Tag: Irish history

PLAIN-CLOTHES POLICE OFFICER SHOT DOWN IN DUBLIN STREET

On By rebelbreezeIn Guerrilla Action, History, Ireland, irish history, Irish Republicanism, Irish War of Independence 1919-'21, Irish War of Independence 1919-1921, National Liberation, Political Prisoners2 Comments

 

Diarmuid Breatnach

“He’s up there if you want him …. on the footpath.”

On 14th April 1920, a man in plainclothes was shot by another, also in plain clothes, in Camden Street, Portobello, on the south side of the city and not far from the centre. A passing motorist rushed the gunshot victim to the nearby Meath Hospital but he died there.

The victim was Det. Constable Harry Kells of the Dublin Metropolitan Police, a man of 41 years of age who lived in No. 7 Pleasant Street, i.e very close to where he was shot. He was married without children.

Funeral party of DMP colleagues of Det. Constable Kells, with the coffin holding his remains.
(Source: irishconstabulary.com)

Many reports say that Kells was a member of the DMP “G” Division, which were known as “the political police” (apparently both within the DMP and outside). However, “McRIC” in the irishconstabulary forum states that this is inaccurate and that the man, although recently promoted to plain clothes work, was rather in “B” Division and investigating a number of burglaries in the city.

From a number of investigations carried out it seems that this question may never be resolved but it is highly likely that Kells was at least in the process of being transferred to “G” Division. However, the reason for his killing is almost certainly much more specific. It seems that Kells had been reviewing identity parades in Mountjoy Jail in attempts to find the killers of British intelligence agent Alan Bell, who had been assassinated on the 27th March. While engaged in this work, he had been identified by Peadar Clancy1, Vice-Commandant of the Dublin Brigade of the IRA, who sent a note about him to Michael Collins, who put the execution order on Kells.

It is worth noting that Republican prisoners in Mountjopy had also been taking part in a hunger-strike at that time in protest at removal of political status while detained without trial. Ironically, 90 prisoners were released on the very day Kells was killed.

Peadar Clancy, who got the word out to Collins about Kells working Identification parades in Mountjoy Jail, Dublin. (Image source: Wikpedia)

 

THE LARGEST RAID EVER CARRIED OUT BY BRITISH TROOPS IN DUBLIN

“Aul Decency”, posting on Dublin Forum.ie on 31st March 2012, drawing on April reports in the Irish Times and New York Times, says that the incident “was the cause of the largest raid ever carried out by British Troops in Dublin.”

According to “Aul Decency”: “Two of those sought in connection with Kells’ killing were Sinn Féin members Michael and William Kavanagh who lived at 5 Pleasant St., who had previously been “fingered” by Kells, and it was thought they would seek refuge among friends in the neighbourhood. The troops swarmed over Camden St from Cuffe street and into Portobello and the homes of the local Jews2. Over 100 people were arrested that day but Kells’ killer was not among them.”

Portobello area map today,  Camden Street is a longish one right between the D8 and D2 legends.   Pleasant St. is off Camden St. to the left, near the top of the image. (Source: Internet)

 

This “fingering” had in fact been carried out after the 1916 Rising when Kells reported that the brothers had been seeing changing into Volunteer uniforms in the house, information which had resulted in at least one of the brothers ending up in Frongoch concentration camp that year and losing his job.

It is enough perhaps to know that Kells was killed by Republicans and the probable reason but we can go a bit further, drawing on The Squad by T. Ryle Dwyer (quoted in irishconstabulary.com) where Paddy Daly of the Squad is quoted about the operation to kill the police officer:

“On our way we picked up Hugo MacNeill, a nephew of Eoin MacNeill3 the initial President of the Irish Volunteers. He was not a member of the Squad but he asked to come along.

We divided up into patrols of two4, MacNeill was with Joe Leonard. O‘Daly said he heard a couple of shots, and saw MacNeill sauntering down Pleasant St. as if nothing had happened.

‘What was the shooting about?‘ O’Daly asked.

‘Kells is up there if you want him‘, MacNeill replied.

‘Where?‘ O’Daly asked.

‘On the footpath‘, replied MacNeill.

Det. Constable was the third police officer to be killed in Dublin so far in 1920 in a war between the British occupation forces and the IRA, in which not only police officers but intelligence agents and British soldiers on one side were killed and, on the other, Volunteers, active Republicans, sympathisers and uninvolved civilians. Of course the war was going on in many other parts of Ireland but it is often forgotten that among those areas subject to martial-type law were Dublin County and City, where had been the HQ of the British occupation since 1171: Dublin Castle.

 

SOURCES:

 

http://www.dublinforum.net/forum/showthread.php?t=2110&page=3

http://irishconstabulary.com/topic/1477#.WO6mGEvb-_s

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

http://www.irishmedals.org/r-i-c-d-m-p-k-i-a-.html

1Peadar Clancy was one of two Volunteers and one civilian who were tortured by RIC Auxiliaries in Dublin Castle and killed on November 21, 1920 (Bloody Sunday).

2Portobello had a Jewish quarter at that time. Some of the residents are reputed to have been active in the resistance movement and a number had been on strike or locked out in 1913.

3He who had on Easter Saturday 1916 issued the cancellation order for the Rising.

4According to testimonies by Squad members, working in two groups of two was standard procedure. Typically each pair would take one side of the road. Once the assassination was carried out, the two who had not done the killing would cover the escape of the two who had.

AN EASTER STORY

On By rebelbreezeIn 1916 Rising, Cultural Comment, History, Ireland, Irish Diaspora, irish history, Irish Republicanism, Peace ProcessLeave a comment

 

Diarmuid Breatnach

There are many different kinds of Easter stories – religious ones, or about Easter parades and processions, ones about family reunions, Easter egg hunts, even holidays …. this isn’t one of those.

The man, let’s call him Jeremiah or Jerry for short, stood outside the pub on a Sunday afternoon and struggled to quell the apprehension threatening to flood his mind and body. It had to be done. He turned to his companion, who seemed to view everything through laughing eyes and was no different now. Brian had three teenage kids with him, two of his own and a friend of one of them. Hardly ideal, but Brian had turned up with them a little while ago and there was no-one to leave them with. Well, they’d be all right – Jerry would be the target and, after him, Brian. They wouldn’t touch the kids.

“Best give me the bag, Brian,” he said and, receiving it, checked inside. The stuff was there. Of course. Jerry folded the bag and stuck it under his jumper, under his coat.

He was focused on the tasks ahead but the trail that led them here had started days earlier. And, in some ways, years before that.

He squared his shoulders, turned and entered the pub. Brian and the kids followed.

**** **** ****

He had been at work on Friday afternoon when the call came from the Manager of the Irish Community Centre. Of course, he asked the staff to put it through to his office.

“Do you know your event is in the newspapers?”

Something in the Manager’s voice alerts him that he is not being congratulated on the publicity.

“The Easter Rising commemoration?”

“Yes. It’s in the Evening Standard.”

Well, that answered the second question he had in mind.

“No, I didn’t know. What are they saying?”

He knows what the British media are like and he’s got a sinking feeling.

It transpires that an Irish Republican organisation had put the event on their website, which had been noted by an Englishman who lost his son in the Omagh bombing of 1998. There are many questions to be answered about that bombing, both within the Republican and the State side, but for many years, not unnaturally, the father had been focused on the Republican group allegedly connected to the Real IRA, who had placed the bomb. In addition to his son, the bomb had killed 28 other people, the second-highest death toll for any day during the war in Ireland, the highest being the Dublin-Monaghan bombing of 1974, with a toll of 34. Jerry was aware that the 1974 bombings did not attract anything like the same media attention and understood the reason – they had been carried out by Loyalists under British Intelligence Service direction.

But what had all this to do with the Irish in Britain Representation Group in South London, and their Easter Rising Commemoration? Or with the Irish Community Centre? Well, the grieving father had noted the posting by the Irish organisation, noted the venue and rang, demanding that the event be cancelled.

“I told him the commemoration is an annual event organised by an Irish community organisation and that there’s never been any trouble at it. I told him it has nothing to do with that Republican organisation …. it doesn’t, does it?”

“No, it’s just us, the local Irish in Britain Representation Group branch. But surely any organisation is entitled to advertise the event?” replies Jerry.

Jerry is noting doubt in the Centre Manager’s voice responding to him. He is on the receiving end of huge pressure, working in his office, alone.

“He wanted me to cancel the booking and I said I couldn’t do that,” said the Manager.

The grieving father had got on to the local authority, who replied that the event was the business of the Irish Centre. The father then contacted the media, who rang the local authority again and this time, instead of sticking to their original line and weathering what would be a short-lived storm, and without phoning the Centre Manger, their spokesperson condemned the event and stated they would be asking hard questions of the Centre, which they part-funded.

Jerry reads all this again when he slips out to get a newspaper. He feels for the beleaguered Centre Manager but can do nothing. It’s too late to contact the newspapers because the story is published. The event is to be held that evening. It has been advertised in the local area and in the Irish Post, the main newspaper at the time for the Irish diaspora in Britain. And in any case, one cannot – should not – give in to intimidation, coercion. The community had mostly caved under the Prevention of Terrorism Act in 1974 and had not really rallied again until the Hunger Strikes of 1981. The event must go on.

Jerry heads home, thinking about additional security needed on the door for the event, composing replies to the local authority, a letter in the newspaper ….

The IBRG Ard-Choiste, its governing body, had withdrawn its support of the Time To Go coalition in Britain some years earlier because of undemocratic maneuvering by some left Labour politicians, along with the sidelining of specific Irish community concerns. They had not been alone: Stop the Strip Searches Campaign and the Troops Out Movement had pulled out also, leaving the tiny Labour Committee on Ireland, the Socialist Workers Party and Communist Party of Great Britain to be supported by only the Wolfe Tone Association (SF support group in London) and the Connolly Association (linked to the CPGB) among the Irish campaigners .

Later, in 1998, the IBRG had been divided on the Good Friday Agreement. It was not the issue of continuing or ceasing the armed actions of the IRA that had been the source of the division, rather the acceptance of colonial rule, albeit claimed to be for tactical reasons only. A majority within the IBRG came out against the Agreement and that was in accordance with Jerry’s position too.

