SOCIALIST REPUBLICANS HONOUR “THE FATHER OF IRISH REPUBLICANISM”

On July 11, 2023July 11, 2023 By rebelbreezeIn Current Event Report, Folk Custom, History commemoration, Imperialism, irish history, Irish Left, Irish Republicanism, National Liberation, Song, Song in StruggleLeave a comment

Clive Sulish

(Reading time: 5 mins)

A broad group of socialist Republicans gathered at the grave of Theobald Wolfe Tone on Sunday 2^nd July to honour his memory and to reiterate their commitment to an independent and socialist Ireland outside of imperialist military alliances.

Wolfe Tone’s grave in the Bodenstown Church graveyard has been a place of pilgrimage for Irish Republicans at least since the days of Thomas Davis¹ of the Young Irelanders of the 1840s, who wrote of his own visit to the grave and composed the song “In Bodenstown’s Churchyard”.

The late 1960s saw huge numbers of people in attendance at annual commemorations there near the village of Sallins, Co. Kildare, including not only Sinn Féin², who led them, but many political and social organisations, GAA clubs, along with many non-aligned people.

Over the years, the voluntary and unfunded National Graves Association has improved the site comprehensively and sensitively, leaving the ruins of the Protestant church as they are but building a stage attached to one side, fronted with plaques and commemorative flag stones.

Commemorations currently are usually organised around a Sunday near the date of the patriot leader’s birthday on 20^th June but have to be managed between different groups wishing to hold their own commemorations.

Speeches, songs and Garda harassment

The Annual Wolfe Tone commemoration organised by the Wolfe Tone Commemoration Committee took place over the weekend with members of a number of groups and Independent Republicans in attendance.

A Socialist Republican Colour party led the march up from the bottom of the road, turning in to the graveyard through a side gate and taking up positions in front and to one side of the monument, at ordú scíthe (parade rest) position but with flags held high.

*Colour party in front of Wolfe Tone monument, Bodenstown Churchyard (*Photo: *Rebel Breeze*)

Behind the colour party followed a crowd carrying banners bearing the legends “Irish Republicans against NATO”, “We serve Neither King nor Kaiser but Ireland” and an assortment of flags including green-and-gold Starry Ploughs, Irish Tricolour, Palestinian and Basque national flags.

The event was chaired by a young Socialist Republican who spoke about the importance of the event before introducing a representative of a midland Republican commemoration group who read a short message of solidarity.

This was followed by a socialist republican accompanying himself on guitar singing The Three Flowers.³

The main oration was delivered by veteran Independent East Tyrone Republican Margaret McKearney who linked the past with the present, including the current housing crisis, the British occupation and the Irish State’s push to join PESCO and NATO military alliances.

*Musician performing The Three Flowers* *at the Wolfe Tone monument* (Photo: *Rebel Breeze*)

*Veteran Republican from Tyrone delivering the oration at the commemoration event* (Photo: *Rebel Breeze*)

There was a clear message at the event that the push towards NATO will be energetically resisted at every turn by the people of Ireland.

Wreaths were laid and a minute’s silence was observed, while the colour party lowered the flags in memory of all those who paid the ultimate sacrifice in the ongoing struggle for Irish Freedom. The event was brought to a close with the musician playing and singing Amhrán na bhFiann.

A handful of Gardaí⁴ in uniform and in plainclothes (Special Branch, the political police) were parked outside the graveyard watching people arriving and leaving but at that point having no direct interaction with those attending the event.

*Part of long tail-back cause by Garda checkpoint very near to Bodenstown Churchyard after the commemoration event* (Photo: *Rebel Breeze*)

*Gardaí in uniform and Special Branch in plain clothes harassing and attempting to intimidate people who had attended the commemoration event* (Photo: *Rebel Breeze*)

However, once the event concluded, the Gardaí set up a checkpoint at the bottom of the road and began to harass and attempt to intimidate drivers of vehicles, stopping them, asking for identification, where they were from etc, causing a long tailback.

This is part of the regular harassment of Irish Republicans by police on both sides of the British Border.

“The Father of Irish Republicanism”

Theobald Wolfe Tone (1763-1798) was formally a member of the Church of Ireland⁵ congregation (Anglican), in his time the dominant religious group in England-occupied Ireland but also one of the smallest.

No-one could be elected to the Irish Parliament unless of that congregation.

In the early 19^th Century a section of the Irish bourgeoisie, nearly all Anglican or of the other Protestant churches, “dissenters”, wished to develop the Irish economy free of interference, control, patronage and bribery associated with being an English colony.

Many of them understood the need for a strong base in the population, for which they recognised the need to include representation for the majority population in the country, the Catholics, along with the most populous of the Protestants, the Presbyterians.⁶

When the liberal but pro-English Crown Henry Grattan brought the issue to a vote in the Westminster Parliament, his motion failed due to many MPs’ sectarianism or vested interests, a situation which continued for decades afterwards.⁷

That seemed to point to revolution as the only logical way forward.

Theobald Wolfe Tone was one of the founders of the Society of United Irishmen in October 1971, the first broad Republican organisation in Ireland, which soon developed a comprehensive revolutionary agenda, for Irish independence and a Republic based on universal male suffrage.⁸

In order to accomplish a successful uprising, they invited assistance from Republican France and planned a simultaneous uprising across Ireland, with particular concentration on Antrim (largely Presbyterian and Anglican), Wexford and Wicklow, Midlands and Mayo (largely Catholic).

*Colour party leading a march towards the Wolfe Tone monument* (Photo: *Rebel Breeze*)

Spies and informers working for the English occupation betrayed some of their plans and most of the Leinster Directorate of the United Irishmen, including Wolfe Tone, were arrested, a disaster for uprising plans in Dublin but also for overall leadership in Leinster.

The 1798 Rising had initial great success in the south-east, particularly in Wexford but was quickly and bloodily suppressed in the Midlands and in Antrim. Mayo rose when a too-small detachment of French soldiers arrived under Humbert in Kilalla but they were outnumbered and beaten.

Tone was was unapologetic at his trial, was sentenced to death by hanging but appears to have attempted to take his own life while awaiting execution, surviving for a few days in great pain before dying on 19^th November 1798 as British and Orange loyalist repression swept the country⁹.

*Wolfe Tone Monument by Edward Delaney (d.2009) at S.E entrance to Stephen’s Green, Dublin city centre* (image sourced: *Internet*)

Many leaders of the United Irishmen are honoured in song, writing and in commemorative events to this day but Theobald Wolfe Tone is still the most widely remembered of them all.

End.

*The Colour Party and some of the participants line up for a group photo by the monument* (Photo: *AIA*)

FOOTNOTES

1Thomas Davis (1814-1845), journalist, author of the song A Nation Once Again and other works, also co-founder of The Nation newspaper.

2Prior to its split resulting in Provisional Sinn Féin and the later split resulting in the Irish Republican Socialist Party.

3Composed by Norman G. Reddin, a Republican ballad honouring the memory of three United Irish leaders, Robert Emmet, Michael Dwyer and Wolfe Tone. Both Tone and Emmet were sentenced to execution, the latter carried out in 1803 on Thomas Street in Dublin. Dwyer was transported to exile in Australia where he was later accused of planning an uprising in New South Wales for which he was twice imprisoned and tried but exonerated, became Police Chief in Liverpool, Sydney in 1813 but was imprisoned again in 1825 for alleged non-payment of a £100 debt, contracted dysentery, was released again and died very soon afterwards.

4Police force of the Irish State.

5A branch of the Church of England, the state religion of the UK of which their Monarch is the titular head (in addition to being the commander-in-chief of the Armed Forces).

6“Catholic, Protestant and Dissenter”, as Wolfe Tone famously called the alliance.

7In May 1808 Grattan proposed emancipation in the House of Commons, with certain qualifications, but his motion was defeated by 281 votes to 128. In June 1812 the Commons accepted, by 225 votes to 106, a motion in favour of considering Catholic claims. An emancipation Bill, introduced in February 1813, received a second reading but was lost in committee by a narrow margin. Frustration at this lack of progress led to the formation of the Catholic Association in 1823 (of which Wolfe Tone was an active member). Parliament passed an Act to restrict the Association’s activities two years later.

8Very few radical or revolutionary individuals, not to mention movements of the 18^th (or even much of the 19^th or early 20^th) Centuries proposed universal female suffrage, one reason why the 1916 Proclamation of Irish Independence is such a remarkable document, beginning its address with the words “Irishmen and Irish women”.

9Which many, in particular Protestants, fled the country to escape, some settling in the United States and in Canada. The great Catholic emigration from Ireland did not occur until the Great Hunger of the mid-19th Century and later.

USEFUL LINKS

https://www.parliament.uk/about/living-heritage/evolutionofparliament/legislativescrutiny/parliamentandireland/overview/catholic-emancipation/

THE TRICOLOUR: A WEAPON FROM THE MOMENT IT WAS SEWN

On June 30, 2023June 30, 2023 By rebelbreezeIn Cultural Comment, Current Affairs Comment, Internationalist Solidarity, irish history, Irish Republicanism, National Liberation, NATO, Political Analysis, Song, Uncategorized1 Comment

Diarmuid Breatnach

(Reading time: 6 mins.)

Recently the Taoiseach¹ of the Irish State criticised people protesting the Government’s plans to slide the state into external military alliances of “misappropriating” the Irish Tricolour and, incredibly, even of “weaponising” it.

The Irish tricolour was a weapon from the moment it was sewn – a psychological weapon, laden with political meaning, sewn by French revolutionaries, presented to and flown by Irish Republican revolutionaries from generation to generation.

