment services, counselling services and the increase in crisis counselling interventions. Outcomes for people in emergency accommodation will not improve until they have a secure home of their own. Until this happens there is scant hope of a better future for this vulnerable group.”
“MANY CHILDREN NOW SPEND THEIR FORMATIVE YEARS IN HOMELESSNESS”
Éire Nua food initiative founder Diarmuid Mac Dubhghlais pointed out at a homelessness protest that many children now spend their formative years in homelessness and have no real idea of what it is like to have a traditional “Sunday dinner” or their own bedroom/play area. This will severely impact their personalities far into the future.
A report published on September 14 by the Irish Human Rights and Equality Commission and the Economic and Social Research Institute (ESRI) found that lone parents and their children account for 53% of all homeless families. The report said that lone parents and their children are much more likely to experience poor housing than other household types. The report also highlights the disadvantages experienced by young people, migrants, people with disabilities and Travellers in the Irish housing system. Researchers looked at six dimensions of housing adequacy – accessibility, affordability, security of tenure, cultural adequacy, quality, and location. They found that less than 25% of lone parents reported home-ownership, compared with 70% of the total population. Lone parents had higher rates of affordability issues (19%) when compared to the general population (5%) and were particularly vulnerable to housing quality problems such as damp and lack of central heating (32% compared to 22%).
Ethnic minority groups had a significantly higher risk of over-crowding, the research found. Over 35% of Asian/Asian Irish people, 39% of Travellers and over 40% of Black/Black Irish people live in over-crowded accommodation, compared to 6% of the total population. Almost half of all migrants in Ireland live in the private rental sector, compared to 9% of those born in Ireland. Migrants, specifically those from Eastern Europe (28%) and non-EU countries (27%), are more likely to live in over-crowded conditions.
One of the queues for free food and water at a charity food table outside the GPO building. (Photo: Éire Nua Initiative)
The research found that almost one third of persons living with a disability experience housing quality issues, compared to 21% of those without a disability. Researchers said there remains a real risk that levels of homelessness will worsen after the pandemic restrictions are lifted and they raised concern about rents increasing faster than mean earnings in Dublin and elsewhere. In 2020, mean monthly rent in Ireland was estimated to be 31% of mean monthly earnings. “Adequate housing allows people to not only survive but thrive and achieve their full potential, whilst leading to a more just, inclusive and sustainable society.”
Meanwhile, the Dublin Regional Homeless Executive (DRHE) said on September 28 that it is to seek greater regulation of organisations providing services for homeless people in the capital as soon as possible in the wake of the Inner City Helping Homeless (ICHH) controversy. Dublin City Council’s deputy chief executive Brendan Kenny, who has responsibility for the Dublin Regional Homeless Executive (DRHE) in his role, said that due to the high number of informal homeless organisations set up in recent years there is “currently no vetting, no controls, on many people who are actually interacting directly with homeless people”. Kenny said he doesn’t want “over-regulation” to lead to certain groups disbanding but added: “At the moment there’s nothing and that’s not good enough.”
In a statement, the DRHE said it is “strongly of the view that greater regulation, vetting, and scrutiny is required for organisations/charities that set themselves up as service providers for homeless persons, including the provision of on-street food services”. “Several such organisations not funded by the DRHE have come into existence in recent years and the DRHE and our partner agencies will be endeavouring in the coming months to bring the necessary expanded scrutiny and regulation to all such organisations.”
Garda Commissioner Drew Harris said there will be a review of Garda vetting procedures for the homelessness sector. Kenny said a report commissioned by Dublin City Council into the impact of unvetted charities is near completion and will provide further insight on the matter. It has been pointed out several times over the past four months that the DRHE, DCC and others have long tried to close the soup runs/food tables in the city centre and many now fear that what has been revealed through the ICHH debacle will be used to close many of these down. The DRHE are ignoring the fact that it is their rules and the oversight bodies recognised by them that has let the homeless down, not the food tables. Much of the work done by the food tables is done in the open and in full public view.