Although he supports none of the Republican groups opposing Sinn Féin, he has heard whispers in the Irish community at various times associating him with this or that group. This might well be feeding doubts in the Centre Manager’s mind.

Jerry is in a more difficult position than might seem. He is not only Secretary of the local IBRG branch that has organised the event and is affiliated to the Community Centre, but also the Chairperson of the Irish Centre’s Management Committee itself. The Management Committee is the Centre Manager’s employer and has a duty of care to him. And after nearly a decade of campaigning for the provision of the Centre and the meagre funding it receives, no-one on the Committee would want to antagonise the local authority.

But it was the IBRG branch itself and in particular the Irish Pensioners’ Association which was then a part of it, which had won the provision for the community in the end. And Jerry had been part of the campaign, elected as Chairperson of the Steering Group in the years while renovations of the building and available funding were discussed, elected Chairperson for the first six months after the Centre opened and at the Annual General Meeting for every year afterwards. In fact, recently Jerry had been trying unsuccessfully to step down, to ease a replacement into his position.

On the train from London Bridge on the last leg of his journey home, Jerry reflects ruefully that this controversy might cause his stepping down, which was hardly the way he had anticipated his leaving. No stepping back slowly, supporting someone new in position and easing himself out. No – thrown out instead! That would of course imply he had done something wrong, which he hadn’t and that the IBRG had been wrong to commemorate the Rising, which they hadn’t either. Ironically, if moves were made now to replace him, he’d have to fight them.

**** **** ****

Before he arrives at the Irish Community Centre, Jerry looks carefully around the mostly residential street. Nothing seems threatening but can one be sure? He is carrying the IBRG’s branch’s banner, wrapped up in black bin liners, which makes him a visible target if someone’s searching. On the other hand, one of the poles of the banner is loose within the bundle, in case of need ….

He drops the Centre’s keys in his nervousness and enters, disabling the alarm and turning quickly to retrieve the keys and lock the door. Then, into the hall, to begin arranging some of the material ….

He is anxious for some of the IBRG members to arrive but jumps when the doorbell rings. Checking through the fish-eye spyhole, he is surprised to see one of the Irish Pensioners, who lives locally.

Opening the door and ushering her in, he locks the door behind her, saying apologetically “There’s only myself here so far.”

“Are others coming?” she asks – she has read the newspaper and unerringly touches Jerry’s main fear at the moment.

“I’m sure they are, Ellie. What are you doing here so early?’

“I thought you might need some help.”

Jerry is touched straight through to his heart but has to refuse. He can’t have her here if there’s an attack with no-one else but himself to defend her.

“Oh no, Ellie that’s very kind of you. But I kind of know what I have to do and explaining it to others will just take longer and make me flustered. You know how it is. Thanks a lot. Besides the others will be here soon. Come back when we’re open …..” he trails off guiltilly.

Still, she goes and he heaves a sigh of relief, at the same time feeling shame.

But there’s work to be done.

A scattering of volunteers arrives over the next half hour. The reception table is set up in the lobby, to sell tickets and distribute leaflets. Hidden behind, are the lengths of wood in case of attack by one of the British fascist groups. Up goes the green-white-&-orange bunting, portraits of the executed 1916 leaders, enlarged copies of the 1916 Proclamation. At the back of the stage, facing the hall, the large artwork Jerry made a few years ago of green, white and orange flames bursting from the date 1916. And the IBRG branch banner.

The stage is ready for the band, a group called The Mc ____ Brothers, who play Irish ballads, including Republican material. Water jug and glasses for the speakers. Tables and chairs rearranged on the hall floor (the part-time Caretaker had laid them out but Jerry always prefers a more “club” arrangement, of smaller tables spaced apart surrounded by some chairs).

By the time the opening hour arrives, Jerry is sweating but it is the sweat of work, not of fear or apprehension. The hall looks good. People are starting to arrive. Maybe he can relax now. Maybe. Brian is on the door with others close by.

The event is a bring-your-own-alcohol one and Jerry and others in the lobby spend some time directing people to the nearest off-licence, so that people are coming in, going out, coming in, sitting in the hall …. Jerry is scanning their faces, looking for possible sources of trouble.

An hour later and the band has not arrived. Pol phones them but gets no reply. Phones their manager but no reply either. Another hour later, the reality dawns on the organisers. The band will not be coming. They have seen the newspaper and decided to look after their safety. But they haven’t even bothered to tell them.

The organisers confer, after which Jerry mounts the stage, calls for attention and begins to speak.

“A Chairde Gael agus a chairde ó thíortha eile, go raibh míle maith agaibh for coming here tonight to commemorate the 1916 Easter Rising with us. This is a hugely important event in Irish history and indeed in the history of the world and the local branch of the IBRG has been not just commemorating but publicly celebrating this historic event every year for some time now.

“But we are very sorry to say that we have some bad news for you now. Some of you will know that very recently pressure was put on us to cancel this event but that we refused to do so. Pressure was put on the Irish Centre to cancel the event which they also and rightly refused to do.

“That the British media would attack us is no surprise, they have been doing that for years. But that the local authority’s spokesperson should bow down to them and, without consulting with us, imply that we are doing something wrong here, that the Centre should not have taken our booking, is something else.

“And worst of all, that an Irish band, which makes a living playing Irish ballads, should allow themselves to be scared off and not even have the decency to ring us – well, I don’t really have the words to tell you what I think about that.

“So, a chairde, we offer you your money back and no questions and our sincere apologies. However, those of you who wish to remain are welcome to do so and we’ll make our own entertainment with a few songs …. we have a guitar player here …. another man plays a whistle …. But please, you are entitled to your money back and those who wish to please go to the table in the lobby now.”

As though he had been primed to do so (but Jerry knew he had not), a middle-aged Irishman at a table nearer the stage jumps up and shouts: “NO! We will not ask for our money back! We’re not going to be chased out by no British newspapers!”

A round of applause from the audience and a few cheers greet his outburst. And just like that, the evening is saved.

The guitarist plays some numbers and sings. Jerry gives an abbreviated oration and sings a few ballads. The whistle player plays some tunes. People sing along to songs. They drink, chat and buy raffle tickets. One of the raffle prizes is auctioned by the winner, a local publican Jerry had been surprised to see in the audience. The money goes into the takings. At the end of the evening, as they finally cajole the last of the audience out of the Centre (still with a wary eye on the street) and finish cleaning and tidying up, they count the takings. Financially, it has been their most successful evening ever, especially since they didn’t have to pay a band.

But the band ….. their action and lack of notification have left a sour taste in the mouths of the organisers. And during the evening, they learned that the Mc___ Brothers are booked to play at an Irish pub, on Sunday afternoon, just two days away. And only a five minutes’ drive from the Irish Centre.

**** **** ****

A council of war decides that the bar will be visited, Jerry will mount the stage (“you’re our best speaker”) and present the band with white feathers, symbolising cowardice. Some can’t be there. One or two think it will be dangerous. Brian, Pol and Jerry think it’s a good plan — so then they just need some white feathers. How hard can it be to get some?

Visits to duck pond parks yield none. The quaysides along the Thames show no seagull feathers. Brian drives to the coast and walks some beaches – and finds a couple of wispy ones. In desperation on Sunday morning, they burst open a pillow and drag out a handful of feathers. They are small, not at all like the large ones they had envisaged presenting to the band but they are white and they are feathers. Into the plastic bag they go and then Brian is driving Jerry and the kids to the pub. Brian has remarkable personal resources and has been through some very serious situations so this might be small potatoes to him …. but Jerry’s guts are churning.

Some faces in the pub turn to look at them as they enter. Jerry has been here before only once but a number of the clientele are known to him from other pubs and events. And he is probably known to more of them, as Chairperson of the Irish Centre. A few catch his eye and he nods at them, keeping his face impassive.

Do they know that the band playing here let down the audience two days ago? Of course they do …. or at least many would. This is the Irish community in SE London. Besides, the Manager of this bar, Kate, until recently worked for the publican who auctioned the raffle prize at the event on Friday night. At least one of them was there that night too.  Are they wondering what Jerry intends to do?

The band, which Brian has taken to calling the “McChicken Brothers”, is already playing on stage. Jerry had meant to get here before they got on but the feather search had been a delay. To get in front of them now might be resented by the audience and anyway, the band’s control of the microphones could drown out what needs to be said. Jerry goes to the bar, orders pints for himself and Brian and soft drinks for the kids, stitches a smile on his face and chats to Brian. And they wait.

Eventually the band takes a break and Jerry waits tensely for the indication that they are returning for the second half of their gig. When he sees them coming he nods to Brian, whose job is to fend off anyone attacking him before he has finished.

Just as the band reach the low stage but have yet to mount it, Jerry jumps up on it and begins to speak in a loud voice.

“Ladies and gentlemen, your attention for a moment please!” EVERYBODY turns to look.

“These musicians here were booked to play at an Easter Rising commemoration at the Irish Community Centre on Friday. They didn’t turn up. They left the audience (ok, bump up the figures a little!, he thinks) — 200 people – and the organisers stranded. And they didn’t even have the decency to tell us they weren’t coming. They ran scared, my friends, from lies in the British press.”

Jerry has the plastic bag in his hand and now dips into it, withdrawing a handfull of fluffy little white feathers.

“Shame on you!” he says, facing the band members. “And this is what we think of you!”

So saying, he tries to throw the bunch of feathers at them but they erupt in a cloud between them, some clinging to Jerry’s hands. No matter, it is done. He steps off the stage and heads for the door, hoping to make it before anyone tries to stop him, before Brian has to get into physical stuff.

Surprisingly, someone shouted “Hear, hear!” and there had been a scattered round of applause.

Outside, they head for Brian’s car. A man comes running out and Brian steps forward to confront him, Jerry getting ready too, the kids behind him. Kate, the Manager, comes running out too and grabs the man. She says some things to him and he goes back in reluctantly, Jerry thinking the man doesn’t know how lucky he is that he didn’t tangle with Brian. Then Kate comes up to Jerry, shaking with anger, her face white.

“You had NO right, NO right to do that in my pub!” she says.

“We couldn’t let them get away with that, Kate,” Jerry replies.

“Anywhere else. Not in my pub,” she says again.

