Tag: Irish history

BLANKET, NO WASH AND HUNGER-STRIKE – FIVE YEARS OF REPUBLICAN PRISONER STRUGGLE AGAINST CRIMINALISATION

On By rebelbreezeIn British imperialism, Guerrilla Action, History, Human Rights, Ireland, Irish Left, Irish Republicanism, National Liberation, Political Analysis, Political PrisonersLeave a comment

Diarmuid Breatnach

(Reading time main text: 4 mins.)

We’ve recently passed by the date of the start of a monumental prison resistance struggle when IRA prisoner Kiaran Nugent refused on 14 September 1976 to wear prison uniform.

The Hunger Strike of 1981 tends to be remembered as an isolated event in the history of the Irish Republican prisoners’ opposition to criminalisation. But it was five years of struggle through stages that ended eventually in the martyrdom of ten Republicans.

Irish Republicans had been in imprisoned in British jails since the late 18th Century.1 After the Irish national bourgeoisie accepted the British partition of Ireland, Republican prisoners were held in prisons in the Irish State and in the British colony of the Six Counties and at times in Britain too.

Long Kesh/ the Maze Prison, in the occupied 6 Counties.

This situation continued on low but constant level with higher points during the Civil War (1922-1923), the pogroms in the Six Counties, the 1930s,2 the 1940s, the Border Campaign (1958-1962) and the Civil Rights campaign from the mid-1960s onwards.

The Wikipedia section on Special Category Status states that it was introduced for Republican prisoners serving sentences in the Six Counties in 19723 but neglects to mention that it was already widespread among nationalist prisoners due to internment without trial a year earlier.

The British introduced internment without trial in their Irish colony in 1971 and one of the effects of that measure was to put a huge number of mostly nationalists from the Six County colony into jail. These prisoners were all accorded Special Category Status and wore their own clothes.

British soldiers capturing and taking away a civilian in the Occupied Six Counties of Ireland (Photo sourced: Internet)

Over the life of the measure, 1,981 people were interned without trial in the Six Counties (British Army’s Operation Demetrius). Of those detained 1,874 were from a Catholic/Republican background while, towards the end, 107 were from a Protestant/Loyalist background.

Special Category Status distinguished the internees from other political prisoners which were few in number at the time but its major impact was to distinguish them visibly from social prisoners or what are commonly called ‘criminals’ and was often called Political Prisoner Status.

In June 1972 other nationalists/ Irish Republicans4 charged and convicted were also accorded Special Category Status,5 which came to be seen as prisoner of war status for opponents of the British colonial occupation, despite Britain’s claims that the prisoners were just criminals.

Early protests in support of the prisoners ‘on the blanket’ in 1976. It was mostly women relatives, partners and their friends who launched the Republican prisoner solidarity movement. As the photo legend also illustrates, there was still another male political prison, Crumlin Road (‘the Crum’) and Armagh Jail for female Republican prisoners. (Photo sourced: Internet)

Internment without trial in the Six Counties, generally recognised as a failure from both political and military points of view, was formally ended after four-and-a half years on 5 December 19756. As resistance continued, including now an armed aspect, more prisoners saw the inside of jails.

But they were still under Special Category regime and wearing their own clothes. The following year on 5 March 1976, Merlyn Rees as Secretary of State implemented the Labour Government’s7 decision to remove Special Category Status from any subsequently-convicted prisoners.

MERL

Merlyn Rees, British Labour Home Secretary who removed the Special Status from the Irish Republican prisoners, which precipitated the struggle that ended in the prison hunger strikes of 1981. He died at 85 years of age, having lived much longer than many of his victims. (Photo sourced: Internet)

The first Irish Republican prisoner to be informed he would have to wear prison uniform under the new rules was Kiaran Nugent. His reply, though pithy has gone down in the records of Irish resistance statements: “You’ll have to nail it to my back.”

Stripped naked, Vol. Nugent was put in a cell, from which he found a blanket and wrapped it around himself. It was a natural act to cover his nakedness but he may also have known that Irish Republican prisoners of the Irish State in the 1940s had done the same.

The Blanket Protest had begun and spread as more prisoners coming into the prison system took the same stand. There it might have stayed were it not for the violence and cruelty of HM Prison regime by its warders regularly assaulting prisoners on their way to and back from the showers and toilets.

In 1978 the Irish Republican prisoners in the Maze H-Blocks8 resolved to remain in their cells, emptying their excreta out the window and their urine under their cell doors into the passageway. So the prison authorities blocked up their windows and warders pushed urine back under their doors.

The Irish prisoners then had nowhere to put their excreta so they smeared it on the walls. They built a dam of bread fragments around their door to prevent their urine being pushed back in. These conditions they endured until the prison riot squad beat them out of their cells for power-hosing.

Those who watched the film Hunger (2008) directed by Steve McQueen will have seen some of that and how they treated the naked prisoners too, beaten to the ground, anus probed for contraband messages or materials, the same gloved hand often opening their mouths to look inside also.

Their flesh was forcibly abraded with scrubbing brushes and they were often inserted into cells still wet from the hosing. Once back inside cells, they continued the protest.

On 27 October 1980 seven Republican prisoners, against the orders of IRA GHQ, embarked on a hunger strike included the Five Demands to break the system, which they terminated after 53 days on receiving promises from the authorities which were then reneged upon.

The 5 Demands:

  1. The right not to wear a prison uniform;
  2. The right not to do prison work;
  3. The right of free association with other Republican prisoners, and to organise educational and recreational pursuits;
  4. The right to one visit, one letter and one parcel per week;
  5. Full restoration of remission lost through the protests.9

Outraged at the reneging, Republicans renewed the hunger strike with their previous Provisionals’ jail Commanding Officer10 insisting he be first. So was Bobby Sands the first to die and another nine martyrs behind, seven Provisional IRA and 3 INLA as they came on to the strike in sequence.

Photograph images with names of the ten Hunger Strike Martyrs of 1981 in the sequence of their death: Vols. Bobby Sands (IRA), Francis Hughes (IRA), Ray McCreech (IRA), Patsy O’Hara (INLA), Joe McDonnell (IRA), Martin Hurson (IRA), Kevin Lynch (INLA), Kieran Doherty (IRA), Thomas McElwee (IRA), Mickey Devine (INLA). (Photo sourced: Internet)

The effect of the hunger strikes of 1981 was huge in Ireland, Britain and further abroad. IRA Vol. Kieran Nugent had an important hand in pushing the process but so did Mervyn Rees, William Whitelaw, Brian Faulker and Edward Heath,11 in a long process of repression and resistance.

Today the struggle continues with approximately 20 Irish Republican prisoners, male and female in prisons between the neo-colonial Irish state and the British colony of the Six Counties. They have essentially won the five demands, though official harassment in the colony’s jails is endemic.

End.
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APPENDIX: Brief biography of Kieran Nugent (12th September 1958 – 3rd May 2000).

Volunteer Kieran Nugent began his short life presumably in the occupied Six Counties of Ireland but all the references I have found so far begin with him at the age of 15 years of age, standing at a corner with a friend on the corner of Merrion Street and Grosvenor Road, West Belfast.

It was 20th March 1973.12 A car pulled up beside them asking for directions but an occupant of the vehicle then opened fire with a submachine gun. Nugent was seriously wounded, shot eight times in the chest, arms and back. His friend, Bernard McErlean, aged 16, was killed.

Kieran Nugent, first of the Republican prisoners ‘on the Blanket’ (Photo sourced: Internet)

Another youth was seriously injured also.13 Local people reported that a British Army Saracen armoured car had crashed through a nearby barricade and that was what had allowed entry for the murder gang, later claimed by the UDA, a British proxy Loyalist militia.

“At some point afterwards, Nugent joined the IRA.”14 The youngest age for IRA membership was 17 and Nugent aged 16 was arrested by the British Army, automatically refused bail, and at trial, after five months on remand in Crumlin Road Prison, Belfast, case withdrawn, he was released.

Kieran became an active volunteer until his arrest and internment without trial, on 9 February 1975. He served nine months in Cage 4 of Long Kesh Detention Centre (later renamed The Maze) in the Six Counties, until 12 November 1975. But was arrested and imprisoned again on 12 May 1976.

Vol. Nugent was charged with hijacking of a bus, a frequent Republican resistance activity in Belfast where the vehicle would then be utilised as a barricade. His sentence was three years in jail which he was commencing when he began the blanket protest.

The cause of death for Kieran Nugent was given as heart attack. A number of his acquaintances remarked that he had sunk into alcoholism with some adding that the movement had given him no support. Whether true or not, many former Republican prisoners of the period had shortened lives.

FOOTNOTES

SOURCES

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

SC status generalised for Republican prisoners: https://cain.ulster.ac.uk/events/bfriday/bac.htm

https://cain.ulster.ac.uk/events/intern/chron.htm

1Republican prisoners were held in British jails in Ireland, Britain and Australia – and for centuries before that Irish clan members had been incarcerated in Britain and Ireland.

2When the anti-fascist struggles also contributed to prisoner of the states.

3https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special_Category_Status

4I am using the term “nationalists” as a broad and not strictly accurate term to describe the people of the Catholic ghettoes and areas of the British colony; of course many of them could have been also or instead mainly democrats, socialists. The term “Irish Republicans” I am using to describe those belonging to organisations nominally of Irish Republican kind but again how much each was truly Republican in ideology varied, for example in their opinion of the appropriate role of the Catholic Church in Irish society.

5Sentenced and remanded in custody Irish Republicans in jails went ona hunger strike for ‘political status’ in 1972 and the Provisional IRA during the Truce negotiations of June that year asked for political status for them which William Whitelaw conceded.

6https://cain.ulster.ac.uk/events/intern/chron.htm However internment without trial in fact continued by charged Republicans being refused bail and remaining in jail for two years or more awaiting trial. Bail decision and trial would be in the special no-jury Diplock Courts.

7It is difficult to understand any Irish person or indeed any anti-imperialist putting any faith in a British Labour government. Apart from its long imperialist history, it formed part of the national government that executed leaders of the 1916 Rising, sent troops to the Six Counties to quell the civil rights struggle in 1969, introduced the Prevention of Terrorism Act in Britain in 1974 and framed a score of Irish people for bombings, removed Special Category Status in 1976 …

8A special male political prison containing panopticon-designed blocks in Lisburn, Co. Antrim, built in 1971 and closed in 2000, the future of the empty buildings uncertain. Female Republican political prisoners were kept in Armagh Jail and fought with different tactics, including taking the Prison Governor hostage at one point.