Painting by Philoppoteaux depicting the revolutionaries of the French 1848 Revolution outside the Paris Town Hall and Lamartine rejecting the Red Flag in favour of the French Republican one. Women participants in this revolution presented the Irish Tricolour sewn in silk to Young Irelanders including Thomas Francis Meagher (*Source photo:* Wikipeda) [*When Paris rose again in 1871 under the Paris Commune, the preference was for the Red flag.*]

Prior to the advent of the Tricolour, the Irish Republican flag was typically the gold harp on a green background² but when a group of Young Irelanders went to Paris in solidarity with the revolution of 1848 there, the Tricolour sewn in silk was presented to them by revolutionary French women.

The symbolism of the Tricolour was firstly in its form; the French Revolution adopted a tricolour in opposition to the monarchist Fleur-de-Lison a blue background and different tricolours became popular as flags of new republics.

In the Irish Tricolour, the ancient Irish and the Norman-Irish, basically Catholics, were represented symbolically by green, with orange for the settlers (after William of Orange) of one sect or another of the Protestant faith; the colour white, symbolised peaceful national unity in an Irish Republic.

And it presented an equal unity, as opposed to the unity of Scotland and Ireland with England but under the clear domination of the latter, as represented in the Union Jack, which incorporates the St. Andrew’s and St. Patrick’s crosses with the English one of St. George.

THE TRICOLOUR UNFURLED IN IRELAND

The Irish Tricolour we know was first unfurled by Thomas Francis Meagher “of the Sword” at the Wolfe Tone Club in Wexford on 7^th March 1848 and in Dublin in Lower Abbey Street on 13^th April 1848.

Meagher’s nickname was due to his renunciation of the Gombeens of his day trying to deny the right to resort to arms if necessary to win freedom³.

Meagher and other Young Irelanders were arrested around the failed uprising of 1848, just after the worst year of the Great Hunger and, after wide-scale international and domestic protests at the sentences of execution, transported to penal colonies, from which many escaped.

Taking his Republicanism and inclusivity seriously, both in Ireland and abroad, Meagher raised and commanded the Irish Brigade (composed of five regiments⁴) in the United States, fondly nicknamed Mrs. Meagher’s Own, to fight for the Union against the Confederacy and slavery.

As the years of struggle progressed, the Tricolour took its place among the ranks of Irish Republicans alongside the older Harp on Green or, for some Fenians, the gold or orange Sunburst on a blue background and so it was in the 1916 Rising when it began to be the most chosen.

Other flags were flown during the 1916 Rising also but the Tricolour was one of two erected on the roof of the GPO, headquarters of the Rising and became the most prominent during the War of Independence (1919-1921).

The Irish Tricolour in modern times flying over the General Post Office building in Dublin City’s main street (*Source photo:* Internet)

During the Irish Civil war by the British-supported, armed and provisioned Free State Army against the Republican movement (1922-1923), it was flown by both sides. Even after the defeat of the Republican movement and repression, it was not immediately named the state’s flag.

Though it was displayed by the Free State when joining the League of Nations in 1923, and denounced by the Republican movement as an usurpation, it did not seem that the new state was too attached to it⁵ and some Irish ships flew the British Red Ensign until 1939 and WW2.

The first time the Tricolour was formally adopted by the Irish State was in the 1937 Bunreacht (Constitution) which was brought in by De Valera’s Fianna Fáil⁶ Government and even then it was under a pretence of Republicanism with claim laid to the whole of Ireland.

Display of the Tricolour was suppressed in the Six Counties colony from 1922 and officially banned under the Flags and Emblems Acts (1954). Many a battle was fought with the colonial police by people asserting their right to display it, the Act not being repealed until 1987.⁷

“A FLAG OF INCLUSIVITY, MISAPPROPRIATED BY A MINORITY”

One must agree with Varadkar that the flag signifies inclusivity and was misappropriated by fascists and other racists in recent years but it is shameful of him to attribute similar exclusivity to Republicans, who in many cases fought those same fascists to which he referred.

Leo Varadkar, current Taoiseach of the Irish Government, who accused protesters for Irish neutrality of “weaponising” the Irish Tricolour (*Source photo:* Internet)

Not only fought them in recent years but also back in the 1930s, when Irish fascists were called the Blueshirts. Surely Varadgar is familiar with the latter’s history also, since they were one of three reactionary groups that joined to create Fine Gael – yes, Varadkar’s own political party.

And the first Irish Republicans, the United Irishmen, sought the unity of “Catholic, Protestant (Anglican) and Dissenter (other Protestant sects)” for an independent Republic, an ideology carried on by all Republican groups thereafter and given expression in the 1916 Proclamation.

But this is not the first time that people in authority have tried to equate Irish Republicans with fascists, as a few years ago Garda Commissioner Drew Harris issued a press statement in which he accused Republicans of having organised a far-Right demonstration — which he later recanted.

One would think Drew Harris, ex-Assistant Commissioner of the British colonial police force, the PSNI⁸, well-known for their sectarianism and collusion with the colonial brand of fascism, the Loyalists, would be able to distinguish between Irish Republicans and fascists with ease.

Varadkar is ridiculous in accusing Republicans of “weaponising” the Tricolour since it was always an ideological weapon from the moment of its creation and then eventually used by the State to try, with monumental lack of success, to deny it to Republicans.

But Varadkar is right in that the Irish Tricolour has been misappropriated by a minority; but rather than Republicans, that minority is the Gombeen ruling class, foreign-dependent, neo-liberal, selling out the country’s resources and networks to foreign capitalist monopolies.

And causing homelessness, or rent and mortgage hopelessness, emigration and austerity for the vast majority of the people in the Irish state, both native and immigrant, for the benefit of a tiny minority of parasites incapable of even developing a viable Irish national economy.

Republican groups, like all groups are minorities but so are the elites, though even smaller. But in representation? Republicans, whatever faults they may have from time to time clearly represent a much larger and wider section of society than do the Gombeens.

This has been evidenced by the militant opposition of wide Irish society to triple water taxation and privatisation, repugnance for the celebration of British occupation forces and the wide opposition to joining a military alliance, all projects pushed by the Gombeens in different governments.

The Irish Tricolour has been commented upon in a number of Irish Republican songs, sometimes even in the song title: White, Orange and Green and Green, White and Gold.

Probably it is most appropriately referenced in the chorus of a song directed at the Gombeens, the very minority who have misappropriated it:

Take it down from the mast, Irish Traitors,
It’s the flag we Republicans claim;
It can never belong to Free Staters
For you’ve brought on it nothing but shame⁹.

End.

The Irish Tricolour that was flown over the GPO in 1916 (*Source photo:* 1916 Rebellion Tours)

FOOTNOTES

1 Currently Prime Minister of the Coalition Government of Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael and the Greens.

2 Flag of the Society of United Irishmen, who led insurrections in 1798 and 1803.

3 Daniel O’Connell’s son intended to force a motion of that kind on the Irish Repeal Association founded by his father and also sought to have the motion passed without debate. O’Meagher said that while he did not exalt violence, neither would he allow his sword to be taken from him in case it should be needed. He and others such as Thomas Davis left the Association at that point and became known as “the Young Irelanders”, first mockingly and later with pride.

4 Including the 69^th New York Infantry or “Fitghting 69^th”. 7,715 men served in the brigade, 961 were killed or mortally wounded and around 3,000 were wounded. (Wikipedia The Irish Brigade)

5 A 1928 British document said: The government in Ireland have taken over the so called Free State Flag in order to forestall its use by republican element and avoid legislative regulation, to leave them free to adopt a more suitable emblem later. (Wikipedia)

6 The party was a split from the losers of the Civil War of which De Valera had been leader, formed in order to participate in elections for Government and presented itself as Republican. The 1937 Bunreacht also laid claim in Articles 2 & 3 to the whole of Ireland which were removed in

7 During a period of direct rule by the British Government.

8 The colonial gendarmerie, formerly the Royal Ulster Constabulary for the Six Counties, preceded by the Royal Irish Constabulary for the whole of Ireland.

9 Soldiers of ‘22 by Brian Ó hUigín, acclaiming the Republican resistance to the counter-revolution of the Free State during the Civil War.

REFERENCES

History of the Irish Tricolour: https://www.1916rising.com/cms/history/leaders-soldiers-and-poets/history-of-the-irish-flag/#:~:text=Irish%20tricolours%20were%20mentioned%20in,accorded%20the%20flag%20until%201848.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flag_of_Ireland

IRISH NEUTRALITY – WHO CARES?

On June 28, 2023July 5, 2023 By rebelbreezeIn Anti-War, Current Affairs Comment, Current Event Report, Imperialism, Ireland, Mass Media Criticism, NATO, Political Analysis, US Imperialism1 Comment

Clive Sulish

(Reading time main article: 6 mins.)

A packed public meeting in Dublin city centre on Saturday listened to and applauded prominent people speaking against the Irish State becoming part of military alliances, whether PESCO¹ (“NATO by stealth”²) or NATO itself.

The high-profile panel of speakers chaired by Irish MEP Clare Daly featured fellow MEP Mick Wallace, Sevim Dagdalen (MP Die Linke), Medea Benjamin (founder of Code Pink) and Anne Wright (ex-US Army Major and opponent of the US-Iraq War).

Celebrated anti-imperialist rapper Lowkey was also a speaker as was Yanis Varoufakis (ex-Syrza)³ who addressed the meeting by recorded video from abroad and applauded the Irish for their long resistance to colonialism and urged them to be proud of their state’s neutrality.

Yanis Varoufakis’ recorded speech video screened at the *Neutrality Who Cares* meeting on Saturday (*Photo:* Rebel Breeze)

BACKGROUND

There is a constitutional impediment to the Irish state’s participating in a war partnership with another state and during WW2 the state’s official position was neutrality.

However, it was always a pro-Allied neutrality with British downed airmen allowed to cross over into UK territory and US servicemen often crossing the UK border to visit the ‘south’, while German downed airmen were interned for the duration of the War.

