Tag: Irish history

TO BE LIKE BONO OR KNEECAP?

On By rebelbreezeIn Censorship & Witch-hunting, Cultural Comment, Current Affairs Comment, Genocide, Human Rights, Imperialism, Internationalist Solidarity, Ireland, Middle East, National Liberation, Palestine, Political Analysis, Song, ZionismLeave a comment

Gearóid Ó Loingsigh

NB: Edited by Rebel Breeze for formatting purposes

(Reading time: 6 mins.)

Kneecap, the Belfast Irish language rap group, have found themselves at the centre of what is an artificially contrived furore dreamt up by people with little sense of real moral outrage.

The basics of the story are well known. They finished off their act at the Coachella event projecting pro-Palestinian statements. Given the band’s history and well-known politics, it could hardly have come as a surprise. Perhaps it was more that the fans welcomed it that upset some.

They were denounced by the non-entity known as Sharon Osbourne, a reality star famous for being the wife of Black Sabbath lead singer Ozzy Osbourne and also the mother of another reality star, her daughter Kelly Osbourne.

Kelly to her credit did carve out a brief musical career on the back of her reality tv exposure.

Sharon as part of the wider Zionist attempt to silence all those who criticise the genocide called for their visas to be cancelled, which in effect happened following the decision by their promoter and sponsor to drop them.

She also called for them to be more like Bono. Kneecap responded with a humorously devastating comeback that they would rather be Rangers fans than emulate Bono.

Bono still has some credibility in certain parts, mainly where they haven’t a clue about the man’s actual politics and obviously amongst the clueless, witless, gutless glitterati like Sharon Osbourne. But what would it mean to be like Bono?

Is he actually some sort of reasonable counterweight to Kneecap?

Well, first of all, in relation to Palestine, Bono is a Zionist, so even before the genocide began, he, unlike them, was already on the wrong side of history. Not for the first time, mind you. Bono has a habit of cropping up where he is not wanted like an ugly cold sore (my apologies to the virus).

He has, as Harry Browne, the author of The Frontman: Bono in the name of power, pointed out dedicated a lifetime to the service of imperialism and was rewarded with a Presidential Medal of Freedom from Genocide Joe.[1] 

I am sure it will go well on his mantle piece alongside his KBE (Knight Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire), for which he was fulsome in his praise of Her Majesty’s Ambassador, as he put it, and grinned like a cheshire cat during the ceremony.[2] 

The claims made by Blair and others about Bono’s achievements were exaggerated, of course. But he is, if nothing, an equal opportunities imperialist and will get around to doing his bit for the others.

The idea that Kneecap would prostrate themselves before the British king is laughable and they wouldn’t be the first artists to reject one, were the Brits ever to mistakenly consider them for it.

The late black poet Benjamin Zephaniah was offered the lesser award of OBE (Order of the British Empire) by the same Tony Blair. He turned it down stating:

I get angry when I hear that word “empire”; it reminds me of slavery, it reminds of thousands of years of brutality, it reminds me of how my foremothers were raped and my forefathers brutalised…

Benjamin Zephaniah OBE – no way Mr Blair, no way Mrs Queen. I am profoundly anti-empire…

If they want to give me one of these empire things, why can’t they give me one for my work in animal rights? Why can’t they give me one for my struggle against racism? What about giving me one for all the letters I write to innocent people in prisons who have been framed? I may just consider accepting some kind of award for my services on behalf of the millions of people who have stood up against the war in Iraq. It’s such hard work – much harder than writing poems.[3]

He also referred to his brother’s death in police custody and to Lizzie II as Mrs Queen, not Her Majesty. A display of dignity.

He pointed out that those who accept such awards, the Queen’s Shilling, though he didn’t use that archaic military expression for those who enlist in the British armed forces to put down uppity types in the colonies, always sell out.

However, calling Bono a sell-out, presumes he was ever anything other than a fan of empire. He tied his mast to the pro-British politics of the Irish chattering classes in the 1980s.

His song Sunday Bloody Sunday was always introduced with the line This is not a rebel song, lest someone think Bono actually had something interesting to say.

The song is quite vacuous though clear in saying he “won’t join the battle cry,” i.e. denounce those who had massacred 14 people on the streets of Derry. The British army is not mentioned once in the song.

You wouldn’t know who had done what, but you know not to point the finger “Cause tonight we can be as one”. John Lennon on the other hand, shortly after the massacre did not hold back.

Is there any one among you
Dare to blame it on the kids?
Not a soldier boy was bleeding
When they nailed the coffin lids![4]

Bono couldn’t bring himself to condemn the British army for a televised massacre, so it comes as no surprise that he has little to say about a live-streamed genocide.

He hobknobbed with neoliberals such as Jeffrey Sachs, various presidents of the World Bank, promoted pharmaceutical companies in Africa and of course was on the side of Bush in the Iraq War, at least in practice and helped whitewash the reputations of many of those involved.

He hedged his bets a bit on Iraq, not wanting to seem too hawkish, saying the war was justified but the US should get UN backing for it. He then went on to endorse Clinton and Blair time and again. Jim Kerr from the Scottish band Simple Minds put it succinctly at the time.

How can Bono, having graced concert stages for over two decades, draped in the white flag of peace and screaming ‘No More War’ [sic] at the top of his lungs contemplate praising and back slapping Tony Blair? … I can’t believe that anyone could fail to identify that no matter what gesture Blair may make towards African debt relief, his slippery hands are currently dripping in the fresh warm blood of Iraqi men, women and children.[5]

Bono of course, could and did, and wined and dined with such hawks as Senator McCain. There were no depths to which he would not plummet, which brings us to Palestine.

Shortly after October 7th he endorsed the Zionist genocide by changing the lyrics of his song about Martin Luther King, Pride (In the name of love)[6]to “Early morning, Oct 7, the sun is rising in the desert sky… Stars of David, they took your life but they could not take your pride.”[7] 

As part of the introduction to the reworked song he state “our prayers have always been for peace and for non-violence… But our hearts and our anger, you know where that’s pointed.” Not at the Zionist occupiers was the answer. Roger Waters lambasted him for it.[8]

Not only that, he was criticised by Irish singer Mary Coughlan for his links to Israeli companies.[9] He did not fly out to Gaza as he had done in Ukraine, nor did he have much to say.

When he eventually did mention Gaza, he was always careful to lay the blame on Hamas for starting it all, ignoring history since the Nakba in 1948.

A good example of that is his piece in The Atlantic after receiving his Medal of Freedom from Genocide Joe.[10] An exercise in saying nothing, whilst attempting to sound profound, something Ireland’s most famous poisonous dwarf never pulls off.

Kneecap on the other hand have been clear from the word go about their support for the Palestinian cause. It didn’t take a genocide for them to take note. They have consistently been on the side of the oppressed, in this case the Palestinians, against the oppressor the Zionists.

So, Sharon Osbourne should probably stick to what she knows best, which is precious little.

As for Bono, as Harry Browne points out, perhaps nothing sums him up quite so succinctly as a piece of graffiti in Dublin that appeared following the scandal when they moved one of their companies to the Netherlands for tax purposes, “Bono is a poxbottle”.

We need more like Kneecap who stand with the oppressed, and a lot less of Bono and the likes who can’t condemn the powerful ever.

At best you can expect some “We are all guilty type” of fudge, which was the preferred slogan of the Irish trade union bureaucracy when the British or their proxies in the UVF or UDA ever did anything, coming as no surprise that they have also done next to nothing on Palestine other than issue the occasional banal statements.

I fully expect them to turn up with Bono somewhere to chastise Kneecap.

End.

