Do b’é an chóilíneacht a rinneadh teanga na nGaeil a “pholatiú”, mar shompla le Reachtanna Chill Coinnigh, le coinníolacha na Plandála, leis na Péin-Dlíthe agus córas na scollaíochta náisiúnta faoi chóilínteacht Shasana. Is beag dul as bhí ag na hÉireannaigh náisiúnacha ach a dteanga dúchais a pholatiú mar chosaint, mar cheist tarrthála.
(Foinse íomhá: an Idirlíon)
Níor aontaigh an Ídeach agus an Phiarsach ar an gceist céanna agus ceaptar gur éirigh Dubhghlas de hÍde as uachtarántacht an eagrais a bhunaigh sé, Connradh na Gaeilge, dá bharr i 1915. Chuir na Sasanaigh Pádraig Mac Piarais chun báis i 1916 agus cé gur cuireadh an Ghaeilge ins an chéad áit go hoifigiúil ins an Saor Stát, agus de hÍde mar Uachtarán 1 1938, is in éag agus ag cúlú atá an Ghaeilge ag dul ó shin i leith (in ainneoin fás mhór scolaíochta lán-Ghaeilge ar leibhéal na bunscoilíochta agus cúpla bua eile thar na blianta, mar shompla bunú TG4 agus Raidió na Gaeltachta).
Pádraig Mac Piarais, Eagarthóir nuachtán Chonradh na Gaeilge, “An Claidheamh Soluis”. Bhí sé den tuairim gur ceist pholaitiúil chomh maith le cultúrtha a bhí sa Ghaeilge faoi chóilínteacht Shasana. Chuir na Sasanaigh chun báis é i 1916 (Foinse grianghraif: an Idirlíon)
Tá an cheist ós ár gcomhair arís agus chun an fhírinne a rá, níor imigh sí ariamh: polaitiú nó gan polaitiú, nó bás don teanga in ionad polaitiú. Deir scríbhneoirí an ailt thíos gur ceist práinneach sin don Bhascais. Is mar an gcéanna againne é maidir leis an Ghaeilge.
Dubhghlas de hÍde, a bhí i gcoinne “polaitiú” na teanga agus a d’éirigh as uachtarántacht Chonradh na Gaeilge i 1915, eagras a bhunaigh sé in 1892. Ceapadh é mar Uachtarán Stát na hÉireann i 1938. (Foinse grianghraif: an Idirlíon)
Aistriú go Gaeilge den alt i Naziogintza ag Cathal Ó Murchú:
CAITHFIMID TÚSÁITE A THABHAIRT DON BHASCAIS
Is ábhar díospóireachta é polaitiú na Bascaise dúinne inár n-eagraíocht NAZIOGINTZA ó a bunaíodh í. Tá sé pléite againn agus neart scríofa ag tagairt air, agus anois – tríd an alt seo – chinníomar dul i ngleic leis an gceist seo go díreach.
Ar dtús, ní mór dúinn bheith soiléir faoi bhrí an téarma “polaitiú.” Teastaíonn uainn bheith soiléir go n-úsáidimid an focal polaitiú ar bhonn náisiúnta, agus nach dteastaíonn uainn ar chor ar bith dul i mbun aighneas polaitíochta ar chlé nó ar dheis, nó bheith claonta le grúpa polaitiúil amháin nó eile. Tá ár n-aighneas sa réimse seo le stáit na Fraince agus na Spáinne, ar mhian leo a dteangacha a bhrú orainn. Mar gheall ar athchultúrú éigeantach na Spáinnise agus na Fraincise, agus ar theacht le chéile na bhfórsaí polaitiúla le déanaí, tá Tír na mBascach i mbun dhianphróiseas dínáisiúnaithe, a bhfuil cáineadh déanta go minic. Tá creimeadh ar fheasacht náisiúnach na mBascach soiléir agus díscaoileadh gasta ar siúl ar ár náisiún in aigéan ollmhór na féiniúlachta Franca-Spáinní.
I bpróiseas an asamhlaithe seo, tá stáit na Spáinne agus na Fraince tar éis gach uile uirlis is cleas ar fáil dóibh a úsáid. Os rud é go dtuigeann siad gurb í an teanga crann taca an náisiúin, bhíodh siad de shíor ag iarraidh bunús na teangan Bascaise a bhaint, ach anois ar bhealach níos slítheanta: in ionad coscú iomlán ar theanga na Bascaise, mar atá déanta acu ar feadh na gcianta, anois tá siad ag rá go mba cheart “dípholaitiú” a dhéanamh ar an teanga Bascaise, ag iarraidh aon luach polaitiúil nó siombalach a bhaint ón mBascais, ag iarraidh teanga aimrid a dhéanamh aisti. Ní hamháin meáin na Spáinnise, ach neart polaiteoirí, tráchtairí, gníomhuithe sóisialta chomh maith inár náisiún féin atá ag athrá na mana céanna: “níor cheart go ndéanfar polaitiú ar theanga na mBascaise.”
Nach ait gurb iad siúd is mó a bhíonn ag polaitiú (agus ag brú orainn) a dteangacha féin (Airteagal a 3 de Bunreacht na Spáinne: ní mór do áitritheoirí stát na Spáinne bheith eolach ar an teanga Spáinnise; mar an gcéanna le hAirteagal a 2 de Bunreacht na Fraince) atá amhlaidh orthu siúd ag maíomh dúinn nár cheart polaitiú a dhéanamh ar ár dteanga. Nuair atáimid faoi fhulaingt ó aon leatrom teangan, mar shampla, deirtear linn gan cáineadh poiblí a dhéanamh ar seo, mar gheall go mbeimid ag polaitiú ár dteanga. Is léir go bhfuil aitheasc “dípholaitaithe” na Bascaise sa tóir ar ghéilleadh ár dteangan.
Ach ní hamháin sin atá i gceist. Iad siúd gur mhian leo luach ídé-eolaíoch na Bascaise a bhaint, tuigeann siad go maith go bhfuil cruinne siombalach bailithe, roinnt ar luachanna cultúrtha, i bhfocal amháin, Pobal i gceist. Mar gheall go dtugann an teanga Bascaise ár láthair sa saol, agus muide i láthair mar Bhascaigh. Le bheith cruinn faoi, is cuid an-bhunúsach an “muid” inár bhféiniúlacht náisiúnta, bunchuid a mhaireann thar na cianta, mar a aistrítear í ó ghlúin go glúin. Iad siúd gur mhian leo an íde-eolaíocht a bhaint ónár dteanga, tuigeann siad go dtugann an Euskera féiniúlacht ar leith agus i gcoitinne dúinn: ar leith sa chaoi gur Euskaldunes (cainteoirí Bascaise) sinne, agus i gcoitinne sa chaoi go ndéanann an teanga Bascaise náisiún dúinn. Is de dheasca na hEuskera a thugtar ainm agus croí do Thír na mBascach.
Iad siúd gur mhian leo an luach ídé-eolaíocht a bhaint ón mBascais, abraimís go soiléir é, is mian leo ár ndínáisiúnú: is mian leo an ghné is éifeachtaí a bhaint ónár dteanga, is mian leo an déthéarmach “Euskara-Euskal Herria” a scrios agus teanga ár dtíre a aistriú go rud éigin gan dochar nó neodrach ar nós gur Béarla nó Esperanto bheith ann, rud éigin gan anam. Dar leo siúd, bheith gonta faoi, níor cheart go mbeadh teanga Thír na mBascach ceangailte an iomarca le Tír na mBascach féin.
Ag tabhairt aghaidh ar seo, dearbhaímid go soiléir go mba cheart meá pholaitiúl, fhéiniúlach agus shiombalach a thabhairt don Euskara. Go mba cheart dúinn polaitiú a dhéanamh ar an mBascais, mar sin, os rud é gur cuid bhunúsach mar náisiún é.
Bímis soiléir faoi rud amháin: ní bhaineann an Bhascais le haon pháirtí polaitiúil amháin nó le haon ídé-eolaíocht ar leith. Ní hea ar chor ar bith. Ach ní hionann sin agus ceart ar dhípholaitiúar an mBascais. Is é sin díreach an aidhm atá ag náisiúnuithe na Fraince agus na Spáinne gur mhian leo náisiúnachas na mBascach a lagú, agus mar aidhm ag Bascaigh áirithe gur mhian leo nach bagairt a bheith ann i gcoincheap na teangan.
Tuigeann aontachtuithe na Spáinne agus na Fraince go maith nuair a labhraímid Bascais go bhfuilimid ag cur ár bhféiniúlacht náisiúnta in iúl. Tá uisce faoi thalamh i gceist leis an iarratas gan polaitiú a dhéanamh ar an mBascais: ná cur an teanga agus an fhéiniúlacht Bhascach in iúl — tá sé contúirteach. Mar gheall ar an gcúis seo, ina n-iarrachtaí luach ídé-eolaíoch na hEuskera (nó an Chatalóinis nó an Ghailísis) a bhaint, is minic a deireann Spáinnigh arís is arís eile “go bhfuil teangacha mar bhunuirlisí cumarsáide.” Ní hionann teangacha neamh-Spáinnise na Leithinse Íbéirí, ar ndóigh. Mar nuair a labhraíonn siad faoina dteanga féin, deireann Spáinnigh go mbaineann an Spáinnis le hoidhreacht luachmhar na gcainteoirí Spáinnise uile, ceann a chruthaíonn naisc láidre chultúrtha is mhothúchánacha idir an Spáinn agus Méiriceá Theas (tá an lá Féile na Spáinnise ar siúl ag an 12ú Deireadh Fómhair, Lá an “Hispanidad”, is féidir an rud céanna a rá faoin “Francophonie”). Ach ní hea, tuigimid go maith nach bhfuil teangacha mar uirlisí simplí cumarsáide. Tá teangacha mar bhunchodanna i gcruthú na bhféiniúlachtaí bailithe, tá siad mar chodanna a chruthaíonn naisc chultúrtha agus mhothúchánacha idir a gcainteoirí. Mura bhfuil sna teangacha ach uirlisí cumarsáide, bheimís go léir ag labhairt Béarla.