The adrenaline is now seeping away and Jerry knows that his leg will start to shake soon. He feels a little sorry for Kate but needs to get away.

“Sorry, Kate, that’s where they were,” Jerry replies and turns to go.

“Don’t ever come in my pub again,” she calls out at his back.

**** **** ****

Many things were probably said in the local Irish community about the IBRG branch before and after that incident but probably that action contributed to an estimation that whatever you might think of them, they stood up for themselves and didn’t back down. That and their annual Children’s Irish Hallowe’en Party, their weekly Children’s Irish Art and History Group, their participation in the South London St. Patrick’s Day Parade and their occasional dramatic productions earned the small group a kind of respect in the local Irish community, a community often quite conservative in social outlook, often insular, often riven by jealousies and back-biting.

One night two weeks after the 1916 commemoration, there was a crude arson attempt on the Centre – a bottle with accelerant leaned against the front door and set alight. It burned a hole in the door and set off the fire alarms. Jerry, as a keyholder, got a call to attend from Ellie. The police were already there and Jerry dealt with them politely. Any enemies? they asked. Jerry wondered whether he should give them a list.

“My guess is some British far-right group”, he replied, very glad that back in the Steering Group days, he had insisted on all the windows being covered with wire mesh panels, thinking of possible rock or even petrol bomb attack.

The police suggested they look through a list of recent attendance at the Centre. Jerry politely refused. Security provisions were made at the Centre.  Nothing came of whatever investigations the police carried out and Jerry was not surprised.

Media attention went away and the local authority didn’t take the matter further. Jerry wrote a letter to the Irish Post, denouncing the pressure applied against the IBRG and the Irish Centre and which might even have encouraged the arson attack. He did so under an assumed name because, as Chairperson, he wished not to implicate the Centre in his denunciation of the craven action of the local authority spokesperson. The beleaguered Centre Manager did not see it that way, assuming that Jerry was trying to have his say while avoiding responsibility.

When, a number of years later, in a heavy round of cuts in expenditure, the Centre’s main funding, the Manager’s and caretakers’ salaries were targeted in the local authority’s budget, Jerry led the Management Committee in a campaign of resistance. They picketed Council meetings and drew up lists of elected Councillors to lobby. Irish musicians and children in Irish dancing school costumes were brought to perform in front of the Council offices, leading to photographs in the local press. The Pensioners’ Association, amicably separated some years earlier from the IBRG branch, played a prominent part once more. Some local English people came forward to support the Centre’s case. Jerry prepared a submission for the IBRG branch and spoke to it at a Council meeting. Eventually, their meagre funding, the removal of which would have meant the closing of the Centre except for sporadic events, was saved.

Jerry didn’t go back to that bar where he had confronted the “McChicken Brothers” for about a year after that incident. When he did, he wondered whether he’d be served. He was — but it was another two years before Kate spoke to him again.

End.

SHOOT-OUT IN DUBLIN ON MARCH 14 LEAVES SEVEN DEAD

On By rebelbreezeIn Executions, Guerrilla Action, History, Ireland, irish history, Irish Republicanism, Irish War of Independence 1919-'21, Irish War of Independence 1919-1921, National LiberationLeave a comment

SHOOT-OUT IN DUBLIN ON MARCH 14 LEAVES SEVEN DEAD1

By John Dorney

(Re-published from The Irish Story, History webpage http://www.theirishstory.com/2015/01/26/the-pearse-street-ambush-dublin-march-14-1921/#.WN6_Ukvb-_s by kind permission of John Dorney)

Dublin awoke on the morning to March 14th 1921 to the news that six IRA Volunteers, captured in an ambush at Drumcondra two months before, had been hanged.

The gates of Mountjoy Gaol were opened at 8:25 am and news of the executions was read out to the distraught relatives of the dead. As many as 40,000 people had gathered outside and many mournfully said the rosary for the executed men.

On the morning of March 14 1921 six IRA Volunteers were hanged in Mountjoy Gaol.

Crowds of protesters outside Mountjoy Jail being held back by British troops and a tank (image from Dorney’s article)

The labour movement called a half-day general strike in the city in protest at the hangings. The clandestine Republican Government declared a day of national mourning. All public transport came to a halt and republican activists made sure the strike was observed. IRA officer Frank Henderson recalled:

“Patrick Sweeney, Vice Commandant of the 2nd Battalion, and other members of the Battalion paraded the Battalion area during the hours of public mourning to ensure that shops were closed. With the exception of one or two public houses which had to be cleared, the order to cease work was loyally obeyed by the citizens.”

By evening, the streets cleared rapidly as the British-imposed curfew came into effect at 9pm each night. The city must have been a fearful place, patrolled by regular British troops and the much-feared paramilitary police, or Auxiliaries, as people scurried home and awaited IRA retaliation for the hangings. This was not long in coming.

Pearse Street, or Great Brunswick Street as it then was, nestles just south of the river Liffey, running from Ringsend, an old fishing port, to the city centre. Number 144 housed the company headquarters of the Dublin IRA’s 3rd Battalion at St Andrews Catholic Hall. It had been used for this purpose since before insurrection of 1916.

On the evening of March 14, their captain Peadar O’Meara sent them out to attack police or military targets. As many as 34 IRA men prowled the area, armed with the standard urban guerrilla arms of easily-hidden handguns and grenades. One young Volunteer, Sean Dolan threw a grenade at a police station on nearby Merrion Square, which bounced back before it could explode, blowing off his own leg.

Auxiliaries on a raid c.1920 (image sourced on Internet)

It was about 8 o’clock. The curfew was approaching. A company of Auxiliaries, based in Dublin Castle was sent to the area to investigate the explosion. It consisted of one Rolls Royce armoured car and two tenders (trucks) holding about 16 men. Apparently the Auxiliaries had some inside information as they made straight for the local IRA headquarters at 144 Pearse Street. One later testified in court that – “I had been notified there were a certain number of gunmen there”.

But the IRA were also waiting. As soon as the Auxiliaries approached the building, fire was opened on them from three sides.

What the newspapers described as ‘hail of fire’ tore into the Auxiliaries’ vehicles. Five of the eight Auxiliaries in the first tender were hit in the opening fusillade. Two of them were fatally injured, including the driver (an Irishman named O’Farrell) and an Auxiliary named L. Beard.

But the IRA fighters were seriously outgunned. The Rolls Royce armoured car was impervious to small arms fire (except its tyres, which were shot out) but mounted a Vickers heavy machine gun, which sprayed the surrounding houses with bullets. The unwounded Auxiliaries also clambered out of their tenders and returned fire at the gun flashes from street corners and rooftops.

Civilian passersby flung themselves to the ground to avoid the bullets but four were hit, by which side it was impossible to tell. The British military court of inquiry into the incident found that the civilians had been killed by persons unknown; if by the IRA then they were ‘murdered’, if hit by Auxiliaries the shootings were ‘accidental’ — which, aside from demonstrating the court’s bias, shows us that no one was sure who had killed them.

Firing lasted for just five minutes but in that time seven people (including the two Auxiliaries) were killed or fatally wounded and at least six more wounded. A young man, Bernard O’Hanlon aged just 18, originally from Dundalk, lay sprawled, dead, outside number 145, his ‘bull-dog’ revolver under him which had five chambers, two of which contained expended rounds and three live rounds – indicating he had got off just two shots before being cut down.

Another IRA Volunteer, Leo Fitzgerald was also killed outright. Two more guerrillas were wounded, one in the hip and one in the back. They, along with Sean Dolan who had been wounded by his own grenade were spirited away by sympathetic Fire Brigade members and members of Cumann na mBan and treated in the nearby Mercer’s hospital.

Three civilians lay dead on the street. One, Thomas Asquith was a 68 year-old caretaker, another, David Kelly was a prominent Sinn Fein member and head of the Sinn Fein bank. His brother, Thomas Kelly was a veteran Sinn politician and since 1918 a Member of Parliament. The third, Stephen Clarke, aged 22, was an ex-soldier and may have been the one who had tipped off the Auxiliaries about the whereabouts of the IRA meeting house. An internal IRA report noted that he was ‘under observation… as he was a tout for the enemy’.

Location of the plaque on house near to Library in Pearse St. (formerly Gt. Brunswick St.) commemorating the fight. The plaque is in the 3 o’clock position on the photo. (photo D.Breatnach this year)

In five minutes of intense gunfire, seven people were mortally wounded; two IRA Volunteers, two Auxiliaries and three civilians.

Two IRA men were captured as they fled the scene, one, Thomas Traynor a 40 year-old veteran of the Easter Rising, was carrying an automatic pistol but claimed to have had no part in the ambush itself. He had, he maintained, simply been asked to bring in the weapon to 144 Great Brunswick Street. The other was Joseph Donnelly a youth of just 17.

As most of the IRA fighters got away through houses, over walls and into backstreets, the Auxiliaries ransacked St Andrew’s Catholic Hall at number 144, but found little of value. Regular British Army troops quickly arrived from nearby Beggars Bush barracks and cordoned off the area, but no further arrests were made. Desultory sniping carried on in the city for several hours into the night.

The plaque closer.
(Photo sourced Internet)

Footnotes

1The title is our own, i.e of Rebel Breeze blog

AN SEAMRÓG — THE THREE-LEAVED PLANT

On By rebelbreezeIn Cultural Comment, Current Affairs Comment, History, Ireland, irish history, Irish Language, Natural History, PlantsLeave a comment

Diarmuid Breatnach

 

The Shamrock, contrary to expectations, cannot be said to be a specific plant. It is of course a kind of clover but which one? People writing about it frequently state that it is generally accepted that the most likely candidates are the species Trifolium dubium (variously called Lesser Trefoil, Suckling Clover, Little Hop Clover and Lesser Hop Trefoil; Irish: Seamair bhuí), with yellow flowers or the white-flowered Trifolium repens (White Clover; Irish: Seamair bhán).  But which one?  Well, excuse the pun but take your pick.