The issues highlighted through the ongoing ICHH investigation show it is what went on behind closed doors that is the problem. Those in oversight positions didn’t do their jobs; people were put in positions of authority without relevant qualifications. The DRHE, DCC and the police should look to how they can improve safety within their “regulated” organisations before seeking to regulate the volunteers who serve a need without any remuneration.
Many of the volunteers at food tables would have difficulty meeting the requirements of police vetting as some would be former addicts, and many others have no desire to become registered charities.
Again, it was pointed out by Diarmuid that many of these “regulated” charities will have high overheads such as transport insurance, maintenance and fuel costs. Some will have CEO wages and petty cash expenses to cover before any donations can be spent on the service user, whereas the Éire Nua food initiative and some others do not seek cash donations. All is done voluntarily and any costs are borne by the volunteers themselves. He cited that many registered charities are little more than businesses operating within the homelessness sector.
Diarmuid has been quoted in the past citing that “there are now many businesses making huge money out of those who are in homelessness” and “that the volunteer ethos that surround many food tables is not to be found within some charities”.
“IMPROVE THE STANDARD OF REGISTERED ACCOMMODATION, NOT SHUT DOWN THE VOLUNTARY ORGANISATIONS”
Kenny said the large number of pop-up soup runs mean some people are less likely to engage with the larger charities funded by the DRHE and in turn, less likely to engage with their support services. The DRHE views sleeping in a homeless hostel, rather than on the street, as a “much safer” option. However, he acknowledged that some homeless people don’t want to stay in a hostel, for a variety of reasons.
“We fully understand that but we’re strongly of the view that a hostel bed is absolutely safer and more hygienic than sleeping in a sleeping bag on the side or a street or in a tent. We know there are some people that just won’t go to a hostel – it may be that they have mental health issues. “We are also aware that some people would prefer to stay in a tent in order to stay involved in drugs and be taking drugs because they may not be able to do it in the hostel.” Kenny added that while hostels provide shelter and food, they “wouldn’t be the nicest place to sleep” but are still “far safer” than being on the street.
He totally ignores the many testimonies from residents, former residents and former workers within these hostels of the theft of personal property, the numerous assaults on residents by other residents, the bullying of residents by some staff members, low hygiene standards, open drug and alcohol abuse and the arbitrary nature operating within some hostels where a resident can be denied access on the whim of staff.
It is incumbent of the State, DRHE and the various councils to bring the standard of these types of accommodation up to a better standard and NOT try to shut those organisations who look after the many who fear staying within State accommodation.
Kenny also noted that sometimes tourists or those who are not homeless queue up to get food from the soup runs. He said fights also break out sometimes. “We’ve come across situations of tourists maybe going up to a food van and getting food, and maybe other people that are not in need of services. And the reality is that anybody that’s sleeping in a hostel, food is provided for them so there is not a shortage of food in the hostel services.
“[Soup runs] do attract a lot of people. I know there are times when large numbers of vulnerable people congregate and you end up with disputes and fights as well.”
Éire Nua free food service workers with table, outside the GPO. (Photo: Éire Nua Initiative)
On the issue of tourists queuing for food, he may well be right, but as the Éire Nua group has pointed out, “we feed the homeless AND hungry, we will not discriminate or question anyone who stands waiting for some food”.
Also pointed out by many residents of various hostels is the small proportions of meals given; while enough to sustain it is often not enough to keep that empty stomach feeling at bay. And for the five to six years that Diarmuid has volunteered alone, with the Éire Nua group or on another soup run, he or other volunteers have never had to call the police. On the few occasions where trouble has occurred, it is often rectified within seconds as the majority of people awaiting food know that: (1) the volunteers are their friends and out there to help them and (2) causing disruption to the smooth running of the tables can result in being denied food. The final word to Kenny from the Éire Nua food initiative: “Let the DRHE look to itself and those under its umbrella before looking to those outside their group; let them ensure the regulations in force within are enforced. Do not blame those who volunteer out of the goodness of their hearts for the sins of those who worked for them.”