The impediment is not absolute and is usually referred to as the ‘Triple Lock’, listing the three conditions which would enable to government to send more than 12 troops overseas:

a mandate from the United Nations
a Government decision
and a Dáil vote ⁴

In recent years some politicians and public commentators have floated the idea that the Irish state could rejoin the British Commonwealth and, since the war in the Ukraine, a discourse has arisen that the State needs to join an external military alliance in order to protect itself from Russia.

Sevim Dagdalen, Die Linke party MP, speaking at the *Neutrality Who Cares* meeting on Saturday (*Photo:* Rebel Breeze)

The Irish Times/Ipsos poll in April, amid criticisms of not following best practice in its design and even accusations of trying to steer respondents towards favouring joining some external military alliance, delivered two thirds clearly against the Irish state doing any such thing.

Russophobic propaganda has speculated on the activities of Russian trawlers in the Irish Sea. This is entirely a whipped-up alarm and discussion without the slightest foundation in fact since Russia has never presented the slightest threat, militarily or politically, to the Irish people.

On the other hand, Britain has invaded and occupied Ireland for over 800 years and is still in possession of one-fifth of its territory and has substantial economic and financial interests in the country as, more recently, have the USA and European Union states.

The UK’s Royal Navy frequently enters Irish national waters and the State has regularly permitted its ships, along with warships of other NATO countries, to dock in Irish harbours. And also the Royal Air Force, it has recently emerged, to patrol Irish territorial air space.

As part of this false alarm and discourse, the Irish Government⁵ recently founded the Consultative Forum on International Security Policy which was scheduled to meet last week in Cork and Galway, then for two days in Dublin Castle.

The President of the State, Michael D. Higgins, in an unusual intervention during an interview with the Examiner expressed concern at what he perceived as the “drift towards NATO” and criticised the composition of the speakers and chairperson of this organisation as being pro-NATO.

Michael D commented on “the admirals, the generals, the air force, the rest of it” and described its chair Louise Richardson, as a person “with a very large DBE – Dame of the British Empire”.

President Higgins apologised later for what he said was “a throway remark” about Richardson but did not withdraw his remarks about the overall composition of the Forum which has indeed been criticised by others, including Richard Boyd Barrett TD⁶ and Senator Frances Black.

THE DUBLIN MEETING

Varoufakis referred to Ireland as though the nation had won its independence, as was the case with every speaker that followed (with the exception of Lowkey).

A member of the audience was heard to remark ironically to another that he was grateful he had attended as heretofore he hadn’t been aware of Ireland’s ‘independence’.

Lowkey, the British-based rapper, tore the illusion of Irish state neutrality to tatters by recounting the use of Irish airports not only for US Army flights under Air America through Shannon, but also airlines run by the CIA and others using other airports in Irish state territory.

*Lowkey, anti-imperialist rapper from London, speaking at the meeting in Dublin.* (Photo: *Rebel Breeze*)

The rapper exposed the ‘neutrality’ of the Irish government in training soldiers going to fight in Ukraine and also in its continued support for the Israeli State and was cheered when he declared that, as an Iraqi, he was proud that his country had “kicked the ass of the British”.

In a masterful exercise in research-backed criticism, Lowkey went on to strip the pretence of independence and impartiality from the Government-founded “Consultative Forum”, exposing the imperialist and even NATO background of the main panel members and its chairperson.

All the members of the Neutrality Who Cares panel were effective speakers and made useful points although it was curious to hear one of them denouncing “Russian fascists” without commenting on the fascist units in the Ukrainian regime’s national army.

Medea Benjamin, founder of Code Pink, speaking at the *Neutrality Who Cares* meeting on Saturday (*Photo:* Rebel Breeze)

It was Lowkey who drove the sharpest and longest nails into the verbal crucifixion of the Irish Government’s drive towards NATO and who brought the loudest cheers from his mostly Irish audience.

Even celebrated speaker Daly did not come very close, though she too exposed the propaganda of the Government and pro-NATO cheerleaders. The MEP debunked the excuse of protecting underground communication cables, pointing out that 25% of them are out of action regularly.

The Irish MEP also lampooned the idea of any underwater cable being protected by NATO, considering where the responsibility for the blowing up of the Nord Stream gas pipeline lies!⁷

Finally she warned the audience to be on the look out for an attempt to remove the Triple Lock under some kind of excuse as a first step to permit the Government to enter a military alliance.

Clare Daly MEP speaking at the *Neutrality Who Cares* meeting on Saturday (*Photo:* Rebel Breeze)

A PART OF IRELAND ALREADY IN NATO

It was left to a youth member of the audience in the Q&A section, reading a statement on behalf of the Anti-Imperialist Action organisation, to point out that a part of Ireland is already in NATO, viz. the Six Counties, occupied by Britain and a part of the United Kingdom.

The youth called for a broad front to unite around opposition to becoming part of an external military alliance and imperialism (see full statement in appendix). Small flyers advocating the same course of action had been distributed inside the meeting earlier.

The People Before Profit party also distributed leaflets against joining NATO to people attending the meeting.

Indeed, it is hard to see why the presence of NATO in a part of Ireland should be so markedly missing from the panel’s speeches. Since it cannot have been accidental we must ponder what the rationale for its omission could have been.

Do those on the panel agree with the colonial occupation of a part of Ireland? That seems hard to believe, at least of some of them. Or perhaps they believe its discussion would be a distraction from the neutrality issue and if so, how can that be?

Or is it that they seek the support of sections of Irish society who are comfortable with the continued occupation and partition of Ireland? If so, they are seeking to build the movement against Irish membership of NATO in terms they think acceptable to timid sections of the middle class.

When resolute action becomes necessary or when reaction starts to bite, those sections will fade out of the anti-NATO movement. For practical as well as for ideological reasons, the campaign must appeal to the working class on an unashamedly anti-colonial and anti-imperialist basis.

Protest banner at Government’s Forum for International Security meeting in Cork while Tánaiste (Deputy Prime Minister, on far left of photo) was speaking (*Photo sourced:* Internet)

Wherever the Government’s Forum has gone, it has encountered public opposition. It was picketed at its Cork and Galway venues, while inside the former, an anti-NATO banner was unfolded and many in the audience denounced the Government’s direction.

Even after the protesters had been hustled out, another stood up to denounce the chairperson’s speech before he too was manhandled away.

In Dublin Castle, venue for the Forum on Monday and Tuesday with a long history as administrative centre of British occupation, people against NATO, war or militarism and for Irish independence displayed banners and placards of protest and flew national flags.

Protesters inside a Dublin Castle courtyard against the Government Forum on International Security held inside the complex this week. (*Source photo:* Anti-Imperialist Action)

AIA Tweet featuring National TV broadcaster RTÉ quoting Irish Government leaders’ ridiculous comments on the display of Irish Republican flags by protestors outside main pedestrian entrance to Dublin Castle in the city centre.

IN CONCLUSION

The general mass media silence on the Neutrality Who Cares meeting in Dublin and in downplaying the protests against the Forum at all its locations is part of the Irish Gombeen class drive to join NATO, despite the well-known opposition of the wide Irish population.

It is not forgotten that when tens of thousands thronged Dublin streets marching against triple water service taxation and privatisation, how the mass media reported participation merely by “several thousand” or even “hundreds”.

Nevertheless the comments of the President of the State and remarks by some journalists in the mass media do reveal that even in their own sections, the Gombeens do not have it all their own way. In the general population, however, the mood is clearly for non-militarisation of Ireland.

If the anti-NATO movement remains active and militant and adopts a generally broad anti-imperialist stance, going to most sections of society but especially to the working class, the Gombeens’ drive towards participation in PESCO and NATO will be decisively defeated.

End.

FOOTNOTES

1Permanent Structured Cooperation is the strange name of this proposed European Union-wide military alliance.

2As described by Clare Daly.

3Syriza is a Left social-democratic coalition party that was elected to government in Greece in 2015 on a promise to implement necessary social and economic reforms in the teeth of EU and other imperialist resistance. However, once the EU and the ECB began to tighten the screws, the resistance of the party’s leadership disintegrated. Varoufakis had been appointed finance minister and to give him his due, he tried to rally his cabinet colleagues around a program of non-compliance with EU diktats but was unsuccessful. Although it remains the main social-democratic opposition in Greece, the party has continued to slide in popularity in elections since.

4Irish UN peacekeeping forces exceeding 12 personnel have been sent overseas with those three conditions satisfied to many conflicts around the world, most notably Lebanon, where they have suffered some casualties and to the Congo, where they suffered many.

5The Irish Government is a coalition of two traditional main oppositional parties, Fianna Fáile and Fine Gael, with the Green Party. The Labour Party does not have a noticeably different position on external military alliance and Sinn Féin recently dropped their decades-long opposition to Irish membership of NATO and the EU.

6Barrett is a Teachta Dála (member of the Irish parliament) and member of the People Before Profit left-wing political party. Frances Black, with a successful career in singing, is an independent Senator in the same parliament who has sponsored a Bill to ban products from the illegal Israeli settlements. The Control of Economic Activity (Occupied Territories) Bill 2018 was passed in full by the Senate in 2018, and passed its first vote in Dáil Éireann in early 2019. It was then sent for detailed scrutiny in the Oireachtas Select Committee on Foreign & Affairs and Trade. This review took place over several months, hearing from expert testimony and input, and in December 2019 the Committee also voted in favour of the bill. Since then the Government is delaying bringing it forward.

7Although direct proof is not yet available, circumstantial evidence points towards US armed forces’ responsibility and journalist Seymour Hersh (Pullitzer Prize winner for exposing the US military massacre in Mai Lai, Viet Nam and its subsequent attempted cover-up) has confirmed the US military’s responsibility on the basis of inside knowledge from his contacts.