An Korrika (Rith) débhliantúil chun an Bascais a chur chun cinn, eagraithe ag AEK, eagras chun Bascais a mhúineadh do dhaoine fásta. (Foinse grianghraif: an Idirlíon)
Cibé áit a bhfuil teanga, tá féidearthacht ann do náisiún freisin. Chomh maith le teangacha, is í feasacht i gcoitinne a n-áitritheoirí a chinnteoidh bunú an náisiúin sin. Mar sin, tá comhpháirt pholaitiúil na teangan soiléir — agus iad siúd gur mhian leo uallach pholaitiúil a bhaint ón mBascais, tuigeann siad go maith é seo.
Is oth an port céanna a gcaitear orainn a chloisteáil ó chuid den saol náisiúnach Bhascach: “ní cheart dúinn polaitiú a dhéanamh ar an teanga Bascaise.” Iad siúd a deir seo, ní labhraíonn siad Bascais go rialta. Baineann siad feidhm as an mBascais chun chur i gcéill, agus labhraíonn siad Spáinnis agus Fraincis ar a sáimhín só gan aon spéis ar leith. Ach ba cheart do gach Bascach a bhfuil grá ina c(h)roí do Thír na mBascach tábhacht na teangan i múnlú an náisiúin a thuiscint, agus an difríocht idir Euskal Herria on Spáinn nó ón bhFrainc a aithint, a bpríomhghné, a dteanga, teanga na Bascaise. An bhfuil orainn an fhianaise chuspóireach a cheilt?
Mar sin, ní féidir luach lárnach simplí a thabhairt don Bhascais, mar atá déanta i roinnt dár scoileanna. Mar atá tugtha don Bhéarla, mar shampla. Tá sé ríthábhachtach do mhic léinn i dTír na mBascach a thuiscint go bhfuil an Bhascais mar chrann taca dár bhféiniúlacht i gcoitinne, leis an mbrí iomlán a bhaineann leis. Sa réimse seo, ní mór dúinn polaitiú a dhéanamh ar theanga na Bascaise, mar atá luaite againn cheana. Ach labhróimid faoi sin go mion in alt eile maidir lenár samhail oideachasúil.
Gan amhras ar bith, ní mór an Bhascais a pholaitiú. Ar an lámh amháin, le polasuithe uaillmhianacha teangan a chur i bhfeidhm a gceadaíonn dúinn seasamh débhéascna ár dteangan a shárú. Agus ar an lámh eile, a shoiléiriú nach uirlis shimplií chumarsáide an Euskera amháin, ach an comhartha is follasaí a léiríonn an éagsúlacht ag Euskal Herria ó náisiúin eile na Cruinne.
A chríoch.
(Foinse grianghraif: an Idirlíon)
(Eagras Bascach neamhspleach ar dhreamanna polaitiúla is ea Naziogintza a bhfuil mar chuspóir aici an Bhascais a chur chun cinn mar chuid lárnach de náisiún Euskal Herria. Déantar staidéar ar chásanna teangachaí náisiún atá faoi láthair gan stát dá gcuid féin)
In an opinion piece in Saturday’s Irish Times, Sean Moncrieff describes a journey on public transport in which he and others were subjected to an anti-masking and Far-Right conspiracy harangue by two other passengers who were not wearing masks. This behaviour typifies the arrogant, overbearing attitude of these Far-Right conspiracy theorists and how opposed they are to the prevalent ethos, especially among working people, of social solidarity.
The incident described is far from being a random isolated one. Up and down the country, anti-maskers have insulted people wearing masks, calling them “muzzled”. Irish Yellow Vester Ben Gilroy was videoed following an elderly man around a supermarket, harassing him for wearing a mask. Some of them, like anti-migrant, anti-masker Alan Sweeney, whose home is in Co. Galway, and a couple from Wexford, have travelled far outside their 5 km. restriction zones to enter shops while refusing to wear masks and then filming the resulting altercation as being alleged struggles for their civil rights. Following an anti-masker rally last year, a group of them entered carriages on the LUAS (the Dublin tram system) and mocked and abused people wearing masks (Sweeney was among those that time too). On a supposed celebration of St. Brigid by anti-maskers in Kildare this February, one was allegedly pulling masks off elderly (naturally!) passers-by. A doctor who returned to Ireland to help fight the virus and gave a thumb-down sign to an anti-mask march in Dublin, was menaced by some participants while many shouted at him “Take off your mask”. Dublin QAnon leader Dolores Webster (‘stage’ name Dee Wall) at a rally in Galway last year was videoed unmasked and deliberately coughing at a counter-protester while laughing about it.
They have even picketed hospitals, as reported in Wexford and in London, while health workers in Wales on social media reported being attacked by anti-maskers. More of that behaviour would have forced the State to close them down, which is probably why we have not seen more of it.
One of the many ironies associated with the Far-Right is that they claim wearing masks creates fear and breaks down solidarity among people, making them more easily manipulated. Meanwhile they go about actually undermining genuine social solidarity wherever they find it.
One of the many expressions of social solidarity in a banner on display in the working-class Dublin area of the Liberties in February 2021. (Photo: D.Breatnach)
SOCIAL SOLIDARITY
Social solidarity evolved first among ancient human societies as a way to live to survive in difficult situations. First in the family, then in the tribe, people helped one another in order for the group as a whole to survive. As society developed, even in societies dominated by exploiting classes that had little or no notion of solidarity, aspects of this social solidarity continued: agricultural communities worked in cooperation to get harvests in, to dig and operate irrigation ditches, to maintain various infrastructures. Workers, pitted to compete against one another as individuals or even groups, learned to build common solidarity and developed slogans like “An injury to one is an injury to all!” and “United we stand, divided we fall!” The moral folk tale of the mother (or father) and the sons (or daughters) being likened to sticks, individually vulnerable but unbreakable in a bunch, is known around the world.
An expression of social solidarity: A block of flats in the Liberties, Dublin, displaying banners thanking front-line workers. (Photo: D.Breatnach)
During this pandemic, social solidarity has been expressed by cooperation to stop the spread of the virus, for example by maintaining social distancing, wearing masks in shops or among crowds. It has also seen expression in demonstrations of solidarity with front-line service workers, in actions like creating solidarity noise, posts on social media, display of placards and banners inside windows and on balconies. People have helped neighbours with their shopping and delivery needs and in some areas, communities have organised a broader service. The anti-maskers and the fascists among them, naturally, have done none of this, despite claims to be raising money “to feed the homeless” or “for mental health services” at events they used to promote their right-wing anti-masker rhetoric (and quite possibly line their own pockets). In fact the genuine feed-the-homeless voluntary services already in operation prior to the pandemic — due to the crisis of homelessness and lack of adequate services in this state – have continued their voluntary work, risking their health and safety. And though they appeal for donations of food, clothing and sleeping bags, they NEVER ASK FOR MONEY.
FASCISTS AT WORK
In recent developments the unity of the Far-Right in Ireland has fragmented. But in earlier days, the organised fascists in the very small parties and groups encouraged the anti-maskers in order to increase their numbers on protests, to recruit members into their own groups and to prepare some of them for street-fighting against the Left. The largest rallies were convened by the Irish Yellow Vests, led by Islamophobe Glen Miller and the self-promoting “anti-eviction activist” (sic) Ben Gilroy. But they were attended and promoted by a wide range of Far-Right conspiracy theorists, anti-maskers, anti-immigrants and Catholic fundamentalists including QAnon, Gemma O’Doherty, the fascist National Party, Síol na hÉireann and Irish Freedom Party.
After a rally of theirs at Custom House Quay on 22nd August 2020, a spokesperson for the National Party boasted about having organised the rally’s “security operation”; what he was referring to was an attack by at least 50 men, most of them armed with metal bars and clubs disguised as flags, upon an unarmed smaller group of counter-protesters in which one of the latter was knocked unconscious.
WHY ARE THEY ALLOWED TO BEHAVE LIKE THIS?
The above is a question many ask themselves. Although recently there have been a few arrests for contravention of pandemic restrictions and public disorder, in general the anti-maskers have enjoyed a freedom to flout the law to a degree difficult to believe. The QAnon group that rallied for months every Saturday outside the GPO in Dublin had a police presence only to protect them, while around the corner the pickets of sacked Debenham workers were harassed by the Gardaí. On a couple of those Saturdays, people in O’Connell Street picketing in solidarity with a Basque hunger-striker, though masked and maintaing social distancing, were harassed by the State’s political police.
QAnon in December at weekly gathering outside the GPO, Dublin against wearing masks, lockdown etc etc. (Photo: D.Breatnach)
Gemma O’Doherty videoed herself up and down the country denouncing all and sundry while violating pandemic restrictions. Sweeney, as mentioned earlier, has done the same, abusing shop workers providing a service while carrying out their duties under pandemic restrictions. Dolores Webster aka Dee Wall has had herself videoed addressing anti-masking rallies in places as far from Dublin as Galway and Belfast. The Irish Yellow Vests were allowed to flout the restrictions on a number of their rallies and marches until they tried to block Grafton Street and were aggressive to the Gardaí who tried to move them on, whereupon the Far-Rightists were shocked to be on the receiving end of police batons, normally only experienced by genuine protesters about social and economic conditions.
Some of the Garda protection for QAnon in O’Connell Street on 20 December 2020. (Photo: D.Breatnach)
The Far-Right have been allowed to breach pandemic restrictions because their protests do not threaten the status quo. Furthermore, they aim at disrupting social solidarity which is no friend of the ruling class and its governments of various political parties. But there is more to it than that. The QAnon and Far-Right demonstrations in the USA were observed to have police support and police officers were observed opening gates for their recent invasion of the Capitol building in Washington DC (although a police officer was also killed in the invasion). In Ireland, the counter-protesters attacked by armed (and masked – at an anti-mask rally!) fascists at the Irish Yellow Vest rally at Custom House Quay on 22nd August 2020 were not only not arrested but the Gardaí attacked the counter-protesters. A few weeks later, an LGBT campaigner of many years was clubbed to the ground in Kildare Street by a supporter of the National Party after which the Gardaí ordered the woman, blood streaming down her head, to leave the area. On each occasion the Gardaí reported no serious incidents had occurred but following widely-disseminated video on social and mass media of the latter incident they were forced to amend their report and eventually to arrest an individual for the assault.