End.
EDITORIAL COMMENT:
It may be that the primary concerns of the Dublin municipal authorities and the Gardaí are to remove the visible signs of poverty and homelessness, rather than protection of the vulnerable among these. DCC Brendan Kenny’s comments in mid-August against the proliferation of homeless people living in tents may be seen as a concern that the charity food services constitute an unwelcome reflection on the performance of the Irish State and the municipal authorities of its capital city, visible not only to the city’s inhabitants — at all levels of society — but also to its visitors.
Political Statement against the new banning attempt: the Ministry of the Interior initiatates a procedure in the Spanish National Court for the “extinction” of Izquierda Castellana
The Central Contentious-Administrative Court No. 6 of the Spanish National Court has notified us on August 5th of the motion put forward by the Ministry of the Interior through the State Lawyers in which the “extinction” of Izquierda Castellana is sought, that is, its disappearance as a legal political organization.
Demonstration of Izquierda Castellana with their logo on banner declaring “Spanish State Prison of Peoples”.
On this occasion, the Ministry of the Interior resorts to administrative tricks, arguing that IzCa’s statutes do not comply with the changes introduced through the legislative reform of Organic Law 3/2015, of March 30, on the control of the financial-economic activity of Political Parties.
It is paradoxical that a political organization that, as is the case with Izquierda Castellana, never in its entire history requested or received any financial subsidy, is intended to be outlawed based on these kinds of reasons, especially when most of the political parties that ostensibly breach the legal regulations on such matters are not even warned of such a possibility.
In our opinion, the attempted extinction / banning of IzCa sponsored by the Ministry of the Interior has a political motivation: the intention of making disappear an organization whose essential activity is the denunciation of all the corrupt, antisocial, antidemocratic and antipatriotic activities of the current Regime of the 2nd Bourbon Restoration; and whose ultimate aim inevitably passes through the establishment of a democratic, republican and social rights system.
IzCa, as we pointed out, has not received or requested a single euro from the public treasury. Our activity is based solely and exclusively on our resources, especially on our human resources, that is, on the militants and activists who support us every day in one way or another. IzCa does not have as such – nor does it claim – representation in the institutions of this post-Franco regime. We do not despise this sphere of action, but it seems to us that the most important and useful thing in this historical moment is to promote the movement and popular organization in the various sectors, and we focus on this and we also believe with some success; that is what the Regime and its successive governments have not forgiven us.
IzCa has suffered permanent harassment from the constituted power since our founding; numerous media-police operations have been plotted against our organization. In 2008 there was already an attempt to ban IzCa, which was finally archived without action in the National Court itself. Last December the trial against our comrade Luis Ocampo was held – Doris Benegas was also on trial – with regard to the events that occurred in the Republican demonstration in Madrid in October 2014. In that trial, a year and a half in prison was requested by the Prosecution. Finally, our comrade was acquitted; in its judgment, the Madrid Provincial Court Court recorded that his version of events was fully credible.
IzCa has been denouncing the repressive policy towards the popular movement and at the same time favourable to the extreme Right that has been carried out by the Ministry of the Interior and very especially by the Government Delegation in Madrid, intensified repression since the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic. We accurately forecast the overwhelming defeat of the institutional Left in Madrid in the last regional elections on May 4; and we predict – we believe that without the slightest possibility of error – the defeat of the institutional Left in the next general elections if it continues on the current path. If you try to make activist organizations disappear, those that with more dedication and commitment defend the interests of the working classes, you are facilitating the path of access to the government by the Right. If the interests of the peoples of the Spanish State are subordinated to those of imperialism – certainly in a phase of full decline – one of the most significant expressions of which is the scheduled holding of the next NATO summit in Madrid in 2022, it is refusing to build its own project in solidarity with the peoples of the world and, once again, facilitating the advance of the right wing, militarism and warmongering.