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

NOTES

[1] Rebel News (07/01/2025) This Song is not a Rebel Song. Harry Browne. https://rebelnews.ie/2025/01/07/bono-this-song-is-not-a-rebel-song/

[2] U2 (29/03/2007) A Knighthood for Bono.  https://www.u2.com/news/title/a_knighthood_for_bono_2110/

[3] The Guardian (27/11/2023) ‘Me? I thought, OBE me? Up yours, I thought’. Benjamin Zephaniah. https://www.theguardian.com/books/2003/nov/27/poetry.monarchy

[4] See https://link.sbstck.com/redirect/de82dedc-5090-458f-9212-e894fa53ed21

[5] Browne, H. (2013) Bono The Frontman: In the name of power. London. Verso. Para 8.116

[6] See https://link.sbstck.com/redirect/9b7d1452-8d25-4992-8f18-9e29589b6ce4

[8] The Independent (21/02/2024) Roger Waters brands Bono ‘disgusting’ over Israel speech. Kevin E G Perry. https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/music/news/roger-waters-bono-israel-gaza-b2498979.html

[9] The Sunday World (13/05/2024) Mary Coughlan ‘lost all respect’ for Bono over alleged links to Israeli companies. Eugene Masterson. https://www.sundayworld.com/showbiz/irish-showbiz/mary-coughlan-lost-all-respect-for-bono-over-alleged-links-to-israeli-companies/a2101784646.html

[10] The Atlantic (04/01/2025) The Gorgeous Unglamorous Work of Freedom. Bono. https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2025/01/the-gorgeous-unglamorous-work-of-freedom/681212/

[7] See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P6sD5Lnh4YY

[8] The Independent (21/02/2024) Roger Waters brands Bono ‘disgusting’ over Israel speech. Kevin E G Perry. https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/music/news/roger-waters-bono-israel-gaza-b2498979.html

[9] The Sunday World (13/05/2024) Mary Coughlan ‘lost all respect’ for Bono over alleged links to Israeli companies. Eugene Masterson. https://www.sundayworld.com/showbiz/irish-showbiz/mary-coughlan-lost-all-respect-for-bono-over-alleged-links-to-israeli-companies/a2101784646.html

[10] The Atlantic (04/01/2025) The Gorgeous Unglamorous Work of Freedom. Bono. https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2025/01/the-gorgeous-unglamorous-work-of-freedom/681212/

INDIA, PAKISTAN, THE USA AND IRELAND

On By rebelbreezeIn Current Affairs Comment, History, Ireland, Political AnalysisLeave a comment

Diarmuid Breatnach

(Reading time: 5 mins.)

The states of India and Pakistan seem to be approaching war, never a good thing but particularly worrying when both states have nuclear weapons. The British Raj ran both territories as one colony but separated them from one another in 1947.1

Since then there have been a number of conflicts between them including war and it will be no surprise to any politically-educated person that Imperialism has had a hand in that. But they may be surprised to find that so also did the Irish State.

(Image credit: Al Manar)

Ireland of course had a strong connection with the anti-colonial movement in what might be called the Indian sub-continent at least from the time of the Fenians and much more so during the War of Independence, for example with the McSwineys in correspondence with the Ghandi family.2

I found the reference to the Irish State’s involvement in a 2nd-hand copy of This Great Little Nation (1999) by Gene Kerrigan and Pat Brennan, about scandals of corruption and injustice in Ireland which I am reading, a few scandals at a time.

It is always interesting reading, at times highly amusing but largely depressing, even for one who holds that this is a neo-colonial state.

I reproduce the relevant article here verbatim and in full (but reformatted for WordPress publication).

It is difficult, looking back from this distance, to comprehend that Ireland once had an independent policy on international affairs.

Those dour, pompous, conservative old men – of whom De Valera was the most visible – sincerely saw themselves as founders of a state, as statesmen, as the equals of the leaders of the great powers.

While aware of the realities of Ireland’s economic dependence on British markets, they sought to take an independent line. As leaders of a former colony, they had particular sympathies with the Third World.

The trimming of that dependence, and the gradual falling into line with the new world order, began in the early 1960s.

The USA was taking over the role previously filled by Britain and the other European colonisers, now exhausted by the Second World War. The USA, confident, triumphant, had a young, assertive President, John Kennedy.

In 1962 India was taking a particular line in its long-running dispute with Pakistan over the former state of Kashmir. Ireland’s representative in the United Nations, Frederic Boland, had discussed the matter with India’s foreign minister, Krisna Menon and had agreed to back the Indian position.

In June, John Kennedy phoned the Irish Ambassador to the US, Thomas Kiernan, and asked him to help change Ireland’s position on Kashmir. He wanted Ireland to propose a motion pushing the US line.

John F Kennedy, flanked by the Tricolour and the Stars and Stripes, speaking during his four-day visit to Ireland in 1963 (Photo sourced: Internet)

“We can’t put it forward ourselves, without it being knocked, and we want Ireland to put it forward”, Kennedy said, according to Kiernan. “If we can get you to come along we’ll get others.”

In the same phone call, Kennedy said that his friend and aide Kenny O’Donnell had “mentioned something to me. I’ll look after that.” Kevin Boland balked at proposing the US line. He already had a deal with Krisna Menon. “He’ll be wild,” he said.

“We have a certain friendship with India from the old days, and so on, and we can’t do it.” Ambassador Kiernan went over Boland’s head, to the Fianna Fáil Minister for External Affairs, Frank Aiken. And Aiken immediately directed that the US line be followed.

“When he heard the request came from Kennedy he agreed without demur, no difficulty whatever”, Kiernan remembered. “We introduced the resolution, it was put through.”

So far, no scandal. Just some top-level and effective lobbying by Kennedy, the kind of thing that happens every day in foreign affairs. But was that something that Kenneth O’Donnell mentioned to John Kennedy, about which the president said “I’ll look after that”?

Ireland had for some time been trying to get into the US sugar market. To do that it needed to be included in a number of countries allowed to sell a sugar quota to the US. Ambassador Kiernan lobbied the president’s friend Kenny O’Donnell, and O’Donnell mentioned it to Kennedy.

Nothing happened for quite some time, until Kennedy mentioned it obliquely in his phone call to Kiernan. In his book, JFK and his Irish Heritage, Arthur Mitchell reports that “a new bill suddenly appeared, specifically including Ireland.”

Ambassador Kiernan said, “We, for the first time, got into the US sugar market. The Wall Street Journal said that it was hard to understand how it happened, but somebody with a large smile in Washington seemed to have been responsible.” We sold our independence for a few tons of sugar.

The following year, Kennedy visited Ireland. The young master, taking over responsibility from the tired old colonialists of Europe, was touring his estate.

Four years later, when an RTÉ current affairs crew was about to depart Ireland to do a first-hand report on Vietnam war, Frank Aiken intervened and the RTÉ Authority were told to call off the trip, which they did.

Independent reporting of the war would probably be critical; this would annoy the Americans; and that wasn’t allowed. The cancellation, said the government, “was in the best interests of the nation.” Not to mention the sugar business.

COMMENT

It’s interesting to identify the exact moment (or something like it) at which the Gombeen State switched from being England’s to being the United States’ bitch. Of course, there’s been a period of EU imperialism subservience and there’s always England, again3 … The bitch can switch.

By some kind of coincidence, considering the story earlier, India is a major sugar-producing country too. But … the Irish state was exporting sugar?!!

Ireland once had its own sugar industry going back to the mid-19th Century and the Irish State, building on that, nationalised it in 1930. In 1976, according to a study, the company was employing more than 10,000 people full-time, in fields, refineries, factories and in sales teams overseas.4

A further 15,000 people found employment in industries using the sugar as a raw material, industries that sprung up in the wake of the sugar factories and which, by 1976, were themselves earning the nation £20 million annually in foreign currency5.

Sugar quotas were imposed by the EEC and the State began successively to reduce the industry in Ireland, finally privatising it in 1991 by selling to Greencore, who closed the last factory down in 2006.6 We were still consuming high amounts of sugar but now importing it all.

We used to import it from the USA, and so the earlier story comes around to its starting point once more. More recently France, Netherlands, UK and Belgium have taken over supplying us.7

We imported sugars and sugar confectionery to US$536.42 Million during 2024, according to the United Nations COMTRADE database on international trade.8

Sugar is used directly as a sweetener for the table but also in the making of confectionery and it is an important component in the fermentation process of drinking alcohol. Beet pulp waste can be a valuable animal feed and production, refinement, packaging and transport all provide employment.

Nowadays, ethanol fuel and bio-degradable plastics could also be produced from beet9 which would be great for Ireland, along with the more traditional benefits. But that requires an independence-conscious planned State economy — so looks like it will remain just a nice idea.

End.

SOURCES

Terrorist bombing in Kashmir and current Pakistan-India tensions: https://edition.cnn.com/2025/04/24/india/pahalgam-india-pakistan-attack-explainer-intl-hnk/index.html

Sugar production Ireland: https://www.farmersjournal.ie/food/news/despite-its-difficult-past-is-there-a-place-for-future-irish-sugar-production-805519

https://www.irishtimes.com/life-and-style/food-and-drink/whatever-happened-to-irish-sugar-1.3886285
https://www.irishexaminer.com/farming/arid-41228155.html
https://www.independent.ie/regionals/a-history-of-the-irish-sugar-industry/27038406.html

Fuel and biodegradable plastics from sugar beet: https://www.nature.com/articles/d42473-023-00018-7

https://www.ebsco.com/research-starters/agriculture-and-agribusiness/sugar-beet-ethanol

1200,000 to 2 million killed in the communal violence that followed, 12 to 20 million displaced. (Wikipedia).