9Prisoners disobeying prison rules are punished in a number of ways, one of which is loss of the remission off sentence normally expected.

10In a long tradition the prisoners of each political group in jail elect their leader and previous ranks are abandoned for the duration of the incarceration.

11In sequence: Labour Party Secretary of State; Conservative party Cabinet Minister; Unionist Prime Minister of the colony; Conservative Prime Minister of the UK.

12https://www.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=672093692010347&id=100076291652304&_rdr

13Ibid.

14Various sources

Start of the Irish Starvation in the News

On By rebelbreezeIn Capitalism, Genocide, History, Ireland, irish history, Political AnalysisLeave a comment

Diarmuid Breatnach

(Reading time: 2 mins.)

On 13th September 1845 the widely-read British weekly publication The Gardener’s Chronicle apprehensively reported the appearance of the blight on potatoes in Ireland but doubtful if the full extent of the holocaust to follow was expected.

(Sourced: Internet)

True, no other national population in any other known part of the world was as heavily dependent on the potato as was Ireland’s. Other crops were grown but were mostly destined as feed for domestic animals1 or for export directly or indirectly as in the case of alcoholic drinks.2

A national diet is that of the mass of the population, which in Ireland was the peasantry. On the potato and a little milk the Irish peasantry grew strong enough to be recognised in Britain as healthy able workers, seasonally in agriculture or longer-term in manufacturing and construction.

They were reputed to be the tallest and most fecund in Europe, according to Frederick Engels writing in Britain a year before the piece in the Chronicle.3 In Ireland the peasantry were for the most part tenants-at-will or landless labourers for the settler big landowners and descendants.

The original Irish had been expropriated by sword, fire and pen (legal decrees) and their expropriators lived on the rents they extracted from their tenants in a mixture of crops, animals, cash and labour. After the abolition of the Irish Parliament,4 most big landowners found no reason to even live in Ireland.

The estates of the absentee landlords were then managed by agents, middlemen who forwarded the extracted wealth to their masters in Britain, or perhaps travelling ‘on the Continent’, or trying their hand in the American colony, minus the agents’ commission, of course.

As people went hungry, meat, dairy and grain continued to be exported.

The dependency of the Irish mass on the potato was known of course and even mocked in some ruling British quarters at times. But so were the Irish landlord aristocracy who seemed to have no interest in developing industry.

But could anyone predict that the blight would intensify each year and that the Government of the UK would tolerate such devastation in one of its parts? By the time it had run its course six years later, Ireland had lost at least 2.5 million of its original over eight million5 and more were emigrating.

Memorial to the Great Starvation on Dublin’s north side quays. (Sourced: Internet)

And both the Irish planter aristocracy and the cotter class of Irish peasantry had been wiped out, leaving the field to the Gombeen6 class of money-lenders and bigger farmers, the latter now expanding their holdings and who would farm meat instead of agricultural produce.

When the overall national population stabilised again it did so at five million,7 at which level, despite a high birth and survival rate, it remained until the early 1990s. The magic trick was achieved by constant annual emigration, giving the Irish one of the largest diasporas in the world.8

The Gardener’s Chronicle’s writer noting the arrival of Phytophthora infestans could not have imagined the extent of its devastation. But if he knew the history of Ireland as well as that of the blight, he would have concluded that it was not the worst blight upon the Irish nation.

No, that was the arrival of the Anglo-Normans in 1169, with the second-worst blight being the growth of the Gombeen class.

end.

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FOOTNOTES

1Grazing animals live on forage in Ireland but in winter or if overgrazed must be given additional food, while draught animals need cereal feed, typically oats. Pigs and domestic fowl were fed on mixtures of potato, beet, pulses and domestic leftovers.

2Typically eorna (barley) for beer brewing and whiskey distilling. These products continued to be produced and exported during the years of famine. Hops are also used for brewing but much was imported from southern England where climatic conditions are more favourable.

3The Condition of the Working Class in England (1844).

41799, followed immediately in 1801by Ireland becoming part of the United Kingdom and Irish MPs being required to attend the Westminster Parliament.

5A historical and statistical riposte to the anti-immigration claim that today “Ireland is full”.

6Originally from the Irish word Gaimbín and applied to moneylenders and land speculators during and following the holocaust period it, came to be applied by many to the Irish neo-colonial national bourgeoisie.

7Of the whole nation, with over 3 million in the Irish state and under two million in the British colony, the Six Counties.

8The bleeding through emigration was constant but fluctuated in degree, with a high point in the 1950s when it amounted to 15% of the Irish state (i.e. of the 26 Counties) and another in the 1980s.

SOURCES

https://www.irishhistorian.com/OnThisDayInHistory.html#SEPTEMBER

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Gardeners%27_Chronicle

https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/agricultural-and-biological-sciences/phytophthora-infestans

https://www.ucc.ie/en/emigre/history/

Click to access TCM-Emigration-Ireland-FINAL.pdf

A SATURDAY IN DUBLIN: TWO MARCHES AND A CONCERT

On By rebelbreezeIn British imperialism, Guerrilla Action, History commemoration, Human Rights, Ireland, Irish Left, Irish Republicanism, National Sovereignty, Political Prisoners, Song, Song in StruggleLeave a comment

Clive Sulish

(Reading time: 4 mins.)

Dublin city centre on Saturday saw two marches scheduled to start at the same time from the Garden of Remembrance, both of which were drenched by heavy showers, as were fans attending the Robbie Williams concert in nearby Croke Park stadium.

The first march to set off was the largest, the Harvey Morrison protest, the Hunger Strike Commemoration organised by Dublin Independent Republicans waiting for the space to clear in order to assemble theirs, with pipers, band and various banners forming up.

Supporters of both marches are mingled here though the majority are there for the Harvey Morrison march. (Photo: R.Breeze)

The Harvey Morrison protest was about the long wait the named boy had for appropriate treatment from the Irish health service for his condition of spina bifada and scoliosis. As he waited, his spine continued to curve causing him pain and though underwent surgery last year died on July 29th.

It emerged last year that Harvey had been removed from Children’s Health Ireland’s (CHI) urgent scoliosis surgery waiting list, without his family being informed. In 2017 Simon Harris declared that no child would wait for more than four months for scoliosis treatment.

Apart from those requiring specialist treatment for rarer medical conditions, people with much more common complaints face many hours in A & E before being seen by a doctor or having an X-ray taken, with an average of 500 people admitted to hospital on trolleys daily awaiting beds.1

Seven different speakers addressed them at their rally on Custom House Quay, being well received by the crowd with a small exception, which was when a participant shouted ‘Traitor!’at Mary Lou Mac Donald, President of the Sinn Fein party, before being told by march stewards to keep quiet.

Calling SF (and any in Government) politicians ‘traitor’ is a frequent position of those on the Far-Right2 in the Irish State, for racist reasons. Indeed, a number of Far-Right activists were spotted among the marchers but it seems they were unable to dominate the event.

THE HUNGER STRIKE MARTYRS COMMEMORATION

A handful of fascists were also observed watching the Hunger Strike martyrs’ commemoration gather and photographing them but when some of their targets began to photograph them in turn, they walked away, presumably to go and promote themselves and their lies on social media.

Fascists who had been filming the Hunger Strike Commemoration moving off as a camera turns on them. (Photo: R.Breeze)

Irish Republicans, who are opposed to (and by) the Far-Right, also call Sinn Féin ‘traitors’ but for the reason that they consider the party has left the struggle and colludes with the neo-colonial ruling class of the state and with the English occupation in the Six Counties.

The pipers prior to setting off on the march. (Photo: R.Breeze)

Two pipers led off the Hunger Strike commemoration organised by Independent Dublin Republicans followed by a full colour party and the James Connolly Republican Flute Band, from Derry. In traditional two lines style they marched through onlooking crowds in O’Connell Street.

The march crossed the Liffey into D’Olier Street, back up O’Connell Street and after a pause at the Government-threatened GPO, into Parnell Street, then around the western and northern sides of the Square and back into the Remembrance Garden for the commemoration ceremony.

The Hunger Strike Commemoration march proceeding down from the Garden of Remembrance and just about to enter Dublin’s main thoroughfare, O’Connell Street. (Photo: R.Breeze)

And it rained – it poured down rain. Which was bad enough on the audience but much much worse on the colour party in shirt and trousers, the RFB members and those holding the portraits of the ten hunger strike martyrs and a number of banners.

Dixie Elliot was introduced as the main speaker, well-known in Republican circles, former member of the Provisional IRA, an ex-POW and ‘Blanketman’.3

(Photo: R.Breeze)

Seemingly undeterred by the pouring rain, Elliot spoke at substantial length though whether through lack of projection or faulty amplifier, much of what he said was lost to many in the audience. From snatches he could be heard going through the history of the recent three decades’ war.

The targets of his condemnation were not alone the British occupation and the Irish State’s complicity but also the leadership of the Irish Republican movement who had abandoned the struggle and become part of the colonial administration in the Six Counties.

(Photo: R.Breeze)
(Photo: R.Breeze)

Expressing solidarity with the Palestinian struggle and against imperialism, Elliot also condemned the far-Right in Ireland who claim to be ‘patriots’ in order to promote their racism and he counter-posed the example of Bobby Sands’ internationalism in his poem The Rhythm of Time.

The Connolly Memorial Republican Flute Band setting out on the march from Garden of Remembrance. (Photo: R.Breeze)

Both Elliot and the Chairperson called for solidarity with Irish Republican political prisoners and the framed Craigavon Two, convicted in a no-jury political Occupation court and still in jail 16 years later.

Finally chairperson Ado Perry thanked people for their attendance, the colour party and audience stood to attention and the piper played the air to the chorus of the song generally known as Amhrán na bhFiann (and of which the chorus melody is also the ‘National Anthem’ of the Irish State).

(Photo: R.Breeze)

CROKE PARK CONCERT

The Gaelic Athletic Association stadium in Croke Park was the venue for a Robbie Williams concert in Dublin and the fans were flocking into town in rainproof macs that the marchers could have done with. The previous weekend it had been the Manchester Gallaghers, i.e. Oasis there.

The finals in Gaelic football for men and women and in hurling have been played in Croke Park in previous weekends and now it seems it’s rock concerts season.

The far-Right protested the couple of occasions that the stadium was rented to celebrate the Muslim feast day of Eid. Apparently English musicians and bands playing there are are not problematic for them. But then nor are the banks and property speculators causing the housing crisis.4

End.