Trifolium dubium, the lesser clover, an seamair bhuí, top of the candidate list for the “shamrock” title.
(Photo: Internet)

 

Generally accepted by whom? One supposes by botanists and Irish folklorists but those sites rarely supply a reference. However, amateur botanist and zoologist Nathaniel Colgan (1851-1919) asked people from around Ireland send him specimens of what they believed to be an Irish shamrock and identified the five most common plant species, of which the two most common were the yellow clover followed by the white. A hundred years later, Dr Charles Nelson repeated the experiment in 1988 and found that yellow clover was still the most commonly chosen. According to Wikipeida, yellow clover is also the species cultivated for sale in Ireland on Saint Patrick’s Day and is the one nominated by the Department of Agriculture as the “official” shamrock of Ireland.

The word “shamrock” is an Anglic corruption of the Irish seamróg, itself a contraction of seamair óg, meaning a sprig of young clover. The Irish shamrock is usually the species Trifolium dubium (lesser clover; Irish: seamair bhuí), with yellow flowers or the white-flowered Trifolium repens (white clover; Irish: seamair bhán).

A trawl through the internet looking for images of shamrock plants throws up a bewildering multiplicity of images of trefoil plants, the only thing they have in common being that they are (mostly) green. It soon becomes apparent that many of the images are taken from a different genus, that of oxalis, usually the one named wood-sorrel (Oxalis acetosella) in English-speaking Europe1.

People today should know better. Edmund Spenser, an anti-Irish colonist and commentator on Irish culture, also poet and ancestor of the late Princess Diana, reported the Irish eating shamrock and so have some other colonial observers but almost certainly what they observed was the Irish eating the wood-sorrel – in Ireland it has some common names associated with eating. Spenser and other colonists can be blamed for many things but not that confusion – they were not botanists and did not have access to the Internet. Also, seamsóg, the Irish name for wood-sorrel, does sound a bit like seamróg, especially if one is not listening carefully. The confusion can be continued in English, where the common sorrel (Rumex acetosa) is a completely different plant and a common enough culinary one.

Many species of the genus oxalis close their leave sand flowers at night – a handy trick which the trifolii do not have; indeed, try as they may, trifolii could not possibly close their flowers since each one is in the form of a cluster, while those of oxalis tend to be trumpet-shaped.

Wood Sorrel — defintely not the shamrock, despite numerous claims since Edmund Spenser, the Elizabethan poet.
(Photo: Internet)

The wood-sorrel grows typically in woods which are shady but not too dark and is characterised, as with many other oxalis, by an acidic taste in the stems. As children in the area in which I grew up in south Co. Dublin we chewed the stems of a cultivated species with large green leaves and pink flowers, commonly grown in window-boxes and gardens and known to us by the name of “Sour Sallies”.

The shamrock (both varieties of trifulium) grows best in meadows receiving a fair amount of sunlight, in among grasses. It belongs to the clovers, a different family completely from oxalis, belonging in turn to a very large group of plants as different in appearance from one another as peas and beans on the one hand and furze (also known as gorse) on the other (but many bearing fruit pods). They are the legume group, plants that concentrate nitrogen in nodules around their roots, making many of them good crops with which to precede plants that require a lot of nitrogen, such as the cabbage family or cereals.

The expression “in the clover” as an idiom for being successful or having a good time alludes to the alleged fondness of grazing animals for the plants but this is much more likely to be the white clover, Trifolium repens (Irish: seamair bhán) than dubium, as the former grows bigger and thicker. Clovers are important plants not only for grazing animals and nitrogen-fixing but also for bee-keepers, being rich in nectar and pollen.

End

 

FURTHER READING

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

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

http://slowfoodireland.com/food/foraging/wild-sorrels/

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

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

 

FOOTNOTES

1 In North America, Oxalis montana is also called “common wood sorrel”.

THE SHAMROCK AND THE COLOUR GREEN – NATIVE OR FOREIGN IMPORTS INTO IRISH ICONOGRAPHY?

On By rebelbreezeIn Cultural Comment, Current Affairs Comment, Flora, Folk Custom, History, Ireland, Irish Diaspora, irish history, Irish Republicanism, La Diáspora Irlandesa, National Liberation, Plants, social commentary, Song, Song in Struggle, Traditions & Folk Custom3 Comments

Diarmuid Breatnach

We are long accustomed to the association of these two symbols with Irish ethnicity and nationalism, the shamrock and the colour green — but historically can they be shown to be authentically Irish?

Shamrock closeup
(Photo sourced at Internet)

 

The shamrock symbol has been used by a number of products and services, including Aer Lingus, formerly the Irish national airline and now a subsidiary of the International Airways Group1. Both as a plant and a living symbol it is now being sold on the streets and in shops in preparation for the celebration of the male patron saint of Ireland, St. Patrick on March 17th.

St. Patrick himself was a foreign import, albeit one seized unwillingly by Irish raiders. The son of a Romanised Celt it seems and probably from Wales, Patricius was kept as slave labour herding sheep until his escape but he returned as a Christian missionary and became one of the founders of the Celtic Christian Church in Ireland. 

We may view this as an amazing feat in itself – Ireland was one of the few European countries which went from the old multi-gods religion to the monotheism of Judeo-Christianity in a largely peaceful transition. However the Celtic Church at least tolerated and many would say condoned many of the laws and customs of the old culture, including marriage of priests, the right to divorce by men or women and a higher status for women than was common in an increasingly feudal Europe.

The word “shamrock” is an Anglic corruption of the Irish seamróg, itself a contraction of seamair óg, meaning a sprig of young — or more likely small –clover. The Irish shamrock is usually the species Trifolium dubium (lesser clover; Irish: seamair bhuí), with yellow flowers or the white-flowered Trifolium repens (white clover; Irish: seamair bhán) with the bias towards the yellow-flowered.

Children at schools influenced by the Catholic clergy in Ireland (which was and still is in control of the vast majority of the schools within the Irish state) were taught that St. Patrick used the shamrock to illustrate the existence of the Christian Holy Trinity of the Father, Jesus Christ and the Holy Ghost, i.e. explaining how there may be three different aspects in one entity, as in the three leaves on the one stem of the shamrock.

A charming story but clearly without any foundation whatsoever – not only is it not mentioned in what is believed by historians to be Patrick’s autobiography but the story only emerged much later. However, the crucial case against the veracity of the story is that neither the Gaels nor the Celts in general2 had any need to be convinced of the existence of trinities of gods: in Ireland we already had the Morrigan, a female trinity of Badhb, Macha and Anand and of course the Celts had the ubiquitous triskele symbol (surviving as the national symbol of Manx) to illustrate a trinity, religious or otherwise. 

The first clear association of the shamrock with St. Patrick in Ireland comes in an account by an English traveller to occupied Ireland, Thomas Dineley, who described in 1681 Irish people on St. Patrick’s Day wearing green on their clothes, including the shamrock. But the first account of St. Patrick’s use of the shamrock is not seen until 1726, when it appears in a work by Caleb Threlkeld, a botanist.

But what of the colour green? Surely that at least is authentically Irish? Well, it certainly has a longer pedigree. Dineley’s account in 1681 associates wearing green with the celebration of the feast day of St. Patrick’s, one of the three patron saints of Ireland3 (yet another trinity?). But the Catholic Confederacy of 1642-1652, an alliance of Gaelic chieftains with Norman-Irish aristocracy against the Reformation being imposed upon them, also flew a green flag, with a gold harp upon it.

The symbol of Ulster was the Red Hand from an ancient Irish myth of arrival but what was the background? Both the O’Neills and O’Donnells, dominant clans of Ulster, have designs in red and blue against a white background. Only Leinster province has a design in green and yellow.

BLUE?

The colour of an old design for Meath is blue. There is an old heraldic design for Ireland of three crowns on a blue background and although this was the arms granted by Richard II of England to Robert de Vere as Lord of Ireland in 13864, over two centuries after the Norman invasion, it may have drawn on the colour of an existing Irish flag or design.

The Wikipedia page on the Coat of arms of Ireland, although commenting that heraldry is a feudal practice suggests an older inspiration:

“The colour of the field is sometimes called ‘St. Patrick’s blue’, a name applied to shades of blue associated with Ireland. In current designs, used by the UK and Irish states (sic), the field is invariably a deep blue. The use of blue in the arms has been associated with Gormfhlaith, a Gaelic mythological personification of Ireland. The word Gormfhlaith is a compound of the Irish words gorm (“blue”) and flaith (“sovereign”); it is noted in early Irish texts as the name of several queens closely connected with dynastic politics in the 10th and 11th century Ireland. The National Library of Ireland, in describing the blue background of the arms, notes that in early Irish mythology the sovereignty of Ireland (Irish: Flaitheas Éireann) was represented by a woman often dressed in a blue robe.”

The designers of the Cumann na mBan flag may have been aware of the ancient claim of the colour blue when they made that the background colour of their own flag.  Markievicz and Hobson would even more likely have been aware of it as well as the blue with an orange, golden or silver sunburst, alleged flag of the legendary band of warriors na Fianna, when they made that the flag of the Republican youth organisation they founded, Na Fianna Éireann.

THE GREEN FLAG

But what about the United Irishmen’s flag of green, with a golden harp? When talking about the United Irishmen we need to remember from where they received their ideological influences. These were mostly from radical and republican thinkers and agitators in Britain, the USA and France. The United Irishmen organisation was founded by Anglicans and Presbyterians, mostly colonists and settlers or their descendants and most of their leadership in the uprisings of 1798 and 18035 came from from among that section of Irish society. That goes a long way to explaining why most of the revolutionary texts of the time are in the English language, in a country where the majority even then still spoke Irish and with a rich literary and oral tradition in the Irish language.

United Irishmen harp motif with motto.
(Photo sourced at Internet)

There is a historical trend among colonists to feel disadvantaged with regard to their compatriots back in “the mother country”, to resent levels of taxation, to complain of inadequate representation and of corrupt or inefficient government. This occurred in English-speaking America and led to the American Revolution and the creation of the United States. It also occurred in the other America, where the Spanish-speaking colones developed conflicts with the Spanish Kingdom and eventually rose in rebellion against it across South and Central America, eventually gaining independence for a number of states.

A similar process was taking place in Ireland, where the disaffected who belonged to the established church, the Anglican or Church of Ireland, understood that to create a strong autonomous nation, even as part of the English-ruled unity of nations, they would need to bring into government the greater majority, the Presbyterians 6 and even the overwhelming majority, the Catholics (i.e the native Irish).