Some of the armed fascists that attacked a counter-protest on Custom House Quay on 22 August 2020, which the National Party boasted on video of having organised. The Gardaí arrested none of these and attacked the counter-protesters instead. Three weeks later an LGBT campaigner was clubbed by a fascist in Kidlare Street and, blood streaming down her head, ordered away by Gardaí. On each occasion the Gardaí said no serious incident had occurred but in the second case had to change their story some hours later due to video sharing and outraged comment. (Source Image: Internet, then cropped)
This is not merely a case of general police and fascist mentality running in parallel — the Gardaí have faced and attacked protesters on the Republican and socialist Left for decades. That is the section of society that is viewed as a potential threat by the ruling class and its State. And when the working people are to be squeezed in future austerity to make them pay for the capitalist crisis, it is those among the Republican and socialist Left that will be mobilising protests in resistance. A fascist and racist movement undermining social solidarity and attacking the genuine opposition must surely be a most welcome phenomenon to the Irish ruling class.
A conspiracy theory? Perhaps – but certainly a more logical one and with a basis in history.
— BOGOTA — The recent election of Joe Biden as president of the U.S. has been met with a round of applause from left reformist currents in Colombia, some even eager to claim Biden as one of their own. Underlying such praise is the notion that the Democrats are more progressive and will treat Colombia fairly, or at least better than the Republicans. There is no evidence on which to base such a claim.
Historically, some of the greatest blows to Colombia have come from Democratic administrations, starting with the smiling, handsome, charismatic JFK, whose policies left few smiling in the country. It was under JFK that two U.S military delegations visited the country and made recommendations that the Colombian state set up armed civilian groups, which are now commonly referred to as paramilitaries. By 1965, Colombia introduced legislation to give effect to those proposals and thus began a long sordid history of the state setting up death squads and providing them with legal status.
Of course, JFK was a long time ago, some would argue, though obviously no Democrat would countenance publicly criticizing him on such matters. Many of those who rushed to endorse Biden are unaware of this aspect of their history, but not so, the leading politicians such as Senator Gustavo Petro, a former mayor of Bogotá and the most successful left-wing candidate for the presidency ever. They are only too aware of the history of paramilitary violence in the country, yet prefer to ignore it on the altar of realpolitik.
The most recent embodiments of charming, handsome U.S. presidents also get a free pass now, just as they did when they were in power. Bill Clinton is perhaps the most notorious of recent U.S. presidents whose policies can be measured in bodies, forced displacement, and the mass destruction of the environment through the aerial fumigation of coca crops. Clinton was the architect of Plan Colombia, a massive supposed anti-drugs policy, which strengthened the Colombian military and under the guise of a concern for public health helped the Colombian military gain the technical and logistical capacity to wage war, including the expansion of paramilitary units throughout the country.
“Handsome US Presidents”, in particular Democratic ones, have helped Columbian ruling circles carry out a murderous reign of terror against social activists.
(Photo source: Internet)
Plan Colombia was of course, implemented by George W. Bush as Clinton finished his second term shortly after concluding the agreement, a sign that policy on Colombia has always been bipartisan. When Clinton announced the initiative he lied. He stated that the motives were public health ones and that cocaine was killing 50,000 people per year in the U.S., when at the time the CDC put the figure for all deaths from all drug abuse, excluding alcohol and tobacco, but including legal pharmaceuticals at just over 15,000. Alcohol alone doubled that figure. The ruse worked and Congress passed Plan Colombia, thanks in part to Biden, who fought for the plan in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Clinton finished his term with controversial presidential pardons, including Marc Rich, but in Colombia, he is remembered for his clemency deal with Harvey Weinig, a U.S. lawyer convicted of laundering $19 million for the Cali Cartel.[1] Whilst attacking impoverished farmers, he indulged the wealthy individuals higher up the chain.
Thanks to the Plan, paramilitaries swept through the country taking over, not only rural areas, but some major urban centers. The Colombian military was in a position to aid them in that and also hold on to those areas, once the dirty work had been done. Their first targets were areas of military and economic strategic importance, with gold and oil deposits and also areas that were earmarked for major transformations in the rural economy. As part of this drugs initiative, peasants were “encouraged” to switch crops. Plan Colombia financed major agribusiness projects, particularly African Palm, and in preparation for the Free Trade Agreement that would be signed under Bush but come into effect under Obama, the country geared its agricultural production toward export markets and opted for importing basic food staples such as rice, beans, and cereals. For example, corn imports from the U.S. began to decline notably from 2008 onwards, but once the FTA came into force in 2012 under the Obama administration, the year of the lowest amount of corn imports in a long time, they quickly increased and by 2016 almost doubled the figure for 2008. By 2018, 80% of all corn consumed in Colombia was imported and barely 20% was produced nationally.
Thanks to Bill Clinton and Obama, Colombia is now one of the major recipients of military aid. Between 2001 and 2019, it received $9 billion in aid, just over 66% of it under the guise of anti-narcotics aid.[1] All anti-narcotics operations in Colombia involve the deployment of ground troops following the strafing of farms by helicopters, displacement of peasant farmers, threats and not infrequently the murder of leaders in the areas. Furthermore, many of these soldiers involved in operations were trained by the U.S. In the same period, 107,486 Colombian military personnel received training from the U.S., making it the largest recipient of such training followed by Afghanistan.[2]Both the aid and training reached their peak under Bush, as part of Clinton’s Plan Colombia, but continued steadily under Obama, though government to government and private arms sales peaked under Obama.
Barak Obama when he was US President with Vice-President, now President Joe Biden. Obama’s presidency was a disaster for the Colombian people and his running mate then, now President too, looks set to follow in his footsteps. (Photo source: Internet)
Nothing could stop Biden and Obama from backing their murderous ally to the south, not even the False Positive scandal. The so called False Positives entailed the luring of young men to rural areas with the promise of work, who were then dressed up in military uniform and executed and presented to the media as guerrillas killed in combat. Amongst the victims were impoverished working-class men, children with cognitive impairments, and even included the kidnapping and murder of professional soldiers recovering from wounds received in combat. The scandal broke in 2008, following the murder of 22 young men from the city of Soacha.
In his preliminary report the UN Special Rapporteur Phillip Alston stated: “But there are two problems with the narrative focused on falsos positivos and Soacha. The first is that the term provides a sort of technical aura to describe a practice which is better characterized as cold-blooded, premeditated murder of innocent civilians for profit. The second is that the focus on Soacha encourages the perception that the phenomenon was limited both geographically and temporally. But while the Soacha killings were undeniably blatant and obscene, my investigations show that they were but the tip of the iceberg.”[3]
He did say they were widespread but not official state policy. However, every soldier who killed one of these young men was paid a bonus by the then Minister of Defense, Juan Manuel Santos, who would become president in 2010. Santos enjoyed the support of Biden and Obama during his tenure and although he began peace talks with the FARC guerrillas in 2012, his regime never stopped murdering social leaders. From 2012 to 2018, 606 social leaders were murdered; there were a further 3371 other acts committed against these leaders, including threats, displacements, and prosecutions. None of this caused Biden or Obama to express their concern. It was business as usual for them. The total number of False Positives is now calculated to be in the region of 10,000 youths, and despite Alston’s diplomatic statement that it was not official policy, no one buys that. We are not even sure whether Alston himself could stand by that statement, outside of his role as a UN diplomat.
It is true that the current regime in Colombia, under Duque, is but a mere remold of the Uribe governments (2002-2010), and the situation has deteriorated in the country. Duque openly backed Trump, and Colombian government officials illegally intervened in the U.S. elections, calling for votes for Trump in Florida. So brazen was their involvement, the U.S. ambassador to Colombia, Phillip S. Goldberg, publicly warned them against campaigning.[5] There may well be a reckoning of some sort with Duque on this point, but it is unlikely that there will be any major change in policy towards the country.
President Iv√°n Duque (L) of Colombia speaks during a meeting with US President Donald Trump at the United Nations in New York September 25, 2018. (Photo by Nicholas Kamm / AFP) (Photo credit should read NICHOLAS KAMM/AFP/Getty Images)
Duque may well be publicly chastised by Biden and given a few well-placed mediatic slaps across the face. It will be mere window dressing. Prior to the implementation of Plan Colombia, Clinton sought and obtained the disbandment of the Colombia’s notorious XX Brigade; charged with intelligence and counterintelligence, it was an exercise in public relations. It did not affect intelligence agencies’ role in the murders, torture, forced displacement, and disappearances, nor the spying on left-wing politicians and human rights organizations, which continues unabated to the present day. On Colombia, the Democrats are very media friendly and good at dressing things up.
The war on drugs is likely to continue in one form or another, and though some left reformists hope that Biden will pressure Duque to restart the stalled peace process with the ELN guerrillas, it is unlikely. During the talks with the FARC, Biden and Obama wouldn’t release from a U.S. jail the FARC commander Simon Trinidad, in jail for his supposed role in the capture and imprisonment of three U.S. Dyncorp mercenaries. The ELN do not represent the same military threat that the FARC did. They are less militarist and much more political, and any threat they may represent is in the political arena. But they have long attacked U.S. companies and oil pipelines, and such attacks may be used as an excuse for further increases in military aid and greater involvement in the conflict. U.S. troops are already involved in the protection of the Caño Limón-Coveñas pipeline as it passes through the ELN stronghold of the department of Arauca. It will be very much business as usual under Biden.
Top photo: Protesters march against President Iván Duque’s policies, including police brutality and disappearances of political activists, in October 2020 in Bogotá. (Louisa Gonzalez / Reuters)
An 1893 article on James Mooney by the Chicago Inter-Ocean newspaper correctly claimed that he knew more about the North American Indian than anyone else in the world. The son of poor Irish immigrants, Mooney never had the chance of higher education, yet amazingly he became not only a champion of Native peoples, but also one of the most influential anthropological fieldworkers of all time. His books written more than a century ago are still considered classics in the field.
Mooney possessed a talent for detailed and disciplined research that one of his colleagues later described as genius and he left several volumes of research. At a time when most Americans considered Native American culture barbaric and primitive, Mooney’s fascination with Irish myth and deep identification with its culture informed his view of Native Americans. Mooney saw Ireland as a spiritually rich, though materially deprived culture, which shaped his sympathetic views of Native Americans.
James Mooney in his 40s or 50s perhaps.