(Photo: R.Breeze)
(Photo: R.Breeze)
(Photo: R.Breeze)
Main speaker, Dixie Elliot, speaking at rally in Garden of Remembrance at end of Hunger Strike Commemoration march. (Photo: R.Breeze)

FOOTNOTES

FURTHER INFORMATION

https://www.irishtimes.com/politics/2025/08/13/family-of-recently-deceased-boy-harvey-morrison-sherratt-to-meet-simon-harris/

https://www.irishtimes.com/news/ireland/irish-news/adams-and-mcguinness-betrayed-everyone-a-former-ira-prisoner-reflects-on-troubles-1.4578091

https://www.facebook.com/p/Independent-Dublin-Republicans-100090801607007

1https://www.inmo.ie/News-Campaigns/Trolley-Watch/

2It is also the position of a number of Irish Republican organisations and individuals for entirely different reasons. See e.g https://www.irishtimes.com/news/ireland/irish-news/adams-and-mcguinness-betrayed-everyone-a-former-ira-prisoner-reflects-on-troubles-1.4578091

3One of the Irish Republican ‘blanket protester’ prisoners who resisted the attempt of the colonial prison service to make them wear regulation prison uniform, wearing underwear and a blanket instead. This condition degenerated into the ‘no wash’ and ‘dirty protests’ which the prisoners sought to overcome with the hunger strikes of 1980 and 1981 when 10 prisoners died.

4Which the Far-Right blame instead on migrants.

“Smash Landlords and Vultures – Universal Social Housing Now!”

On By rebelbreezeIn Capitalism, Current Affairs Comment, Current Event Report, Housing Struggle, Human Rights, Ireland, Irish Left, Irish Republicanism, Political Analysis, Socialist Revolution, SongLeave a comment

Diarmuid Breatnach

(Reading time: 4 mins.)

The Irish socialist Republican group Anti-Imperialist Action today issued a call to revolution centred around a need for universal social housing to resolve the chronic housing crisis in Ireland (and in particular in Dublin).

This housing crisis has at January’s count left nearly 15,300 living on the streets or in emergency accommodation1 with another unknown number in inappropriate accommodation such as sofa-surfing with friends and relatives or in IPAS centres for refugees.

Rampant property speculation has made a handful of bankers and speculators very rich and along with the social misery of thousands, facilitated the demolition of buildings of historical and architectural importance and their replacement by usually unsightly glass and concrete.2

Well, so what of AIA’s call? Different organisations make various calls at different times but do they have any effect? However, this one has some important distinctions, one of which is that this organisation actively practised its preaching when it called for the occupation of empty properties.

In May 2022 the AIA founded a sub-group called Revolutionary Housing League that occupied empty buildings in Dublin, refused to comply with court orders3 to evacuate or, in court, to agree to bail conditions that they would desist from further building occupations.

‘James Connolly House’ in occupation by the RHL in May/ June 2022. Photo: D.Breatnach)

The first building targeted on May 1st was a former Seamen’s Institute building on Eden Quay, renamed Connolly House, metres from O’Connell Bridge, empty for years since the Salvation Army, a religion-based charity NGO, had lost government funding for its youth homeless accommodation project.

On the morning of June 9th 2022 over a hundred Gardaí, with an armed unit on standby and a helicopter overhead, stormed the building4 and arrested the only occupants, two RHL supporters. In court later that day, they were bailed without making any promise not to re-occupy buildings.5

It seemed that the State was sensitive to the dangers of creating martyrs around the housing crisis.

Instead, RHL renewed its call for mass action across the country to occupy empty buildings. And went on to occupy other buildings, including Ionad Sean Heuston near the eponymous Bridge and another in Belvidere Road, eviction here also including massive police forces and helicopter.

Seen from the north bank of the Liffey, the Starry Plough flag flying high over the ‘Ionad Sean Heuston’ occupied building. The Heuston train station is behind the photographer while the Bridge is out of frame to the right. (Photo: D.Breatnach)

Success for the RHA’s campaign depended on, if not a mass, at least a substantial take-up of its call to occupy empty buildings backed by civil disobedience to the courts. Neither happened and the AIA was far too small to carry the campaign on its own and so suspended it.

It is worth noting that though many organisations and individuals had agitated around housing, including the high-media-profile occupation of Apollo House in December 2016, backed by noted individuals,6 none had initiated the steps advocated by RHA/ AIA.

‘Homes Not Hostels’ banner on Tara Street side of occupied Apollo House in December 2016 or January 2017. The building was later demolished and numbers of homeless people continued to rise.
(Photo: D.Breatnach)

Amongst a general lack of social condition agitation among the post-GFA7 Irish Republican movement, only the socialist-Republican éirigí organisation had militantly taken up the housing struggle while calling for universal social housing — but it had not led a campaign of occupations.

The electoral left and some anarchists had occupied some empty buildings but had either left when threatened by the State or been evicted by security thugs backed up by Gardaí, without a follow-up of further occupations. Nor had they contextualised housing occupations as part of revolution.

So the record of AIA is stand-alone among the Republican and Socialist Left so far and therefore, one might speculate, failed to inspire a mass movement.

I am not ashamed to say that I supported AIA’s campaign although I did not take part myself in any of the occupations. However I did not view it as an immediate cause for revolution, nor do I now. The Irish gombeen8 State, I believe, can survive the supply of universal social housing.

The ‘rack-renting’ landlords, both big and small, cannot. But the Gombeen class, closely linked to the landlords and speculators will ditch them if they are confronted – not with the suffering of the masses, about which they care not, nor protests – but with the real alternative of social revolution.

The State has access to the means to fund such a campaign of new housing construction and of renovation/ repurposing of existing empty buildings9 by local municipal authorities.

In such a radical change of the Irish neo-colonial capitalist system, people would have more disposable income and purchasing would increase dramatically, stimulating production and expansion of goods and services and raising people’s living standards (and expectations).

Property speculation would be hugely reduced in scope but would continue – in hotels and office blocks, for example and big projects such as transport networks. And possibly in sale of land to State and local authorities for housing projects.

So, essentially a reformist project, not revolutionary at all, right? No, not at all necessarily. Reformist projects fought for with revolutionary intent and energy, teach the masses their potential when they unite in struggle. It also tests their leaders before their eyes, in their experience.

I see universal social housing therefore as a social necessity for the mass of people living on the streets, in hotel-rooms, sofa-surfing, in insecure and inappropriate housing, facing eviction from debt-mortgaged housing (the cost of which has already been paid several times over).

Universal social housing is a social necessity and an urgent one and it is an objective for which all true humanity in Ireland should strive. Revolutionaries should fight for it, pointing towards the evils of the capitalist system and the need for its replacement by a socialist system.

The struggle should be fought relying on the strength and capacity of the working people and will need to embody civil disobedience and sacrifice, while at the same the movement needs to safeguard capacity for other struggles such as against fascism, imperialism and colonialism.

In that context therefore, I think we should unreservedly support the call of the AIA’s statement today and the headline of this article.

End

FOOTNOTES

SOURCES

Anti-Imperialist Action statement on Telegram 19/08/2025

Homelessness statistics:https://www.focusireland.ie/press-release/homeless-figures-increase-to-a-record-high-of-15286-as-focus-Ireland-urge-government-to-prioritise-new-social-housing-for-vulnerable-families/

Empty property statistics: https://www.socialjustice.ie/article/vacancy-and-dereliction-ireland

APPENDIX

Text of Anti-Imperialist Action statement 19/08/2025:

Housing is a key part of the Republican struggle for National Liberation and Socialist Revolution in Ireland.

Housing is one of the key pressure points in the class struggle in Ireland today, due to the artificial housing crisis created by those in power, designed at driving up profits for landlords and imperialist housing vultures.

Since the days of Tone, Irish Republicans have recognised that land and housing are completely tied to the fight for freedom, and today it is by showing the Republican struggle will solve the land and housing issue once and for all, to the benefit of the working class, that Republicans can mobilise our class to join the fight.

There should be no doubt about the Republican position on housing. The 1916 Proclamation stated that ‘the ownership of Ireland by the People of Ireland’. The Democratic Programme placed public right above private property and stated, It shall be the first duty of the Government of the Republic to make provision … to secure that no child shall suffer hunger or cold from lack of food, clothing, or shelter’.

Landlords and foreign imperialist housing vultures have no place in the Republican vision of a Free Ireland, where homes would be provided by the Republic to all Citizens.

AIA advocates a system of Universal Social Housing as the Republican Housing System that guarantees all citizens a home, and rents based on ability to pay. This system is the death knell for landlords and vultures and it is why the garrison class resists it.

AIA has played a leading roll in the militant housing direct actions of recent years and will continue to do so.

If you want to fight the landlords and vultures and work to bring about the conditions for a Republican system of Universal Social Housing, then join AIA!

Raise the cry of the working class: Smash Landlords and Vultures – Universal Social Housing Now!

1https://www.focusireland.ie/press-release/homeless-figures-increase-to-a-record-high-of-15286-as-focus-Ireland-urge-government-to-prioritise-new-social-housing-for-vulnerable-families/

2Taking history tour groups around Dublin I often comment that Dublin has suffered three period of architectural devastation, all in the last century: 1) the British artillery bombardment during the 1916 Rising; 2) the Irish neo-colonial State’s bombardment during its Civil War; 3) the property speculators’ rampage from the 1970s onwards.
Pete St. John, in his song Dublin In the Rare Aul’ Times:

“Fare thee well, sweet Anna Liffey,

I can no longer stay

And watch the new glass cages

Spring up along the quays …”

3In one of which I was wrongfully named myself since no evidence of my presence had been provided by the landlords to the court – merely an article by me describing the occupation of ‘Sean Heuston House’ reproducing some photographs taken inside. See https://rebelbreeze.com/2022/09/22/concert-in-occupied-building-murals-pickets-and-court-cases-the-revolutionary-housing-league-spreads-the-fight/

4https://www.facebook.com/JamesConnollyHouse/videos/2172514896242639

5I passed by this building recently which, three years later, appeared to be still empty.

6The occupiers eventually agreed to leave under a mixture of threat and promises and the building was demolished.

7The Good Friday Agreements of 1999, the Irish instalment of the imperialist pacification process, following South Africa’s and Palestine’s versions, later to visit Colombia and Turkish Kurdistan.

8From the Irish word gaimbín, first applied to the hustlers opportunistically buying up Irish land in the midst of the disaster of the Great Starvation (1845-1849) but now applied to the Irish comprador or foreign-dependent native capitalist class.