We are going to fight against our outlawing at the National High Court and before all judicial bodies, including European ones, where it is necessary. In the National Court, that special court of which we do not recognize any democratic legitimacy, nor for the entire institutional framework of the ’78 Regime,starting with its Head of State, just as “exemplary” in its general terms as the rest of its institutions and whose legality is based on Franco’s legality. But above all, we will continue to fight in the streets.
Study and reflect; organize and mobilize; build popular power. That’s the only way.
Izquierda Castellana, August 6, 2021
COMMENT:
The Izquierda Castellana is a revolutionary socialist organisation basing itself on the territory of Castille (a central area of the Spanish state including Madrid) and claiming its right to self-determination, drawing its historical inspiration from the revolt of the Comuneros in the 1520s. The party or organisation seeks social justice internally, self-determination for its own territory and supports the struggles for self-determination of others (for example, the Basques and Catalans), is opposed to imperialism abroad and military alliances such as NATO. IzCa is anti-racist and anti-fascist and has suffered repression.
The potential for revolution in the Spanish State is not in the Basque Country and Catalonia alone, nor only in other areas such as Galiza and Asturies but in the heartland of the State also, in Madrid and in other parts of Castille. It seems clear that the struggles for independence of the Basque Country and Catalonia as in the past will be met with heavy Spanish repression and the only possibility for success in such circumstances would a situation in which the State was met with uprisings in other parts also. I have long advocated the building of the type of alliances that could make that possible.
Here’s a photo I took recently. We were travelling over the Healy Pass, crossing from West Cork into Kerry when this little house caught my eye.
What would it be like to live there in the mountains? What would you do all day? Would you grow potatoes? Would you be a sheep farmer? Would you have a clever sheep dog to gather in the sheep and run all over the mountains for you, to herd in the awkward ones? Would you be like the ‘Mountainy men’ from “The Wayfarer” poem by Patrick Pearse?
And what about electricity? Or Broadband?
Perhaps you’d have a blog, or a vlog, even. You could make funny videos about the sheep, maybe. I don’t know. We live such disparate lives, nowadays. It’s probably quite difficult up there in winter. Snow and ice. Certainly the Healy Pass would be treacherous in the snow. But beautiful. …
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Last Thursday (7th October) the former home of the Pearse family saw the launch of a plan for Moore Street as an alternative to the current Hammerson plan. The latter, a large property development company based in England, currently has a planning application in to Dublin City Council awaiting a decision. Moore Street is a centuries-old iconic street market in the heart of Dublin city but was also a battleground during the 1916 Rising, as the insurgents’ headquarters garrison in the General Post Office building evacuated the building, set aflame by British shelling and strove to relocate to continue the insurrection to the north-west of the city.
The former home of Patrick Pearse, Commander-in-Chief of the 1916 insurrection and of his brother William, both executed by British firing squads, now a building held in trust with facilities for meetings and a small theatre, was the location chosen by the Moore Street Preservation Trust to launch their alternative plan.
A packed room of people sweltered in their Covid19 face-masks as they listened to a number of speakers on behalf of the Moore Street Preservation Trust, formed earlier this year along with a guest spot for Mary Lou Mac Donald, President of the Sinn Féin political party, prior to the unveiling of the scale model.
A section of the crowd at the launch inside the room, while others crowded the doorway and corridor beyond.
Mícheál Mac Donncha, a Dublin City councillor for the Sinn Féin party and Secretary of the Trust, chaired the event and, after an introduction to the subject of the meeting, announced Patrick Cooney who spoke for the Trust on their history, aspects of the long campaign and the alternative plan. Cooney outlined what the Trust considers the importance historically of the “Moore Street battleground” and remarked that their plan was the only alternative to the Hammerson plan, which he said is supported by no-one else.
In traversing aspects of the conservation struggle, Cooney referred to the High Court case taken against the Minister of Heritage and the property developer (which was then Joe O’Reilly’s Chartered Land) and the momentous judgement that the whole Moore Street area was a national historical monument. The capacity of the Judge to make that decision was overturned in a later appeal by the Minister of Heritage’s legal team.