(Source photo: Internet)
The Mooney family came to America as famine refugees. His father James Mooney was an itinerant scholar who taught Gaelic and Irish history at a time when it was a crime to do so. Born in Meath about 1832, Mooney’s father left for Liverpool in 1849, but life was hard and prospects limited, so he decided to move to the United States. Arriving in New York City in 1852 aged 30 he Married Ellen Devlin, 12 years his junior. He had known her family in Meath and asked for Ellen’s hand in marriage, but at first she refused the impoverished teacher. In New York they experienced the grim life of the tenements.
Ellen had family in the Midwest and in 1852 they moved to Richmond, Indiana. James Mooney died soon after his son’s birth, leaving the family to contend with poverty. His mother, who made her living as a housekeeper, supplemented her son’s public school education with tales of her native country, stories about the former grandeur of Irish culture, and memories of oppressive British rule. After graduating from high school in 1878, Mooney taught public school for one year and then joined the staff of the Richmond newspaper, but Mooney was a romantic who chafed at the limitations of small town life.
Since childhood, Mooney had a fascination with Native Americans and he longed to study them. Lacking any credentials whatsoever, Mooney applied for a position with the Bureau of American Ethnology, which was run by the famed explorer John Wesley Powell, the first white man to see the Grand Canyon. Amazingly, Mooney talked his way into a non-paying position and eventually became a paid member of the Bureau and one of the first “professional” scholars studying Native Americans.
James Mooney with Native American (Source photo: Internet)
His first field work was studying the few remaining members of the Cherokee Tribe in North Carolina. The Cherokee were victims of the brutal expulsion policy of President Andrew Jackson who sent them west to Oklahoma on the infamous “Trail of Tears.” Mooney lived with the Cherokees, learned their language and soon gained their trust. Mooney believed that the only way to learn their ideas and study their character was to live and work with them. At a time when the general attitude towards Native Americans was dismissive, Mooney saw the Cherokees not as inferiors, but as humans who shared a common humanity with people from more materially advanced civilizations. The more time he spent with Native Americans, the more his writing stressed their humanity. From his Irish roots, Mooney understood that some cultures put great store in charms and prayers and Mooney became a great chronicler of Native incantations and prayers, using them as a focal point to derive a deeper understanding of Native cultures.
Painting depicting winter scene of the expulsions of the Cherokee from Georgia to Oklahoma (1830-1850), “The Trail of Tears”. Permitted no preparation, their homes were looted by whites even as they were hustled away. 4,000 died on the journey. (Source image: Internet)
At a time when the Commissioner of Indian Affairs had told government employees to do everything in their power to curb native ceremonies, Mooney’s detailed research into Native beliefs, rituals, folklore and traditions violated government policy and was nothing short of revolutionary. Mooney published his groundbreaking study of the Cherokee, The Myths of the Cherokee, which added a new dimension to the writing of Indian history by using sources from the Indians themselves. The comprehensive work compiled 126 Cherokee sacred stories, animal myths, legends, wonder stories and historical traditions. His account is tinged with a sadness informed by his awareness that Gaelic and Cherokee culture were both under threat, writing, “the older people still cling to their ancient rites and sacred traditions, but the dance and the ball play wither and the Indian day is nearly spent.”
Cover of 1995 Reprint (Source photo: Internet)
Mooney’s career spanned thirty-six years and several Native American peoples. At a time when many whites wanted to force Native Americans to abandon their culture and assimilate, Mooney became an outspoken critic of assimilation and the boarding schools where forced assimilation occurred, making him an object of scorn for supporters of the practice.
He was also viciously attacked for his defense of two Native traditions: the Ghost Dance and the use of peyote in religious ceremonies. The Ghost Dance was a Native ritual that spread from tribe to tribe. Started by a Native American mystic and visionary, the Ghost Dance promised a physical regeneration of the world and the removal of all whites from Native lands. Fear of the dance led to the tragic massacre of Native Americans at Wounded Knee in 1890. Published in 1896, Mooney’s Ghost Dance Religion and the Sioux Outbreak of 1890 established Mooney’s reputation among anthropologists and historians. It has been called “The classic study of the American Indian revitalization movement.” Its power derived in large part from Mooney’s Irish heritage, which gave him an acute awareness of a people struggling to preserve their culture against economic, political and cultural oppression. Native American scholar Robert Utley said of Mooney, “No scholar since has tried to tell the story of the Ghost Dance in so comprehensive a fashion and that will never be done.”
Cover of a collection of Mooney’s publications on the Cherokee rituals and beliefs in paperback 1992. (Source photo: Internet)
Though his life was dedicated to Native Americans, he never forgot his Irish roots. He learned some Gaelic and sang Gaelic songs to his five children. In 1907, he hosted Douglas Hyde, founder and president of the Gaelic League, at a meeting that laid the groundwork for the Gaelic League of Washington. Mooney became President of the Gaelic Society of Washington and thanks in part to Mooney’s efforts, Hyde won support for the establishment of the first Irish Studies programs at American universities.
Mooney also suffered opprobrium for his defense of the Native American rituals using the Peyote cactus, which has hallucinogenic properties. In 1891, he became the first white man to ever witness a peyote ceremony. Mooney understood that peyote became for Native Americans a bridge to another spiritual dimension. Misunderstood like the Ghost Dance, the peyote religion counseled peace and brotherhood among the Indians and unlike the Ghost dance it did not pledge destruction of the whites. In February 1915, he testified in Congress in defense of the Peyote right, even though it jeopardized his government job.
An older James Mooney (Source photo: Wikipedia)
Mooney died in 1921 believing that despite a lifetime of work, little had changed. He ended his career as he began it: convinced of the inability of one race to understand another. Mooney had committed his life to preserving Indian culture against a White world committed to its eradication. His mission flatly contradicted the Federal policy of assimilation, which assumed that, within a generation, there would be no more Indians, only “Americans.” Today, he is still recognized by whites and Indians alike as one of the foremost Native American ethnologists ever and a man who played a massive role in preserving Native American culture.
Threats? What threats? That is the question on a lot of minds as scepticism continues to grow about recent claims of intimidation against local officials in the port of Larne and the city of Belfast who were working, however tangentially, on administrating the so-called Irish Sea border between Ireland and the post-Brexit United Kingdom. As the well-informed political correspondent Sam McBride notes for the regional News Letter, a decidedly hardline pro-union publication, most of the allegations of imminent violence directed at UK and European Union employees seems to have come from the Democratic Unionist Party. The chief opponent of the regulatory frontier agreed between Brussels and London under the so-called Northern Ireland Protocol.
[On Monday] news emerged that Mid and East Antrim Borough Council – on which the DUP is the largest party – had suddenly withdrawn its staff from the border post in Larne because of graffiti describing…
(Translated from the article in Castillian by Alejandro Torrús [Publico 01/24/2021] by Diarmuid Breatnach)
(Reading time text: 7 mins.)
The descendants of Alexandre Bóveda join the ‘Argentine complaint’ together with the grandchildren of Amancio Caamaño, president of the Pontevedra County Council; and Ramiro Paz, editor. The three were murdered in 1936 in Galicia by Franco’s forces. Around 5,000 Galicians were shot by the Franco regime.
– Provided by the family
Alexandre Bóveda in a conferenece in Vigo (Photo supplied by the family)
They say that after the body of Alexandre Bóveda fell to the ground, shot by firing squad, one of his friends approached and placed a small Galician flag in his jacket pocket, near a heart that no longer beat. Thus was the last will fulfilled of the man that Castelao himself had described as the engine of Galicianism. It was August 17, 1936 and Bóveda was murdered after a farce of a trial that sentenced him to die for treason. Just a few hours later, at dawn on August 18, 1936, at the other end of the peninsula, the poet García Lorca was also murdered by the Francoists. In just a few hours, in two of the most remote territories of the country, two elevated minds of the country were murdered. Point blank. One after a sham called a trial. Another, after being arrested as a criminal. Two elevated brains, two unique sensibilities, and two ways of fighting, fighting for a freer, more democratic and more plural country fell by force of arms. The country was entering the long Francoist night.
The figure of Alexandre Bóveda is so spectacular that it is difficult to summarize in just a few paragraphs. He was one of the drafters of the Statute of Galicia of the Second Republic (which would never come into force due to the Civil War); he was the soul and “motor” of the Galician Party; and, furthermore, he had participated in the founding of the first savings bank in Galicia. The list, in a telephone conversation with his grandson, Valentín García Bóveda, is practically endless. To the political successes must be added a good number of professional successes, which led him to participate in the founding of Campsa, the Hacienda de Pontevedra or to expand the funds of the Pontevedra Council using only the existing law. He was only 33 years old.
The focus of his political struggle, however, was Galicia. He was convinced that the economic and social backwardness of the country was due to the centralism of a State that squeezed every last drop of sweat from the workers of the periphery. His love for the land, in fact, was taken to its ultimate consequences and in front of the same court that sentenced him to death he declared: “My natural homeland is Galicia. I love it fervently, I would never betray it. If the court believes that for this love the heavy death penalty must be applied to mey, I will receive it as one more sacrifice for her. “
So it was. Bóveda stood in the February 1936 elections to Parliament in the Ourense constituency, competing against Calvo Sotelo, who would be finally elected. Months later, Calvo Sotelo would be murdered in Madrid, while, just a few weeks later, Bóveda would be murdered in Galicia. He face it tied to a pine tree, in the mount of A Caeira, in Pontevedra, some bark of which is still kept by the family.
Pieces of bark from the pine tree against which Bóveda was executed (Photo supplied by the family)
His grandson says that he could have escaped, that he was warned on several occasions of the danger he was running, but that Bóveda answered all those warnings with the words he recited in front of the court. “I wanted to do good, I worked for Pontevedra, for Galicia and for the Republic and the confused judgment of men (which I forgive and all of you must forgive) condemns me,” he wrote in a letter to his brother hours before being shot.
“My grandfather was a marvel of the economy and aa elevated brain. Everything he achieved within only 33 years is impressive, which was at the age at which he was killed. I have always wondered what would have happened to this country if people so important such as Bóveda, like Lorca and like so many others who were shot or had to go into exile by Francoism could have lived another 30 years … Surely now we would live in a different country”, explains Valentín García Bóveda, grandson of the political victim and Vice-President of the foundation that bears his name.
Now, almost 85 years after this murder, Valentín takes over the family struggle to reestablish the memory of Alexandre Bóveda and has filed a complaint with the Argentine Judicial system. In doing so, he joins the nearly 1,000 legal actions that the victims of the Franco regime have presented in the last ten years before Judge María Servini de Cubria in Federal Court No.1 of Argentina.