Henry Grattan attempted this by trying to get the excluded denominations admitted to the Irish Parliament but Crown bribery, sectarianism or fear of having to return lands grabbed by their grandparents or others, combined to have a majority vote the proposals down. That ensured that the organisers of the United Irishmen would realise that no progress to their objectives was possible without revolution.

Irish nationalists among the descendants of colonists often adopted Irish symbols and some other Irish identifiers as a sign of difference from the English. There was some interest in the Irish language but it does not appear to have been widely studied by most Irish Republicans of the time as witnessed by the incorrect appellation of “Erin” for Ireland – any Irish-speaker would know that Éire is the nominative form for the country and ‘Éireann’ is employed in the genitive and dative cases. United Irishmen were involved in organising the Belfast Harp Festival of 1792, while folk-song collectors and antiquarians dug among the people and archives for survivals of an older Irish culture.

The Harp, an ancient Irish musical instrument employed also to accompany poetry recitation was employed as a symbol by the Unitedmen — often with the motto “ ‘Tis new-strung and shall be heard”. In addition, the English had long recognised the instrument as a symbol for Ireland, albeit under the Crown.

THE COLOUR GREEN

But where did the colour green come from to be associated with Irish nationalism? This question could do with more research than I have the time or other facilities to devote to it but one may comment what green is not: it is neither the Red of Royal England nor the Blue of Royal France. Nor is it the red with a white saltire of the Order of St. Patrick, another colonial creation and clearly of Royal and colonial origin and patronage, created at the time of a bubbling of the nationalist pot in Ireland and only sixteen years before the 1798 Uprising.

Interestingly, the Irish Brigade (1688–1791) of the French Army did include the colour green in its flag design, four quarters alternately green and red, with a crown in each. And the standard of Napoleon’s La Légion Irlandaise in 1841 is described as of “emerald green”.

Regimental colours of one of the irish Regiments of the French Royal Amy, De Berwick, until 1791. (Photo sourced at Flags of Ireland — see Further Reading for link)

 

William Drennan (1754–5 February 1820), United Irishman, is credited with first use of the description “Emerald Isle” in his poem When Erin First Rose and it was much later re-used in the ballad Bold Robert Emmet. John Sheils, a Drogheda Presbyterian and United Irishman, employed the harp, the colour green, St. Patrick, Erin (sic) and the shamrock all in his song The Rights of Man, which he composed some years prior to the 1798 Rising. The “three-leaved plant” which is “three in one” is used in Sheils’ song:

“to prove its unity in that community

that holds with impunity to the Rights of Man”

The trinity there is clearly the political one desired by the Unitedmen of Protestant (Anglican), Catholic and Dissenter (Presbyterian and other sects).

Green was widely worn by people with United Irish sympathies and particularly during repression by Orange militia, people wearing green were targeted. However, if one wanted to wear a suspect nationalist colour, how safer than to do so than on the feast day of the alleged founder of Christianity in Ireland and acknowledged by Protestant, Sects and Catholics alike?

From the United Irishmen onwards, green has been unarguably associated with Irish nationalism and Irish Republicanism, in the flags of the Fenians, the Irish Volunteers and even of the Irish Citizen Army, also part of the tricolour flag awarded by Parisian revolutionary women to the Young Irelanders which is now the national flag of the Irish state. Green was also the colour of the flag of the St. Patrick’s Battalion that fought for Mexico against the invasion by the USA (1846-’48) and of ceremonial uniforms of some Irish formations during the American Civil War along with the main colour of some of their regimental flags, also of the flags of the Fenian veterans of that war invading Canada in 1866.

Flag of the Irish Brigade (later the Fighting 69th) in the Union Army, American Civil War.
(Photo sourced at Internet)

Does it matter whether green is authentically an ancient Irish colour or not? Would Irish Republicanism or nationalism be de-legitimised if it could be proven the colour they are using was of dubious origin or of comparatively recent political significance for Ireland? I don’t think so. But it is good to be aware of the different origins of symbols and to question and even challenge what is handed to us as unquestionably authentic.

However, enough people have now fought under the green in eight uprisings in Ireland and struggles abroad; enough people have laid down their lives under the colour and indeed, once it became a symbol of Irishness, enough Irish have been persecuted, prosecuted and even executed for wearing it, to ensure that “wherever green is worn” can be Irish. And in that representation, the shamrock too, which of course happens to be green, and could be passed off as a devotional symbol to suspicious authorities and murderously insecure and sectarian minorities of colonial origin, has its place.

Painting depicting the Battle of Ridgeway, Fenian invasion of Canada, 1866. (Photo sourced at Wikipedia)
The Wearing o’ the Green

(by John Keegan “Leo” Casey (1846 – March 17, 1870). Keegan, known as the Poet of the Fenians, was an Irish poet, orator and republican who was famous for authorship of this song, apparently written when he was 15 and also as the writer of the song “The Rising of the Moon” (to the same air), also as one of the central figures in the Fenian Rising of 1867. He was imprisoned by the English and by a huge irony died on St. Patrick’s Day in 1870 at the age of 24).

O Paddy dear, and did ye hear the news that’s goin’ round?

The shamrock is by law forbid to grow on Irish ground!

No more Saint Patrick’s Day we’ll keep, his colour can’t be seen

For there’s a cruel law ag’in the Wearin’ o’ the Green.”

I met with Napper Tandy7, and he took me by the hand

And he said, “How’s poor old Ireland, and how does she stand?”

“She’s the most distressful country that ever yet was seen

For they’re hanging men and women there for the Wearin’ o’ the Green.”

So if the colour we must wear be England’s cruel red

Let it remind us of the blood that Irishmen have shed

And pull the shamrock from your hat, and throw it on the sod

But never fear, ’twill take root there, though underfoot ’tis trod.

When laws can stop the blades of grass from growin’ as they grow

And when the leaves in summer-time their colour dare not show

Then I will change the colour too I wear in my caubeen

But till that day, please God, I’ll stick to the Wearin’ o’ the Green.

But if, at last, her colours should be torn from Ireland’s heart

Her sons, with shame and sorrow, from the dear old soil will part;

I’ve heard whispers of a Country that lies far beyond the sea,

Where rich and poor stand equal, in the light of Freedom’s day!

O Erin! must we leave you driven by the tyrant’s hand!

Must we ask a Mother’s blessing, in a strange but happy land,

Where the cruel Cross of England’s thralldom’s never to be seen:

But where, thank God! we’ll live and die, still Wearing of the Green!

End.

John ‘Leo’ Keegan Casey monument, Glasnevin Cemetery, Dublin (Photo sourced at Wikipedia)

FURTHER READING

An undated interesting article about the origins of Irish national symbols (also giving a list of additional reading) http://www.gov.ie/en/essays/symbols.html

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

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

Reference to colour green in the standard of Napoleon’s Irish unit La Légion Irlandaise http://www.irishtimes.com/culture/heritage/enlisting-for-my-enemy-s-enemy-1.1779145

and in some uniforms and flags of Irish formations in the Union Army in the American Civil War https://www.abebooks.com/book-search/title/new-yorks-fighting-sixty-ninth-regimental/author/john-mahon/ and

https://www.amazon.com/Rising-Moon-Peter-Berresford-Ellis/dp/0312006764

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

About Leo Casey http://www.irishidentity.com/extras/gaels/stories/leocasey.htm

FOOTNOTES

1A consortium of Iberia, Vueling and ironically, British Airways.

2Nor indeed other cultures such as the Hindi or the classical Greeks

3Sts. Patrick, Bridget and Columcille

4It continued in use until 1541

5 And even many of the leaders, journalists and poets of the Young Irelanders and of the Fenians.

6And other “Dissenters” such as Unitarians, Methodists, Society of Friends (Quakers) etc.

7Napper Tandy was a United Irishman who lived in Dublin; his home is mentioned in the most common versions of the well-known Dublin song, The Spanish Lady.

DUBLIN FIRE BRIGADE AMBULANCE PROTEST AT CITY HALL

On By rebelbreezeIn Current Event Report, Housing Struggle, Ireland, Trade unions, Workers' StrugglesLeave a comment

Diarmuid Breatnach

DUBLIN FIRE BRIGADE AMBULANCE SERVICE WORKERS PROTEST AT CITY HALL — hundreds of workers protest Dublin City Council Executive Officer’s plan to “outsource” their service.

Gathering to hear the speakers on Cork Hill, outside the side entrance of Dublin City Hall (left of photo).
(Photo: DBreatnach)

The monthly meeting of the elected representatives of Dublin City Council is often an occasion for protest, with placards and banners, of a number of campaigns protesting measures of the Council’s administrators or for calling on City Councillors for support ffor the campaigners’ objectives.

The March meeting of the Council on Monday night this week was no different in that respect but on this occasion, unusually, there were hundreds of protesters outside, the majority of them in uniform, filling the Cork Hill space in front of City Hall’s side entrance, up to the ceremonial entrance gates of Dublin Castle.

Several hundred thronged the area, most of them in either the dark blue of the Dublin Fire Brigade or in red-and-yellow or tan-and-yellow jackets, also bearing the legend “Dublin Fire Brigade”. Dotted among the crowd too were others in ordinary street clothes, presumably members of the public and a few with young children, probably relations to fire fighters or paramedics.

A young supporter of the fire-fighters’ struggle
(Photo: D.Breatnach)

The protest meeting was seeking the support of elected Dublin City Councillors in their dispute with the Chief Executive of the Council, Owen Keegan. The highest officer in the Council does not want the local authority responsible for funding the Dublin Fire Brigade’s ambulance service call-and-dispatch service and announced two years ago that it would be transferred from the Tara Street centre and put under the control of the HSE at their national control centre in Tallaght.

However, his plan ran into trouble not only with the fire-fighters themselves but with a large number of the elected public representatives and as a result a consultative forum was set up. Its eventual recommendations were not however what Keegan wished for, proposing instead a technological linkup between the HSE’s and the DFB ambulance services and as a result Keegan and other DCC senior management pulled out of the consultative forum in January. Brendan Kenny, second-in-command at DCC said that there was no point in continuing with the forum since it did not carry out the task it was set up to do but came up with different recommendations.