9https://www.socialjustice.ie/article/vacancy-and-dereliction-ireland

OASIS, MANCHESTER & THE FENIANS

On By rebelbreezeIn Britain, Cultural Comment, Current Affairs Comment, Current Event Report, Internationalist Solidarity, Ireland, Irish Diaspora, irish history, Irish Republicanism, National Liberation, Political Analysis, Political Prisoners, Song, Song in Struggle, Workers' Struggles2 Comments

Diarmuid Breatnach

(Reading time: 4 mins.)


The Oasis rock band are performing on 16 and 17 August in Croke Park, the Gaelic sports stadium in Dublin, to a sold out capacity of 82,300. Brothers Liam and Noel Gallagher are the two leading members of the band.

Oasis-marked t-shirts and caps are being sold from stalls in the city and posters announcing the forthcoming concerts adorned shop windows and lampposts but how many fans know the Gallaghers’ background?

Liam and Noel Gallagher of Oasis (Source imag: Internet)

Liam and Noel were born in Manchester to Irish migrant parents but their mother Peggy split from her abusive husband and moved elsewhere in Manchester, taking the kids with her. Liam dedicated Stand by Me to her on Saturday night and gave a shout-out to her her birthplace in Co. Mayo.1

Ireland fed the British ‘industrial revolution’ and the Irish have a long association with Manchester. In 1845 the city’s factories were already attracting Irish workers and its farms probably also agricultural workers to replace English labourers deserting the farms for the factories.

Friedrich Engels wrote The Condition of the Working Class in England,2 published in 1845 (the first year of the Great Hunger) and mentioned the Irish migrants not too favourably. He was writing mostly about Salford, the subject of Ewan McColl’s Dirty Old Town,3 just outside the city then.

By the time Engels’ book was published, the Great Starvation was gearing up. Uncomplimentary references to the Jews can also be found in that work but whatever about that ethnic minority,4 Engels changed his mind radically about the Irish in Britain and came to admire them greatly.

Instrumental in learning about the Irish for Engels were two Irish sisters living in Manchester, Lizzie and Mary Burns, illiterate but intelligent and militant mill workers. Mary and Friedrich became life partners and, after her death, Friedrich became Lizzie’s partner thereafter.

The Irish, as the natives and diaspora of what is often referred to as “England’s first colony” were of considerable interest to the revolutionary partnership of Engels and Karl Marx and more so still as the Fenian movement, the Irish Republican Brotherhood, spread throughout Britain.5

Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, leading theoreticians and activists of the revolutionary socialist movement. (Source: Workers Liberty)

A largely proletarian movement, the Fenians were admitted to the First International Workingmen’s Association6; no doubt the Irish struggle against British domination greatly influenced the political opinions of Marx and Engels in relation to nations under colonialist rule by capitalist states.

The struggle spilled over from Ireland into the Irish diaspora, particularly that in North America, Australia and Britain. In Australia the Fenians’ role seems to have been mostly in facilitating and escaping British jails there7 while in America, they invaded the British colony of Canada.8

The charge of the Fenians (wearing green uniforms) under Colonel John O’Neill at the Battle of Ridgeway, near Niagara, Canada West, on June 2, 1866. In reality, the Fenians had their own green flags but wore a very mixed bag of Union and Confederate uniforms (if they still had them, or parts of them left over from the Civil War), or civilian garb, with strips of green as arm or hat bands to distinguish themselves. (library and archives canada, c-18737)

In Britain itself, the Fenians went to war against the ruling class with dynamite. To spy on them, Scotland Yard created the Irish Special Branch which evolved into the Special Branch, the political police in Britain and in any colony the British had since then.9

The activities of the US Fenians intersected with those of Britain-based Fenians when two of the former, Thomas J. Kelly and Timothy Deasy, American Civil War veterans, were arrested in England. On their prison van’s journey to jail it was ambushed10 and both officers spirited away.

Artists’ impression of the rescue of the Fenian prisoners.
(Image source: Internet)

Unfortunately and entirely unintentionally, Constable Brett was killed during the breakout. Refusing to hand over the keys from inside the wagon, he was bending to look through the keyhole when in order to release the prisoners one of the Fenians fired at the lock, the bullet entering Brett’s brain.11

The British police swept vengefully through the Irish quarters of Manchester and Salford arresting at least 28 people but eventually sending five for trial on ‘murder’ charges. Three were hanged, all innocent of intentional killing and at least two probably not even present at the scene.

As sentence of death was passed upon them, all five cried “God save Ireland!” Although the sentences on two were commuted, Timothy Sullivan used those words for his ballad about The Manchester Martyrs, as the executed three became known among the Irish at home and abroad.

The song travelled quickly and became an unofficial national anthem of Ireland and the Irish until it was decisively supplantedafter the 1916 Rising by Peadar Kearney’s The Soldiers Song (latertranslated: Amhrán na bhFiann).12 A memorial to the three was erected in Mostyn Cemetery.

Artist’s impression of the trial of the five convicted including the three Manchester Martyrs.
(Image source: Internet)

Manchester continued to be a destination for Irish migrants, for factories still, including motor car production but also post-WW2 reconstruction and motorway building.

Manchester United FC, along with a number of other British soccer teams, recruited Irish players and Irishman Liam Whelan was one of the eight players killed in the Munich air crash of 1958. Another 30 Irish have played for the club at one time or another, some quite famous.13

The city is one of a number of British cities that has a name in the Irish language; Mancunians would probably be delighted to know that their city’s name in Irish is Manchuin.

From the late 1960s to late 1990s the city was host to an active branch of the Troops Out Movement in solidarity with Ireland, also from 1980s to an active branch of the Irish in Britain Representation Group; the Special Branch was active in monitoring and, from time to time, harassing their activists.

The Provisional IRA bombed the city in 1996 as part of its campaign against the British State and — despite a 90-minute warning — 212 were injured.

Today Manchester, alongside South Asian ethnic influences, continues its Irish ethnic presence with Irish traditional cultural activities14 and no doubt the sons and daughters of Manchester’s Irish diaspora will continue to contribute to other sport and artistic culture in Britain and in the world.

Footnotes

1https://www.breakingnews.ie/ireland/oasis-review-the-band-were-great-the-service-was-not-1793012.html

2https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Condition_of_the_Working_Class_in_England

3https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s11BuatTuXk here performed by The Pogues

4Given that Marx, a German Jew, became his closest political comrade and writing partner, it’s likely he changed his bias against Jews also.

5https://www.marxists.org/history/international/iwma/documents/1867/fenians.htm and Introduction to https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/030639688202400204

6https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Workingmen%27s_Association

7For example, the escape on board The Catalpa https://www.irishtimes.com/opinion/an-irish-diary/2023/11/01/the-greatest-escape-frank-mcnally-on-one-mans-mission-to-make-a-movie-about-the-catalpa-rescue/

8https://www.irishcentral.com/roots/history/irish-fenian-invasion-canada Unlike many other accounts easily available this one gives a reasonable assessment of the rationale for the invasion, including its potential and the reasons of its ultimate failure, the interests of the ruling class of the USA, which the Irish Republican movement should have learned from forever afterwards – but failed to do.

9Often referred to simply as ‘the Branch’ or ‘Branchmen’ (though the organisation of course also recruits women).

10The location, by an arch under a railway bridge, is still unofficially known as “Fenian Arch.”

11https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/God_Save_Ireland

12https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/God_Save_Ireland

13For example, George Best and Roy Keane.

14Manchester has a Comhaltas Ceoltóirí Éireann club (for Irish traditional music) and informal music sessions, also an Irish dancing school https://www.facebook.com/profile.php; Gaelic Athletic Association clubs  including St Brendan’s, St Peter’s, Oisín, and St. Lawrence’s.

Sources

The Fenian Ambush: https://ballymacoda.ie

The ballad: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/God_Save_Ireland

The First International and Fenians: https://www.marxists.org/history/international/iwma/documents/1867/fenians.htm

The Saturday concert in Croke Park: https://www.breakingnews.ie/ireland/oasis-review-the-band-were-great-the-service-was-not-1793012.html

FROM EYESORE TO EYE-CHARMING GARDEN IN INNER CITY DUBLIN

On By rebelbreezeIn Current Affairs Comment, Environmental, History, Ireland, irish historyLeave a comment

Diarmuid Breatnach

(Reading time: 3 mins.)

How does a rat-ridden eyesore become a charming garden? And how does a sheet-metal fabricator-welder who knew nothing about gardening become its creator? The answers are: slowly, learning as he goes along and with support in the community.

In a little housing cul-de-sac or ‘turning’ as we used to call them, in a Dublin inner-city southside dockland, there was a disused area overgrown with brambles harbouring rats. Its only attractive feature was a big beech tree (Feá) left there when the area was cleared for housing construction.

But Jimmy saw something else there. In the eye of his mind, he saw a garden, a place of calm and beauty. The vision nagged at him until he began to clear the brambles and other undergrowth. And then to plug the rat-runs inside the brick back wall.

Though he was no stranger to the area, living as he does in the Markievicz flats, the neighbours might have been wary at first of what he was doing. But before long, they were bringing him cups of tea and biscuits, commenting approvingly on progress.

Flower bed in the garden (Photo: D.Breatnach)
“… in vacant or in pensive mood,
they flash upon that inward eye
which is the bliss of solitude …“
Jimmy Browne, creator of the garden, caught in a moment of reflection. (Photo: D.Breatnach)

NOW AND FUTURE

Trees are valuable oxygenators and carbon-sequestrators, absorbing CO2 in the environment, as well as attractive but the big beech tree was shading the whole garden, restricting many other plants from growing. Sadly it had to go and two of its sections provide nice features in the garden.

Flowering shrubs and perennial flowers now grow in borders around an attractive brick floor. To those Jimmy has added other features of stone, metal posts and a garden bench.

Among the many that Jimmy acknowledges helping him is Shane Daly of the Windjammer, Leo for garden bench donation and Christy Barry who transported materials Jimmy collected to the garden.

Younger Rowan trees in the garden. (Photo: D.Breatnach)

The beech has been replaced by some Rowan trees, also known as Mountain Ash (Caorthainn), some in full berry flush when I visited the garden with local man Christian, who introduced me to Jimmy. I hoped Jimmy would install a pond that frogs or newts might breed in, attracting also damselflies.

The garden is attractive now and safe for children to visit but Jimmy has plans for a rockery, a fountain, a small shelter from rain showers over a seat and bird nest boxes, for tits for example. The Blackbird and robin are sure to nest in trees there in time, sending their songs into the area.