Patrick Cooney also paid tribute to the week-long occupation of the buildings by others in January of 2016, which had prevented the demolition of three buildings in the sixteen-building terrace in Moore Street. He said that his group could not be identified with the occupation since they were part of the High Court case ongoing at the time but named two Irish Republicans (of a group opposed to the Good Friday Agreement) who had acted as their link with the occupation body, leaving a possible impression that his group had been involved in some way from behind the scenes in the occupation of the buildings.
Closer view of the model, viewed from the east and looking westward — Moore Lane is represented at bottom, O’Rahilly Parade at far right and Moore Street at top of image.
Cooney also mentioned the Bill moved by Sinn Féin TD (parliamentary representative) Aengus Ó Snodaigh, currently awaiting debate in the Dáil (Irish parliament) and how it mirrored to a large degree that put forward formerly by a TD of the Irish political party Fianna Fáil, currently in coalition Government, which had not been proceeded with. Cooney paid tribute to the political party Sinn Féin as “the only political party to support” the Moore Street conservation struggle (which may have come as a surprise to Peadar Ó Tóibín, TD of the Aontú political party, who was present in the audience).
Mac Donncha thanked Cooney for his contribution and introduced Jim Connolly Heron, a great-grandson of James Connolly, one of the executed leaders of the 1916 Rising who talked about the historical importance of the site and the importance of its preservation. Connolly Heron talked about historical buildings in Dublin that had been demolished. He said their plan represented an opportunity for the State to atone for the “lamentable failure to save Wood Quay” and commented that “On that occasion the voice of the people was silenced; the loss to the city was immeasurable and we can ill afford another Wood Quay.”
Then Connolly Heron, with Proinnsias Ó Rathaille, grandson of The O’Rahilly, removed the Starry Plough flag of the Irish Citizen Army to unveil the architect’ scale model to loud applause and the clicking of phones and cameras.
A portion of the attendance then removed to the small theatre where Seán Antóin Ó Muirí, for the architects, took the audience through a slide show of drawings and maps while discussing their relevance to the Preservation Trust’s plan.
Outside the building, a large group of teenage Danish students, on a walking history tour conducted by Lorcán Collins of 1916 Rising Tours, had gathered, where they were addressed by Lorcán and also by Aengus Ó Snodaigh TD and, very briefly by Diarmuid Breatnach of the SMSFD group who, at Lorcán’s request, sang them the “Grace” ballad (in which Joseph Plunkett addresses Grace Gifford, his bride of only hours before he is to be executed by British firing squad).
THE ALTERNATIVE PLAN
The Alternative Plan as outlined by the architect involves a number of ideas that have been put forward over the years: refacing some of the buildings to match the pre-1916 facing surviving on some of the buildings, using appropriate matching construction materials, uncovering the cobblestones, etc. The two-story elevation has been promoted previously as have awning-covered ground-level shopfronts but the north end of the terrace at four storeys is a departure perhaps from previous plans other than the Hammerson and O’Reilly plans, as is perhaps the opening up of some spaces around the “back” of the terrace (accessed through Moore Lane). The plan foresees a unitary unbroken terrace which all campaigning groups have proposed.
Architect’s drawing imagining an arch leading to an internal courtyard from Moore Lane to the back of the museum in Moore Street.
Unlike some plans and visions previously mooted, the Alternative Plan as explained does not propose excluding chain stores, nor propose pubs and bakery among the businesses; street stalls were mentioned only in passing with no discussion of the range of hot and cold food or other merchandise that might be on sale. The housing units proposed do not specify local authority rental. Unlike a number of previous plans there was no mention of the benefits of linking the development of a Moore Street cultural quarter to a number of other nearby amenities and cultural quarters nor to that of rejuvenating the north city centre by day and by night.