2With the Ghandi political dynasty (not Mahatma Ghandi) in particular when Terence McSwiney was on his long hunger strike in Brixton Jail in 1920.

3Political leader of the Blueshirt section of the Gombeen class expressed leanings in that direction during an interview https://www.breakingnews.ie/ireland/varadkar-says-us-is-no-longer-reliable-political-and-economic-partner-to-europe-1756771.htm

4https://www.independent.ie/regionals/a-history-of-the-irish-sugar-industry/27038406.html

5Ibid.

6There were allegations that the financial justifications for closure were faulty and in 2010 the European Union Court of Auditors found that the Mallow plant in particular did not need to close. https://www.farmersjournal.ie/food/news/despite-its-difficult-past-is-there-a-place-for-future-irish-sugar-production-805519

7https://trendeconomy.com/data/h2/Ireland/1701

8https://tradingeconomics.com/ireland/imports/sugars-sugar-confectionery

9https://www.nature.com/articles/d42473-023-00018-7 and https://www.ebsco.com/research-starters/agriculture-and-agribusiness/sugar-beet-ethanol

1916 Rising Commemoration in Glasnevin: James Connolly, the Citizen Army and Palestinian Resistance

On By rebelbreezeIn Current Event Report, Euskal Herria, irish history, Irish Language, Irish Left, Irish Republicanism, National Liberation, Palestine, Political Analysis, Song, Song in Struggle, Traditions & Folk Custom, ZionismLeave a comment

Clive Sulish

(Reading time: 4 mins.)

An Irish Republican Easter Rising commemoration conducted on Sunday 20th April followed tradition in some aspects but departed in others. The event in Glasnevin Cemetery was organised by the Anti-Imperialist Action group.

As the 1916 Rising commenced on Easter Monday it is traditionally commemorated on various days around the Easter weekend. The actual date however was 24th April which a now-deceased socialist Republican activist publicly celebrated every year as Republic Day in front of the GPO.1

Taken from near rear of the marching columns approaching Cross Guns Bridge. (Photo: R.Breeze)

Among the commemorations organised by Irish Republicans around the past weekend was that by the AIA group on Sunday, rallying by the Phibsboro shopping parade for 1pm, before marching out to Glasnevin cemetry along the Phibsboro Road in two parallel separate lines.

This gathering in the past has been marred by the Special Branch, the political plainclothes police, harassing and attempting to intimidate those present, demanding their names and addresses under anti-terrorist (sic) special legislation. This time they were there but did not approach.2

Just after passing Crossguns Bridge over the Royal Canal, a flare was lit and the march stopped in the street.3

After a short pause the march resumed, led by the colour party,4 six men and women, each carrying a different flag with the Tricolour and Starry Plough in the lead, all dressed in black trousers, white shirts, black berets, sunglasses and lower face masked.

The images of each of the Seven Signatories of the 1916 Proclamation, all shot by British firing squads were on large placards were carried among the marchers: Tom Clarke, James Connolly, Patrick Pearse, Seán Mac Diarmada, Joseph Plunkett, Thomas McDonagh, Eamonn Ceannt.

(Photo: R.Breeze)

A variety of flags were also flown among the marchers, including the green and gold Starry Plough,5 Palestinian flag, Basque Ikurrina and red flags (with gold hammer and sickle emblem on at least one).6 The AIA banner carried at the front bore a quotation from Bobby Sands in Irish.

The march soon passed the main gates of Glasnevin Cemetery to their right but continued before turning leftward to then cross over the pedestrian railway bridge to the newer part of Glasnevin Cemetery and up to the monument to the Six armed struggles referred to in the Proclamation.7

Formed in two lines the attendance was welcomed in Irish and English by the event’s MC, calling also for the reading of the Proclamation of Independence, which a man stepped forward to do. The MC recommended a careful reading of the still-relevant document to attendees from abroad.

Section on the left of the attendance at the commemoration rally with another section to the right out of shot. (Photo: R.Breeze)

Following the reading, the MC commented on the important role of culture in the 1916 Rising8and called on an activist who he said has done much to promote traditional and folk Irish song, who proceed to sing Patrick Galvin’s Where Oh Where Is Our James Connolly? “with some changes”.

Next the call was given for those who wished to lay floral tributes while the colour party lowered their flags in homage to the fallen to commands in Irish, then slowly raised them again before responding to the command in Irish to stand ‘at ease’.

(Photo: R.Breeze)

Another activist was called to read the 1915 statement on the Irish Citizen Army by James Connolly in which the revolutionary leader outlined the police violence during the 1913 Lockout that created the need for the ICA and how it had gone beyond defence in assertiveness.

The statement declared its class allegiance and origins “Hitherto the workers of Ireland have fought as parts of the armies led by their masters, never as members of an army officered, trained, and inspired by men of their own class.”

Reading Connolly’s “To the Irish Citizen Army” (Photo: R.Breeze)

The PA amplification failed on the reader but she carried on in a strong voice reading Connolly’s words that the ICA sought alliance with all progressive forces but remained independent, not to be bound by the limits others set themselves and going further on their own if necessary.9

Another singer was called to perform Erin Go Bragh10 specifically about the 1916 Rising (by Dominic Behan, originally called A Row in the Town).

Singing Erin Go Bragh at the Monument (Photo: R.Breeze)

It is traditional for organisations to deliver a keynote message or statement of aims at 1916 commemorations and a statement was read on behalf of the Irish Socialist Republican Movement (of which the AIA is a part) restating the objectives of national independence and socialism.

In that context the struggles against the Irish ruling class putting the State into imperialist alliance and against the British occupation of the nation, also a NATO member, were greatly important and the Gardaí had broken a comrade’s foot in that struggle.

(Photo: R.Breeze)

Referring to the international context of the 1916 Rising and the international connections of the revolutionary movement in 1916, the MC read out a fraternal message to AIA from the People’s Front for the Liberation of Palestine,11 declaring that the struggles of both peoples are one.

The event concluded at around 2.45pm with a singer performing Amhrán na bhFiann12 (first verse and chorus) followed by an announcement or reminder of a public meeting organised by the AIA titled Rebuilding the Republic to take place at 4pm at a venue not very far distant.

End.
Footnotes

1Easter is a religious festival and its date varies from year to year according to computations based on the lunar and solar calendars and cannot fall on the same date annually in the Gregorian calendar (or the Julian one). After the insurrectionary forces had taken possession of the building, Patrick Pearse with James Connolly by his side read the Proclamation outside the General Post Office (GPO) building on the first day of the Rising (after its rescheduling from the previous day, Sunday): 24 April 1916. Tom Stokes tried for years to have the date adopted as Republic Day and annually organised an event outside the GPO on that date. After his death others carried on commemorating the date but rather than outside the GPO, at Arbour Hill. The Republican movement continues to hold its 1916 commemoration events over the Easter weekend.

2Possibly because the dust has not yet settled on the Gardaí’s recent violent arrests on 23 peaceful activists in three different events over four days (See Rebel Breeze’s Irish State Ramps Up Repression) recently.

3This spot has a 1916 history: A group of Irish Volunteers walked from Maynooth on Easter Monday along the banks of the Royal Canal, meeting two Irish Volunteers guarding the bridge and that night slept in Glasnevin Cemetery. The following morning they continued their journey to the city centre. Later, as the Rising was being suppressed, the British soldiers placed a barrier on the Bridge and prevented most people from passing through. A local man who had been deaf from birth failed to heed the soldiers’ challenge and they shot him dead.

4The ‘colour party’ carries the ‘colours’, i.e the flags and usually marches at the front. The number and type of flags varies but Irish Republican colour parties always carry the Tricolour among them, usually followed by the Starry Plough of which for many years the white stars on a blue background version was the most common. Often a flag of each of the four provinces would also carried and the Gal Gréine (or Sunburst) of the Fianna and of the Fenians would be carried too. The Harp on a Green background was another flag that was often carried by Colour Parties.

5The original design of the flag of the first workers’ army in the world, the Irish Citizen Army, created in 1914. It is a plough following the form of the Ursa Mayor constellation with a sword replacing the ploughshare.

6This is usually considered a symbol inherited from the Bolsheviks, the sickle representing the agricultural workers and the hammer, the industrial workers, their conjunction symbolising unity of peasants and industrial proletariat.