APPENDIX

Text of statement read out during Q&A period of Neutrality – Who Cares public meeting in Dublin 24 June 2023:

Anti Imperialist Action Ireland hold the revolutionary position that Britain, NATO and any other imperialist power is not welcome in Ireland. Anti-Imperialist Action have been active in opposing all forms of imperialism in Ireland and have been to the fore in opposition to NATO.

NATO is a great threat to Ireland and the Irish People, and in realisation of that, we urge and call on everyone here to vocally oppose the presence of NATO in Ireland whether you be an anti-war activist, a Socialist Republican, an anti-Fascist, a trade unionist, or just against the presence of a foreign power in Ireland, get behind this position and ensure that your sons and daughters aren’t sent off to be slaughtered in illegal wars of conquest.

While all the focus has been about the push towards NATO for the 26 Counties we cannot forget that the Six Counties are already occupied by NATO by virtue of Britain’s illegal occupation. Only a militant broad front of progressive forces all across the 32 counties can make a firm stand against NATO’s presence in Ireland. Everyone has a part to play in such a broad front which Anti-Imperialist Action and others are working hard to establish.

Reject NATO. Britain and NATO out of Ireland now!

SOURCES & FURTHER INFORMATION

https://www.breakingnews.ie/ireland/irish-people-overwhelmingly-support-military-neutrality-in-latest-poll-1290604.html

Anti-Imperialist Action statement on line: https://anti-imperialist-action-ireland.com/blog/2023/06/21/the-free-states-imperialist-circus/?fbclid=IwAR27Y7HSZOJKgLe_oivFx828jHfUMFa4mNXADUY1jhFh1KaDsoxGmsxhN1Q

https://www.france24.com/en/live-news/20230622-ireland-s-debate-on-neutrality-derailed-by-anti-nato-protest

https://www.irishtimes.com/ireland/2023/06/22/ireland-should-not-be-squeamish-over-security-issues-micheal-martin-tells-ucc-forum/

https://www.gov.ie/en/campaigns/e2a6b-consultative-forum-on-international-security-policy/

COLLAPSE OF BUILDING KILLING TWO GIRLS COMMEMORATED

On June 13, 2023June 14, 2023 By rebelbreezeIn Current Affairs Comment, Current Event Report, History commemoration, Housing, Ireland1 Comment

Diarmuid Breatnach

(Reading time: 6 mins.)

The collapse of multi-occupation buildings in Dublin’s Fenian Street killed two girls. A day from the anniversary of the tragedy sixty years later, local residents in a working-class block of flats organised a moving and informative commemoration.

On 12^th June 1963, Marion Vardy and Linda Byrne, returning from a shop were killed when the buildings collapsed.

After another two people were killed in a Bolton Street collapse, a galvanised Dublin City Council inspection condemned many other buildings in the city and 155 families were rehoused immediately, though some in Army barracks.

And a number had to camp out for some days in the street. But it was not the first fatal building collapse in Dublin. On 2^nd September 1913 (with the epic Lockout struggle only days old), two adjacent buildings had collapsed in Church Street, killing seven people.¹

All the buildings in question were privately-owned with working class people paying rent to the owners. Emergency inspections by Dublin City Council inspectors in 1963 resulted in the condemning of 156 Dublin buildings as too dangerous for residence.

For years, other buildings in the Dublin inner city could be seen braced on a side by a massive timber frame.

*Organisers’ panel photographed by D.Breatnach*

COMMEMORATIVE EVENT

A display of panels describing the tragedy and panels of photos had been erected around the entrance to St.Andrew’s Court block of flats in Fenian Street, where a crowd had gathered for the well-organised commemoration.

Paul McKeown chaired the event speaking eloquently when he could be heard (there was no public address facility) about the actual tragedy and the context of housing provision for working class people in the inner city.

Paul McKeown, who chaired the event, speaking. (*Photo: D.Breatnach*)

As a Catholic priest had performed the religion’s Last Rites over the bodies of the girls in 1963, McKeown invited a priest to recite some prayers at the event, which he duly did, after which the MC introduced a representative from the Henrietta Street Tenement Experience.^²

The Henrietta Street speaker provided interesting snapshots of what past life was like for working people of the inner city in terms of occupation, accommodation and schooling. Some women sewed shirts in a factory while others sold items in street markets, such as Moore Street.^³

Speaker from the Henrietta Street Tenement Museum. (*Photo: D.Breatnach*)

The floors in the poorest homes had no covering and toilets were very few, their use often shared by a great many residents. Although virtually all children would end schooling at the age of 14, the eldest boy often left years earlier to work, as a newsboy or shop messenger, for example.

Labouring on the nearby docks and carting would be the main employment for the men. No doubt emigration, almost a constant in Irish history, played a part too. Rats and mice were endemic in the buildings.

Though alternative and eventually new housing was found for all, it was to Dublin’s outlying areas, breaking up communities and their ways of life, separating them from services used, employment, etc. Many felt isolated and took the long journey to return to the city centre for social contact.

ATTACK ON NEARBY REFUGEES

The local flats overlook the location in Sandwith Street that in May had seen an attack by fascists on refugees who had been living in tents because the nearby International Protection Office, a State body, had failed to allocate them accommodation while processing their applications.

A few locals might have joined in and certainly some had attended the crowd but the fascists were imported (as indeed were the refugees and subsequently their antifascist defenders). Some locals at least resented the way they were being portrayed in some social media subsequently.

Refreshments, some of which were provided by Dublin City Council, were served by residents in the inner courtyard after the speeches. (*Photo: D.Breatnach*)

“We’ve had generations of Travellers^⁴ in the flats and migrant people too,” commented one. “We’re more ethnically diverse than Dalkey,” he added. “Middle class people don’t talk to us, they talk down at us,” was another comment.

They claim that they have been neglected for generations by all the government parties but also by small left-wing parties, also by people who were quick to criticise them and to see them in negative stereotypes. “Nobody talks about class prejudice”, commented McKeown.

The inner city working class population has been moved out of much of the city and this area, which was previously seen as the least valuable real estate in Dublin, as McKeown observes, is now attracting property speculators for gentrification.

Some of the residents and others in attendance in the inner courtyard after the speeches. (*Photo: D.Breatnach*)

McKeown feels his people are not wanted in the area and he’s probably right. It’s not just that they are not the typical users of the wine bars and coffee bars of gentrified areas but that their current location would take in big rents after construction of hotels and upper-market flats.

Past the site of the attack on the refugees there is a new block of apartments, two bedrooms for 3,000 euro a month, one bedroom for 2,000. An empty bloc across the road which people say was well-maintained, remains empty since Dublin City Council moved the residents out 5 years ago.

The local residents say that they have been promised that a new block of apartments will be built on the latter site and that all the units will go for “social housing”, presumably meaning for affordable rent.^⁵They want that to be true but are not sure whether they should trust the authorities.

After the speeches of the commemoration people were invited to partake of food and music in the inside square of the flats which contains minimal playground facilities.

Shay Connolly (centre) and friends performing at the event (Photo: *D.Breatnach*)

The music was provided by a trio including Shay Connolly playing ballads with the food served by local residents, in a relaxed atmosphere. The area at the back of the flats had become a sun-trap and while some soaked it up, I and some others eventually fled the heat.

PAST, PRESENT AND FUTURE

The commemoration of historical events can be of great importance. The event in 1963 forms part not only of an older story but also of the present, which is the lack of decent housing provision for the population of Ireland, in particular for those living in the inner cities.

Working and lower middle class people were wanted in the inner city to work its industries and its shipping port and to service the houses of higher social classes. As industry and port declined and the higher social classes moved out, the need for their work declined.

When their poor areas are seen instead as development prize areas, there is even less demand for the people who have lived in these areas for generations.

One can see this as the inexorable play of impersonal market forces or as the operation of finance and rentier capitalism in a capitalist economy and more, a Gombeen capitalist state where everything is done for the foreign capitalists and as little as possible for the working classes.

From the latter viewpoint, voting different political parties in to government will make no essential difference; what is needed is a fundamental change in the economy which can only be brought about by an organised, conscious and militant working class seizing their rightful inheritance.

End.

FOOTNOTES

1 I recall reading that a number of Dublin City Councillors, including Nationalist ones, were slum landlords.

2 It is open for visits from Wednesdays through to the weekend, I am told.

3 The market and area are subject to a long war between property speculators and conservationists (see smsfd.ie)

4 An Irish indigenous nomadic ethnic group of at least five centuries existence, much discriminated against.

5 “Social housing” is often understood as provision for people unemployed and on state welfare provision. Perhaps “Public housing on affordable rent” is a better description, housing both people working and those on benefits, the rents adjusted to means. This was widely built in the middle of the last century but none has been built in Dublin for decades, all governments insisting that the “private sector” (i.e big landlords, property speculators and vulture funds) can solve the problem while the housing crisis intensifies year after year.

SOURCES & OTHER READING

1963 Collapse: https://www.rte.ie/archives/2023/0531/1386694-fenian-street-homes-collapse/

The tenement crisis in Dublin, 1963.

1913 Collapse: https://www.historyireland.com/the-church-street-disaster-september-1913/

Tenement conditions 1913: https://csu1916.wordpress.com/lockout/dublin-1911/tenements/

2023 DCC failure to enforce standards on landlords: https://www.irishexaminer.com/news/arid-41080388.html

https://www.fm104.ie/news/fm104-news/tathony-house-landlord-rejects-councils-attempt-to-buy-the-property/

No Irish Need Apply to British Communist Party History

On May 20, 2023May 20, 2023 By rebelbreezeIn Current Affairs Comment, History, Irish Diaspora, Journalism, Political Analysis, USALeave a comment

I have been sent this article from The Morning Star, newspaper of the Communist Party of Great Britain, a reprint from The People’s World, like-minded newspaper from the USA.