The history component does not seem to vary much from the Hammerson/ O’Reilly one, being concentrated on the four buildings which the State has named “the historical monument”, a title also used by Trust. In the unbroken terrace proposed (and frequently demanded by campaigners) of course the Alternative Plan departs significantly from the Hammerson one but strangely this contrast was not alluded to in either the verbal or visual presentations.
In the overall presentation of a slideshow and scale model perhaps the most significant contribution of this plan is to present some of the possibilities in a manner more easily grasped and form easier for many no doubt to visualise. It is this that has been missing in past plans and proposals.
HAMMERSON AND DUBLIN CITY COUNCIL
On the west side of Moore Street is the ILAC shopping centre, built with DCC planning permission in 1977 on what was a patchwork of streets and laneways, many of them containing shops and stalls selling various new and second-hand merchandise. A university study group concluded that, apart from the construction companies, the ILAC had benefitted the big stores of Debenhams and Dunnes and that the compensation paid out to most stall-holders and small shops had been inadequate to relocate within the City Centre and workers had been made redundant. The ILAC is half-owned by Irish Life and the other half passed from O’Reilly to Hammerson.
In the early years of this century a consortium of property developers were applying for planning permission to carry out plans in the area from the northwest side of O’Connell Street to Moore Street but Dublin City Council Planning Manager froze the plans and in a very strange deal later handed it all over to Joe O’Reilly. The whole murky story (including city councillors being legally threatened to keep silent by the then Planning Manager Jim Keogan) was covered in a two-part program, Iniúchadh na Cásca, by the Irish language television channel TG4 before O’Reilly got his giant “shopping mall” planning permission (the program was re-broadcast in 2016).
Jim Keogan took early retirement from DCC and is now employed by McCutcheon Halley, a Cork-based planning consultancy company while the most recent Ireland Director for Hammerson is Mark Owen, straight from his previous employment as the Head of Asset Management & Recovery for NAMA.
The architects’ scale model, showing the quarter from a north-facing perspective (i.e from Henry Street). The street to the left is Moore Street and at the right, Moore Lane. Further to the right would be O’Connell Street, not shown here. The Henry Place lane is shown from the nearest part of the model.
INTERNAL CAMPAIGN CONTROVERSIES
Patrick Cooney in his presentation of their Alternative Plan referred to a split in the original conservation committee and in fact over the years there have been a number of controversies and conflicts among campaign groups. The remaining part of the committee containing Mr. Cooney and Mr. Connolly Heron also experienced a number of acrimonious departures. Due to internal difficulties the 1916 Relatives Association, to which both also belonged did not have a meeting for over a year and when it did so eventually, there were loud internal arguments and clashes between Mr. Connolly Heron and others, leading to a number of departures, including Marcus Howard of Easter Rising Stories, producer of many historical documentaries and filmed interviews, including a number on Moore Street.
In that atmosphere, Brian O’Neill was seen by many as a stable and quiet choice for Chair of the 1916 Relatives Association and was duly elected. Shortly afterwards Barry Lyons, a long-time campaigner was expelled from the Association as was also long-time campaigner Donna Cooney, grand-niece of Elizabeth O’Farrell and a DCC Councillor. Neither seems to have been given a formal hearing or allowed an appeal. Although formerly the 1916 Relatives’ Association opposed the developers’ plans, Brian O’Neill now represents the Association on the Minister’s Advisory Group on Moore Street and is on record supporting the Hammerson plan.
Clashes between different campaign groups and individuals have taken place on occasion inside the Lord Mayor’s Forum on Moore Street, including one between members of the Connolly Heron-Cooney group and Colm Moore, another campaigner for many years and the individual who took the High Court case against the Minister of Heritage.
The Ministers’ Consultative Group on Moore Street and its later iteration as the Minister’s Advisory Group, although it has a seat for Jim Connolly Heron, rejected the membership applications of the most active groups in the broad campaign, those who were involved in the 2016 Occupation and the six-week Blockade: the Save Moore Street From Demolition and the Save Moore Street 2016 groups. The SMSFD group has a stall on the street every Saturday, stated to have been since the founding of the group in September 2014, at 368 weeks to date and claims 380,000 signatures to its petition to save the area.