71798 and 1803 (United Irishmen), 1848 (Young Irelanders), 1867 (Fenians), 1882 (Invincibles group within the Fenians), 1916 (IRB, Irish Volunteers, Irish Citizen Army, Cumann na mBan, Fianna Éireann)

8Irish language revival, national theatre groups, national sports, poetry, music and song all contributed to an atmosphere conducive to resistance and uprising.

9However it may be for others, for us of the Citizen Army there is but one ideal – an Ireland ruled, and owned, by Irish men and women, sovereign and independent from the centre to the sea, and flying its own flag outward over all the oceans. We cannot be swerved from our course by honeyed words, lulled into carelessness by freedom to parade and strut in uniforms, nor betrayed by high-sounding phrases.

The Irish Citizen Army will only co-operate in a forward movement. The moment that forward movement ceases it reserves to itself the right to step out of the alignment, and advance by itself if needs be, in an effort to plant the banner of freedom one reach further towards its goal. https://www.marxists.org/archive/connolly/1915/10/forca.htm

10The slogan Éirinn (or Éire) go brách (“Ireland for ever”) was rendered in English spelling as Erin go bragh.

11 A socialist and secular resistance Palestinian resistance organisation; its armed wing is Brigades of the Martyr Abu Ali Mustafa which has been part of the armed resistance throughout the period, often in coordination with other groups.

12In a reversal of the usual sequence, the lyrics of this song by Peadar Kearney and Patrick Heeney were first composed in English but later translated to Irish, that being the most popular version of the chorus today.

Further information

https://www.marxists.org/archive/connolly/1915/10/forca.htm

isrmedia@protonmail.com

RAISING DEFENCE FUNDS FOR RADICAL IRISH PALESTINE SOLIDARITY MOVEMENT

On By rebelbreezeIn Cultural Comment, Current Affairs Comment, Current Event Report, Folk Custom, History, Internationalist Solidarity, Ireland, Irish Language, Irish Left, Irish Republicanism, Israeli Zionism, Palestine, Performance Review, Song, Traditions & Folk Custom1 Comment

Clive Sulish

(Reading time: 4 mins.)

A night of resistance and other songs on Friday night in Peadar Browne’s Dublin pub raised funds to assist in fighting state repression of Palestine solidarity activists in Ireland, as Palestine solidarity activists face persecution across the Western world.

The evening’s performance consisted of a mix of political and other songs, a number of which were original material. However it was the political material that most drew interest, ranging from international struggles to the rich Irish Republican tradition.

Olive and Fynn in performance at the fund-raising event (Photo: R.Breeze)

To begin the event Diarmuid Breatnach explained the need to support Palestine solidarity activists against the repression of the Irish authorities, hence the fundraising event and announced that in addition to performing he would be standing in for the event’s MC who had been unable to attend.

Breatnach began his set combining two songs from the German antifascist tradition, three verses of Peat Bog Soldiers and three from the Hans Beimler ballad.1 Then from the Spanish Anti-Fascist War he sang Ay Carmela!, the air of which he said was from an anti-French occupation folk song.

Next the MC announced a performance by two performers, half of the four-strong Croí Óg ballad band. During their performance with voice, guitar and banjo there was an incident from a couple of unruly elements nearby who had substantial drink taken and had been very loud throughout.

Two members of the Croí Óg band performing at the fundraising event (Photo: R.Breeze)

A man who had been refused permission to sing solo began shouting that the songs were not Republican, ironically interrupting Grand Old Country, a song about the Fenian tradition. It became clear that what he wished was to perform the Grace ballad, which he began to sing loudly.

A male confronted the interrupter; the latter’s friend, a big elderly Glaswegian protested; others took to the floor … but the incident wound down, the interrupters and audience resuming their seats. However, the putative Grace singer threw threats at his earlier confronter across the room.

The big Glaswegian then crossed the room to confront the audience member, a female audience member intervened, he brushed her aside and the audience section erupted, only the quick arrival of the pub’s landlady preventing a fight … And the musicians resumed their performance.

Among the songs performed by Croí Óg were Crossmaglen and British Soldier Go on Home. The MC called for appreciation applause for them, made some barbed comments about the recent anti-social behaviour and welcomed the song-and-guitar duo Olive and Fyn to the stage.

Sage Against the Machine performing at the fundraiser event (Photo: R.Breeze)

The duo performed their own material in lovely harmonies, mostly non-political, also including their ironically titled Save the Landlord! After they had left the stage to applause Breatnach got up on stage again to announce a short break and to remind the audience to contribute to the funds.

His additional comment: “Remember when someone sang in a Dublin pub and everyone went quiet? Remember those days? Remember?” was followed by loud applause throughout the pub.

Breatnach restarted the second half, singing a capella again two songs celebrating Irish women’s resistance,2 ending with songs in Irish including the ballad of Rodaí Mac Corlaí. After concluding he introduced Sage Against the Machine to take to the stage, singing solo with guitar.

Sage’s material was mostly original, sung in English but went on to Masters of War in a spirited concluding verse, followed by Gallo Rojo, Gallo Negro3 in Spanish from the anti-fascist tradition in Spain. The MC then presented Eoin Ó Loingsigh, also with voice and guitar.

Eoghan Ó Loingsigh performing at the event (Photo: R.Breeze)

Although no further incidents occurred, the volume of ‘conversation’ between a number of people not far from the stage was high. Loingsigh’s material included Only Our Rivers Run Free, Viva La Quince Brigada4 and a satirical song contrasting the fates of the rich and the poor after death.

The evening’s scheduled performances concluded with Seán Óg, also solo with voice and guitar, his selection including Ho Chi Minh, republican ballads Boys of the Old Brigade, The Patriot Game, Boolavogue and his own composition Boys of Gaza to air and structure of The Boys of Kilmichael.5

Breatnach thanked the attendance for their support, restating the context of the event and asked for another round of applause for all the performers, who gave their time and creativity for free, then called for people to stand for the Irish national anthem6 which he led with the first verse in Irish.

Diarmuid Breatnach in performance at the fundraiser event (Photo: R.Breeze)

At the concluding line of “seo libh, canaig …” the audience exploded to complete the words “Amhrán na bhFiann!” followed by launching into the chorus, also in Irish.

The event had been organised by two broad Palestine solidarity organisations, Saoirse Don Phalaistín and Palestine Action Ireland and among the attendance were a number of their activists, including some victims of state repression.

Most of the charges to date have been under the Public Order Act but also some around ‘criminal damage’ and the potential is there for more serious charges and possible jail sentences, as have been the case in some other European administrations.

In addition to actions of their own, including occupying and picketing the Israeli Embassy, Axa Insurance and picketing the Palestine Authority, Saoirse don Phalaistín and Palestine Solidarity Action organised Resistance Blocs to participate in mass demonstrations organised by the IPSC.

Seán Óg performing at the fundraiser event (Photo: R.Breeze)

Peadar Browns pub has become increasingly known as an Irish Republican tavern on the south side of Dublin city. Its small stage area is decorated with Republican artwork on the walls and on many of the bodhráns7 hanging there, along with some Glasgow Celtic celebratory material.

The side of the pub, on a minor street, carries a large mural representation of the Palestinian national flag, along with the slogan SAOIRSE DON PHALAISTÍN. However Dublin City Council have directed that it must be removed, to the anger of a great many people.

Mural on the side of the Peadar Brown pub (Photo sourced: Internet)

Historically cultural events of this type have a function other than to raise defence funds and to promote the cause: they are also occasions for replication of the cultural face of resistance and for expression of new cultural compositions but additionally for the creation of a community of resistance.

End.

Footnotes

1Both translated to English from German.

2White, Orange and Green (War of Independence) and Anne Devlin (United Irishmen, Emmet’s insurrection).

3Red Cockerel, Black Cockerel.

4About the Irish who went to fight against fascism in 1930s Spain.

5Also known as The Kilmichael Ambush, celebrating a famous event in West Cork during the War of Independence (1919-1921). However, the air of both songs is that of an older ballad about the 1798 Rising called Men of the West.

6The lyrics were originally written in English and later translated to Irish in which language it most usually sung today.

7A shallow one-sided Irish drum, same shape as a tambourine but much larger, played with a wooden striker on the outside with variation in tension achieved by hand pressure on the inside.

Useful Links

Saoirse don Phalaistín: isrmedia@protonmail.com

Action for Palestine Ireland:
actionforpalireland@gmail.com

NO NATIONS, NO BORDERS?

On By rebelbreezeIn Cultural Comment, Current Affairs Comment, History, Imperialism, Ireland, National Liberation, Popular Resistance, Song, Song in StruggleLeave a comment

Diarmuid Breatnach

(Reading time main text: 4 mins.)