 

STRIKE NOTICE

View from the steps of City Hall (State Entrance gates to Dublin Castle to the extreme left of photo). (photo: D.Breatnach)

Since the intention of the City’s management was clearly to proceed with their plan, both the main trade unions affected, SIPTU and IMPACT, balloted their members for strike action and obtained an overwhelming majority in February: 93% to 7% in favour of strike action and 97% to 3% in favour of industrial action. On Monday SIPTU served strike notice on Dublin City Council management and IMPACT did likewise the following day.

The strikes are due to take place from 9am on Saturday, March 18th and Monday, March 27th.

The demonstration on Monday night was addressed by a number of speakers, including many elected Councillors. However, first to address them was SIPTU’s Brendan O’Brien who expressed regret that “SIPTU members in Dublin Fire Brigade have been forced into conducting these work stoppages” which he said was a result of his “members’ total commitment to providing the best emergency services possible to the residents of Dublin” and the intransigence of DCC management, headed by Owen Keegan.

Speaking to the press, he said that “These firefighters are withdrawing their labour to indicate, in the strongest manner open to them, their complete opposition to an attempt by senior management in Dublin City Council to break up the DFB Emergency Medical Service by removing its ambulance call and dispatch function.”

Before speakers addressed the crowd: top section of the crowd, approaching the State Entrance gates of Dublin City Castle
(photo: D.Breatnach)

Addressing the demonstration on Monday evening, O’Brien said that if the strikes were not sufficient to make DCC management see reason, “make no mistake, this fight will become a national one.”

A number of Councillors addressed the crowd, representing most of the political groupings on the Council. Christy Burke, ex-Lord Mayor (2015), representing a group of Independent councillors, stated that DCC management had refused to let them use the power in the nearby building for amplification for speakers. Burke drew cheers when he quipped that what the Management did not realise was that “the power is not in there, it is out here on the street.”

Burke also stated that the DFB Ambulance Service was working well and asked rhetorically “why fix something that isn’t broken”, a theme taken up by a number of other speakers. The Sinn Féin speaker made the point that she was representing the largest political party in the Council, totally supported the Fire Fighters and would be seeking legal advice on Keegan’s plan and the other speakers likewise promised support to the fire-fighters.

 

OTHER UNDERLYING ISSUES IN THE DUBLIN FIRE-BRIGADE AMBULANCE SERVICE PROTEST

Although speakers for the fire-fighters a number of times expressed support for the colleagues employed by the Health Servive Executive, their members must be concerned at the prospect of coming under the management of an organisation so under-funded and reportedly often mismanaged as has been the HSE for decades now.

Another element playing itself out here is the recurring conflict between many elected City Councillors and the unelected City Management. The political colouring of the public representation in the Council changed considerably with the local elections in 2014, when Sinn Féin with 16 seats and Independents with 12 became the groups most represented. Next in numbers of Councillors is Fianna Fáil with 9 seats, while Fine Gael and Labour each have 8 each and People Before Profit have 5. The remaining 5 are divided between the Greens, Anti-Austerity Alliance and United Left.

This struggle between many of the elected and the appointed few has broken out on a number of issues previously, most notably perhaps on the Moore Street Quarter issue, with Keegan and Jim Keoghan, formerly second-in-command and head of the Planning Department, proposing a deal with a property developer for a ‘land swap’ involving Council buildings on Moore Street, a plan which mobilised significant campaigning opposition and which was defeated by a large majority of Councillors voting in November 2014. The Councillors were however unable to prevent Keoghan’s “executive action” in agreeing a number of property speculator planning applications and the most controversial extension of the ‘giant shopping mall’ permission towards the end of last year.

This level of conflict between the elected Dublin public representatives and the appointed senior officials has perhaps not been seen since the War of Independence (1919-1921), when an Irish Republican and Labour majority on the Council, after the 1920 Local Government elections, found itself in recurring confrontation with officials appointed under a colonial administration.

 

BACKGROUND

“According to Dublin Council’s website, “The Fire Brigade has provided the citizens of Dublin City and County with a fire and rescue service since 1862. This service was enhanced in1898 by the addition of an emergency ambulance service. In 2007 with 12 emergency ambulances DFB responded to 78,864 ambulance incidents, with the figure growing each year.

“Dublin Fire Brigade provides an emergency ambulance service to the citizens and visitors of Dublin. Dublin Fire Brigade is the only Brigade in the country to provide an Emergency Ambulance Service. Dublin Fire Brigade operates 12 emergency ambulances with one ambulance operating from each full time station with the exception of Dun Laoghaire.

“DFB’s Firefighters are trained to Paramedic level and are registered as practitioners with the pre-hospital Emergency Care Council (PHECC), meaning there are over 100 Paramedics available on a 24/7 basis in the event of a major emergency. All operational firefighters rotate between Fire and Rescue to Emergency Ambulance duties. Dublin Fire Brigade Ambulance Service has achieved accreditation under the ISO 9001/2000 Quality Management System.”

Lively ladies active in the Campaign for social housing Irish Glass Bottle site, Ringsend.
(photo: D.Breatnach)
Banner of campaign for social housing Irish Glass Bottle site, Ringsend.
(photo: D.Breatnach)

 

OTHER CITY HALL PROTESTS

Also protesting outside City Hall (see photos) were lively and good-humoured campaigners for social housing on the former Glass Bottle company site in Ringsend and others calling for the renaming of the Artane Band (it is hoped to cover these campaigns in a little more detail in future reports).

Campaigners to rename the Artane Band because of the abuse that went on in the Artane Industrial School, which formed the original Artane Boys’ Band.
(photo: D.Breatnach)

 

The History Beat

On By rebelbreezeIn 1916 Rising, Capitalism, Creative writing, Current Affairs Comment, History, IrelandLeave a comment

Diarmuid Breatnach

View of the campaign table through fruit stall on a sunny Saturday in Moore St in June 2015 (Photo D.Breatnach)
View of the campaign table through fruit stall on a sunny Saturday in Moore St in June 2015 (Photo D.Breatnach)



Here we are on famed Moore Street

in close touch with market beat,

in the air and beneath our feet,

defending heritage and history

knowing that it’s no mystery —

no accident or just a mistake —

why they want our history to take

to offer on the altar of the speculator,

Gombeen and foreign vulture taker.

 

A people without history is easier to rule

without that memory, easier to fool;

without a past, having no future

our masters hope we’ll be safely neutered

to be consumers dumbly tutored.

 

But history trembles beneath our feet

here we hear it and also feel it

we speak to the foolish and the wise

denouncing speculators and their allies

refuting Government Minister lies

our voice joining street traders’ cries.

 

Lemons and leeks here for selling

History stories here for telling

You never know who you’ll be meeting

Old friend or new to be greeting.

 

This whole area was a battleground;

A knot of people gather to sign the petition in Moore Street (photo: D.Breatnach)
A knot of people gather to sign the petition in Moore Street on a colder day in 2017 (photo: D.Breatnach)

it is again, the speculators found:

through city streets protests wound,

people stood and linked arms around,

occupied also against demolition,

blockaded five weeks of attrition;

and here on Saturday some of us meet

to set up our table on the street

a part of the Saturday market beat

in dry or wet or sun or sleet.

 

Diarmuid Breatnach, Feabhra 2017.

WE WANT CHANGE?

On By rebelbreezeIn 1916 Rising, Anti-Fascism, Capitalism, History, Ireland, Irish Civil War, irish history, Irish Left, Irish Republicanism, Irish War of Independence 1919-'21, Irish War of Independence 1919-1921, National Liberation, Political AnalysisLeave a comment

 

Diarmuid Breatnach

Yes we do – or at least most of us do. There are a few who do not.

Some people think that those few who do not want change are our rulers, the big capitalists — but they are mistaken. The capitalist class forced change to overthrow the feudal system, which was hampering their growth and the development of industry and commerce. And capitalists know that change is inevitable, so it is better to go with it than to try to stop it. That is why they set up courses such as those called “Change Management” — if change is inevitable, then manage it, the thinking goes. Manage it so that it comes out to capitalist advantage, naturally.

(Source Internet, using "change management" as search words)
(Source Internet, using “change management” as search words)

Change Management courses, particularly those dealing with personnel, emphasise managing change as smoothly as possible, making it non-traumatic. In that way, it is assumed, there will be less reaction against the change, less opposition.

But in fact, sometimes capitalism wants the exact opposite – it wants change to be as traumatic as possible. These are the situations described under the title “Shock Doctrine” by economic/ environmental activist and theorist Naomi Klein (2007). This has two mechanisms: in the first, the shocking change taking place disarms people from the psychological ability to organise resistance; in the second, the speed of the shock (or shocks) of the economic and political manoeuvres of the capitalists moves faster than the opposition can organise, achieving their goals before opposition can coordinate an effective resistance.

Klein has described how huge natural disasters such as earthquake (Haiti), tsunami (Thailand, Indonesia) and flood (New Orleans, USA) are used to force foreign or native private takeovers of sectors of the national economy while the people and the regime in power are reeling under the impact of the disaster.

Political and economic disasters are also used in this model, such as the military coup in Chile and the collapse of the USSR (in the case of Poland), the economic collapse in Bolivia, the invasion of Iraq, the financial collapse of the “Tiger economies” of SE Asia. Even a potentially beneficial change of great magnitude may be used, such as the collapse of white minority rule in South Africa, during which the black majority won formal equality and citizenship but lost control of most of the economy (and lost a lot more which I do not intend to discuss here).

Internet source http://sinkers.org/stage/?p=536
Internet source http://sinkers.org/stage/?p=536

There is in fact a military precursor to this which has been called, in the context of US military strategy, “Shock and Awe”. This doctrine was described by its authors, Harlan K. Ullman and James P. Wade (1996), as “attempting to impose this overwhelming level of Shock and Awe against an adversary on an immediate or sufficiently timely basis to paralyze its will to carry on … [to] seize control of the environment and paralyze or so overload an adversary’s perceptions and understanding of events that the enemy would be incapable of resistance at the tactical and strategic levels”.

Of course there were many elements of this in the Blitzkrieg of the Nazi German army in its invasions of other countries and even the medieval invasions by the Huns and of the Mongols. Cromwell employed elements of it in Ireland in his army’s massacres at Wexford and Drogheda.