The article is about the removal by right-wingers in the USA of a marker commemorating worker organiser, women’s suffrage campaigner, anti-racist and anti-fascist Elizabeth Gurley Flynn in her home town of Concord, Massachusetts, USA.

https://www.morningstaronline.co.uk/article/f/60-years-after-death-elizabeth-gurley-flynn-still-scares-right

An omission in the article, which the Morning Star chose not to correct, is the Irish background of the article’s subject, class fighter Elizabeth Gurley Flynn. Is this important? It certainly was to the subject herself who, in her biography, emphasised her Irish background.

Cover of her biography (*Source photo: Internet*)

She wrote of the importance to her of claiming both Irish family names in her ancestry and always used them both: Gurley and Flynn. But in particular for the CPGB, operating in a state that is oppressing Ireland, it should be of importance how Irish people are represented.

Especially in a culture with a deep and long streak of anti-Irish racism.

Elizabeth Gurley Flynn speaking at a mass meeting in the USA (*Source photo: Internet*)

The CPGB never supported the armed struggle by Irish people against its masters nor stood up for the defence of the Irish diaspora in Britain, subject to racism in the media, to police persecution and to judicial and legal racism in the 1970s, ’80s and ’90s.

This is despite the enormous contribution of the Irish diaspora to the trade union and socialist movement in Britain in shop stewards, activists and leaders.

International Workers of the World (‘Wobblies) organisers: Elizabeth Gurley Flynn (centre) next to Big Bill Haywood (right). (*Source photo: Internet*)

With Bronterre O’Brien and Fergus O’Connor, the Irish diaspora gave the British working class two leaders of the first mass movement of workers in Britain, the Chartists. The anthem of the class, The Red Flag, was composed by Jim Connell from Co. Meath (though they used the wrong air).

And the classic novel of the class, The Ragged-Trousered Philanthropists, was penned by Robert Tressel, pen-name of Robert Noonan, born and reared in Dublin.

The CPGB in fact has a long association with British colonialism and its very title is an indication of that.

End.

Left: Famous photo of Gurley Flynn as a public speaker. Right: The marker in her hometown now removed by right-wingers there. (*Photo sourced: Internet*)

REFERENCE:

https://www.morningstaronline.co.uk/article/f/60-years-after-death-elizabeth-gurley-flynn-still-scares-right

The Rebel Girl: An Autobiography, My First Life (1906-1926). New York: International Publishers, 1973.

ANTI-FASCISM, HOUSING AND REFUGEES

On May 16, 2023May 16, 2023 By rebelbreezeIn Current Affairs Comment, Current Event Report, Housing, Human Rights, Ireland, Racism3 Comments

Diarmuid Breatnach

(Reading time: 5 mins.)

Refugees living in tents on streets in Dublin were targeted last week by fascists and antifascists have confronted the latter in defence. Shelters of refugees have been torched.

There’s been some anti-immigrant discourse in Ireland, especially promoted by fascists and racists for a few years but it really took off during the Government’s handling of the Ukrainian refugee influx.

The Irish Government for pro-NATO reasons prioritised these over other refugees, also placing the Ukrainians in empty buildings in working class areas already low on social infrastructure and without consultation with the local community, some of whom reacted angrily.

The Irish Government handed the fascists and other racists a great opportunity and they grasped it.

After that issue had died down a bit, the fascists were looking for something to take its place and found it again in other refugees, this time those who were NOT being housed by the Government and were instead living in tents on streets around the IPO office in Mount Street.

Refugee tents near the International Protection Office (left of photo) in Dublin recently (*credit Sasko LazarovRollingNews.ie*)

The International Protection Office was supposed to organise to provide for the basic needs of refugees – in fact are legally obliged to – while their cases were being processed and had been failing to do so, hence the people it had failed living in tents around the area.

FASCISTS GO TO ATTACK THE REFUGEES

The refugees got some sympathetic coverage in articles in the Cork Examiner and Irish Times¹. Perhaps it was this that stirred up well-known fascist Phillip Dwyer (known hater of women, migrants, LGBT and Muslims) to go and attack those people living on the street.

On Thursday 11^thDwyer turned up with his “security” people, i.e fascist goons, thinking to run the refugees out of there and perhaps do worse. But he was met with resistance including some people helping the refugees, two of the goons got hurt and they backed off.

According to a statement on Revolutionary Housing Action’s Twitter account, one of the defenders was ambushed when he went to collect his bike and while fighting them off, they threw a bike at him. Dwyer and his fascist hounds promised to be back.

Streetlink homeless service stated that on Friday, they were threatened and their outreach van pummelled while they packed refugee belongings and then boxed in so they had to suspend their outreach service for that evening, handing on outreach contacts to other services.

On Friday 12^th Dwyer was back with a larger mob but met by a broad group of antifascists, including RHL, AIA, PBP, CATU, CYM, DCAR and independent antifascist activists² (AIA statement onTwitter, Saturday 13 May). Dublin Republicans Against Fascism were there too.

Section of antifascists in the foreground on Friday, police in the middle distance and fascists and the curious beyond. (*Photo: Rebel Breeze*)

The violence against persons was now turned on the pitiful shelters and belongings which, on Friday night were set on fire.

On Saturday 13^th, the fascist Irish Freedom Party held their rally on Custom House Quay against hate speech legislation being considered by the Government. From there they marched, not against the Government but against the homeless refugees.

According to local sources, the fascists distributed leaflets asking people to be electoral candidates and promising to help the inexperienced.

What was the connection between a protest allegedly about ‘free speech’ and a march on homeless refugees? Absolutely none, except the standard fascist agenda of targeting minorities to divide the working people and scream about free speech while using violence against their targets.

But in a cunning move, the NP who have never helped any area, were there afterwards cleaning up the area and placing flowerpots there.

Meanwhile, on Thursday night, the Revolutionary Housing League stated that they had opened one of the many empty buildings in Dublin to house the targeted refugees. The RHL have been opening up empty buildings for over a year now and encouraging others to do so.

Subsequently, Leo Varadkar, of the very Government that set up the conditions for this to happen, declared how unacceptable the attack on the refugees was. And following strong criticism from the Refugee Council, the State suddenly found it could house most of the refugees.

If true, hopefully good for those refugees but the fascists will now bleat about how “foreigners are getting treated better than the Irish” to the gullible and, also among themselves, be commenting that violence brings results.

The fascists have been stirring up local community fears with allegations that some of the refugees are paedophiles on the run from justice in their own countries, for which there is not a shred of evidence.

Ironically, while they attacked LGBT people as “paedophiles” some of the far-right have for decades been defending the Catholic Church hierarchy in Ireland from criticism and accusations of abuse of children and women in their institutions.

Lies spill from fascist lips as a matter of course: “immigrants are rapists and paedophiles, LGBT people are paedophiles, migrants are rapists, migrants are being treated better than the natives, the whites are being replaced by people of colour, muslims are taking over”, etc, etc.

THE GARDAÍ AND THE FASCISTS

The Gardaí, including the Public Order Unit, stood between the antifascists and the fascist-led mob on Friday, then kettled the antifascists for awhile, then followed the antifascist contingent up Pearse Street with fascists tailing along. When the antifascists dispersed, some of them were attacked.

The Irish Times on Monday 15^th reported on a complaint from the Garda Representative Association that they are unable to police these events, don’t know about refugees, need training, etc.³

What is there to know? Refugees are as entitled as anyone else to be kept free from violence and the Gardaí could have arrested a number of fascists, had they wanted to, under the Public Order Act, which they regularly use against left-wing protests.

In September 2020, when unarmed antifascists went to counter-protest a Yellow Vest⁴ rally against masking⁵ and were attacked by masked (!) thugs recruited by the National Party with wooden and metal clubs, the POU understood enough to draw batons and attack – the antifascists!

Scene on Butt Bridge in September 2020 after armed fascists had attacked the unarmed counter-protesters at Custom House Quay and then the Public Order Unit had attacked them also, pushing them back off the Quay with raised batons, threatening to strike. (*Photo: Dublin Republicans Against Fascism*)

The following week, the Gardaí allowed NP fascists in Kildare Street to jostle and threaten a handful of LGBT campaigners and to club one of them to the ground. The Gardaí then ordered the woman, blood streaming from her head, to leave.

On both occasions the Garda press office issued statements saying that there had been no serious incidents. But the videos of the woman being assaulted and then ordered away went wide on social media and within a few hours, the Gardaí had changed their story.

In September 2020, longtime fascist and member of the National Party Michael Quinn (left, carrying wooden club disguised as Irish Tricolour flag) attacked veteran LGBT campaigner Izzy Kamikaze while she observed fascists in Kildare Street. The Gardaí forced Izzy to leave and later told the media nothing of any note had occurred, later having to change their press statement after the circulation of video footage. Quinn was later convicted of the attack and jailed for two years. (*Images sourced: Internet*).

However, it was ‘up to the victim’ whether she made a complaint (for an armed attack in a public place seen on video?)! She did, and eventually the particular assailant, Michael Quinn of the NP, was jailed for two years.⁶ But for Gardaí collusion with fascists and lying to the press? Nothing.

WHAT NOW?

Given the wars instigated by US/NATO and EU around the world and deprivation by foreign exploitation of people’s natural resources, refugees and other migrants will continue coming to Europe, including Ireland.

The fascists will continue to target minorities and wave their fake patriotism and social concern while they recruit for their parties, diverting attention from the housing profiteers and the facilitating ruling class while they strive to drive wedges into the working people.

The local working class residents, for example in the block of flats overseeing the site of the conflict, will gain nothing except an undeserved bad reputation for what happened in their area and in which perhaps a few teenagers were opportunistically involved.