“I go to the Department of Justice of Argentina with several objectives. On the one hand, to reestablish the memory of my grandfather. I do it for him, but also for my grandmother, who had to die seeing how, legally, her husband was listed as being shot for treason to the homeland. I want that sentence to be judicially annulled. On the other hand, I also go to Argentina to fight against this amnesiac democracy that was based on the foundations of oblivion and injustice,” explains García Bóveda, who hopes that Argentina can declare the crimes of the Franco regime to be crimes against humanity.
The case of Alexandre Bóveda is not the only one to reach the Servini court recently. The descendants of the Republican doctor and politician, president of the Pontevedra County Council in May 1931, Amancio Caamaño, and of the printer and political leader Ramiro Paz, have also filed a complaint. Begoña Caamaño, Amancio’s granddaughter, explained to Público that her grandfather was arrested a week after the Francoist coup and shot on November 12, 1936.
“I could never agree with the Amnesty Law or with the Historical Memory Law. In this country the wounds were never closed even though others accuse us of wanting to open them. The Francoist hierarchy passed to democracy without being held accountable. The Police that were torturing was the new democratic police. And for this reason neither my family nor I have been able to sue in Spain about the execution of my grandfather and we have decided to go to Argentina. All I am looking for is justice and for the sentence against my grandfather to be annulled “, Begoña Caamaño explains.
That fateful November 12, 1936, the Francoist forces executed Caamano and Paz in A Caeria, but also doctors Telmo Bernárdez Santomé and Luis Poza Pastrana; the teachers Paulo Novás Souto, Germán Adrio Mañá and Benigno Rey Pavón; the lawyer José Adrio Barreiro; journalist Víctor Casas Rey; and Captain Juan Rico González. Their murders, however, were only a few more drops of pain in the midst of the slaughter that Franco’s forces were carrying out. The repression ended in just a few years with the lives of 4,699 Galician citizens. Seven out of ten (3,233) were executed in the so-called Francoist “strolls”1. The rest, 1,466, were killed by the carrying out of a death sentence, according to data from the Nomes e Voces (Names and Voices) project. A veritable extermination in an area where the war lasted no more than a few days. In the first months of the Civil War alone, the four civil Governors, the Mayors of five of the seven Galician cities and of the 26 most important towns and the highest Galician military authorities who opposed the coup were all murdered in Galicia.
However, selective or indiscriminate murder was not the only means of repression. With the aim of destroying a civil, plural and organized society, 1,597 citizens were sentenced to life imprisonment and 1,981 were sentenced to various shorter prison terms. In total, 28,234 Galician victims suffered some type of judicial persecution by the new military authorities.
The lawsuits of Bóveda, Caamaño and Paz are not the only ones that have reached Argentina for Francoist crimes perpetrated in Galicia. The “Argentine complaint” was born, in fact, after the complaint filed by a Galician citizen, Darío Rivas, for the murder of his father, Severino, Republican mayor of Castro de Rei and the first of the executed exhumed in Galicia.
Doctor and Politician Santiago Caamaño
Likewise, in 2014, Público reported on a good number of complaints filed about crimes committed in Galicia. Among them was the case of the murders of Manuel Díaz González, a doctor from O Incio (Lugo) and the first Mayor of the Republic in that town, and his brother José Díaz, elected in the last elections as the new Mayor of the municipality. His granddaughter Esther García then explained how her grandfather had been dragged for several kilometers tied by the tail of a horse to the municipality to be murdered where he had been Mayor.
The repression in Galicia also led to a long exile to Latin American countries. In 1942 Galician exiles in Argentina established August 17, the day of the assassination of Alexandre Bóveda, as ‘Día da Galiza Mártir’ (Galician Martyr Day) to commemorate a unique generation that was wiped out by the weapons of Francoism.
Descendants of victims at the Argentine Consulate in Vigo (Photo supplied by the Pontevedra Council)
COMMENT:
The dictator and leader of the coup General Franco was himself a Gallego, a Galician. So was Manuel Fraga Ibibarne (despite the Basque second surname), Minister of propaganda during the Franco Dictatorship and director of repression during the Transition years after Franco’s death (“The streets are mine” — yet claimed by some as steering the ‘democratic transition”) and founder of the Alianza Popular/ Partido Popular party. The claim of fascists to uphold and defend nationalism was exposed as a lie in so many examples in history but very starkly indeed in the Celtic nation of Galicia. The foremost national intelligentsia of Galicia, political, cultural and law-making – those that did not flee — was wiped out by the Franco military and the fascist Falange.
Also a Gallician — an elderly Franco on a Spanish State occasion (Photo sourced: Internet)
Also a Gallician, fascist Manuel Fraga, propaganda Minister and director of repression. (Photo sourced: Wikipedia)
The supporters of the military-fascist coup against the democratically-elected Popular Front Government of the Spanish State called themselves “Nationalists” and the media in much of the rest of the world did them the favour of referring to them likewise.
But it was the Spanish imperialist “nationalism” that was upheld by the coupists, one which denied the social aspirations of the population of the central “Spain” and denied the cultural, social and political aspirations of the Basque, Catalan, Galician and Asturian nations within the State and those of its colonies outside, for example the people of Western Sahara.
Today that false nationalism remains in power in the Spanish State, whether the social-democratic PSOE or the right-wing conservative PP are in government. It is supported in effect by sections of the Left as represented by the (old) CPE/ Izquierda Unida/ Podemos and by the extreme right-wing of Ciudadanos and Vox. The struggle between progressive national independentism and that centralist-imperialist bloc continues.
Diarmuid Breatnach
End.
Alexandre Bóveda addressing a mass meeting in Vigo (Photo supplied by the family)
1Translator: Many of those murdered by the Francoist repression were not as a result of firing squad ordered by military tribunal but, in particular by the fascist Falange, by unofficial execution which the perpetrators called “paseos” (strolls). They would collect the victims from places of detention or their homes, telling them that “We are going for a walk”.
Health Service, Broad Socialist Front, Anti-Fascism
Diarmuid Breatnach
(Reading time main text: 15 mins.)
A new periodical has emerged from the Irish Left. At the time of writing two issues of Rupture have been produced and Parts I and II of this article consist of a political overview (but of course from my individual viewpoint) of a number of issues discussed in the magazine. While the assessment of some is highly critical, overall my opinion is that Rupture is a welcome introduction to socialist analysis of conditions in Ireland.
Rupture is a quarterly magazine format produced by RISE, a group of socialists whose most publicly-prominent individual is Paul Murphy (see Appendix) who is also a TD, i.e a member of the Parliament of the 26 Counties. The formation of the party RISE was announced in September 2019 when Murphy announced his departure from the Socialist Party and his joining this new organisation, of which he is a founding member.
Rupture espouses “eco-socialism”, a drive to organise the production of food and fuel under socialist control while dramatically reducing its harmful impact on the environment. Most of its contributors address issues from a Marxist perspective but interviews with activists from some other perspectives are included.
The magazine’s two issues to date included features on public health, the environment and food production. In addition there have been a number of articles on developing a broad socialist front, combating racism and fascism, multi-national companies and neo-liberal capitalism, Big Pharm and trade union struggle. For the first time, the latest issue (November 2020) addressed the issue of the national question (and struggle) in Ireland. PART I of this article dealt mostly with the discussion of the magazine’s discussion of a) the Environment and b) the National Question, while PART II focuses on its coverage of the Health Service and the Broad Socialist Front, including Anti-Fascism. As a consequence each Part contains both positive and negative evaluation.
From another aspect, the layout is generally attractive and mostly easy to read with photography and artwork which is interesting (if its relevance is not always clear). Some articles are perhaps on the longer side for some tastes but then these are big issues being discussed, in many cases literally of life-and/or-death dimensions.
An annual subscription costs €40 all Ireland or €60 international and I would recommend taking out one for 2021).
HEALTH SERVICES
The articles on the health service in the Irish state, one might say health services, are particularly strong and, like those on the environment, use published statistics and analyses from other sources to illustrate their points.
It is a fact, as the contributors point out, that the Irish state has never had a national health service (and one of the benefits for people in the 6-County colony is that they have the UK’s National Health Service, for all its current troubles). What we have is a three-tier system: state, private not-for-profit and capitalist — the articles argue for a totally public health system, such as would be in place in a socialist society.
There are those, especially Government Health Ministers (though not necessarily when in Opposition) who argue that the three-tier is the optimum mix, all tendencies working together to deliver the best service to the population. If the fallacy in this argument were not obvious before, with long waitings lists for procedures including even testing, packed A&E departments with patients waiting hours for treatment and some patients even days on trolleys, along with the false negative cervical cancer results, it was brutally exposed by the Covid19 pandemic. Overburdened ICU wards, more pressure on hospital beds, deferment of procedures and longer waiting lists, shortages of protective equipment and overworked and stressed front-line health workers, including shocking death rates in care homes have been stark pointers to the urgent need for change. And now delays in contact tracing and vaccine roll-out.
Besides, the alleged mix of the three types of health service provider is a fallacy, as the articles point out; in fact, public money is funding them all. Whether run by religious institutions or by unashamedly profit-making enterprises, they are all dependent on funding through the Irish State and through tax exemptions.
It would seem rational and logical that if a health service provider insists on working within a religious ethos, that its services be funded entirely by its own institutions and congregation. It would seem rational and logical that a provider who wishes to work on a profit-making basis should fund itself entirely by investors, bank loans and its own profits, just like any other business. It would seem rational and logical that the entire wealth available to the State for health should be spend funding and improving its own services. In the Irish state, none of that is what happens.
Not Fun Facts
The Catholic Church owns and controls 90% of primary and around 50% of secondary schools in the state which however are funded publicly. “Out of the 1,735 total deaths in the first wave (of the pandemic), over half (967 ) were in nursing homes.” “In 2019 the HSE spent 31% of its current budget ( 5.4 billion euros) on outsourcing to outside agencies.” “Top 5 religious orders funded by the HSE (2019): Sisters of Mercy (including the Mater and Mercy University Hospitals) – 432 million; Sisters of Charity (St. Vincent’s University Hospital) — 373m; Brothers of Charity 218m; St. John of Gods – 166m; Daughters of Charity – 122m.” (Total: 1,311,000,000 euro). “By 2019, up to 80% of nursing home beds were private, up from 66% 1n 2009 and 25% in the 1980s.” While working people struggle with ill-health or pay privately, also seeking care for elderly relatives, the huge rise in private health insurance cost and sector growth is the main beneficiary.