Aside from needing change to overcome feudalism, managing change to its advantage and use of shock doctrine to facilitate changes it wants, the capitalist system itself promotes change as part of its system. Small capitalists combine and form conglomerates, in which big capitalists come to power and, in turn, eat up smaller capitalists in order to dominate their sphere of economic activity. We have seen the growth of supermarkets and the decline of small shops, the rise of chain stores killing independent clothes shops, chain cafes and eateries driving indpendent cafes and restaurants out of business.

Capitalists also promote inventions and discoveries so as to increase their wealth but also in order to stay in front of the competition – a capitalist concern that stays at its original level will be taken over or driven out of business by its competitors. Our grandparents hardly knew about the possibility of mobile phones and computers, let alone small hand-held audio-visual connections to the Internet; our children today play with visual electronic games, films and music before they learn to talk. To be sure, monopolies also suppress inventions but they can only do so to an extent as some capitalist somewhere will break the embargo or consensus (if the discovery can be used to make sufficient profits making the attempt worth the risk).

OK, but we want change too and, we think, what we want is not the capitalist kind of change we’ve been talking about until now, although innovations and discoveries should continue and in fact accelerate – but for the benefit of the people, not the capitalists. Technological advances and innovations that do not make big profits may nevertheless be very valuable to us for all kinds of reasons.

So, yes, we want change. But what kind of change? Change to what? Change how? There a vast panorama opens.

We want to eliminate homelessness; have an efficient universally affordable health service; not to have to struggle for a decent standard of living in food, housing and small luxuries; to enjoy universal and affordable access to education at all levels; not to harm the environment; to have the positive aspects of our cultural inheritance, including history, valued and promoted. We want equal rights and respect between people regardless of race or ethnicity, gender, sexuality, ability … and freedom of choice.

In 1930s Germany, people wanted those things too, except that a lot of people were convinced that the contents of the last sentence above were harmful and not what they wanted. But there were many, many people who did want those contents too. The issue was in doubt for awhile.

In the 1928 elections the Nazi Party achieved just 12 seats (2.6% of the vote) in the Reichstag (German Parliament) and in three areas the Nazi Party failed to gain even 1% of the vote. In the Presidential elections of March 1929, the Nazi candidate Erich Ludendorff gained only 1.1% of votes cast, and was the only candidate to poll fewer than a million votes.

We know that elections are not everything – but still.

Five years later, the Nazis were in power — but even after the Communist Party was declared illegal their candidates polled a million votes.

The people definitely wanted change and the established ‘democratic’ parties were unable or unwilling to deliver it. The change the people ended up with was not probably what most had imagined and for some time it spelt disaster for Germany – and unbelievable suffering for large parts of the rest of the world … and also for millions of German citizens.

To look closer to home, people wanted change here too and from 1917 onwards they showed that electorally by voting for the newly-reorganised Sinn Féin party. From 1919 a significant section of the populace took to arms to pursue change and had the active or tacit support of a huge part of the population. But in 1921 the movement and the people split about what kind of change they wanted. A civil war followed with a heavy level of brutality against civilians and combatants, particularly by the State side, which won the contest — and we ended up with the State we now have.

Bombardment of Republican-held Four Courts in Dublin by Free State forces from the bottom of Winetavern Street (with British artillery on loan) starts the Civil War on 28 June 1922 (Source Internet)
Bombardment of Republican-held Four Courts in Dublin by Free State forces from the bottom of Winetavern Street (with British artillery on loan) starts the Civil War on 28 June 1922 (Source image: Internet)

It is well to be fairly clear about the change we want and what we do not want. There was no such general clarity in the ranks of those fighting for change from 1916 to 1921. It turned out that many who were fighting for change were fighting for different things.

Differences must have come up over the years of struggle and we know from some evidence that they did. We also must assume from the political nature of prominent people in the struggle that there were differences. Even within the IRB itself, only one of the organisations involved, there were differences that surfaced in attitude to the 1913 Lockout, the control of the Volunteers in 1914 and the Treaty of 1922.

Of course, we need maximum unity against the principal enemy. But that is unity in action only. If we put unity in thought, principles or political or social program first, as some organisations have and some others claim to do, we end up with small organisations unable to effectively counter the resistance of the ruling class to the change we want and, in the end, unable to overcome that resistance. On the other hand, if we sacrifice everything to unity against the enemy, we leave ourselves hostages to events in the future and to what kind of society will emerge from the struggle.

Somewhere between those two is where we need to be, preserving the freedom to discuss, explore and proclaim differences of opinion and social program, while avoiding unnecessary squabbles and maintaining unity in action. It is a difficult balance to strike but it needs to be done. In the midst of fighting the common enemy and striving for unity in action against it, we must fight for that freedom also inside the resistance movement, the freedom to discuss, explore and yes, also to criticise.

End.

UNSCIENTIFIC MYTH AND IGNORANCE ABOUT THE IRISH LANGUAGE

On By rebelbreezeIn Cultural Comment, Current Affairs Comment, Current Event Report, History, Ireland, Irish LanguageLeave a comment

Clive Sulish

A most interesting and stimulating lecture was held on Wednesday night at Pearse House in Dublin. Hosted by Misneach, an Irish language campaigning organisation, the lecture was titled “Miotas agus Aineolas faoin nGaeilge” (“Myth and Ignorance about the Irish Language”).

 

What Colm Ó Broin, who described himself as an Irish language activist, has done is to take a number of frequently-expressed ideas hostile to or dismissive of the Irish language and to deconstruct them, analyse them and compare them with other languages and social situations. For the purpose of the lecture, he took around ten of those ideas, encapsulated in stock phrases well known to Irish speakers and campaigners – and probably to many others not within those categories.

Some of the attendance at the lecture before its start
Some of the attendance at the lecture before its start

Over the years, we have heard and read these stock phrases and ideas expressed with tedious regularity, for example that the language is archaic or dead, is full of English words, that it is an expensive commodity, that Irish language schools are elitist, that the language is or was badly taught or that it was “beat into” people. Over the years, many speakers and activists have of course countered these ideas, sometimes by reasoned argument and sometimes by a trenchant phrase, such as: “What, was it only Irish that was bet into you then?” or “Was it only Irish that was taught with an overwhelming concentration on grammar to the exclusion of conversation?”

But Ó Broin has gone about this work scientifically, methodically. For the purpose of his lecture he took around ten of these propositions, deconstructed and exploded them, revealing their underlying lack of logic and scientific fact. For example, dealing with the proposition that the language is dead, Ó Broin produced a long list of living languages around the world – the vast majority, actually – that have less speakers than does Irish. On the allegation that Irish is full of English words, he produced pages of English-language words that are of French origin (leaving aside the easier and also huge list of words or Greek or Roman origin).

Colm Ó Broin, Irish language activist and presenter of the lecture
Colm Ó Broin, Irish language activist and presenter of the lecture

Having revealed the lack of scientific truth or logic as a basis for hostility or contempt towards the Irish language, Ó Broin turned to psychology as an explanation, finding fear and/or shame as the motivating factor. Turning back to history, he reminded his audience of the Statutes of Kilkenny of 1366, when the England-based descendants of the Norman Conquest of England dating from 1066, attacked the ‘gone native’ customs of the Irish-based descendants of the Norman Conquest of Ireland beginning in 1169 (though Ó Broin did not say so, the English Normans had gone quite ‘native’ themselves by then, integrating with the Saxon nobility and the Statutes were written in English, not French).

The Statutes forbade the Irish Normans (“the degenerate English” who had become “more Irish than the Irish themselves”) from playing Irish games and music, speaking Irish, submitting themselves to Irish law, adopting Irish cultural and social customs including marriage. It was the coloniser’s fear, fear of the Irish-Normans losing their allegiance to the English Crown, that was at the heart of that hostility.

Since the Irish who oppose the Irish language cannot be said to be “the coloniser”, something else must be at work there. Ó Broin twice in his lecture called on the state-funded or supported Irish-language organisations Foras na Gaeilge and Connradh na Gaeilge to undertake social research into what is behind this attitude among large sections of the public (according to opinion polls).

Some of the attendance at the lecture
Some of the attendance at the lecture

This would of course be useful work, especially if it led to the production of measures to counter such myths and ignorance. It is likely however that the answer has already been supplied, by for example the work Patrick Pearse (1879-1916) and Franz Fanon (1925-1961), though it would be useful to have more up-to-date validation. Fanon’s work focused on the coloniser’s view being culturally and psychologically internalised by the colonised individual and society and Pearse focused more on the mechanisms by which that was done through the educational system run by the coloniser. The idea is expressed succinctly, though in a different context, in the words of a popular nationalist song, Memory of the Dead by John Kells Ingram (1823 – 1907):

“He’s all a knave or half a slave

who slights his country thus …”.

 

franz-fanon-cognitive-dissonancecover-the-murder-marchine

The lecture was delivered by Ó Broin in Irish to an audience that contained Irish speakers and presumably all present could at least understand the language. My feeling was that this research and deconstruction needs to go out to the non-Irish-speaking public in this country. In response to a question, Ó Broin replied that he had in fact written some of it in English some years ago and that material had been posted on a website that no longer exists. Currently, his work exists only in Irish. It is to be hoped that he returns to putting this work out there among the people who perhaps most need it.

End.

SPANISH STATE TO REIMPOSE NUCLEAR POWER PLANTS ON THE SOUTHERN BASQUE PEOPLE?

On By rebelbreezeIn Basque Country, Current Affairs Comment, Environmental, Guerrilla Action, History, National Liberation, Police Violence, Political AnalysisLeave a comment

 

Diarmuid Breatnach

 

The Basque Country is one of the few places in the world where popular opposition successfully prevented the completion of a nuclear power plant; the opposition consisted of both popular mobilisations and armed action. But is the Spanish state now about to reimpose a nuclear program on the Basques?

 

In the 1960s, the Spanish state began a program of nuclear plant construction in the territory under its dominion. This was an era of great enthusiasm among states and industrialists for nuclear power and generally there was little popular opposition – most of the nuclear opposition at the time being focused on use of nuclear (and earlier, atomic) weapons and nuclear-powered military vessels.