No Nations No Borders was the title of a meeting I saw advertised recently and also a slogan I had heard chanted some years ago1 on a counter protest to fascists and other racists. I wondered then and wonder now: Have they thought this through?

Clearly the utterers and followers of such a slogan see many negative things emanating from nations, probably war, oppression, repression, racism, even genocide. But are those things fundamentally attributes of nations – or even of states that are founded upon nations?

The definition of a nation is not universally shared among historians, philosophers and sociologists but they are generally agreed that it is applied to a people who share a territory and common history, along with a language and culture, incorporating customs and law.

Some argue that nations only came into existence historically in the 18th century, others maintain that they existed long before that, in the Middle Ages and even further back. In Ireland, Thomas Davis published the lyrics of A Nation Once Again in 1844, nearly half-way into the 19th Century.2

Davis, whose father was Welsh, drew on the classical Romano-Greek education of the British ruling class as inspiring his awakening nationalism:

When boyhood’s fire was in my blood/ I read of ancient freemen/ Of Greece and Rome who bravely stood/ Three hundred men and three men3/ And then I hoped I yet might see/ Her fetters rent in twain/ And Ireland long a province be/ A nation once again!

Plaque in Middle Abbey Street to mark the site of The Nation, a patriotic newspaper founded in Dublin in 1842 by leaders of a group that became known as The Young Irelanders. (Photo sourced: Internet)

However, the United Irishmen who rose in revolt in 1798,4 the first Republican uprising in Ireland, certainly conceived of their nation, the French too in their 17895 revolution and the 13 Colonies, the precursor of the United States of America, in the American Revolution 1765–1783.6

The leaders of the United Irishmen were mostly English-speaking while the majority of the population, indigenous clans and Gaelicised descendants of Normans and Vikings, were all Irish-speaking and they had earlier appealed to Rome in terms of an oppressed nation.7

It can be argued that in passing the Statutes of Kilkenny in 13668 the English occupation recognised Irish nationhood, albeit in the form of a malignant influence upon the Norman invaders who were ‘going native’, “the degenerate English” having become “more Irish than the Irish themselves”.

An Irish nation-building process may be perceived over three centuries earlier, with Brian Boróimhe trying to unify Ireland under his kingship and defeat the Dublin Viking colony. As Brian was killed9 at the Battle of Clontarf (sic),10 this remains unproven.

All the attempts to achieve national independence starting with the United Irishmen until at least 1923 were built upon democratic formulations according to their time and – in the case of the 1916 Proclamation – in actual advance of it in terms equality of women and of civil and religious liberty.

Monument to Thomas Davis (1814-1845), writer, publisher (founder of The Nation newspaper) and composer, erected in Dublin’s Dame Street 1966. (Photo sourced: Internet)

NO NATIONS?

If nations are to be abolished, how might this be achieved? Presumably their languages, cultures and customs would need to be eradicated … and replaced with what? Actually, there have been ongoing attempts at that eradication for centuries – by colonialism and imperialism!

In those cases, the conquering power would seek to replace the language, culture and history of the conquered with their own – or with an allegedly ‘cosmopolitan’ culture (i.e allegedly independent of any national culture). It might be unpleasant for the “no nations” people to reflect upon that.

It was fashionable in the 1980s among certain intellectuals to claim that nationalism was moribund (and history too), quickly refuted even in Europe by the Balkan wars, not to mention by the Irish and Basque anti-colonial struggles.

A German movement among the Left known as anti-nationalismus in opposition to the nationalism of the German State, because of fears of return to nazism, extended its application of that to opposing national liberation struggles (e.g in Ireland, Basque, Palestine) and to support for Zionism.

I have heard John Hume quoted as saying that “We are all Europeans now”, understood to indicate the end of the various national entities in Europe – or at least their importance as nations.

I failed to find that quotation but he said something similar in his acceptance speech for the 1998 Nobel Peace Prize (shared with Loyalist leader Trimble)11 — a speech either hugely naive or reflective of imperialism at a time of its rampant reign and proxy wars across the world.

The eradication of nationalism, even were it possible, would entail the elimination of a huge reservoir of different languages and cultures around the world, the different ways of expressing being human as we understand that concept.

The replacement, if achievable, would be a sterile mono-culture. Or possibly even that culture might fragment over time into different forms of expression in parts of the world.

NO BORDERS?

Let us suppose that the people of a nation are not to be removed nor their culture eliminated but that it’s merely proposed that its borders be removed. If we do not agree – or it should prove impossible to – eliminate the nation as a political-cultural construct, what about just removing borders?

It would be wonderful to be able to travel around the world without ever encountering customs posts or border guards – wouldn’t it?

The monument to Charles Stewart Parnell (184 -1891), political party and Land League campaign leader, erected in Dublin at the junction of Sackville (now O’Connell) and Parnell Street in 1911. An inscription on the monument opposes borders or boundaries but in another sense, as a limit to the nation’s independence: “No man has a right to fix the boundary to the march of a nation. No man has a right to say to his country thus far shalt thou go and no further.” (Source photo: Wikipedia)

Of course it would and hopefully one day that will be a reality, without having eliminated nations. But in the era of imperialism and colonialism, nations that free themselves will need to maintain borders as part of the defences against their invasion by their former masters or prospective ones.

During that period, those borders will need to be defended and monitored in terms of financial, scientific and commercial exchanges, imports and exports and – yes — passport control. Not very libertarian, for sure but some idea of entrances and exits will be needed for a number of reasons.

This is the era of imperialism and colonialism on the one hand and national liberation on the other. To attack the idea of the nation at this time is to objectively side with the projects of those reactionary forces and progressive forces need to oppose projects against nationalism.

However, inside the nations, there are also necessary struggles to be fought: of class, of democratic rights and freedoms and these can and should be fought, while at the same time defending the rights of nations to exist and develop.

End.

FOOTNOTES

1This was by a small politically sectarian group which seems to have left the active stage for some years now.

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

3The ‘three hundred men’ men refers to the Spartans (who actually had other allies there too) led by Leonidas I at the battle at the Pass of Thermopylae to delay the Persian army’s invasion of Greece led by Xerxes I in 480 BCE; the “three men” is a reference to Horatio’s stand with two comrades on the bridge in 509 BCE in an attempt to deny an invading Etruscan army access to the city of Rome. Coincidentally or not, the story was published in McCauley Lays of Ancient Rome in1842, two years before the publication of Davis’ A Nation Once Again.

4Although the leadership was nearly all descended from settlers, they did seek a democracy enfranchising the indigenous Irish.

5The French Republic could justifiably claim to represent the French nation but what of the Breton and Corsican nations, along with parts of the Basque and Catalan nations over which La Republique claimed domination? Or the French colonies in Africa, Asia, America and the Caribbean?

6This is a most problematic concept of a nation, being entirely constructed of a minority of settlers imposed on the Indigenous population and the imported slave population, both of which were totally excluded from the polity.

7I have seen a copy of the appeal but now cannot find it, however at the time of post-WWI Paris Peace Conference Seán T. Ó Ceallaigh seeking Vatican support for Irish independence declared: Ireland’s righteous and time-honoured claims have been frequently recognised by Your Holiness’s Predecessors and even actively assisted by them as far back as the sixteenth century. https://www.difp.ie/volume-1/1920/appeal-to-vatican/35/#section-document page.

8Quotations from the preamble to The Statutes of Kilkenny 1366 legislation: “In essence its purpose was to codify laws passed over the previous decades which had sought to halt and reverse the Gaelicisation of English settlers in Ireland. For instance the use of Irish language, dress, and customs by all English and Irish subjects who had sworn loyalty to the king was forbidden.” https://cain.ulster.ac.uk/othelem/chron/ch1169-1799.htm

9Along with all commanders of both sides.

101014, the Battle lasting around 12 hours could not have been fought at present-day Clontarf, which did not exist then and that site is not mentioned in any of the early accounts of the Battle. The site has never been indentified but was likely around the Glasnevin/Drumcondra area.

11Awarded for his work in helping to create the imperialist pacification process in Britain’s colonial conflict in Ireland: If I had stood on this bridge 30 years ago after the end of the second world war when 25 million people lay dead across our continent for the second time in this century and if I had said: “Don’t worry. In 30 years’ time we will all be together in a new Europe, our conflicts and wars will be ended and we will be working together in our common interests”, I would have been sent to a psychiatrist. But it has happened and it is now clear that European Union is the best example in the history of the world of conflict resolution and it is the duty of everyone, particularly those who live in areas of conflict to study how it was done and to apply its principles to their own conflict resolution. https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/peace/1998/hume/lecture/

FURTHER READING

A discussion on the composition of nations and nationalism: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nation

THE REBEL WOMEN’S TOUR

On By rebelbreezeIn 1916 Rising, Current Event Report, History, Imperialism, Ireland, Irish Civil War, Irish Left, Irish Republicanism, Irish War of Independence 1919-1921, National Liberation, Political Prisoners3 Comments

Orla Dunne

(Reading time: 3 mins.)