The story, shockingly, is the same when it comes to vaccines. Though people are right to question the operations of Big Pharma, the companies that produce medicines to make a profit, the general case for the defence of vaccines against diseases is unanswerable. Many distressing medical conditions and epidemics have been eliminated in parts of the world through vaccines though in some other parts people continue to suffer because vaccinations are generally unavailable.
However the article in the current issue of Rupture points out that a number of companies are in a race to be first to produce an effective Covid19 vaccine so that their company alone can patent it and profit from it (and of course, set their own price). Although their end product is patented and belongs to them to profit by, 66% of their research is public-funded. And they spend a large proportion of their funds on advertising – “64 of the top pharmaceutical companies spend twice as much on advertising as they did on new research, while 27 companies spent 10 times as much.”
In a socialist system, all the scientists would be collaborating and sharing research and work so that not only would likely success be enormously hastened but the vaccine would be universally available and cheap. In fact, the permanently crippling disease of polio was eliminated in Ireland by a publicly-available and cheap vaccine – its inventor Johan Salk, despite its estimated worth of $7 billion, refused to patent it , saying that it was “owned by the people” (https://polio.ie/polio-vaccine-26th-march-1953/).
Johan Salk, who developed the polio vaccine and refused to patent it. (Photo source: Internet)
BROAD SOCIALIST FRONT
Contributors ofarticles in Rupture on the question of creating a mass resistance front to capitalism have criticised the traditional socialist party-building method, which they point out leaves them essentially small, with limited influence in the working class and, through loyalty to their leaderships and reluctance to learn from their mistakes, perpetuates both. Whatever different people may think of the reasons nobody can argue with the result.
The articles advocate participation in broader fronts and attempting to influence them with a Marxist approach while also being willing to learn, instead of using these broader formations primarily to sell their newspapers, recruit some members and project themselves as the main leaders (that last might be more my own point than that of the article authors). It is suggested that on some questions socialist organisations can join in a common struggle with other groups and activists with whom they don’t agree on other issues.
Sounds good? Yes, of course and some of us independent activists have been saying that for decades. Interestingly however (and curiously, one might say if one were unaware of the general trajectory of the Irish Left), there is no mention of uniting with other revolutionary groups such as Irish Republicans and Anarchists. This should be curious because active Irish Republicans usually number many more than the Socialists in Ireland and they – and the Anarchists – have been fighting in struggles for years (including some which the rest of the Left is only now beginning to take up). Furthermore, which should be of more than passing interest to socialists, in general Irish Republicans are significantly of more working class background than are the members of the socialist parties.
If the Socialists in Ireland don’t unite with those groups it is of course possible that they will unite around enough others to overthrow the State and usher in a socialist order. Possible – but hardly likely. What is much more likely is that, in their pathological desire to steer clear of those elements, they will instead drift or gallop into alliance with social democracy. And that element of the Left is one which raises the aspirations of working people only to constantly dash them and, at crucial junctures of struggle always has and will betray its working class and lower-middle class supporters. Clara Zetkin, in the article referred to in the next section, pointed to the betrayal of the struggles of the working class paving the way for the fascists, giving the examples of the factory occupations and agrarian struggles of 1920 and the 1st August 1922 general strike debacle.
At those junctures the socialist organisations that have been in alliance with the social democrats will splinter again, amidst recriminations and opportunism as some leaders jostle for position among the social democrats. In some situations of course, socialists have instead ended up in prison, concentration camps or against a blood-stained wall.
The road to social democracy has been the historical trajectory in the West of most of the parties of the Left claiming to be revolutionary, both of the Trotskyist and Communist Party variety. At this early stage of Rise and Rupture that tendency is already to be seen in contributions to the magazine discussion – one from the USA advocating working within the Democratic Party and others suggesting the possibility of building a mass Irish social-democratic party inside of which the revolutionaries can work.
ANTI-FASCISM
The rejection by Rupture contributors as allies of those active revolutionary elements, Irish Republicans and Anarchists, can once again be seen in its discussion of anti-fascism in Ireland. In the article on the subject in the November issue we are treated to eight pages of an address by Clara Zetkin to the Communist International in 1923, a time when fascism was still a very new force. The introduction from Rupture, dealing with Ireland and the world today, is barely one page long and doesn’t even mention the history of the struggle against fascism in Ireland.
Of course, discussion of Ireland being kept mostly free from fascism can only be even considered by ignoring the presence of the Loyalists and the colonial statelet, with its sectarian legislation, housing and education allocation and especially policing. As for the Loyalists, pogroms, individual murders and burning people out of their homes – that is not fascism? And it’s not as if there have not been plenty of connections established between Loyalist and fascist groups in and outside Ireland – and not only in Britain.
If the Irish state has been kept generally fascist-free so far, might it not be of some value perhaps to investigate why? In fact there have been fascist organisations operating within the Irish state but they were smashed by energetic action of Irish Republicans, both left and more generally nationalist throughout the 1930s, as well as by eventual banning by the De Valera government of Fianna Fáil, which was elected largely by Irish Republican and Socialist support.
Subsequently, every time until the very recent past the fascists have attempted to gain a foothold they have been smashed again, both by Irish Republicans and Anarchist and Socialists – but notably, never by the main socialist parties, who have sometimes demonstrated and more often written against fascism but always remained aloof and even critical of direct confrontation.
Irish antifascists in the 1930s, mostly of an Irish Republican background, contributed to the international struggle directly by participation in the International Brigades in the Spanish Anti-Fascist War (1936-1939), in Britain (notably in the Battle of Cable Street 1936), also the little-known burning of the Clonfert mansion of Sir Oswald Mosely, leader of the British Union of Fascists, the “Blackshirts” in 1954. And contributing since, down through generations of the diaspora to Red Action and Anti-Fascist Action in Britain.
When the European fascist network based on Islamophobia tried to include Dublin in its program of organisational launches in European cities, it was defeated in Dublin, making the Irish state probably the only one in Europe that was not host to a Pegida launch. The mobilisation against Pegida was huge but what really demoralised the organisers and ended the alliance of Irish and East European fascists in acrimony, was as a result of the physical confrontation which hospitalised some Irish fascists en route and required Garda vans to drive the East European variety away to safety.
The more active antifascist opposition was overwhelmingly Irish Republican, with some anarchists and independent socialists. And the people still facing charges of “violent disorder” and a maximum penalty of 10 years in prison (or an unlimited fine or both!) are all Republicans from different organisations. Those who confronted the fascist National Party on October 10th in Dublin last year and sent the nazis scurrying off under Garda protection included (unelectoral) Socialists but the largest element were undoubtedly Irish Republicans of various groups and none.
Today, even the new fascist groupings of Síol na hÉireann, the Irish Freedom Party and the National Party, along with the right-wing anti-vaxxer, anti-mask conspiracy theorists such a QAnon, all try to piggy-back on the history of the Irish Republican movement (at least until 1922), lacing their rhetoric with references to “700 (sic) years of struggle” and “the martyrs of Irish freedom”.
The formation of the Le Chéile antifascist alliance in early December last was an alliance of liberals, social-democrats and the electoral Left, with TDs of Rise and PBP in the lineup. Regarding the earlier discussions or founding meeting, a well-connected Irish Republican told me “I don’t know one Republican group that was invited” and when the alliance declared that they would not be organising any confrontations with the Far-Right, one suspects why. While it might be said that socialists should join such alliances in order to influence people towards the correct strategy and tactics, the least they could have done would be to publicly disagree with that stand. The reason the electoral Left did not do so seems to be because they agreed with it, as evidenced by their practice throughout the last two years.
October 2020: Supporters of the fascist National Party (right of photo) in shock as the antifascists (left of photo) clash with them. (Photo source: Internet)
By all means discuss and develop a theoretical understanding of the historical origins, development and nature of fascism but socialists need to remember that in the final analysis it was a huge expenditure of physical effort, with millions of martyrs, that brought fascism to its knees in most of Europe at the end of the 1940s.
RISE would do well to heed at least one of the remarks of Zetkin in the quoted speech: “Fascism confronts the proletariat as an exceptionally dangerous and frightful enemy”.As such, socialists require serious analysis of its history and current appearance in Ireland, along with an examination of the tactics and strategy necessary to defeat it.
End.
APPENDIX
A BRIEF INTRODUCTION TO PAUL MURPHY (RISE)
Formerly an activist and TD of the Irish Socialist Party, an Irish child of the British Trotskyist organisation the Socialist Party (and formerly, Militant, the largest among a number of entrist groups into the British Labour Party), Murphy left them gently in September 2019 to form the RISE group. It may be remembered that Clare Daly, also a TD, left the SP in August 2012 in a somewhat more acrimonious dispute and became part of Independent Left with some other socialist TDs and municipal councillors, since when she and her partner Mick Wallace were elected Members of the European Parliament and virtually disappeared from the Irish political scene (to be missed by many without allegiance to either group). Paul Murphy has also been an MEP in the past, from 2011-2014. Although now a member of a different political party, he has remained in the Solidarity-People Before Profit coalition of SP and PBP which retains another five TDs (four essentially of the Socialist Workers’ Party but no longer any of the SP).
Paul Murphy (centre, grey jacket, facing camera) speaking at his trial and that of others after the famous water protest at Jobstown against Minister Joan Collins (which led to his arrest and long trial before he and others (including Irish Republicans) were found not guilty by a jury).
Murphy has a long record of activism and has been violently handled by the Gardaí (Irish state police force) and also arrested as part of the celebrated Jobstown case defendants in 2015 (all acquitted two years later). His international activism includes participation in the Gaza blockade flotilla in 2011 and high seas capture by the Israeli Zionist state, detention and deportation. His production of regular video broadcasts to date during the Covid19 crisis, both from home and of his interventions in the Dáil have included lashing the Government on placing accommodation of capitalism above the lives or ordinary people, denouncing its “yo-yo policy” of precautionary restrictions followed by much-too-early relaxation and also demanding the nationalisation of private health facilities.