Already the recently-completed block of apartments just down the road from them is advertising one-bed apartments for 2,000 euro a month and two-beds for 3,000. None of the local working people of course will be renting those.

The cause of the housing crisis in Dublin will continue: property speculators, vulture funds and multi-unit landlords will continue to rake in profits because the Government won’t build housing for affordable rent in case it should compete with them.

Unless, that is, a real hard struggle including militant occupations and defiance of court orders is taken to them forcing a change, be it reform or revolution. This is a task for the Left which of course can never be carried out by fascists.

But hopefully many anti-fascists have learned or had reaffirmed the need for unity in a broad front against fascism and that confrontation and preparedness for physical defence against fascists is needed, while also discussing the most appropriate tactics for different situations.

End.

FOOTNOTES

1 https://www.irishtimes.com/ireland/social-affairs/2023/05/04/homeless-asylum-seekers-its-hard-sleeping-outside-its-cold-its-wet-its-no-life/

2Including anarchists.

3 https://www.irishtimes.com/ireland/social-affairs/2023/05/15/gardai-have-sufficient-resources-to-stop-violence-against-refugees-harris-says/

4The Irish Yellow Vests were a right-wing populist organisation, led by Ben Gilroy and Glen Miller, fascists and islamophobes.

5The rally was on Custom House Quay, scene of the NP’s rally last Saturday.

6 Man who used wooden post to strike a woman during an anti-lockdown rally is jailed (thejournal.ie

SOURCES

https://www.irishtimes.com/ireland/social-affairs/2023/05/04/homeless-asylum-seekers-its-hard-sleeping-outside-its-cold-its-wet-its-no-life/

https://www.irishtimes.com/ireland/social-affairs/2023/05/15/gardai-have-sufficient-resources-to-stop-violence-against-refugees-harris-says/

Man who used wooden post to strike a woman during an anti-lockdown rally is jailed (thejournal.ie)

FASCIST-LED MOB THREATENS MIGRANT ENCAMPMENT IN CITY CENTRE

On May 13, 2023May 13, 2023 By rebelbreezeIn Anti-Fascism, Current Affairs Comment, Current Event Report, Internationalist Solidarity, Ireland1 Comment

Clive Sulish

(Reading time: mins.)

On Thursday evening fascist Phillip Dwyer and a number of other known fascists led a mob in threatening migrants encamped in the Mount Street/ Fenian Street/ Sandwith Street area on the north reaches of Dublin City Centre.

Dwyer, formerly of the fascist National Party and some of his cohorts had been there the previous night too but in smaller numbers, when he was met with opposition.

Migrants have for some time been camped out in that area near the International Protection Office of the Irish State which has a brief to help refugees. Those living in the tents say that little is being done in reality to help refugees and their encampment is an illustration of this.

On Thursday night Phillip Dwyer had brought a mob to at least intimidate the refugees but was faced off by antifascists. He had declared his intention to return.

On Friday in Sandwith Street, a number of people in ordinary clothes could be seen in confrontation with another group, with yellow-jacketed Gardaí and dark blue Public Order Unit between them. An Irish Tricolour and green Starry Plough waved on one side and a lone tricolour on the other.

The view some time after the arrival of fascists and supporting mob. The antifascists are where the green Starry Plough flag may be seen, in a short laneway and in a group in front of the lane’s mouth.
(*Photo: Rebel Breeze*)

Local people and some passers-by watched.

People who received a callout for antifascist support but arrived late experienced difficulty in getting into the antifascist sector, which was where the Tricolour and Starry Plough could be seen, due to the police line between there and the confronting mob.

It seemed that neither antifascists nor fascists would be permitted to get in this way. (*Photo: Rebel Breeze*)

For many antifascists it was a novel experience to be facing the backs of the Public Order Unit, normally drawn out against them, often with batons drawn (none of that seen on this occasion).

The dominant chanting was from the antifascist side, mostly of “Say it Loud and Say it Clear: Refugees are welcome here”, interspersed at times with “Homes for Need, not for Greed!” and another.

Section of antifascists before moving, Gardaí further away and hostile mob further still. (*Photo: Rebel Breeze*)

Though these slogans outline socialist positions they don’t directly address what the fascists were doing and some slogans need to be developed for that, for example pointing out that the fascists are dividing working people and assisting capitalism.

It was difficult to make out what the mob were shouting but individuals at times threw accusations of paedophilia at the migrants and antifascists. This is a common lie by fascists in Ireland and there has not been a single case among this refugee group to justify the accusation.

Section of antifascists before moving, viewed from short laneway mouth, Gardaí further away and hostile mob further still. The new block of expensive apartments is in the left background. (*Photo: Rebel Breeze*)

The refugees camped around there are actually causing nobody any harm, except perhaps embarrassment for the IPO and the Irish State. Journalists for the Cork Examiner and the Irish Times have both written sympathetic pieces about them recently (probably to the ire of Dwyer).

The area includes working-class flats complexes and higher-market-end housing, including a newly-completed block nearby where the rents are reportedly 2,000 euro a month for one-bedroom-units and 3,000 per month for two bedrooms.

And it is said that some low-rent units were promised but never delivered.

Of course, the Fascists and their followers don’t mobilise against that problem, caused by failure of the State to supply quality affordable housing units lest they compete with the property speculators, big landlords and financiers, although that would make general housing sense.

Fascists are an arm of the capitalist class, not its enemy and for their followers, it’s infinitely easier to pick on vulnerable refugees and other migrants than the rich and their State.

Antifascists kettled by Gardaí after agreement to move. (*Photo: Rebel Breeze*)

Some investigation carried out locally ascertained that although some local people were being fooled by the far-Right discourse, others blamed the Government. Some also said that a lot of the anti-refugee crowd were just in it for the fight and were not even locals.

However one should not underestimate the potential for fascists to mobilise disadvantaged people to split the working people as fascism and racism has done in the past.

Rear section of antifascists after kettling by Gardaí. (*Photo: Rebel Breeze*)

A light moment occurred when one of the mob threw a plastic water bottle at the antifascists. As the missile arced towards them, a hand rose out of the crowd and caught the bottle in the air, followed by applause, congratulatory for the catcher and derisory at the thrower.

Since the refugees had been moved earlier there seemed little reason for the anti-fascists to remain except to shout slogans at the opposition and perhaps to deny them a feeling of victory. However, they would have to leave at some point.

A couple of individuals who seemed to be in some kind of leadership role began to discuss with the police their desire for everyone to leave together. At last, to the relief of many, the crowd began to move in the direction of Pearse Street. But not for long, as they were stopped by some POU.

The antifascists were now strung out along the pavement and much more vulnerable than they had been in their previous position in the small lane entrance. Police vans moved up, ostensibly for protection but the actual result was the kettling of the antifascists for a while.

Dissatisfaction was expressed among the crowd – a lot!

The Gardaí might present it as a protective measure but in effect it was part of the kettling of the antifascists for a period after agreement to leave. (*Photo: Rebel Breeze*)

Eventually they began to move again, and a local elderly man wished the antifascists well and “safe home”. One of the antifascists was heard to reply: “Thank you; go raibh maith agat!”

The route was through a narrow passage under a railway bridge and on to Pearse Street, heading for Tara Street but strung out and not at all in good defensive form, with members of the mob regularly screaming hatred at them from a metre or two away.

The temptation to knock out one individual nearby who was spitting at antifascists was strong but apart from the danger of arrest, that might have sparked a general assault with the whole group exposed and badly strung out along the pavement.

It is clear that the fascist and far-right threat which was so much in evidence during the Covid Lockdown and which received a couple of important setbacks since has not disappeared and the National Party has planned a rally for Custom House Quay today.

Responses to fascist threats will need to be more widespread and probably better organised in future.

Subsequently the revolutionary Housing League issued a brief statement that they had opened up an empty building in Dublin to accommodate the displaced (again!) refugees. It was learned today that some antifascists were assaulted as their group dispersed.

Misguided people from disadvantaged working class communities the followers of the mob may be but there is no excuse for harassing and threatening vulnerable people who are living rough on the street.

End.

THE 1st of May, INTERNATIONAL WORKERS’ DAY OF STRUGGLE

On May 1, 2023 By rebelbreezeIn Britain, Cultural Comment, History, Internationalist Solidarity, Ireland, Massacres, Popular Resistance, Workers' StrugglesLeave a comment

Diarmuid Breatnach

(Reading time: 5 mins.)

Revolutionary greetings on the First of May! It is International Workers’ Day, for recalling of the struggles of working people down the centuries past and of resolution to carry the struggle forward until we succeed in building and defending a socialist society.

On that Mayday too we are aware that in some parts of the world, those wishing to mark the date in public will be subject to intimidation or worse: arrest, baton charge or being fired upon. Possibly even trial and death sentence.

HISTORY OF MAYDAY

The day dates from an incident in Chicago 1886, USA, when trade unions and socialist groups of various kinds organised a campaign in many cities of the USA to exchange the common 10-hour¹ working day for the 8-hour day. May 1^st was set for the start of the campaign

On May 3rd in Chicago, a city central to the campaign for an eight-hour working day, a demonstration as part of the campaign took place outside the McCormick Harvesting Machine company. The police opened fire on striking workers, killing one of them and injuring many.

The anarchists and anarcho-syndicalists organised a demonstration for May 4^th to protest the killing of workers. When the police advanced on the peaceful crowd ordering dispersal, a bomb was thrown at them and police opened fire on the crowd, some of whom returned fire.

Some of the police are believed to have shot some of their colleagues by mistake.

Sixty police were injured and one killed; the police chief gave his opinion that more than that number of demonstrators were injured. The media was mostly hostile and many demonstrators wounded would have feared to attend hospital for fear of arrest or worse by police.