Section of beech trunk, now the stand for a table. (Photo: D.Breatnach)

FROM DERRY TO DUBLIN

Jimmy Browne is from Derry and came to Dublin in the 1970s, “on the hop” he says and indeed there were many from the Catholic areas that did the same in those years, whether temporarily or permanently. Coincidentally, the area around the garden has a strong political history too.

Around the corner, next to the Windjammer pub, is a plaque commemorating the founding of the Irish Republican Brotherhood in a wood yard there on St. Patrick’s Day, 1858, its counterpart in the USA being formed on the same day, soon to be known as “Fenians” which was adopted here too.

(Photo: D.Breatnach)

Almost facing the open end of Lombard Close is a little park with a monument, both dedicated to Elizabeth O’Farrell, of the 1916 Rising GPO Garrison, who took part in the occupation of Moore Street, where she had the dangerous responsibility of negotiating the surrender.

She grew up in that area as did nearby also her childhood friend, comrade and later lifelong house partner Julia Grennan, who also fought in the Rising and was there in Moore Street at the end also.

By strange coincidence, both Jimmy’s employers in Dublin, before he set up his own fabrication/ welding shop, had his own family name: Browne’s Foundry and Brownes Brothers.

Older Rowan trees in the garden (Photo: D.Breatnach)

Contrary to the drive for profits that dominates our society, a great many people contribute their physical and mental energy not only to their immediate family and friends but to the community at large. The garden is a benefit to the 19 homes in the Close and 40 others in attached streets.

Jimmy is not being paid to do this work. But he is being rewarded and not only by cups of tea and biscuits. He enjoys the feeling of creation, of making things from his mind come to life, of keeping busy in retirement, of feeling contentment. And of knowing his work is appreciated in the area.

End.

View of the garden from the outside: (Photo: D.Breatnach)
Plaque to the birth-place of the Ireland section of the Fenians in Lombard Street, Dublin. (Photo sourced: eadingthesigns.weebly.comblog).
(Photo: D.Breatnach)
Garden bench – suigh síos and relax (Photo: D.Breatnach)

FAKE PATRIOTS MISUSE IRISH HISTORY AND THE HOMELESS CRISIS

On By rebelbreezeIn 1916 Rising, Anti-Fascism, British imperialism, Current Affairs Comment, History, Housing, Human Rights, Ireland, irish history, Irish Left, Irish Republicanism, National Liberation, Political Analysis1 Comment

Diarmuid Breatnach

(Reading time: 6 mins.)

In recent days we have seen the far-Right mobilise people to allegedly defend the GPO and protest homelessness, not against its causes but instead against migrants. In defence of ‘Irishness’ they also menaced an annual religious Muslim procession.

Participants in these and similar events wave the Irish Tricolour and Irish Republic flags and claim to be ‘Irish patriots’ standing up for ‘the Irish nation.’ However, it’s far from that they are in reality as we can see.

They

  • disgrace the Proclamation

The far-Right claim to honour our national history of resistance to colonialism and occupation and even display copies of the 1916 Proclamation of Independence.1

Yet they are often also seen and heard denouncing Muslims, in direct contravention of the Proclamation’s words: “The Republic guarantees religious and civil liberty … to all”; similarly they held protests when use of Croke Park was hired to celebrants of the Eid festival.

  • disgrace the GPO as HQ of the 1916 Rising

They have and do disgrace the very symbolic building they claim to be trying to protect.

They have often held racist gatherings outside it; one of their organisers2 (e.g. of weekly protests during the Covid crisis) leading a chant of support for British fascist Tommy Robinson, who defended the Paratroopers who carried out the 1972 Bloody Sunday massacre in Derry.

Their recent protest at the GPO featured as speaker a man known for his active membership of the sectarian UVF murder gang, who admitted working for British Intelligence and who called for the strengthening of the colonial British Border – and was cheered for saying so.

Cartoon by D.Breatnach
  • disgrace the flags

The far-Right disgrace and misuse the very flags they wave so keenly.

The Tricolour was presented to the revolutionary Young Irelander republicans3 by French revolutionary republican women in 1848. It signified peace and unity between the descendants of settlers and the indigenous Irish in revolutionary struggle against the British colonial occupation.

The flag with the words “Irish Republic” painted in white and gold on a green background was made on domestic material of socialist Republican Constance Markievicz (see next section) in her house and delivered by her to the GPO.

It was installed and flown on the roof at the Princes St. corner by Eamon Bulfin4 (see next section), a migrant from Argentina.

  • disown but also misappropriate real patriots

In dishonest manipulation, the far-Right claim to honour our patriots and even invoke them in their campaigns. In their agitation against migrants they hide the fact that Constance Markievicz, Thomas Clarke and James Connolly were all migrants (Connolly and Clarke no less than three times).5

Also a migrant was Eamon Bulfin (see previous section) along with many others who fought for Irish freedom and even sacrificed their lives (including Erskine Childers)6.

Placards on an anti-racist rally on Custom House Quay some years ago. The text placard quotes the 1916 Proclamation: “The Republic guarantees religious and civil liberty to all”. (Photo: D.Breatnach)

Of the Seven Signatories of the 1916 Proclamation (see earlier section), two – Pearse and McDonagh7 – were children of migrants and two were themselves migrants (Connolly and Clarke).

Among many such examples, the father of Young Irelander Republican patriot Thomas Davis (author of the song A Nation Once Again) was a migrant.

  • join with Loyalists and British fascists

A far-Right organiser calling for three cheers for British fascist Tommy Robinson was not the only such example and outside the GPO this week far-Right elements welcomed as speaker Mark Sinclair, a member of the UVF, a British colonial sectarian murder and terrorist squad.8

Prominent Irish leaders of fascist organisations have also shared a platform with Scottish fascist and Loyalist Jim Dowson.9 And of course how can we forget the desecration of the Tricolour unfurled among Union Jack and Loyalist flags in Belfast by some Dublin far-Right activists!10

Admitted UVF/ MI5 Sectarian Loyalist UVF murder gang member Mark Sinclair. (Photo sourced: Internet)
  • don’t act against British occupation

With all that background, it’s hardly surprising that the far-Right “patriots” don’t organise against the British occupation of the Six Counties or in support of Irish Republican political prisoners in jails on either side of the British Border.

  • burn buildings

Apart from misleading people and distracting them from the real sources of problems to Irish working people and seeking to intimidate refugees, what do the far-Right actually do? Ah, yes, they burn buildings that might be used as accommodation. A great help to the homeless indeed!

  • attack homeless refugee and migrant tents

But no, that’s not all. No, the brave ‘patriots’ slash tents and threaten migrants and refugees who are sleeping on the streets. They don’t take on the big landlords, bankers, property speculators and vulture funds – no, they strike down at people poorer and in worse conditions than themselves.

  • cover for the property speculators and vulture funds, big landlords, bankers

So with all this whipping up fear and hatred of migrants, the far-Right obscure the actual cause of the problems, which is not only Irish capitalism but its total subjection to foreign capitalism. The only ones to benefit from this activity are those who are the real causes of the problems.

  • are not patriots, nor nationalists

Despite their claims and flag-waving, the far-Right in Ireland are neither patriots nor true nationalists. They do not organise in defence of Irish sovereignty and against British occupation nor against foreign capitalist exploitation of Irish natural resources, labour or infrastructures.

Or the contrary, they work to distract attention away from these centrally-important issues for the Irish nation and raise false issues to divide the people. And usually their concept of ‘Ireland’ ends at the British border which the recent far-Right rally at the GPO called for strengthening!

  • are a sub-class of deprived individuals allowing themselves to be manipulated by fascists, MI5 and NATO

Many of those being mobilised against migrants come from parts of the cities neglected for generations, often associated with low educational level, substance misuse, unemployment and unresolved mental health issues.

The ideological fascists will recruit those elements to fight, not against the cause of their deprivation, the neo-colonial ruling class or the flooding of foreign capitalist companies into Ireland, assisted by banks and political decisions -but instead against migrant workers and refugees.

  • are filling a vacuum left by the Republican and Socialist movement

WILL WE LEARN FROM OUR FAILURES?

Many of those participating, while some are also unfortunate victims of Irish capitalism, will be recruited as the boot boys of fascism.

While it is true that historically capitalism in crisis turns to fostering fascism and that capitalism, including the neo-colonial variant in the Irish state is running out of other options, we must evaluate our own role in this development, examine our own failures, learn from and remedy them.

The ground was largely ceded to the Far-Right in the period of their initial growth during the Covid crisis. The socialist Left and Republican movement, in particular its organisations, had little response to the early FR mobilisations or to responding creatively to state-imposed restrictions.

Throughout that period and subsequently the socialist Left sector, despite its protestations of anti-imperialism and anti-colonialism, completely ceded the ground of Irish national sovereignty and its symbols to anyone who wished to occupy it.

They did not, for the most part, protest the use of State repression against Irish Republicans both sides of the British Border, whether through police harassment, special legislation and special no-jury courts, nor stand up for the human and civil rights of Republicans, including political prisoners.

Their distaste for the very issue of national sovereignty was reflected in their refusal to fly the Irish Tricolour, which, although now also the official flag of the Irish State, is originally and remains still a potent symbol of Irish Republican anti-colonial struggle over 170 years.

They might argue that they wished to be identified with the struggle of the working class rather than a nationalist one but they also chose not to fly the flag of the insurrectionary Irish working class, the Starry Plough, in among their internationally-recognised red flags.

The Irish Republican organisations in their fragmented movement, on the national question, failed to sustain unity even around opposition to repression of the states or even around solidarity with the movement’s political prisoners.

They also failed and, to an even greater extent, in fighting for universal affordable housing in a crisis which seems to offer no end and is seized upon by the Far-Right to target refugees and economic migrants, who of course have no responsibility whatsoever for the crisis.

This area too has been a notable failure of the socialist Left organisations which, although marching often enough in public demonstrations and participating in a couple of media-orientated occupations,11 failed to organise and lead a state-wide campaign of empty building occupations.

And so, here we are today, when the FR are able to bring Tricolour and Irish Republic flag-waving crowds on to the streets in false claims of patriotism, dividing and seeking to intimidate migrant workers and anti-racists, burning buildings and insisting on their definition of ‘Irish’ being correct.

Our omissions and failures, if we recognise and act to remedy them, also point the way forward.

End.

1In a travesty of frequent Irish Republican ceremonial occasions, it was even read out at the recent Far-Right gathering outside the GPO which was addressed by a known member of the UVF sectarian murder gang.