Myself and my sister, Brenda went on the Rebel Women’s Tour in the General Post Office on Saturday, 1st February 2025. Our Guide was Kim.

Two women’s groups were highlighted: Inghinidhe na hÉireann which was founded by Maud Gonne in 1900 and inspired Cumann na mBan. Inghinide na hÉireann is Irish for “Daughters of Ireland”. It was founded solely for women and adopted Saint Brigid as their patron saint.

Cumann na mBan:

In 1914, Inghinide (modern spelling ‘Iníní’) na hÉireann was merged with Cumann na mBan (abbreviated C na mBan, translated in English as the “Women’s League”). It was formed in Wynn’s Hotel on Lower Abbey Street on the 2nd of April 1914.

Brenda’s husband’s grandmother, Christina Caffrey, was a member. Our Grand Aunt, Theresa Rudkins nee Byrne was also a member as was also an old neighbour of our sister Eileen, Mary Breslin. Cumann na mBan was then led by Kathleen Lane O’Kelley.

One key member whom we are all familiar with is Countess Constance Markiewicz who took an active role in the 1916 Easter Rising which I will come to later.

Cumann na mBan uniform on display in the GPO Museum (Photo: O. Dunne)

1913 Lockout:

During the 1913 Lockout by an employers’ consortium, women including Dr Kathleen Lynn, Helena Moloney, Delia Larkin (sister of Jim Larkin) and Rosie Hackett opened soup kitchens at Liberty Hall to assist struggling workers and families.

The 1916 Easter Rising:

It is estimated that approximately 200 women took part in the Rising and 77 were imprisoned.
The only woman sentenced to death was Countess Markiewicz who was second-in-command to Commandant Michael Mallin in St. Stephen’s Green.

Constance Markievicz (colourised) in ICA uniform (Source photo: Internet)

However due to her being female, it was then changed to life imprisonment. She subsequently served 13 months in prison in both Ireland and England. She was outraged that she would not be executed.

Winifred Carney:

Winifred Carney was named as the first woman to enter the GPO on Easter Monday 1916. It is thought that she entered the building wielding a typewriter and revolver.

Winifred Carney (Source photo: Internet)

Elizabeth O’Farrell:

Elizabeth O’Farrell was one of the last three women to remain with the GPO garrison along with Julia Grennan and Winifred Carney and all three spent their last days of freedom in Moore Street. Ms O’Farrell accompanied Patrick Pearse on his journey of surrender to the British forces.

Elizabeth O’Farrell(colourised) after release from jail (Source photo: Internet)

There is a photograph of this and all that can be seen of her are her feet and the end of her dress, as she stood at the far end of Pearse from the photographer.

Julia Grennan (Source photo: Internet)

WOMEN DURING THE WAR OF INDEPENDENCE:

Women also played a significant part during the War of Independence. Over 300 women are believed to have assisted by smuggling weapons and ammunition into Ireland and relaying messages from area to area.

WOMEN DURING THE IRISH CIVIL WAR:

The Irish Civil War lasted for almost one year from June 1922 to May 1923 and again women participated in the struggle, believed to have been mainly on the Anti-Treaty side. Female members of the Irish Citizen Army were armed.

Grace Gifford (colourised) with paintbrush and easel (Source photo: Internet)

One such example is Grace Gifford Plunkett who married her beloved fiance, Joseph Mary Plunkett in May 1916 just hours before his execution. She herself was incarcerated in February 1923 in Kilmainham Gaol for her part in the Civil War.

While there she painted a copy of Mary and Child on the wall of the cell.

End.

“A March Travelling into the Future … a Beacon of Resistance”

On By rebelbreezeIn British imperialism, Censorship & Witch-hunting, Civil Rights, Current Event Report, Genocide, History commemoration, Human Rights, Internationalist Solidarity, Irish Left, Irish Republicanism, Massacres, Peace Process, Political Analysis, Popular Resistance, Resistance ArtLeave a comment

Diarmuid Breatnach

(Reading time main text: 6 mins.)

Thousands of marchers with flags, banners and three marching bands retraced the route of the anti-internment march in 1972 that ended in the infamous Derry Bloody Sunday1, a massacre of unarmed civilians by the British Parachute Regiment.

The nearest Sunday to the date of the original march, which this year fell on February 2nd has been chosen annually for the commemorative march over the 53 years since the massacre. People travel from different parts of Ireland and indeed from beyond in order to attend.

Section of the march coming down from the Creggan. (Photo: D.Breatnach)
The colour party (bearing the flags) traditionally precedes the marching band. (Photo: D.Breatnach)

Derry is not well served by public transport from other parts of Ireland and there is no train station there.

There is a bus service from Dublin from the Translink company of the occupied colony but one would need to catch it at seven in the morning and then hang around in Derry for 3.5 hours waiting for the march to start. For this reason, many travel to Derry by car.

Equally, many others who would attend were the public transport available, stay home but an estimated over 7,000 participated in this year’s march. The theme this year was Palestine, once again as was last year’s too.

The day of the massacre

The original march was a protest against the introduction in August 1971 of internment without trial in the occupied colony. Almost immediately afterward the Parachute Regiment had massacred 11 people protesting against it in Ballymurphy, Belfast.2

Ballymurphy campaign banner in the Creggan awaiting start of march with Kate Nash centre. (Photo: D.Breatnach)

The 1972 march, along with many others, had been banned by the sectarian colonial administration. The Civil Rights campaigners knew that their legitimate demands3 were being obstructed by use of the Special Powers4 of the statelet and that they could win nothing if they were to acquiesce.

After the previous massacres it took considerable courage to march that day but perhaps they thought that with an advertised march, in daylight, with many film cameras covering, the Paras were unlikely to open fire. In any case, they decided to risk it.

At 4.10pm the first shots were fired by the Paras5 without warning and by around 20 minutes later they had killed 13 men and youths and wounded another 13, one of whom would die weeks later. According to the Saville Inquiry in 2010, they had fired over 100 rounds.

Not one of their targets was armed.

To justify the slaughter, the British Army claimed that they were fired upon and returned fire, killing IRA fighters. The British Government, in particular through Home Affairs Minister Reginald Maudling, repeated the lies as did the British media.

Bernadette (then) Devlin6 MP, a survivor, was prevented from speaking in the Westminster Parliament and she walked up to Maudling and slapped his face. In Dublin a general strike took place with schools closing and a huge crowd burned the British Embassy down.

In London, a giant march reached Trafalgar Square as its end was still leaving Hyde Park. In Whitehall the police prevented them from laying the symbolic coffins outside No.10 and in the scuffles the ‘coffins’ were eventually thrown at the police or knocked to the ground.

And a number of construction sites in Britain went on strike also.

The judicial response varied wildly. Coroner Hubert O’Neill, an ex-British Army major, presiding on the inquests in 1973, called it “Sheer unadulterated murder” whereas Lord Chief Justice Widgery in the ‘inquiry’ he led ignored all the local evidence and accepted the British Army’s lies.7

“The last Bloody Sunday march”

Provisional Sinn Féin organised and managed the annual march for many years but in January 2011 Martin McGuinness announced that year’s march would be the last, because of the UK’s Prime Minister David Cameron’s public apology to the relatives of the 14 killed in Derry.

The apology followed quickly on the verdict of the Saville Inquiry8 which totally refuted the statements at the time by representatives of the Army and of the Political and Judicial establishments: the victims had been unarmed and the Army had not been “returning fire”.

One side of one of the marching band drums (Photo: D.Breatnach)
Section of the march about half-way along its length. (Photo: D.Breatnach)

Despite the UK State’s acknowledgement that they had no excuse for the massacre, not one of those who planned, organised or carried out the atrocity had been charged, never mind convicted, nor had those who conspired to cover up the facts. To this day, only a low-level soldier has faced charges.

Nor had there been government admissions of wrongdoing in the other massacres by the Paras intended to crush the resistance to the repressive internment measure, at Ballymurphy and Springhill.

A number of relatives and survivors of the original march declined to have the annual march cancelled, among them Kate Nash and Bernadette McAlliskey. Kate Nash’s brother William was shot dead on Bloody Sunday and her father, William, was wounded trying to save his son.