En 10 días vendrá a secuestrarme a la fuerza el brazo armado del Estado para encarcelarme porque no voy presentarme de forma voluntaria en prisión. No sé ni a que cárcel me llevarán ni cuánto tiempo. Entre todas las causas que acumulo por luchar, unas con condenas pendientes de recurso y otras de juicio, puedo pasar hasta casi 20 años en prisión.
Este constante acoso que sufro desde hace muchos años y que se materializa más allá de las condenas de cárcel, no sólo es debido a mis canciones revolucionarias, también por mi militancia más allá de la música y escritura. La propia Fiscal reconoció literalmente: “es peligroso por ser tan conocido e incitar a la movilización social”. Llevar a la práctica la lucha de la que hablo en mis canciones es lo que me ha puesto especialmente en el punto de mira, además de apoyar a organizaciones que han combatido al Estado, ser solidario con sus presos políticos y crear conciencia denunciando las injusticias señalando alto y claro a sus culpables.
Es muy importante tener claro que no es un ataque sólo contra mí, sino contra la libertad de expresión y por tanto contra la inmensa mayoría que no la tenemos garantizada como tantas otras libertades democráticas. Cuando reprimen a uno, lo hacen para asustar al resto. Con ese terrorismo quieren impedir que se denuncien sus crímenes y políticas de explotación y miseria, no podemos permitirlo. Saben que no voy a claudicar por estar preso, por eso lo hacen especialmente para que el resto lo haga. Por no interiorizar que es una agresión contra cualquier antifascista, ha faltado solidaridad para evitar mi encarcelamiento como tantos otros. El régimen se crece ante la falta de resistencia y cada día nos quita más derechos y libertades sin pensárselo dos veces a la hora de tocarnos, necesitamos organizar la autodefensa ante sus ataques sistemáticos. Muchas personas me escribís preguntando qué podéis hacer. Hace falta mucha difusión para que todo el mundo se entere de lo que hacen y se tome conciencia, pero sobre todo urge la organización no sólo para llevar la solidaridad a los hechos en las calles y coordinarla bien, también para defender todos los derechos que pisotean con impunidad.
También es necesario señalar al tan mal llamado Gobierno “progresista” por permitir esto y tanto más, mientras protegen a la Monarquía y le aumentan el presupuesto, no tocan la ley mordaza y otras leyes represivas, han añadido además la “ley mordaza digital”, siguen teniendo las cárceles llenas de luchadores en pésimas condiciones, además de otras políticas contra la clase trabajadora. Qué duda cabe de que si nos encarcelaran con un gobierno de PP y VOX habría mucho más escándalo, pero son estos farsantes quienes diciéndose de izquierdas ni se han opuesto firmemente a esto.
No voy a arrepentirme para reducir la condena o evitar la cárcel, servir a una causa justa es un orgullo al que jamás voy a renunciar. Si me liberan antes de finalizar la condena será porque la presión solidaria lo conquista. La cárcel es otra trinchera desde la que seguiré aportando y creciendo, como tantas otras personas yo empecé a luchar inspirado por el ejemplo de resistencia y otros aportes de numerosos presos políticos. Espero que este grave atropello sea aprovechado para sumar más personas a la lucha contra el Régimen enemigo de nuestra dignidad, que si me encarcelan para silenciar el mensaje tenga mucha más voz y salgan perdiendo. Respetando el exilio, decidí quedarme aquí para que esta oportunidad sea aprovechada para desenmascararlos aún más. Este golpe contra nuestras libertades puede tornarse contra ellos, pongámonos manos a la obra.
(translated from Castillian by Diarmuid Breatnach)
(Reading time: 2 mins.)
STATEMENT BEFORE MY IMMINENT IMPRISONMENT:
In ten days the armed wing of the State will come to kidnap me by force to imprison me because I am not going to present myself at the prison voluntarily. I don’t know to which jail they will take me or for how long (I will be detained). Among all the cases that I have accumulated through struggle, some with convictions pending appeal and others pending trial, I could spend up to almost 20 years in prison.
This constant harassment that I have suffered for many years and that goes beyond prison sentences, is not only due to my revolutionary songs, but also because of my activism beyond music and writing. The Prosecutor herself put it into words: “he is dangerous for being so well known and inciting social mobilization.” Putting the struggle I speak of in my songs into practice is what has put me especially in the spotlight, in addition to supporting organizations that have fought the State, being in solidarity with their political prisoners and raising awareness by denouncing injustices by pointing out the culprits loudly and clearly.
“Do you swear to tell the whole truth?” “I am here because of telling the whole truth.” (Image sourced: Internet)
It is very important to be clear that this is not an attack only against me, but against freedom of expression and therefore against the vast majority who are not guaranteed it like so many other democratic freedoms. When they repress one, they do it to scare the rest. With this terrorism they want to prevent their crimes and policies of exploitation and misery from being denounced, we cannot allow it. They know that I’m not going to give up because I’m in prison, but they they do it in particular so that the rest do. By not internalizing that it is an aggression against any anti-fascist, solidarity has been lacking to avoid my imprisonment like so many others. The regime grows in the face of the lack of resistance and every day it takes away more rights and freedoms without thinking twice when it comes to attacking us — we need to organize self-defense against its systematic attacks. Many people write to me asking what they can do. It takes a lot of diffusion so that everyone knows what they are doing and is aware of it, but above all organization is urgent not only to bring solidarity to the events in the streets and coordinate it well, also to defend all the rights that they trample on with impunity.
It is also necessary to call out the badly-named “progressive” Government1 for allowing this and so much more; while protecting the Monarchy and increasing its budget, they do not touch the gag law and other repressive laws, they have also added the “digital gag law”, they continue to keep jails full of fighters in terrible conditions, in addition to other policies against the working class. There is no doubt that if we were imprisoned during a government of PP and VOX2 there would be much more of a scandal, but these phonies who while claiming to be left-wing have not even firmly opposed this.
“From above they mock the past,
they tread on us in the present
to rob us of our future.” (Image sourced: Internet)
I will not repent3 to reduce the sentence or avoid jail, serving a just cause is a cause of pride that I will never renounce. If they release me before the end of my sentence, it will be because solidarity pressure conquers them. Prison is another trench from which I will continue to contribute and grow, like so many other people I began to fight inspired by the example of resistance and other contributions of numerous political prisoners. I hope that this serious outrage will be used to add more people to the fight against the regime, enemy of our dignity, that if they imprison me to silence the message, they will give rise to a much greater voice and lose out. With regard to going into exile,4 I decided to remain here so that this opportunity can be used to expose them even more. This blow against our freedoms can turn against them, let’s get down to work.
Pablo Hasél.
(Image sourced: Internet)
BRIEF INTRODUCTION TO PABLO HASÉL:
Pablo Hasél (Pablo Rivadula Duró), poet, writer, political rapper and activist from Leida in Catalonia, 32 years of age, has described himself as a revolutionary Marxist. Since 2011 Hasél has been convicted in Spanish courts on a number of occasions of “promoting terrorism” and for “slandering” Spanish State and Royal institutions in his lyrics, as well as for allegedly assaulting a TV3 reporter and being party to an assault on a Catalan far-right group.
Pablo Hasél burning the colours of the Spanish monarchical state during a performance.
(Image sourced: Internet)
Hasél began his recording in 2005 with Esto no es un Paradiso (This Is Not a Paradise) since when he has recorded another 64 discs on his own and another 35 in collaboration with others. In 2020 alone Hasél recorded two discs. He is also that author of nine poem collections, four of which are in collaboration with Aitor Cuervo Taboada, and one collection of stories.
FOOTNOTES
1The current Government, a coalition between the PSOE and Podemos. The former is the social-democratic party of the two-party system of the Spanish State which has been breaking down of late. Podemos-Izquierda is a coalition of trotskyist Left tendencies, Left social-democrats and the old Spanish Communist Party.
2The PP has been the right-wing conservative party of the two-party system of the Spanish State while Vox is even further to the Right.
3The Spanish penal and judicial system requires prisoners to repent of the “crimes” of which they have been convicted if they are to be moved to less harsh prison conditions or to be paroled. This is a particularly crushing requirement of inmates convicted of politically-inspired actions who are serving long sentences of a number of decades.
4 In May 2018, the day before he was due to surrender himself to Spanish jail, rapper Valtónyc (José Miguel Arenas) went into exile in Brussels.
A new periodical has emerged from the Irish Left. At the time of writing two issues of Rupture have been produced and Parts I and II of this article consist of a political overview (but of course from my individual viewpoint) of a number of issues discussed in the magazine. While the assessment of some is highly critical, overall my opinion is that Rupture is a welcome introduction to socialist analysis of conditions in Ireland.
Rupture is a quarterly magazine format produced by RISE, a group of socialists whose most publicly-prominent individual is Paul Murphy (see Appendix) who is also a TD, i.e a member of the Parliament of the 26 Counties. The formation of the party RISE was announced in September 2019 when Murphy announced his departure from the Socialist Party and his joining this new organisation, of which he is a founding member.
Rupture espouses “eco-socialism”, a drive to organise the production of food and fuel under socialist control while dramatically reducing its harmful impact on the environment. Most of its contributors address issues from a Marxist perspective but interviews with activists from some other perspectives are included.
The magazine’s two issues to date included features on public health and private services, the environment and food production. In addition there have been a number of articles on developing a broad socialist front, combating racism and fascism, multi-national companies and neo-liberal capitalism, Big Pharm and trade union struggle. For the first time, the latest issue (November 2020) addressed the issue of the national question (and struggle) in Ireland. PART I of this article deals mostly with the magazine’s discussion of a) the Environment and b) the National Question, while PART II focuses on its coverage of c) the Health Service and d) the Broad Front and Anti-Fascism. As a consequence each Part contains both positive and negative evaluation.
For another aspect, the layout is generally attractive and mostly easy to read with photography and artwork which is interesting (if its relevance is not always clear). Some articles are perhaps on the longer side for some tastes but then these are big issues being discussed, in many cases literally of life-and/or-death dimensions.
An annual subscription costs €40 all Ireland or €60 international and I would recommend taking out one for 2021).