Contemporary engraving of the seven originally sentenced to death (*Image: Wikipedia*)

Subsequently, amidst a wave of police repression, including raids on union halls and people’s homes, eight Anarchists were framed, charged with conspiracy to murder and convicted. One of them was sentenced to 15 years in jail.

The sentences of Schwab and Fielden were commuted to life imprisonment. Linng took his own life in jail but August Spies, Albert R. Parsons, Adolph Fischer and George Engel were hanged by the Chicago State authorities.

Artist’s impression of the hanging of the four (*Image: Wikipedia*)

In 1889 the (Second) International Workingmen’s Association, a federation of trade unions and socialist organisations, agreed that in memory of that struggle and its martyrs, the First of May should be marked by all socialists around the world as International Workers’ Day.²

The site of the incident was designated a Chicago landmark in 1992 and a sculpture made in 1893 was dedicated there in 2004. In addition, the Haymarket Martyrs’ Monument was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1997 at the defendants’ burial site in Forest Park.

THE FIRST OF MAY BEFORE THAT

In European agricultural society the First of May was celebrated firstly as a pagan festival and later as an allegedly secular one or named for a Christian saint. It celebrated the coming of summer, of growing of crops and of livestock.

Industrial workers originated in agricultural societies or, in the case of early miners, were located near to such. It was natural that they should participate in such festivals and also even generations later create their own around a similar calendar.

European settlers in the USA, many of them from agricultural societies³, brought those traditions with them. That was probably one of the reasons for the date of the Chicago demonstration, although certainly there had been others on other dates.

MAYDAY IN IRELAND

My father took me as a child on my first Mayday march in Dublin. He was an active member of the NUJ and some members of his union and of others participated in a small march through the city centre led by a brass band.

Returning to Ireland in 2003 after decades working in England and marching there on May 1^st, I was disappointed by the very small size of Mayday demonstrations in Dublin, though I participated in some and on at least one occasion as part of a Basque contingent.

The oppositional movement to the status quo in Ireland, because of our history of anti-colonial struggle, is dominated by Irish Republicanism. And though all of that movement’s parts would claim to be socialist too, the First of May is not of great importance in their annual calendar.

This is unfortunate because the mass of Irish workers who are not members of the Republican movement need leadership for their class and also, as it happens, most Irish Republicans are workers. And practically all immigrants are workers too.

While fighting for an independent Ireland, do we as workers want to exchange one group of exploiters for another? And is a struggle for an independent Ireland even remotely winnable without enlisting the working class fighting as a class in its own class interests?

James Connolly thought not and our history since his day has certainly attested to the correctness of his view.

NATIONAL HOLIDAY?

On 1^st of May for years I took the day off work – unpaid, of course and went into the centre of London, the city in which I was living and working. My destination was usually Hyde Park Corner and if I was then in an organisation I met up others and if not, just joined in as an individual.

Thousands of people met there to rally and perhaps to march and I was aware that around the world not just thousands, or hundreds of thousands but millions were marking that day also. As a day to recall struggles in their own particular countries and in solidarity with others around the world.

Generally the various organisations and tendencies marched with those of their own affiliation but in the same demonstration, with the exception of the Workers’ Revolutionary Party, which on at least one occasion marched in as everyone was leaving.

The WRP was an extremely internally dictatorial and externally politically sectarian trotskyist organisation that at one time up to the mid 1980s was probably the largest socialist organisation,⁴ certainly outside the ranks of the Communist Party of Great Britain.

The latter organisation, with the support of some other socialists, many of them left social-democrats, began to push for Mayday to become a national holiday, an objective they achieved in 1978⁵ (followed by the Irish State 15 years later)⁶.

So now I could go to the demonstrations and not lose pay. Great, right?

No, not really. For a start, the holiday was no longer on May 1^st but instead on the nearest Monday to the date. More importantly, people tended to treat it as a holiday rather than a day of international workers’ solidarity. Of course people are entitled to holidays but the essence of the day was gone.

And rather than being larger, the demonstrations grew smaller.

Sculpture made in 1893 known as The Haymarket Martyrs’ Monument (*Photo: Wikipedia*)

A DAY TO RECALL AND AVOW WORKERS’ STRUGGLE

This is not a day for class collaborationists, politicians or union leaders who try to undermine the struggles, water down demands and act as the ruling class’ police on union activists. It is a date for those at minimum in support of militant resistance.

The essence of the day is what we need to keep. A day upholding our struggle, that of the working class against its exploiters, native and foreign. A day remembering our long history of struggle, of victories and defeats, of sacrifices and why the colour of the workers’ flag is red.

It is a day to remember our internationalist duty of solidarity, not as charity or altruism but as partners in struggle across the world, as on a picket line or demonstration we would shield the person beside us and strike out at the company goon, fascist or policeman attacking us.

And rightfully expect the same from those next to us as we ourselves are the subject of assault.

End.

Footnotes

1That was for a six-day week and 14-hour days were not unknown and in rural areas, even a seven-day week.

2Five years later, U.S. Pres. Grover Cleveland, uneasy with the socialist origins of Workers’ Day, signed legislation to make Labor Day—already held in some states on the first Monday of September—the official U.S. holiday in honour of workers. Canada followed suit not long afterward.

3That would certainly have included most Irish, Italians, Sicilians and East Europeans in the 19^th and early 20^th Centuries.

4The WRP was the result of a split in socialist organisations and by the mid-1980s was disintegrating in many smaller organisations. It exists still in name but as shade or sliver of its earlier form.

5May Day became an official public holiday all across the UK in 1978 with provisions for it being made in the Banking and Financial Dealings Act. Prior to that time it had been a holiday only in Scotland. The May Day Bank Holiday was instituted by Michael Foot, then the Labour Employment Secretary to coincide with International Labour Day.

6In the Irish State, the first Monday of May became a public holiday following the Public Holiday Regulations 1993 Act. The holiday was first observed in 1994.

Sources

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haymarket_affair

https://www.britannica.com/topic/May-Day-international-observance

One of the songs of the time for an 8-hour day, recorded by Pete Seeger: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KVWigCuq83w

THEFT OF PALESTINIAN LAND COMMEMORATED IN DUBLIN CITY CENTRE

On April 5, 2023April 5, 2023 By rebelbreezeIn Current Affairs Comment, Current Event Report, Human Rights, Internationalist Solidarity, Israeli Zionism, Middle East, National Liberation, Palestine, Political AnalysisLeave a comment

Diarmuid Breatnach

(Reading time main text: 2 mins.)

Palestinian flags waved as people gathered on the pedestrian reservation in Dublin’s main thoroughfare, O’Connell Street, to mark Palestinian Land Day March 30^th, anniversary of the 1976 confiscation of Palestinian land by the Israeli Zionist State.

Naturally, the event also addresses the continual threat to additional Palestinian land by Zionist settler occupation, Israeli judicial and army demolition of Palestinian housing and intimidation, harassment and terrorism against Palestinians in Jerusalem.

Palestine supporters gathering for Land Day (*Photo: D.Breatnach*)

The Dublin event was organised by the Ireland Palestine Solidarity Campaign, a broad organisation that receives broad support not only across the Irish Left and Republican spectrum but also from a great many non-aligned Irish people and even many among voters for mainstream political parties.

This support was emphasised by frequent drivers in passing traffic, both public, taxis and entirely private, blowing their horns in approval of the rally. The population of the Irish state has gone from being in general support of the Israeli State to being generally hostile to its behaviour.¹

Zionists tend to depict anti-Israeli Zionism as being anti-Jewish and therefore, according to them, “anti-semitic”². Quite apart from the wide inapplicability of the term and some isolated historical examples dredged up³, it fails to account for the change in public attitudes over recent decades.

The iconic GPO in the background (*Photo: D.Breatnach*)

It has been years of viewing even media-sanitised coverage of massacres of Palestinians by the Israeli armed forces with international impunity that has radically altered the opinion of the public in Ireland, in all probability drawing on their own historical experience of foreign occupation.

An elderly Irishman voicing anti-Jewish views did in fact approach the rally but was confronted by other Irish people who emphasised that they were against the Zionist state and not against Jews, soon causing the first man to depart unhappily.

The continual occupation of Palestinian land by Zionist settlers has invalidated even the “two-state solution” (sic) beloved of liberals, making it a practical impossibility, undermining the main ‘concession’ of the supposed solution of the USA-mediated “Palestinian peace process” of 1991.

The refusal of the Israeli authorities to permit the return of Palestinian exiles while welcoming Jewish settlers, most of whom had no even ancestral connection to Palestine, means that the future for Palestinians in the Israeli state can be at best as an oppressed minority.⁴

Other Palestine news

Even as preparations for the Dublin rally took place, Israeli police shot dead a Palestinian they claimed had tried to wrest a gun from them at the Al Haq Mosque but whom Palestinian eye-witnesses said had merely been protesting the police harassment of a woman.

Since the rally, another two Palestinians have been killed in an by Israeli armed forces raid on Nablus. This brings the total number of Palestinians killed by Israeli forces this year alone to over 90, with a high proportion of them children.

Mass protests and even mini-riots by Israeli Jews are currently expressing opposition to the current government’s plans to ‘reform’ the judiciary, to bring it under the greater control of the Executive.

While Israeli Jews are deeply divided on this question the vast majority are agreed on the need to suppress Palestinians, to enforce apartheid and to keep the State as ‘Jewish’ one.

Meanwhile an April 1^st Fool’s Day hoax depicting an executive of the sports shoe manufacturer company Puma declaring a boycott of the Zionist state was widely shared on the Twitter social media to overwhelmingly welcoming comment.

Exposure of the hoax received mixed responses, with wide condemnation from pro-Israeli and even some pro-Palestinian sources but others claiming it helped to widely publicise the manufacturer Puma’s close links to the Zionist State and that would enhance its boycott by many.

End.