Bernadette McAlliskey was a survivor of the massacre and also survived nearly a decade later an assassination attempt in her home, being struck by nine bullets of a Loyalist murder gang. Despite opposition by and denunciation from SF, volunteers have kept the march going every year.

Each year different themes have also been incorporated into the Bloody Sunday March for Justice, including ones in Ireland, such as the framed Craigavon Two prisoners but also ones from beyond, e.g. the resistance of the Broadwater Farm housing estate in London to Metropolitan Police attack.

Section of the march in Creggan waiting to start, showing the Palestinian national flag and the Irish Tricolour in close proximity. (Photo: D.Breatnach)
Big drums of one of the marching bands getting a workout in the Creggan while waiting for the march to start. ‘Saoirse go deo’ = Freedom for ever. (Photo: D.Breatnach)

Since 2011 Sinn Féin have boycotted the march but also sought to mobilise public opinion against it, claiming that relatives of the victims didn’t want the march to continue. The truth is that some hadn’t wanted it even when SF were running it, some didn’t afterwards but some did.

Such an atrocity has of course huge personal impact on relatives of victims but its impact is also much wider on a society and beyond, historically and politically. That historical memory ‘belongs’ to the people of Derry but also to the people of the world (as do others such as Sharpeville SA).

Those in power in society are aware of that and the media outside of Derry gives little or no coverage to the annual march while promoting other events there of lesser numbers and significance.

The ‘Derry Peoples Museum’ ignores the march in its Bloody Sunday commemorative program.

This year’s march

Sunday just past was one of sunshine and little wind, as it was on the day of the Derry massacre. But regular marchers remember other Bloody Sunday commemoration days of pouring non-stop rain, of squalls, of snow and sleet, of wet clothes, socks and freezing fingers and toes.

The march starts in the afternoon at the Creggan (An Chreagáin) and winds down to just below the Derry Walls, then up a long slope again before eventually ending down at Free Derry Corner9, the destination of the original march, where speakers address the crowd from a sheltered stage.

Marchers underway, led by people carrying 14 crosses to represent the unarmed civilians murdered by the Paras on that day 53 years before. (Photo: D.Breatnach)
The band members are itching to go up in the Creggan. (Photo: D.Breatnach)

The sides of residential blocks in this area are also painted in giant murals to represent scenes from the civil rights and armed resistance period while nearby stands a monument to the martyrs of Bloody Sunday 1972 but also another to the 10 H-Blocks’ martyrs of the Hungers Strikes of 1981.

In this area, one needs to be blind not to be at least peripherally aware of the icons of proud struggle and of loss, of sacrifice.

Eamon McCann and Farah Koutteineh addressed the rally at the end of the march. McCann, a journalist and member of the People Before Profit political party is a survivor of the massacre. He is an early supporter of the Bloody Sunday March for Justice at which he has spoken on occasion.

Farah Koutteineh is a Palestinian journalist who was herself the news when in December 2023 she and a few other Palestinians were ejected from a Sinn Féin-organised meeting in Belfast being addressed by the Palestinian Ambassador as a representative of the Palestinian Authority.

Koutteineh had been denouncing the Palestine Authority’s collusion with Israel when she and the other Palestinians were hustled out to applause from many of the attendance. Not surprisingly from the Derry platform on Sunday she too drew applause in criticising SF’s position on Palestine.10

Speaking to this reporter after the march, Kate Nash said: “There is no chance the march will be ended. It will go forward into the future, a beacon of resistance against the injustices and crimes of states around the world.

“There are millions of us … people come from around the world to commemorate this massacre with us.”

end.

Series of images from the march (Photoa by D.Breatnach)

Footnotes:

1There have been a number of Bloody Sundays in the history of Ireland under colonialism and therefore the location and year are often incorporated into the name for clarity as to which is being discussed.

2There was substantial State interference with inquests during the period of the 30-years’ war in the Six Counties (and in some cases in the Irish state also), in order to avoid inquest juries finding the state armed forces culpable of homicide unjustified in law. The original inquest in 1972 on the Ballymurphy massacre recorded an ‘open verdict’ but a 2021 reopened inquest found the British Army killings “unjustifiable”. Even after the Derry massacre, in July of that year, the Paras again killed five unarmed people and injured two in the Springhill area of Belfast and again an ‘open verdict’ was recorded into the fatalities which included three teenagers and a priest.

3The demands were all of rights that were in existence in the rest of the UK, including an ending to discrimination in allocation of housing and employment and general enfranchisement.

4The Special Powers (Northern Ireland) Act 1922 gave legal powers to the authorities similar to martial law. Allegedly temporary, as is often the case the Act kept getting renewed until made permanent and its repeal was one of the demands of the Civil Rights campaign. The Act was finally repealed in 1973.

5There was a unit of other British Army soldiers stationed on the Derry Walls with special rifles and there has been speculation that some of the shots might have been fired by them but this has never been confirmed to date.

6Now McAlliskey then Devlin, she had been a candidate for the People’s Democracy party of the time, the youngest MP elected.

7And that was the ‘official record’ until the Saville verdict 38 years later. A clever contemporary lampooning of Widgery and playing on a soap powder advert, with excellent alliteration, had it that “Nothing washes whiter than Widgery White!”

8Although the Saville Inquiry delivered its verdict in June 2010, it had been set up in 1998, taking an inordinately long time (and a bonanza in legal fees for judge, barristers, lawyers and clerks) to reach a verdict already obvious to all the nationalist people of the Six Counties, most of the Irish people and probably millions around the world. The date of its setting up so near to that of the Good Friday Agreement suggests that its creation (and eventual verdict) was part of the ‘sweeteners’ of the Pacification Process and the Good Friday Agreement.

9A reconstruction of the iconic gable end of a small local authority house in the Bogside area of Derry which had been painted in 1967, during the Civil Rights resistance period, with giant letters proclaiming: YOU ARE NOW ENTERING FREE DERRY. The house was demolished during redevelopment of the area but the gable end was reconstructed as a monument to the resistance of the people of the city.

10Sinn Féin support the corrupt and collaborationist Palestine Authority and its backing political party Fatah and also celebrated St. Patrick’s Day with (then) President Joe Biden while the US was supplying the Zionist genocide with weapons, money and political backing.

1There have been a number of Bloody Sundays in the history of Ireland under colonialism and therefore the location and year are often incorporated into the name for clarity as to which is being discussed.

2There was substantial State interference with inquests during the period of the 30-years’ war in the Six Counties (and in some cases in the Irish state also), in order to avoid inquest juries finding the state armed forces culpable of homicide unjustified in law. The original inquest in 1972 on the Ballymurphy massacre recorded an ‘open verdict’ but a 2021 reopened inquest found the British Army killings “unjustifiable”. Even after the Derry massacre, in July of that year, the Paras again killed five unarmed people and injured two in the Springhill area of Belfast and again an ‘open verdict’ was recorded into the fatalities which included three teenagers and a priest.

3The demands were all of rights that were in existence in the rest of the UK, including an ending to discrimination in allocation of housing and employment and general enfranchisement.

4The Special Powers (Northern Ireland) Act 1922 gave legal powers to the authorities similar to martial law. Allegedly temporary, as is often the case the Act kept getting renewed until made permanent and its repeal was one of the demands of the Civil Rights campaign. The Act was finally repealed in 1973.

5There was a unit of other British Army soldiers stationed on the Derry Walls with special rifles and there has been speculation that some of the shots might have been fired by them but this has never been confirmed to date.

6Now McAlliskey then Devlin, she had been a candidate for the People’s Democracy party of the time, the youngest MP elected.

7And that was the ‘official record’ until the Saville verdict 38 years later. A clever contemporary lampooning of Widgery and playing on a soap powder advert, with excellent alliteration, had it that “Nothing washes whiter than Widgery White!”

8Although the Saville Inquiry delivered its verdict in June 2010, it had been set up in 1998, taking an inordinately long time (and a bonanza in legal fees for judge, barristers, lawyers and clerks) to reach a verdict already obvious to all the nationalist people of the Six Counties, most of the Irish people and probably millions around the world. The date of its setting up so near to that of the Good Friday Agreement suggests that its creation (and eventual verdict) was part of the ‘sweeteners’ of the Pacification Process and the Good Friday Agreement.

9A reconstruction of the iconic gable end of a small local authority house in the Bogside area of Derry which had been painted in 1967, during the Civil Rights resistance period, with giant letters proclaiming: YOU ARE NOW ENTERING FREE DERRY. The house was demolished during redevelopment of the area but the gable end was reconstructed as a monument to the resistance of the people of the city.