Environment
As with most serious commentators on the environment, the articles in Rupture point to an accelerating crisis and the need for urgent action right now. At the same time they point to the unwillingness or inability of the capitalist system – which means the governments of most states today — to take the necessary steps. In fact, unwillingness and inability are almost the same thing with the capitalist system because if one capitalist does not maximise his profit he will be undercut and crushed – or taken over – by another who will do “what is necessary” according to the rules and logic of the system. Even if in the longer term (or the medium term, in this case) the scramble for profit maximisation destroys the very resource — cod and herring, for example or rainforest. In this case, without the slightest exaggeration, it is the whole civilisation-sustaining environment that is at stake.
Not Fun Facts
“In 2017 a habitat area the size of a football field was lost every second.” “Eirgrid has projected that 2027 as much as 31% of Ireland’s electricty could by consumed by data centres” (most of it for cooling the servers to prevent them overheating). “In Ireland a fairly normal herd of pigs consists of 3,000 animals — only 2% of pigs are living in small herds of 5 or less. ….. a flock of chickens can normally be around 3,000.” Diseases due to overcrowding of animals enter the food chain for humans, causing infections of “bird ‘flu” and “swine ‘flu” through ‘zoonotic spillover’ (remember that term — you’ll be hearing more of it in future).
The prediction a fairly long time ago that the choice, rather than being between socialism or capitalism is in reality socialism or barbarism, is facing us now as an urgent practical question. Because when civilisation crashes the remaining groups of humanity around the world, assuming their survival, will indeed be thrust back into barbarism.
The contributors to Rupture quote writings of Karl Marx and Engels which one never hears from non-Marxist environmentalists and rarely either from Marxists themselves. These early developers of Marxist thought studied not only economics, class struggle and philosophy but also (and dare I say it, necessarily), history, science and culture too.
Mental health is an issue discussed in the magazine not only in respect to the appalling lack of health services in that area or the stresses and strains of work under capitalism but also in the divorcing of most humans in cities from nature. The agricultural landscape, having been moulded by humanity is far from natural and yet retains much of nature, the environment in which humanity first came to exist and in which it developed …. but most people in the West are not employed in agriculture. In these times of fear of infection along with isolation from our regular social contacts, even a walk in a park, in woods, on hills or botanic gardens can be rewarding and a reminder of what we have lost and are losing.
It is a challenge to radically change the way we produce food and generate power in a long-term sustainable way but only a socialist system, with overall benefit replacing profit as the ruling motivation has the possibility of bringing an end to the ruthless exploitation of not only labour but the very environment.
THE NATIONAL STRUGGLE
This is a question rarely dealt with by the socialist parties in Ireland, a situation which surprises revolutionary socialists across Latin America and much of Europe in particular. Some might ascribe that to the British origin of a number of those parties, particularly the main Trotskyist ones which in that respect established a tradition very far from the theory and personal practice of Karl Marx. So although I have much to disagree with in this article, the fact that it is being discussed at all should be encouraged.
I hope it will serve to encourage further discussion rather than its opposite when I summarise the piece as containing partial history and poor analysis with however one important recommendation. This critique really deserves a treatment all of its own but since this evaluation of the magazine has already got appreciably longer than was my original intent, I will have to be brief and therefore blunt.
The brief overview of history does not even mention that the United Irishmen (and therefore the uprisings of 1798 and 1803) was led almost exclusively by a section of the colonist-descended bourgeoisie, which is why the leadership was virtually all of various Protestant religious backgrounds. This is important because this is not the same bourgeoisie that rules the Irish state today. The article also omits any mention whatsoever of the linguistic genocidal legislation and practice of the conquerors of Ireland and for any treatment of “the national question” one would have to wonder how or why one would omit that. In dealing with the occupied Six Counties, the treatment of the civil rights movement is poor, even for a very brief overview – it was not only “anti-Unionist unity” that drove or characterised it but opposition to the violent response of the Unionist statelet, Loyalist mobs and paramilitaries and their resolute backing by the armed force of the British State.
Wolfe Tone Monument by Edward Delaney (d.2009) at Stephen’s Green (image sourced: Internet). He and other United Irishmen leaders represented the revolutionary national Protestant bourgeoise and they were descended from colonists.
The article remarks on the“weak capitalist class” in Ireland. But what is the nature of the weakness of this class? In other words, towards which forces are they weak? Not towards the working class, with programs of austerity funding bank bailouts, decades of emigration, slow adoption of equal social rights, high homelessness. Not towards the working class, with the Army used to undermine the Dublin Bus strikers in 1963 and 1979 or the restrictions on the right to strike and solidarity action. Not towards the Irish Republican movement with its Civil War history, special non-jury courts, its repressive legislation and armed police.
No, it is not those towards which the Irish capitalist class is weak. But it is weak in developing its own industry and developing an independent political line. Its weakness economically is marked by the takeover by big foreign capitalists of nearly all of its industry and telecommunications network, along with chunks of its transport infrastructure and services, its health services (private religious and foreign companies) and its national airline and large pieces of its agriculture. Its weakness is demonstrated in failure to develop its own natural resources and selling them off or giving them away.
The weakness of the Irish capitalist class is demonstrated in its firstly accepting the partition if its national territory and going to war with the independence movement rather than join it gaining total independence. The same weakness manifested itself in its inability to unite its territory and subsequently abandoning any claim to do so. The weakness of the Irish capitalist class is demonstrated in its permitting atrocities committed against its citizens at home and abroad by the occupying power, only once taking a case against it to the European Courts of Human Rights and never to the European Court of Justice or the United Nations. And it permitted without protest the intelligence services of that occupying power to bomb its capital city many times, including in 1974, with the murder of 26 people (and another eight in Monaghan). And there are many other examples too.
The article admits that the Irish capitalist class has been “acting to facilitate the exploitation of people and resources by foreign capital”. What would we call a capitalist class that behaved like that in Latin America, Asia or Africa? Yes, neo-colonial. Or in Latin America, possibly “comprador”. The difference is not just in location but in the minds of the Irish electoral Left – but none of any significance in the reality on the ground. As the contributor from Talamh Beo points out, “even though we’re geographically in Europe, our land history is radically different.” Of course defining the Irish capitalist class as neo-colonial might give one a very different outlook on the national struggle, right?
And also on socialist revolution, which we would understand to be opposed in Ireland not only by the majority native and the minority colonial capitalist classes and their apparatus, not only by our powerful imperialist neighbour, but also against economic interests in the imperialist USA and EU.
In addition, despite the officially neutral status of the Irish State, its armed forces are being integrated into the European imperialist military alliance. Ireland has not (yet) joined NATO but has the EU Battlegroups, as part of the Common Security and Defence Policy (CSDP) of the European Union (EU).
Fianna Fáil, although a split from Sinn Féin in the 1930s and therefore the losing side in the Civil War, has become the first party of choice of the Irish national bourgeoisie, the “Gombeen” class, a neo-colonial capitalist class. In the historically two-party state, it is currently in power in coalition with its main rival, Fine Gael (and the Greens).
Fine Gael, although formed from the victorious side in the Civil War, has become only the second party of choice of the Irish national bourgeoisie, the “Gombeen” class, a neo-colonial capitalist class. In the historically two-party state, it is currently in power in coalition with its main rival, Fianna Fáil (and the Greens).
Ireland’s main social-democratic party, whenever in Government it has always been as a minor partner in coalition. It always supports the Irish national bourgeoisie, the “Gombeen” neo-colonial capitalist class. It is currently sits on the Opposition bench.
The truth is that in the above respects, Irish Republicans in general have a much better understanding of the Irish State, the representative of that neo-colonial capitalist class, than do the electoral left parties in Ireland. The Republicans have traditions and history and recurring practical experience that teaches them.
The Green Party of Ireland, whenever in Government it has always been as a minor partner in coalition. It always supports the Irish national bourgeoisie, the “Gombeen” neo-colonial capitalist class. In the historically two-party state, it is currently in power in coalition with Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil.
The electoral socialist Left, far from joining with the Republicans, chooses instead to snipe at them on occasion and to ignore them the rest of the time. And to permit their civil liberties and human rights to be attacked for the most part without protest.
POSITIVE RECOMMENDATION
The positive recommendation in the article regards the projected Border Poll. While not wishing for any kind of capitalist Ireland, whether partitioned or united, the article recommends voting YES in any such referendum. I myself must agree with that and along with them find it difficult to imagine how any socialists could advocate any other position.
Recommending a NO vote even if for the best of reasons would isolate any party from the majority of the Irish people, while recommending abstention would leave the party on the sidelines not only regarding the poll but in important debates about what kind of Ireland we should have. Even the British & Irish Communist Organisation deviation of the 1960s and 1970s with their two-nation theory, although it generated much discussion, never looked likely to grow to any size, much less become a mass party of the Left.
I am far from convinced however that a genuine poll on the reunification of Ireland will ever be agreed by the ruling classes of the UK and of Ireland or, should it be held and have a majority for reunification, that the ruling classes will implement the verdict.
End.
(See also Part II published separately)
APPENDIX
A BRIEF INTRODUCTION TO PAUL MURPHY (RISE)
Formerly an activist and TD of the Irish Socialist Party, an Irish child of the British Trotskyist organisation the Socialist Party (and formerly, Militant, the largest among a number of entrist groups into the British Labour Party), Murphy left them gently in September 2019 to form the RISE group. It may be remembered that Clare Daly, also a TD, left the SP in August 2012 in a somewhat more acrimonious dispute and became part of Independent Left with some other socialist TDs and municipal councillors, since when she and her partner Mick Wallace were elected Members of the European Parliament and virtually disappeared from the Irish political scene (to be missed by many without allegiance to either group). Paul Murphy has also been an MEP in the past, from 2011-2014. Although now a member of a different political party, he has remained in the Solidarity-People Before Profit coalition of SP and PBP which retains another five TDs (four essentially of the Socialist Workers’ Party but no longer any of the SP).
Murphy has a long record of activism and has been violently handled by the Gardaí (Irish state police force) on a number of occasions and also arrested as part of the celebrated Jobstown case defendants in 2015 (all acquitted two years later). His international activism includes participation in the Gaza blockade flotilla in 2011 and high seas capture by the Israeli Zionist state, detention and deportation. His production of regular video broadcasts to date during the Covid19 crisis, both from home and of his interventions in the Dáil have included lashing the Government on placing accommodation of capitalism above the lives or ordinary people, denouncing its “yo-yo policy” of precautionary restrictions followed by much-too-early relaxation and also demanding the nationalisation of private health facilities.
rebelbreeze 