2Under the name Dee Wall (real name Dolores Webster).

3Including to Thomas Meagher ‘of the Sword’ who later recruited for, joined and fought in the Union Army in the US Civil War against slavery. Meagher unfurled the flag first in Wexford and later in Dublin, both acts in 1848.

4Bulfin came to Ireland around the age of ten with his family and later joined the IRB and the Irish Volunteers. After the surrender in Moore Street he was sentenced to death, later commuted to life sentence, then from Frongoch prison camp deported to Argentina from where he was the Latin American representative for the Movement.

5Clarke and Markievicz were both born in England. Clarke was first a migrant to Ireland, later to the US, then back again. Connolly was born in Edinburgh and a migrant to Ireland, then to England, then to the USA before his return to Ireland.

6Childers was born in England. He captained the yacht that brought the Mauser rifles and ammunition to Howth. Later he joined the IRA, took the anti-Treaty side and was executed by the Free State during the Civil War.

7The father of the Pearse brothers was English, as was McDonagh’s mother.

8During his trial for bank robbery for the UVF in Glasgow, Sinclair declared he had been working for MI5 which was well known to be steering Loyalist organisations. The UVF and British Intelligence bombed Dublin and Monaghan in 1974, causing the deaths of 34 people and a full-term baby, the highest death toll of one day during the recent 30 Years War.

9Rowan Croft, Herman Kelly (Irish Freedom Party) and Niall McConnell (Síol na hÉireann).

10A prominent group among the Dublin far-Right calling themselves Coolock Says No.

11https://www.irishtimes.com/ireland/2025/07/09/former-loyalist-uvf-prisoner-addressed-anti-immigration-protest-at-dublins-gpo/

12For example, the 27-day occupation of Apollo House, Dublin, from 15 December 2016 by housing activists and homeless people, with speeches and performances by prominent musicians.

BBC, Kneecap and the long history of censorship

On By rebelbreezeIn British imperialism, Censorship & Witch-hunting, Cultural Comment, Current Affairs Comment, Human Rights, Imperialism, Indigenous or Original People, Ireland, Irish Republicanism, Israeli Zionism, Mass Media Criticism, Political Analysis, Resistance Art, Rhyming Rapping & Ranting, Song, Song in Struggle, US ImperialismLeave a comment

Gearóid Ó Loingsigh June 2015

(Reformatted entire for publishing in Rebel Breeze from article of same title in his Substack)

(Reading time: 8 mins.)

Kneecap’s music is not really my thing. I am perhaps too old, or maybe my musical tastes are more conservative. But I do love their politics and their stance on Palestine.

I don’t think much of Hezbollah, but I do think waving their flag is not a criminal offence.

The BBC think otherwise as evidenced by their decision to not broadcast Kneecaps’s performance at the Glastonbury festival. The only reason for this was their support for Palestine. There was no other reason.

Though, it didn’t work out well for the BBC as Bob Vylan who was broadcast live got the crowd to chant Death to the IDF!, one of the noblest of chants ever to be heard at Glastonbury.

But there is a long history to the BBC and other British media censoring musicians. The BBC in its statement said:

Whilst the BBC doesn’t ban artists, our plans ensure that our programming meets our editorial guidelines.

We don’t always livestream every act from the main stages and look to make an on-demand version of Kneecap’s performance available on our digital platforms, alongside more than 90 other sets.[1]

In other words, the BBC does ban artists.

The rapper trio under the band name of Kneecap (Image sourced: on line)

It is not like this is the first time they have banned some of them. Following the Bloody Sunday massacre by the British Army in Derry in 1972, Paul McCartney, penned a song titled Give Ireland Back to the Irish.[2] It was the debut single of Wings.

It was instantly banned in Britain by the BBC but managed to get to No. 16 in the British charts nonetheless and got to No. 1 in Ireland.

They banned songs that mentioned sex, even Shirley Bassie’s Burn My Candle[3] and they banned songs that were considered more political such as The Sex Pistols’ Anarchy in the UK,[4] a song that wasn’t really political at all.

Not surprisingly they banned the then relatively unknown Heaven 17’s debut (We Don’t Need This) Fascist Groove Thang,[5] over concerns it might upset the then recently-elected US president Ronald Reagan.

This was a man whose government through the CIA went on to support deaths squads in Latin America and set up cocaine smuggling networks to finance them through his loyal servant Oliver North.[6] Reagan of course is referred to in the song.

Democrats are out of power
Across that great wide ocean
Reagan’s president elect
Fascist god in motion

That wasn’t the last of it either. The BBC went on to ban a song by The Police, Invisible Sun[7] because of a possible slight on the British Army contained in the lyrics and of course the official video to the song.

I don’t want to spend the rest of my life
Looking at the barrel of an Armalite
I don’t want to spend the rest of my days
Keeping out of trouble like the soldiers say

I don’t want to spend my time in hell
Looking at the walls of a prison cell
I don’t ever want to play the part
Of a statistic on a government chart

The BBC would, during the 1st Gulf War ban a total of 67 songs for the duration of the war, amongst them songs by such establishment figures as Elton John whose song Act of War [8] recorded in 1985 with Millie Jackson was put on the list.

As was Pat Benatar’s Love is a Battlefield,[9] recorded even earlier in 1983. It takes little to upset the BBC it would seem.

The former Irish Taoiseach (Prime Minister) Leo Varadkar criticised Keir Starmer’s call for Kneecap to be not allowed play at Glastonbury stating that

It’s not great for politicians to get into deciding which artists should be allowed to perform where or not.

To me, that’s illiberalism. Part of the whole point of art and music and literature is to be inappropriate, is to be challenging, is often to be anti-establishment,” he said.

We’ve had a situation now for quite some time in Ireland and in Europe and Britain, where politicians didn’t get into the space of saying who should be allowed to perform, who shouldn’t, what books you should be allowed to read, and I hope we don’t slip back into doing that under the guise of national security and anti-terrorism when it isn’t really about that.[10]

Varadkar tut tuts the BBC and Starmer. Sounds great, except his party and the Irish state in general does not have a great record in the matter.

The state broadcaster took an insidious approach to censorship with songs rarely being banned outright. Rather they were just not simply played on the radio station. Hint hint, nudge nudge. A very Irish way of doing things.

The Irish group The Wolfe Tones released many songs over the years about the conflict in the north of Ireland and got little to no airtime. Such was the situation that they even recorded a song about it, called Radio Toor I Li Ay (sometimes called They Don’t Play Our Songs on the Radio) [11].

The lyrics are pertinent to Kneecap and Starmer and sum up exactly what the Establishment are about.

You don’t play our songs on radio
You say they’re too political!
Who controls the mind, where’s the mind’s control?
For the music on the airwaves
Follows empty minds, those empty heads
Play songs of sex and drugs instead
Don’t tell them how it really is

Won’t MI5 look after you, control your thoughts
Feed information to your hearts and minds
To save you all from thinkin’, thinkin’, thinkin’, thinkin’

It is a fact that RTE didn’t give them much airtime and still don’t. So much so that in 2024, Derek Warfield the lead singer with the group said it was time to end the ban on them.[12] It still hasn’t happened, nor will it.

In fact, the Irish women’s football team got into trouble for singing one of their songs, Celtic Melody,[13] and were excoriated by British sports journalists, who are not renowned for their knowledge of music, politics, history or much else aside from who ran how fast and where.

Not exactly intellectual heavyweights. Nonetheless these idiots led to the Irish women’s team being eventually fined €20,000 for singing the song.[14]

The Irish singer Christy Moore found himself on the wrong end of state repression in Ireland on many occasions and his songs, like those of The Wolfe Tones were not banned per se, but they never received much airplay.

Except those that were considered to be humorous and non-political, such as Don’t Forget Your Shovel.[15] 

But other songs of his were censored on the radio without the need for an official ban, such as Ninety Miles From Dublin,[16] which was about the IRA and INLA prisoners on the Blanket and Dirty Protests in the H-Blocks of Long Kesh.

Likewise, other songs he recorded about the prisoners and later on about the Hunger Strikers equally received no airplay. There was one brief exception to this.

Patsy O’ Hara (INLA) died on hunger strike on May 21st 1981 after 61 days. His mother Peggy O’Hara was initially adamant that she would not let her son die and that when he lapsed into a coma she would intervene and give the doctors the order to break his strike with an intravenous drip.

However, in her last conversation with her son, he said to her that he was sorry they had not won and asked her to let the fight go on, before lapsing back into unconsciousness. Christy Moore wrote a song about that exchange called The Time Has Come.[17] 

It was well received and got airplay and praise. Then someone informed the ignorant and arrogant mandarins at RTE what the song was about and suddenly it got no more airplay. Listening to the song, it is obvious what it is about.

The gentle clasp that holds my hand
Must loosen and let go
Please help me through the door
Though instinct tells you no

Our vow it is eternal
And will bring you dreadful pain
But if our demands aren’t recognized
Don’t call me back again

Ironically Christy Moore would record another song that got no airplay. It was called Section 31,[18] a reference to the article of the Broadcasting Authority Act (1960) that gave the minister power to ban interviews with members of Sinn Féin and proscribed organisations such as the IRA.

But in effect it led to RTE’s scant reporting of or carrying out of few interviews that were critical of state policy on the conflict. The song explained exactly why some issues are censored.

Who are they to decide what we should hear?
Who are they to decide what we should see?
What do they think we can’t comprehend here?
What do they fear that our reaction might be, might be?

The Kneecap trio with friends at the Sundance Festival in January. (Photo sourced: RTÉ)

It is always about silencing the opposition and preventing a reaction to their repression and in this case genocide.

So back to Kneecap. They stand in a long line of artists who have put their money where their mouths are. They stand side by side with giants from other musical genres such as Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger who were repressed by the McCarthyite wave in the US in the 1950s.

The BBC for its part continues to be the propaganda arm of the British Empire, or what is left of it, covering up, lying about or justifying murder, massacre, torture and plunder from India to Kenya, Ireland and now Palestine.

Woody Guthrie had the words This Machine Kills Fascists carved into his guitar, a slogan that might earn him a jail sentence nowadays.

It was meant more in the sense that his music was part of the struggle against fascism, carrying political messages to workers, Dustbowl refugees and migrants.

It didn’t literally kill anyone, though in his song Ludlow Massacre,[19] Guthrie celebrated the workers taking up arms to kill the scab thugs that came to shoot them.

Scabs at the behest of the Colorado Fuel and Iron Company, owned by the infamous Rockefeller family murdered 26 people, mainly the wives and children of the striking miners.