The Connolly Heron and Cooney group do not acknowledge the SMSFD group in public and on one occasion during the Blockade Mr. Cooney posted that the only campaign group they recognised outside of their own was the Save Moore Street 2016 one. However, among all the invitations that were sent out to attend the unveiling last Thursday, neither they nor the SMSFD groups received one – and nor did Colm Moore, the man who took the famous High Court case.
After the formal representation last week but while still inside the Pearse home building, Patrick Cooney was heard to clash with a prominent campaigner and City Councillor in the presence of a radio reporter. Immediately outside, Proinnsias Ó Rathaille verbally abused a member of the SMSFD group (who had learned of the event through the media) in the hearing of many people, including Danish teenagers on a walking history tour.
LOOKING AHEAD
At time of writing it is important to realise that the only plan with Planning Permission is the original O’Reilly one which Hammerson acquired. The latter have submitted their changed plan for a shopping district and new roads which is currently under review by the Planning Department who have asked for some minor changes and gave them six months to produce them. Many objections were registered (and paid for), even by the Housing Department and the feeling is that the vast sweep of popular opinion is against the Hammerson plan – however that is far from being a guarantee against its acceptance by DCC’s Planning Department. And, as NAMA failed to seize them from Joe O’Reilly, their largest debtor at the time and allowed him to transfer them, all the buildings but two (owned by Dublin City Council) are owned by Hammerson.
Should Hammerson receive approval from DCC’s Planning Department, on previous history a not unlikely event, campaigners are sure to appeal the decision to An Bord Pleanála but that avenue too holds little hope for conservationists, given the record of that body’s decisions in Dublin. In the event of an unwelcome decision there, the High Court remains the only recourse in law (for which leave has to be sought to take the case). Protests on the street are of course likely.
Given Hammerson’s financial difficulties in recent years, even if granted planning permission they may not be able to proceed with their plan immediately and despite Hammerson’s denials the suspicion of many is that they will sell the area on – but for that, they need the new Planning Permission attached first and the current one runs out next year.
End.
BACKGROUND TO A LONG CAMPAIGN
In 1916 Moore Street and surrounding streets and laneways became a battleground, as the Irish insurgent force evacuating its erstwhile HQ in the GPO ran into encircling forces of the British Army. A detachment of the GPO garrison proceeding up Moore Street ran into British rifle and machine gun fire, killing three including its leader, The O’Rahilly and wounding others. The main part of the evacuation forces also suffered casualties but occupied No.10 Moore Street and tunnelled through the 16-building terrace to the laneway at the end, where an assault group was being mobilised to attack the British Army barricade at the Moore Street/ Parnell Street junction. The decision to surrender, taken by the leadership, cancelled the assault. Along with William Pearse, five of the Seven Signatories of the 1916 Proclamation spent their last hours of freedom in Moore Street, not long after to be shot by British firing squads: Thomas Clarke, Patrick Pearse, James Connolly, Sean McDermott and Joseph Plunkett.
Prior to 1966 there was nothing in Moore Street to inform people of what happened there although in that year, amidst the 50th anniversary commemorations of the 1916 Rising, a small plaque was placed at first floor level on No.16 Moore Street, believed to have housed the last HQ of the 1916 Rising. That plaque was noted missing in 2002 – it turned up in a property speculator’s office – and fears of demolition plan for the buildings gave rise to a campaign to save it. A meeting was organised by the National Graves Association and a committee formed, hardly a single one of which is currently active in the campaign today for a number of reasons (Patrick Cooney alluded to one of them, a split when some sided with the property developer of the time but there have been many others).
The 50th anniversary of the 1916 Rising plaque in Moore Street, the only fixture to say anything of the sort that happened there.