Broad popular opposition to nuclear power itself began to build in particular after the accident at the nuclear reactor at Three-Mile Island (Pennsylvania, USA, 1979) and a catalogue of smaller nuclear reactor accidents (such as those at Sellafield, Wales, for example).

The lobby in favour of nuclear power tends to emphasize the ‘cleaness’ of the fuel (i.e. as opposed to ‘acid rain’ carbon dioxide and other pollution from coal-burning and oil-burning stations, and oil tanker disasters), relative ‘cheapness’ to produce (as opposed to oil, gas and coal) and possibly inexhaustible power (as opposed to fossil fuels). The lobby against nuclear power quotes environmental damage from accidents with potentially greater consequences and points out that the ‘cheapness’ is created by ignoring the costs of safe disposal of nuclear waste material which, if taken into account, would make it much more expensive.

Of course there are powerful interests in favour of nuclear power programs, including military, industrial energy production and construction industry. Employment opportunities in work-poor areas often build local support for construction of such plants also but in some areas it is precisely the local community that opposes the construction and that was the case in the southern Basque Country (the four provinces in Spanish-controlled territory).

Nuclear reactors tend to be built away from especially large population centres; if one accepts the necessity of such plants this policy makes sense but exposes people in areas far from the national decision-making centres to the pro-nuclear policy and its consequences, actual and potential. The later stages of the Spanish nuclear program included building three reactors in the Basque Country and one had already been built in the first phase at Garoňa, in the nearby Spanish province of Burgos.

LEMOIZ: A HISTORY OF STRUGGLE AGAINST NUCLEAR REACTORS IN THE BASQUE COUNTRY

The first site of the Basque-location phase of construction was at the small harbour of Lemoiz (Lemoniz in Spanish), situated in a picturesque part of Bizkaia (Biscay) province and attracted opposition from a coalition of interests: militant Basque left-nationalists, anti-nuclear and environmental campaigners.

lemoiz-from-distance
Lemoiz nuclear reactor site seen from a distance (photo source Internet)

Popular demonstrations began in the 1970s while the site was under construction with people traveling to the site to protest, also holding protests elsewhere and there were even some incidents of sabotage inside the facility, which was guarded by a Guardia Civil (Spanish Francoist paramilitary police force) post. This took place during the life of the Franco regime (he died in 1975) and also after his death during the repression of the “Transición” process which was not completed until 1982. Festivals and marches were also organised elsewhere in the Basque Country against the project.

The first armed attack by ETA was carried out 18 December 1977 with an attack on the Guardia Civil post at the site, during which David Álverez Peña, one of the ETA group’s members was injured, causing his death a month later. ETA later succeeded in planting a bomb in the reactor of the station which exploded on 17 March 1978, causing the death of two employees (Andrés Guerra and Alberto Negro), and wounding another two. Substantial damage was caused to the structure in the explosion, delaying construction.

Lemoiz nuclear reactor site seen from a distance (photo source Internet)
Scene one hour after killing of Gladys del Estal in Tudela, Nafarroa in 1983, her body still lying on the ground (photo source Internet)

On an International Day of Action Against Nuclear Power, 3rd June 1979, a police bullet resulted in the death of an anti-nuclear activist during a demonstration in Tudela, a town in the Basque province of Nafarroa; her name was Gladys del Estal and she was from Donostia/ San Sebastian in Gipuzkoa province. Demonstrations against the facility were now a weekly event.

Honor ceremony at a commemoration for Gladys Estal, shot by police at an anti-nuclear demonstration in Tudela, Nafarroa province.
Traditional honor dance being performed by two Basque women at a ceremony commemorating Gladys Estal, shot by police at an anti-nuclear demonstration in Tudela, Nafarroa province. (photo source Internet)

ETA struck again on 13 June of that year with another bomb placed inside the site, on this occasion in the turbine area which, when it detonated, caused the death of another employee, Ángel Baños.

The deaths of employees in explosions might not have been intentional but on 29th January 1981 ETA kidnapped the chief engineer of the power station, José María Ryan, from Bilbao. The armed organisation issued an ultimatum to demolish the facility or to face the death of their hostage. Despite a demonstration organised against this threat, ETA killed engineer when the company did not back down.

The company replaced Ryan with Ángel Pascual as chief project engineer and ETA assassinated him on the 5th May 1982. Work at the site ground to a halt and Iberduero, the company developing the site temporarily halted work, calling on the Basque Government to commit itself to supporting the project.

Mass demonstration at Lemoiz against the nuclear reactor (photo source Internet)
Mass demonstration 1979 at Lemoiz against the nuclear reactor (photo source Internet)

The Government of the Autonomous Basque region in which the site was located was in the hands of the Basque Nationalist Party (PNV) which, although completely opposed to ETA and by no means socialist, feared to go publicly against popular opinion opposed to the nuclear project. In 1983 the company officially stopped work, at which time both reactors were almost ready to go into production.

The deadlock was broken by the PSOE (Spanish unionist social-democratic party) winning the general election in 1984 on an anti-nuclear power policy and their government declared a moratorium on the building of all nuclear reactors throughout the state.

SPANISH STATE RETURNING TO A NUCLEAR -BUILDING PROGRAM?

The Spanish state currently has seven nuclear reactors generating a fifth of its electricity and its first commercial nuclear power reactor began operating in 1968.

After the horrific nuclear reactor disaster of Chernobyl (USSR 1986), people probably assumed that no further nuclear reactors would ever be built in the Spanish state. But the PSOE, the main establishment political party that formerly forced the nuclear moratorium shows signs of beginning to waver on the issue and even the nuclear reactor disaster at Fukishima (Japan 2011) does not appear to have deterred them. The PP, the right-wing Spanish unionist party, has always been in favour of nuclear reactors so that now a ruling class consensus favourable to more reactors seems to be forming (or formed).

lemoiz-skull-directions
(Source: Internet)

Last month, according to press reports in the Basque Country, José Ramón Torralbo, president of Nuclenor, the operator of the Garoña plant, stated that a “two-year-long” “comprehensive” evaluation of the nuclear power plant found no reason that the reactor could not be restarted “with some modifications”, although consideration of the request to reopen the plant is not complete and asked that deliberations of the CSN (Nuclear Safety Council) “should not be interfered with”.

Around the same time it was reported that the reopening of the Lemoiz plant was being considered also.

The decision on reopening is not to be based on questions of feasibility in the short term alone but on the decision of the Spanish Government with regard to its energy policy in general and with regard to nuclear power in particular. The President of Nuclenor indicated when speaking about the Garoña plant that a commitment to operate for 40 years only would rule out feasibility and that they would be looking for a 60-year minimum commitment and preferably for 90 years – presumably this would apply also to the Lemoiz plant.

Referring to environmental and other opposition to nuclear power generation, the president of the Forum of the Spanish Nuclear Industry, Antonio Cornadó, claimed it an “error” to “mix ideological with technological considerations”, stating that has “negative consequences” for the state energy model and for the economy, since the sector generates an important contribution to GDP and taxes.

Cornadó put this figure at €2,781 million contribution of the nuclear industry to Spanish GDP, the equivalent of 30% of the textile and footwear industry and said that “environmental taxes are becoming fashionable and seem set to increase”, stating that of every 100 euros of business, 25 go to the payment of taxes which contributes 781 million euros in taxes overall.

In addition Cornadó raised the fear of “irreversible risk …. of failing to meet climate change targets” and that “Spain is not ready to tackle the massive dismantling of all its nuclear power plants, which would be a very difficult and very expensive technological plan.”

A new uranium mining project is also commencing.

SPANISH STATE READY TO REOPEN LEMOIZ DESPITE ITS HISTORY?

With regard to Lemoiz and plans for any further nuclear reactors in the Basque Country, the factors to consider of course are much than financial viability, given the history of the plant. The Spanish state and indeed the ‘Autonomous’ Basque Government may feel that the current political situation favours a return to the nuclear program in the Basque Country or at least is less favourable to the forces that oppose it.  This is despite the leading PNV (Basque Nationalist Party) official in Araba province declaring his opposition to it.

Some Basque trade union sources have claimed that Iberduero, the company owning the Lemoiz plant, have communicated to them that it has no plans to reopen Lemoiz but it is not clear whether these statements are merely trying to calm fears or possibly even enlist trade union support for employment at the plant.

2016-06-11, Vitoria-Gasteiz. Garoñaren aurkako manifestazioa Araba Garoñarik Gabe plataformak zentral nuklearra berriz ireki ez dadin eskatzeko 11-06-2016, Vitoria-Gasteiz. Manifestación de Araba Sin Garoña para pedir que no se reabra la central.
Demonstration in Gastheiz/ Vitoria, Araba province last June calling for closure of Garona plant (photo source: Gara)

The leadership of the Abertzale (pro-Basque independence) Left has chosen to abandon the armed struggle (ETA has been on “permanent ceasefire” since 2011) and, under the leadership of Arnaldo Otegi, to pursue a national independence program electorally in alliance with social democratic parties, which has seen a fall in street opposition activities also. The opposition to the Abertzale Left’s approach within the broad movement is growing but currently weak and, to an extent, divided.  It is difficult to see how the movement’s current mainstream approach can hope to prevent a vigorous return to a Spanish State nuclear program throughout the territory it controls, including the southern four provinces of the Basque Country. 

On the other hand, the Spanish ruling class finds itself politically divided and with neither of its main political parties able to form a government, with increasing talk of both of them, the PP and the PSOE, coming to an agreement for a national coalition government. That may bring the Spanish ruling class further problems in the future as the possibility of democratic alternative choices become more remote and are seen to be so. The discontent of broad sections of society within the Spanish state in recent years has been expressed in monster demonstrations, strikes, some movements and in elections, in which oppositional but mainly radical social-democratic parties across the state have made gains, sometimes huge ones. At the moment, the revolutionary opposition movement(s) in all parts of the state is weak and divided but this may change as the situation develops.

 

End.

 

English-language video (but sketchy and difficult to understand at times): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g0oANKygvaA

INTERNET SOURCES

http://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/country-profiles/countries-o-s/spain.aspx

http://www.naiz.eus/hemeroteca/gara (various editions with reports concerning the Garoña plant)