However, the massacre was just one large incident, the Baldwin-Felts Detective Agency had harried and harassed the striking miners, murdering them in ones and twos.

The detective agencies celebrated in comics and films were what would later become known in Latin America and elsewhere as death squads. The miners fought back and Guthrie celebrated this in his song. Resistance, including armed resistance was legitimate.

The state soldiers jumped us in a wire fence corners,
They did not know we had these guns,
And the Red-neck Miners mowed down these troopers,
You should have seen those poor boys run.

The press, at the time, described the striking miners as savages.

Any similarity to the current media onslaught on Palestine is not a coincidence, it shows the class interests of the media moguls and the western states. Working class people, foreign resistance movements will always be savages to the media.

And the use of armed masked thugs by the state is not new either. Before ICE, there were the detective agencies. Most of the dead at Ludlow were migrant workers. The final death toll according to Howard Zinn’s People’s History of the US was sixty six men women and children.

Kneecap have contributed to the fight against fascism and Bob Vylan’s chant Death to the IDF! should be on everyone’s lips. There is no reforming the IDF, just like there was no reforming Hitler’s SS. Only the complete destruction of the IDF will bring any change.

Can their music, like Guthrie’s be said to kill fascists? I don’t know, time will tell, but from the reception they got at Glastonbury it is looking good.[20] What I do know is Keir Starmer and Trump finance fascists.

Starmer like a fascist wants to ban Palestine Action. The BBC covers up for fascists, praises them and censors those who stand up to fascists. I know who is on the right side of history.

End.

NB: For more articles by Gearóid see https://gearoidloingsigh.substack.com

NOTES

[1] The Guardian (28/06/2025) Kneecap’s Glastonbury set Will not be broadcast live, BBC confirms. https://www.theguardian.com/music/2025/jun/28/kneecap-glastonbury-set-will-not-be-broadcast-live-bbc-confirms

[2] See Wings: Wild Life – Give Ireland Back To The Irish

[3] See

[4] See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q31WY0Aobro&list=RDq31WY0Aobro&start_radio=1

[5] See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lV5dbcOmw6I&list=RDlV5dbcOmw6I&start_radio=1

[6] Jacobin (12/11/2021) What We Really Know About the CIA and Crack. Daniel Finn. https://jacobin.com/2021/11/what-we-really-know-about-the-cia-and-crack

[7] See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1VuDjJ9KIxM&list=RD1VuDjJ9KIxM&start_radio=1

[8] See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vKbuDkueGek&list=RDvKbuDkueGek&start_radio=1

[9] See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IGVZOLV9SPo&list=RDIGVZOLV9SPo&start_radio=1

[10] The Journal (27/06/2025) Varadkar on Kneecap row: Terrorism is bombs and guns, not music. https://www.thejournal.ie/varadkar-on-kneecap-row-terrorism-is-bombs-and-guns-not-music-6745000-Jun2025/

[11] See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jtsxQaXdflU&list=RDjtsxQaXdflU&start_radio=1

[12] Newstalk (11/09/2024) ‘Systemic ban’ on The Wolfe Tones should be lifted – Warfield. Jack Quann. https://www.newstalk.com/news/systemic-ban-on-the-wolfe-tones-should-be-lifted-warfield-1764007

[13] See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rgWeD7tHhaE

[14] Sky News (08/12/2022) Ireland women footballers fined €20,000 for singing song referencing IRA in World Cup celebration. https://news.sky.com/story/ireland-women-footballers-fined-20-000-for-singing-song-referencing-ira-in-world-cup-celebration-12764012

[15] See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rV9c0OnekvM&list=RDrV9c0OnekvM&start_radio=

[16] See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q98EcxrOr6w&list=RDQ98EcxrOr6w&start_radio=1

[17] See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6E7wJsDx2qg&list=RD6E7wJsDx2qg&start_radio=1

[18] See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m19Pc-b7EBc

[19] See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XDd64suDz1A&list=RDXDd64suDz1A&start_radio=1

[20] See https://www.instagram.com/reel/DLdeW1sI2A-/?igsh=YnJqeDd0bm1obzdi

“FIX OUR HOMES!” – DUBLIN COUNCIL TENANTS DEMONSTRATE AT CITY HALL

On By rebelbreezeIn 1916 Rising, City Planning, Current Affairs Comment, Current Event Report, Environmental, Housing Struggle, Human Rights, Irish Left, Political AnalysisLeave a comment

Diarmuid Breatnach

(Reading time main text:5 mins.)

A large number of tenants organised by the Community Action Tenants’ Union (CATU) from a number of Dublin City Council housing estates gathered outside City Hall on Monday 12th May evening to lobby the monthly elected Councillor’s meeting.

Those attending for the most part came from public housing blocks and estates from Ballymun to the Liberties and Coolock to Pearse Street. They carried placards and demanded that Dublin City Council negotiate with them.

A section of the lobby outside City Hall facing Parliament Street (note on top extreme left of photo plaque commemorating two leaders of the Irish Citizen Army shot dead in 1916). (Photo: D.Breatnach)

The recently-appointed Assistant Chief Executive over housing and community came out to receive the Union’s demands and petitions from tenants organising within their complexes and areas and the lobbyists also forced the issues onto the agenda of the council meeting that night.

The protest was organised by the Dublin city CATU branch with wide support from community organisers and was attended by a number of elected councillors from some political parties and independents.

(Photo: D.Breatnach)

The problems CATU representatives listed verbally and in writing included a general low level of maintenance and upkeep of their estates and blocs, of the actual dwellings, communal areas, playgrounds and rubbish chutes. Rat infestations were a problem in some.

Damp leading to mould, rainwater penetration, inadequate proofing, badly fitting windows and doors were also listed at a number of sites, as were inadequate insulation leading to high heating costs and a need for overhaul of the heating system itself.

Among the slogans chanted was: Dublin City Council – Negotiate!

(Photo: D.Breatnach)

Included in their demands was that DCC officials recognise the right of their tenants to be represented by CATU as their union, which they stated was not always respected and they sought formal meetings with named officials responsible for the areas in question within one month’s time.

Although apparently currently not members of CATU, the organisation had invited the Pearse House Residents’ Committee to attend and speak at the lobby. Their chairperson Neil Maloney did so, addressing the issue of the long overdue regeneration of their housing bloc.

(Photo: D.Breatnach)

Maloney described the “blow to the community” when funding for stage two of the regeneration project to eliminate overcrowding was withdrawn, after their hopes had been raised by presentation of a regeneration timescale and a physical design in August of the previous year.

Ironically, the housing crisis was implicated in the Government’s reason for refusing to support the regeneration going ahead, in that the increase in inner space of the dwellings would reduce the number of actual housing units.

(Photo: D.Breatnach)

The Pearse House chairperson commented that “the current bedsits are illegal” and that their homes currently don’t meet European standards, going on to state “a real need for bigger homes to address overcrowding and family needs.”

“This was always going to be a challenge for this protected structure, but in phases 2 and 3 of the regeneration plan, there would be 2 additional blocks built. The additionality that the Government is seeking would be gained through the social homes gained during the decanting process.”

Pearse House residents attended CATU’s protest “to highlight our anger and what we see as another block on this project,” Maloney said. And note that although DCC has committed to redesigning the project for submission to the Government there is no guarantee this will be successful either.

(Photo: D.Breatnach)

“Ireland is still in breach of the European Charter for social housing and our human rights. Our community has seen the redevelopment and construction of new buildings, offices etc. and Pearse House is the eyesore in the middle of our community.”

“We were the community before all this redevelopment, and we will be the community when it’s all over,” concluded Maloney, voicing a common complaint along the south Dublin dockside. 1

A section of the lobby outside City Hall viewed looking down Dame Street. (Neil Maloney is pictured after his speech). (Photo: D.Breatnach)

Public Housing Background

There was little public housing in Dublin under British rule and the big town houses of the rich had been sold and sub-divided for rent by private landlords (including some who were elected councillors (or aldermen).

The new State built “2,000 local authority homes by 1924, a feat all the more remarkable in the context of a shortage of State funds, and the need to rebuild much of the infrastructure damaged in the War of Independence.”2

But of course it was not keeping up with the existing need or population growth and 40% of the population were forced to emigrate in the first 50 years of the Irish State.3

However 1924 too was the introduction of legislation facilitating state money subsidising the building of private housing.4 “In the decade after 1932 some 82,000 homes were built, the vast majority (public and private) with State subsidies.”5

Prof. Kenna relates that by 1940, some 41% of the Irish housing stock had been built by local authorities, far higher than that in England and Wales (25%) and also comments on the effect this had on subsidiary employment not only in construction but in sourcing and supply of materials.6

Although by 1964, a further 74,000 private and 63,000 local authority homes were built with State support and that between the 1950s and 1960s a million people had left the country, there was still a housing shortage and rents on private properties dug deep into workers’ incomes.7

Prof. Kenna comments that little attention was paid to the need for housing estate management, amenities, shops and the social, educational or other needs of the new community established there. That this should coincide with a boom time for property developers should not surprise us.

(Photo: D.Breatnach)

Government schemes to facilitate the purchase of their local authority accommodation from the 1950s resulted in the disappearance of much public housing stock into the private sector.8 Theoretically they would be replaced by new public housing builds but that didn’t happen.

Public land and land held by NAMA9 has been increasingly sold or even given away to private developers on promises of provision of a low percentage of public housing and often those individuals or consortiums do not even keep their earlier promises.

The Report of the Commission on the Relief of the Sick and Destitute Poor in 1927, Prof. Kenna reminds us, found 3,257 homeless people including 901 children, while in January 2021 there were 5,987 homeless adults and 2,326 homeless children in Ireland.

The Far-Right has jumped on the opportunity of the current housing crisis to blame it – not upon lack of public housing construction, big landlords, property speculators and vulture funds – but on migrants.

The Left in Ireland has until now in practical terms left this ground for exploitation of racists.

One of a number of speakers, photographed from across the street as too crowded there. (Photo: D.Breatnach)
One of a number of speakers, photographed from across the street as too crowded there. (Photo: D.Breatnach)
One of a number of speakers, photographed from across the street as too crowded there. (Photo: D.Breatnach)

GOING FORWARD

CATU seemed pleased with the lobby turnout and announced their intention to organise a housing protest march on Saturday July 5th. In the meantime they will no doubt be following up on the meetings they requested with area housing managers and agreeing objectives and deadlines.