The campaign extended its demand for the conservation of the whole terrace, backyards etc and in 2006 the State finally conceded a historical importance worth conserving in Moore Street by declaring Nos.14-17 a National Monument, though these still belonged to O’Reilly. In 2008, O’Reilly applied for planning permission for a huge “shopping mall” from O’Connell Street to Moore Street, with a “ski slope” on top and carpark underneath, entailing the demolition of all but Nos.14-17 and the renovation of these as a small museum. DCC’s Planning Department approved the plan but it was appealed to An Bord Pleanála which, against the advice of its own Inspector, rejected the appeal. With the removal of the “ski slope” top and the underground carpark, the giant “shopping mall” was approved but O’Reilly’s demolition plans faced a problem in that two buildings at the end of the terrace belonged to Dublin City Council and four in the middle are protected structures.
In 2009 and 2012 dramatist Frank Allen organised human chain “Arms Around Moore Street” events which gained some media attention.
The campaign gained prominence again when in September 2014 O’Reilly offered Dublin City Council the dilapidated Nos. 14-17 in exchange for Nos. 24-25, where the Council had a waste management depot, a “land-swap” favoured by the City Managers and the Minister of Heritage. A branch of the campaign set up a stall on the street and began to collect signatures to a conservation petition and to disseminate campaign leaflets. In November the majority of DCC councillors voted to reject the deal.
The campaign group with a weekly Saturday stall on the street, now called Save Moore Street From Demolition and separate from the other which had mainly concentrated on lobbying, organised the first public meeting about the campaign in November 2014, inviting as speakers Jim Connolly Heron and Donna Cooney (there had been some conflicts between the two). But in January 2016 the group noted hoardings going up around Nos.12-18 with plans for the demolition of three buildings. They called two emergency meetings during the week on the street and supporters, a mix of people including water protesters and Irish Republicans, occupied the buildings, an act which became headline news.
While the Minister of Heritage made ready to obtain an injunction against the occupiers, instead Colm Moore, who had registered a case with the High Court against the State plans, obtained an injunction against any demolition until the case should be decided and the occupiers left the buildings after one week. However, subsequently alarmed by sounds of heavy machinery inside the buildings, campaigners asked to inspect the works but were refused, as was also a delegation of politicians led by the Lord Mayor.
A new defence coalition called Save Moore Street 2016 had been formed of those who had occupied the buildings and including representatives of the weekly stall group, SMSFD and these now installed a blockade on the buildings from 6.30am to 4pm Monday to Friday. No building workers were admitted to the buildings until the decision of the High Court, on 18th March 2016, that the whole terrace and its surrounding area is a national historical monument.
In the meantime the SMSFD group separately and, in particular the SMS2016 coalition, had organised marches, history walking tours, street concerts and street theatre events in period costume, including mock “heritage funerals” and a reenactment of the 1916 surrender.
Towards the end of 2016, also the 100th anniversary of the 1916 Rising, the Minister of Heritage set up her Advisory Group on Moore Street and the 1916 Relatives’ Association, formed earlier that year, were invited to participate, as was the separate Jim Connolly Heron/ Paddy Cooney etc group, along with representatives of the political parties in the Dáil. Not invited were the National Graves Association, the Save Moore Street From Demolition or the Save Moore Street 2016 activist groups — the applications of the latter two were rejected, though they were permitted to make a submission.
By this time, O’Reilly had been permitted by the responsible officer at NAMA to transfer his Moore Street and Dundrum portfolio to Hammerson.
The Lord Mayor’s Forum on Moore Street, where all concerned have had representation, has met regularly some years but not on others. The 1916 Relatives Association has seen internal changes and ended with its Chairperson supporting the Hammerson plan. The Jim Connolly Heron/ Paddy Cooney group has gone through a number of name changes, shedding some individuals and gaining others, before the current group presenting the Alternative Plan.
Immediately outside the Pearse’s house, a group Danish teenage students, having arrived as part of a history walking tour conducted by Lorcán Collins (in cap, far right of photo, seen from the back) is addressed by Aengus Ó Snodaigh TD (mostly out of shot).
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