Footnotes

1Dublin City has had Jewish municipal Councillors and the sixth President of Israel, Chaim Herzog (Hebrew: חיים הרצוג‎; 17 September 1918 – 17 April 1997) was an Irish-born Israeli politician, general, lawyer and author who served as the 6^th President of Israel between 1983 and 1993. He was born in Belfast and raised primarily in Dublin; his father was Ireland’s Chief rabbi Yitzhak HaLevi Herzog, who immigrated to the British protectorate of Palestine in 1935 and served in the Haganah Zionist paramilitary group, later the Israeli Army where he reached the rank of Major-General. As recently as 1967 the prevailing Irish public opinion seemed sympathetic to the Israeli State and the fictional propaganda and wildly inaccurate historical Hollywood films Exodus (1960) and Cast a Giant Shadow (1966) were widely viewed sympathetically in Ireland.

2The term originally included hatred or fear of all Semitic people, including Arabs and Jews but has come to be understood as exclusively meaning a racist attitudes towards Jews. By no means all Jews are Zionist though Zionists have worked long and hard to make both descriptions interchangeable with a great deal of success among the world Jewish population with possible unfortunate consequences for Jewish populations outside Israel. However many Jews have criticised the behaviour of the Zionist State towards Palestinians, earning the hatred of the Zionists, who cannot label them as anti-semitic and therefore call them “self-hating Jews”.

3And even outright lies and unlikely conspiracy attitudes, such as that Irish authorities are feeding anti-Semitism into the Irish population (see ‘Ireland most hostile country in Europe’ (ynetnews.com) )

4A substantial Israeli Zionist body of opinion favours the total expulsion of Palestinians from the territory ruled by the State.

Sources & Further Information

Land Day – Wikipedia

‘Ireland most hostile country in Europe’ (ynetnews.com)

European countries with most antisemitic attitudes have fewest attacks – poll | The Times of Israel

Israeli police kill man at Jerusalem’s holiest site (breakingnews.ie)

Israeli forces kill two Palestinians in occupied West Bank raid | Israel-Palestine conflict News | Al Jazeera

April Fool’s gone wrong: No, Puma did not sever ties with Israel – Doha News | Qatar

Puma’s sponsorship of Israeli teams highlights the double standard in international football (theconversation.com)

Ireland Palestine Solidarity Campaign website (also has a Facebook page): Home – Ireland Palestine Solidarity Campaign (ipsc.ie)

RUSSIAN AND BURKEAN GAS

On March 10, 2023March 10, 2023 By rebelbreezeIn Current Affairs Comment, Human Rights, Ireland, Mass Media Criticism, NATO, Political Analysis, Satire, US ImperialismLeave a comment

NEWS & VIEWS No.2

10 March 2023

(Reading time: 5mins.)

The mass media is not great for accuracy or wide coverage and even less so for trustworthy analysis but it does often provide entertainment. Not always even intentionally.

Like when the western mass media reported one day that the Russians were shelling the nuclear reactor in the Russian-held sector of the Donbas area and, within hours, that the Russians were shelling from there.

We’ve all seen examples of the unreliability of the mass media (run by capitalists for the capitalist system so what can we expect, after all?) in our own country but hard to imagine more consistently unreliable and biased than its coverage of the war in the Ukraine.

Take for example the bombing of the Nord Stream pipeline on 26 September last year. The undersea pipeline was delivering Russian gas to Germany; its owners are Russian in financing partnership with European companies and it cost around $9.5 Billion euros to build.

It’s a twin pipeline stretching 1,230 km through the Baltic Sea. Each line comprises around 100,000 individual pipes, each 12 m in length.

So who did the wmm (western mass media) line up to blame, or at least to suggest might have carried out this sabotage? Yep, Russia, major shareholders in the pipeline and major route for exporting of their gas for sale to Europe!

Made no sense at all but to a public marinated in msm propaganda for months …

Now, if you were a reasonable detective, you’d be asking yourself: “Who stands to gain from this?” And you’d have to conclude “enemies of Russia”. Next, who would have the capability and opportunity to do it?

Well, states near the sea there who are not friendly to Russia, obviously. Like Sweden and Norway, whose states have reportedly been investigating for months without any apparent results..

But not just them, also US NATO, who has ships nearby and who carried out the BALTOPS 22 major naval exercise not long before the explosions – including underwater exercises. Sweden and Norway had both participated in the BALTOPS 22 joint NATO exercise.

Ships participating in NATO’s BALTOPS 22 exercise last year. (*Images sourced: Internet*)

Who would point the finger of suspicion at them? Not the western mass media, that’s for sure.

However a big fly has very recently landed in the ointment. Seymour Hersh, a long-established USA journalist, who has in his CV a Pullitzer Prize for the exposure of the 1968 US massacre of the Mai Lai village in Vietnam, published a report pointing the finger at the USA.

Of course Russia jumps on that – it’s their pipeline and they consider that the US is fighting a proxy war against them in Ukraine. The US and its allies in turn accuse Russia of just using the accusation to divert attention away from their continued invasion of Ukraine and war there.

Sure, that’s possible. But the blowing of the pipeline is an acknowledged fact and it was blown up by somebody – and the US are looking more and more like the most likely suspects. But don’t expect much help in clearing this up from the wsm.

A naval diver surfaces during NATO’s BALTOP 22 exercise last year. (*Images sourced: Internet*)

Apparently Hersch’s report is not reliable because he didn’t name his inside sources. Really? He didn’t burn his whistleblowing sources on whom, apart from any considerations of decency, he might need to use in future? Or for reason to be trusted by future whistleblowers?!

Now we have a new version. No, not Russia in the frame any more but some “pro-Ukrainian group” or “anti-Putin Russian group”. And the source for this? An unnamed (but suddenly that’s not a problem any more) US Intelligence agency. Yeah, sure.

Neither wsm massaging nor US laundering is going to clean this story up. In pursuance of its drive for world hegemony, the ruling class of the US has been pushing Russia, its main obstacle in Europe, into war.

Well, despite the dangers, the European allies of the USA can go along with that, some (e.g. Poland) more enthusiastically than others, but ok overall. But to sabotage the pipeline delivering gas to Germany, the big power in the EU?

Reckless, US ruling class, reckless. And not just environmentally.

SOURCES

Spare a thought for a family being tortured by the Irish State, which has jailed one of its sons already and went and jailed another one more recently. Yes, you’ve heard of them, the Burke family.

First of all, their son Enoch who was a teacher, objected to a pupil identifying themselves by another gender.

The school required him to refer to this person not as ‘he’ or ‘she’ but as ‘they’. Oh, you can imagine the torment suffered by poor Enoch!

The Burke family leaving from one of Enoch Burke’s court appearances. Enoch is on the far left (not politically) and Simeon in the centre (not politically either). (*Images sourced: Internet*)

True, he might only have to refer to this person a dozen times in the year but … being forced to say “they”. This is a sin against Enoch’s religion! His religious rights are at stake here!

So naturally Enoch had to take a stand and naturally too had to do it in a public situation in the school, for which he got suspended while awaiting a disciplinary hearing.

Enoch’s religious principles required him to refuse the suspension and keep attending the school and to disobey a court order, for which (and for his stalwart protests in court) he was sent to prison in contempt of court.

Eventually, of course, he was sacked but he applied to the High Court to prevent that, during which attendance he and his family antagonised the judge by their interruptions and manner.

Then the younger son, Simeon, emulating his older brother, refused to be silent and accused the judge of “forcing the people of Ireland to accept transgender”, obviously an attack on his religion too.

The judge was “shoving transgenderism down the throats of the people of Ireland, not only in the schools but in the universities”, cried out the younger Burke. The judge ordered him to leave the court and when he declined, the Gardaí were called.

Young Simeon was removed, during which he was, he told the Judge, “shocked and shaken to the core” and had “been treated in a brutal fashion” by a “mob of Gardaí”. And charged with breach of the Public Order.

Left: Enoch Burke; right: Simeon Burke leaving the High Court. (*Images sourced: Internet*)

This raised unkind comments on social media from people alleging that they knew Garda “brutal treatment” in Dublin and in Rossport and that Simeon simply had no idea (some going so far as to cruelly dub him “Simple Simeon”, a reference to a similar-sounding children’s game).

Simeon was offered bail in his own name for a paltry sum and with no conditions except to stay away from the High Court but the brave young Burke refused to sign his bail form. So he went to jail too.

Simeon Burke should know something about the law, having studied it at University of Ireland, Galway. He ran for Student Union President there against the Left in general, where, according to Isaac Burke’s media, out of 2,500 votes cast, he received 482 first preference votes.

The legalisation of contraception, divorce and gay marriage are all presumably “crimes against God” too in the eyes of the Burke family and the High Court judges are sworn to protect those decisions.

Some unkind people are pointing out that if the Burkes consider the High Court to be wrong and its operation against their religion, why take their case there for adjudication? Yes, that is puzzling.

But the substantive and original issue remains: should a man of religious conviction be forced to use the third person plural pronoun to refer to any person?

And, come to think of it, did the Burkes object when Christianity was being “shoved down the throats of the people of Ireland, not only in the schools but in the universities”?

End.

SOURCES

Seymour Hersh claims US Navy behind Nord Stream 2 pipeline explosion (nypost.com)

BALTOPS – Wikipedia

Nord Stream explosions: US officials say intelligence indicates pro-Ukrainian group sabotaged pipelines | World News | Sky News

Carlow Nationalist — ‘I am not a criminal’: Simeon Burke charged with breach of peace after court incident | Carlow Nationalist (carlow-nationalist.ie)

Who is Simeon Burke, the younger brother of Enoch arrested after scenes at Court of Appeal? (msn.com)

Battle lines drawn at NUI Galway Students’ Union elections – Burke Broadcast