Hopefully, seeing the initial results in the attention of DCC housing and amenity officials, and reflecting on their numbers when they take joint action, tenants of DCC will take heart and grow in confidence in their ability to ensure provision of decent housing and services for their needs.

Of course, the Far-Right won’t like that as it distracts from their targets – but the extension of this campaign does provide some hope of something like a solution to the current terrible grinding crisis of both housed and homeless.

End.

One of a number of speakers, photographed from across the street as too crowded there. (Photo: D.Breatnach)

APPENDIX: I916 Battleground

It might or might not have been mentioned (I couldn’t hear much of the speeches) that City Hall, outside of which CATU were protesting, had been a 1916 resistance centre, occupied by a small force of the Irish Citizen Army, known in some circles as the first workers army in the world.

Unaware of the extremely low British garrison on the Castle that day, the ICA had failed to take the complex and retreated to City Hall and some outposts in Dame Street and Parliament Street where they resisted until overwhelmed by British Army reinforcements.

The symbolism of the Castle, the administrative seat of the British occupation in insurgent hands, resulted in a ferocious assault on the ICA garrison and it fell on the Monday/ Tuesday of that week. One of the statues inside bears what appears to be a bullet hole to this day.

A steel plaque on the right of the outside front of the building lists the names of the ICA garrison of the area, around 50% of which were women. An older cast plaque at the east corner lists the names of two of the five who were killed there, Sean Connolly (OC) and Sean O’Reilly (2i/c).

The 1916 Rising was followed by the election of the First Dáil in 1919 with its Democratic Program affirming that all right to private property must be subordinated to the public right and welfare, and that no child should suffer hunger or cold from lack of food, clothing, or shelter.10

That was followed by the War of Independence and the Anglo-Irish Agreement; and the new State that came into being had no intention of fulfilling the promise of the Democratic Program but rather a determination to suppress any who tried for that fulfilment.

Footnotes

1For example the construction plans for the Irish Bottle Glass site (sold by Nama to the Ronan consortium) contain no components of public housing and units at expected prices will not be affordable by most local people.

2Prof. Padraic Kenna https://www.jcfj.ie/article/100-years-of-irish-housing/

3Ibid.

4Ibid.

5Ibid.

6Prof. Padraic Kenna https://www.jcfj.ie/article/100-years-of-irish-housing/

7References in Prof. Padraic Kenna https://www.jcfj.ie/article/100-years-of-irish-housing/

8https://www.dublininquirer.com/a-new-book-weighs-up-the-history-and-impact-of-selling-off-irelands-social-homes-to-tenants/#:~:text=In%20the%201950s%2C%20the%20first,than%20we%20could%20have%20had.%E2%80%9D

9https://www.irishtimes.com/ireland/housing-planning/2025/05/11/no-deal-on-affordable-housing-at-glass-bottle-site/

10https://www.nootherlaw.com/archive/democratic-programme.html

Useful Links

CATU: https://catuireland.org/

A Hundred Years of Irish Housing by Professor Padraic Kenna: https://www.jcfj.ie/article/100-years-of-irish-housing/

The Democratic Program of the First Dáil: https://www.nootherlaw.com/archive/democratic-programme.html

Housing: https://www.irishtimes.com/ireland/housing-planning/2025/05/11/no-deal-on-affordable-housing-at-glass-bottle-site/

Lack of consultation on traffic management?: https://m.independent.ie/regionals/dublin/dublin-news/local-residents-complain-of-absolute-mayhem-following-new-pearse-street-traffic-restrictions/a240993177.html

WE FOUGHT THEM FOR 800 YEARS BUT WE ARE STILL NOT FREE

On By rebelbreezeIn British imperialism, Capitalism, Current Affairs Comment, History, Imperialism, Internationalist Solidarity, National Liberation, Palestine, Political Analysis2 Comments

Diarmuid Breatnach

(Reading time main text: 4mins.)

I was jarred recently hearing the Irish actor and Palestine solidarity activist Liam Cunningham mention “700 years of British occupation”.1 And I have heard others not from Ireland speak admiringly of the “Irish freedom struggle of 700 years.”

Quite a few of those from other countries who quoted the “freedom” after “700 years” did so admiringly and may not be well acquainted with our nation’s history.

Liam Cunningham in Italy with two of the humanitarian activists about to sail on the Mayleen’s expedition to Gaza.

The foreign occupation of Ireland is normally dated from the Norman invasion of 1169 (although we could add to it the foreign occupation of Dublin by the Vikings from roughly 853 AD to 1170 AD).

I’m aware that I can be somewhat challenged in mathematics but after checking and re-checking I find that 856 years have elapsed since 1169, which means that the British-based occupation of Ireland has continued for well in excess of the 700 years quoted by Cunningham and others.

The Pale or walled city of Dublin under British Norman/ English occupation (Source image: https://www.census.nationalarchives.ie/exhibition/dublin/short_history/map_1.html)

So where did the “700” years figure come from? It occurred to me that in some people’s heads this might be based on the creation of the Irish State and an assumption that was the point at which we threw off the British colonial yoke. Well, even then it would be 752 years but o.k, that might be it.

So, all of Ireland was occupied for centuries, then after numerous uprisings, in 1921 the British ceded 26 counties to Irish State control. But Ireland has 32 counties – what happened to the missing six counties? Well, we know, they remained occupied.

The Irish State in 1921 abandoned the people of the Six Counties, in particular the 34%+ who were of Catholic background; abandoned them to institutional sectarian religious discrimination in housing, employment and representation — and to repression.2

And in fact, the fairly recent 30 Years War was precisely about that occupation. Inevitably, the people rose up against their repression and oppression. The Irish State formally claimed those Six Counties but took no steps to regain them and cooperated with the colonial forces.3

Clearly we can’t change history but we can choose not to collude with injustice. We can refuse to conceive of Ireland as missing six counties, as only four-fifths of its actual landmass. We used to have a word for the thinking that had a Six-County blind spot – we called it ‘partitionist’.

In other words, an attitude that agreed with, colluded with or merely accepted the partition of the Irish Nation.

The Irish State that was born in 1921 was dominated by a capitalist ruling class which was pro-British and socially conservative, even beyond the social conservatism of Britain. And the social conservatism of the colonial Six County regime was even more extreme.

The agreement to abandon the Six Counties was a good indication of the servile nature of the ruling class of the Irish State which became even more evident as the State developed — and even under a later government of former opponents of the State, the Sinn Féin split of Fianna Fáil.

The Irish economy was neither developed nor diversified. Emigration continued unchecked as it had for centuries under British rule and. Irish State obeisance in turn switched to the USA and then to the EU. Currently the Irish ruling class is trying to eliminate any Irish State neutrality.

In 1845 Ireland was able to feed over 8 million but today in 2025 cannot even feed a little over 7 million in (over 5.3 million in the Irish state, nearly 2 million in the Six Counties). Yes, we must import food in order to eat.

Most large companies and banks within the state are foreign-owned, including such national brands and flagships as Aer Lingus, Guinness (including Harp and Hop House lagers and Smithwicks ale), Jameson and Paddy’s whiskeys,4Erin Foods, our telecommunication system5.

Most financial institutions within the state such as insurance companies in health, life, accident, motors, travel are also foreign-owned, including the now ironically-named Irish Life. The health, transport and mail systems and infrastructures are increasingly penetrated by foreign companies.

Foreign-owned hotels, housing apartment and office blocks are the rule and growing while vulture companies gobble up the properties of people who already paid the construction costs of their homes.

In economic policies and in foreign political policy it is clear that the Irish State remains close to the major Western Powers. Responding to popular feeling over the genocide in Gaza, its political leaders may posture a little away from the pack but in effect?

The Irish State imports productsfrom the Israeli State (US$4.15 Billion in 2024),6 allows genocidal state munitions through the State’s ‘neutral’ air space, US munitions and personnel through Shannon International Airport while maintaining all normal links with the Zionist state.

What we believe and say is important

In his interview with The Group Chat Cunningham, with the agreement of the panel, stated that no state was fulfilling its legal duty to practically oppose genocide. This was an unjustified slur on Yemen, which has shut down Israeli inward or outward Red Sea traffic and hit the state itself.7

It is very interesting that even among the many condemnations of Israel by media commentators and politicians we rarely hear acknowledgement, never mind commendation of the anti-genocidal action and sacrifice of the Ansarallah state and the Yemeni people.

Perhaps the contrast is too painful.

However, in an interview during a Palestine solidarity march in Dublin8 Cunningham referred to 800 years. Was that a slip of the tongue, or were the references to 700 centuries instead the slips? Interestingly he also referred to foreign vulture funds and landlords in the same interview.

Liam Cunningham speaking about the seizure by the ‘Israeli’ navy of the humanitarian mission ship Mayleen. (Source photo: The Irish Star)

It is important that an actor in a popular drama series speaks up for Palestine and also for the Irish people and Cunningham has been doing so for years.

What we say and how we recall history is also important because they have an impact on the present and on the future. On what we aspire to. On how we act and think, on how those around us act and think.

Ireland is partitioned between a colonial ruling class and an Irish foreign-dependent ruling class. We fought the Viking occupation for 300 years and the British occupation for well over 800 years – and we are still fighting it. Without sovereignty we cannot develop our economy.

Without sovereignty we will be dragged into imperial and colonial conflicts but never to our historical and traditional place – on the side of the Resistance.

End.

NOTES

1A number of times but in particular in interview on https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=znTKPzXLfrI and on 21.17 minutes in the Empire Files interview

2It also abandoned the Protestant majority, including many descendants of the United Irishmen particularly in Antrim, to a sectarian, bigoted, racist and colonial ideology that helped maintain them for decades with the worst housing and lowest wages in the UK of which they were part.

3In 1998 it abandoned even the formality of that claim https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-northern-ireland-65184915

4And Bushmills in the colonial statelet.

5https://www.irishtimes.com/business/2025/03/16/french-billionaire-niel-inches-closer-to-full-ownership-of-eir/#:~:text=NJJ%20Boru%2C%20a%20company%20controlled,private%20equity%20firm%20Anchorage%20Capital

6https://tradingeconomics.com/ireland/imports/israel and https://www.irishtimes.com/business/economy/2025/06/08/despite-the-politics-ireland-is-israels-second-biggest-export-market-for-goods/

7Also in the Empire Files interview.

8On 24th April https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/tv/news/game-of-thrones-liam-cunningham-gaza-b2534126.html

SOURCES

The Group Chat interview: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=znTKPzXLfrI

The Empire Files interview: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ojQGOD3vywU