10Sinn Féin support the corrupt and collaborationist Palestine Authority and its backing political party Fatah and also celebrated St. Patrick’s Day with (then) President Joe Biden while the US was supplying the Zionist genocide with weapons, money and political backing.

Useful links:

“THIS TIME WE WON’T SURRENDER”

On By rebelbreezeIn UncategorizedLeave a comment

Save Moore Street From Demolition
(Reading time: 2 mins.)

“This time we won’t surrender” were the words that appeared in January 2016 on a meme featuring Banksy-style graffiti artwork painted on hoardings in Moore Street, surrounding the planned demolition site of at least two buildings.

In the first weeks of January 2016 the Save Moore Street From Demolition team on their weekly Saturday stall had noted the erection of hoardings around a number of buildings and, learning of the planned demolition of Nos.13 and 18, called emergency demonstrations on to the street.

The first of these resulted in a number of people occupying the buildings to prevent demolition and the occupation grew until by majority decision they were evacuated after a High Court injunction had been issued against any damage by contractors pending a Court decision on the buildings.

On the last day of the occupation, signed SMSFD petition sheets were taped end to end and a chain organised stretching them from one end of Moore Street to the other. The Save Moore Street 2016 group was founded to unite the various street-active components of the conservation campaign.

One day in January, the Banksy-style graffiti appeared on part of the hoarding in the street. Part of the artwork reproduces the scene of the 1916 Rising surrender of the forces in Moore Street and of the entire Rising, captured by a photographer in Parnell Street on April 30th.

That staged photograph shows General Lowe and his son John, also a British officer, taking the surrender from Commander-in-Chief Patrick Pearse with Vol. Elizabeth O’Farrell by his side but out of view (by her choice, she later related) though her feet may be seen beside Pearse’s.

The artist transposed the scene to the present, with the two figures of the British Army now wearing construction safety helmets, representing those who planned to demolish the historic buildings in the 1916 Terrace that had been occupied by up to 300 men and women fighters in 1916.

The artwork was one feature of the many aspects of the resistance in 2016 which helped to ensure a High Court decision that the whole area is a “1916 History Monument” but the Minister of Heritage appealed on the basis that a High Court Judge could not make that decision.

Other aspects included a 6.30am-4pm blockade of the site Mon-Fri for six weeks, pickets of Heritage Dept. Offices, including re-enactments and mock history funerals, protesting the Heritage Minister’s 1916 event in Moore Street and weekly collection of petition signatures on the street.

In February 2017 the Minister’s appeal succeeded and the earlier Planning Permission was once again in force. However, no buildings in the terrace had been demolished nor have been since, with many twists and turns in the struggle yet – and still – to come.

If you support the struggle, spread the word and please sign our on-line petition and ask your contacts to do likewise. Ní neart go cur le chéile. https://my.uplift.ie/petitions/save-moore-street

End.

AWARD-WINNING DOCU-DRAMA LIFTS THE LID ON IRISH STATE CENSORSHIP

On By rebelbreezeIn Censorship & Witch-hunting, History, Ireland, Irish Left, Irish Republicanism, Mass Media CriticismLeave a comment

Clive Sulish

(Reading time: 5 mins.)

FEW CAN SEE – Censoring the Conflict was screened last week (Wednesday 4th night) in the Irish Film Institute to a moderately-sized audience, followed by questions of film-maker Frank Sweeney and Betty Purcell by​​​​​​ Ruairí McCann from Belfast.

Sweeney took a look at state censorship during the three decades’ war in Ireland which was effected through the introduction of Section 31 of the Broadcasting Act, the sacking of the entire RTÉ Board of Directors and the jailing of a journalist.

Henceforth, self-censorship was the rule.

Specifically, the State ban applied during this period in refusals to interview any member of the IRA (Provisional or Official) and was later extended to Provisional Sinn Féin. It was enforced within RTÉ by management including members of the Workers’ Party1 who also led one of the unions.

Docudrama Few Can See focused on the application of the ban to spokespersons of people in the occupied Six Counties and of a number of campaigning groups: Gays Against the H-Blocks; Concerned Parents Against Drugs; the Gateaux bakery strike in Finglas (factory closed 1990).

Gay rights activists in Cork also campaigned against the H-Blocs and were subjected to censorship under Section 31. (Photo sourced: ICCL website)

Frank Sweeney said he had been intrigued by Betty Purcell’s memoir of her time producing programs for RTÉ and her battles with censorship there2. Conducting interviews with people about their experiences of being censored, he then worked the material into a script.

The format was of a 1980s studio with a program presenter in the style of the times and smoking, intercut with grunge-style footage, electronic interference noise and visuals, then narrowing to interviews with actors playing the parts of victims of the ban at the time.

If the intention was to show how ridiculous it could be to apply a political ban aimed at alleged terrorists instead to community struggles against oppression and the heroin epidemic, the struggle of gays around legality and health and a bakery strike, it succeeded.

The ‘RTE presenter’ in the docudrama screening (Photo: R.Breeze)

However, the issues of whose interests the State was representing in that period of heavy censorship and why it felt threatened were not teased out. Nor why it was able do what it did.

Had those issues been addressed we might have observed a vulnerable neo-colonial ruling class during a high point of struggle against the very colonial and neo-colonial nature of the state and the colony of its imperial neighbour, which also imposed censorship on broadcasting at home.

An aspect of such censorship which might not occur to one but which was discussed in the documentary is the effect of censorship not only on struggles of the time but also on the lack of available footage for archives in the future, leaving history the poorer in material.

Few Can See film has been screening around the world this year and has won some awards including the  Tiger Short Award at International Film Festival Rotterdam and is due in Barcelona next year, hopefully to be screened in Ireland again, followed by a fuller discussion.

Film maker Frank Sweeney (centre) speaking during post-screening discussion at the IFI with Ruairí McCann (left) and Purcell (almost out of shot, right). (Photo: R.Breeze)

In addition to exposing the State-led censorship of the past, Sinn Féin might benefit from the film as those who were being gagged were either members or were thought to be supporters of the party. However, SF has its own history of censoring critics both within the party and outside.

And as one member of the audience was heard to remark: “It’ll be the dissidents, not SF that will be getting censored now.” True, though no longer enforced by the State, rather voluntarily by program makers, editors and by the reporters themselves, as with the genocide in Palestine.

Indeed both Sweeney, Purcell and a member of the audience alluded to ongoing censorship around that subject. But it is not only suppression of the truth which is the problem but also the obligatory insertion of the false narrative that everything began on 7th October with the Palestinian raid.

BACKGROUND: THE BROADCASTING BAN MECHANISM

Section 31 of the Broadcasting Authority Act 1960 empowered the Minister for Posts and Telegraphs to issue a ministerial order to the government-appointed RTÉ Authority not to broadcast any material specified in the written order.

The first order under the section was issued in 1971 by Fianna Fáil Minister for posts and Telegraphs Gerry Collins. It instructed RTÉ not to broadcast

any matter that could be calculated to promote the aims or activities of any organisation which engages in, promotes, encourages or advocates the attaining of any particular objectives by violent means.

Collins refused clarification when RTÉ asked for advice on what this legal instruction meant in practice and RTÉ interpreted the Order politically to mean that spokespersons for the Provisional and Official IRA could no longer appear on air.

The following year, the government sacked the RTÉ Authority for not sufficiently disciplining broadcasters the government accused of breaching the Order.

RTÉ’s reporter Kevin O’Kelly had referred to an interview that he conducted with the then Provisional IRA Chief of Staff, Seán Mac Stíofáin, on the Radio Éireann This Week programme. The recorded interview was not itself broadcast, nor was Mac Stiofáin’s voice heard.

Premiere balladeer Christy Moore (right) marching with Provisional Sinn Féins Joe Cahill (Photo sourced: Internet)

Mac Stiofáin was arrested after the O’Kelly interview and charged with membership of the IRA, an organisation listed as illegal by the State.

Soon afterwards O’Kelly was jailed for ‘contempt’ at the non-jury Special Criminal Court because he refused to identify a voice on a tape seized by the Gardaí as that of Mac Stiofáin. However Mac Stiofáin was convicted anyway in the “sentencing tribunal” of the SCC.

O’Kelly appealed to the Supreme Court and a fine was substituted as a means of purging O’Kelly’s alleged contempt. O’Kelly declined to pay the fine but it was said to have been paid anonymously and O’Kelly was released.

In 1976, when Conor Cruise O’Brien  (Labour) Minister for Posts and Telegraphs amended Section 31 of the Broadcasting Act, he also issued a new Section 31 Order. This censored spokespersons for specific organisations, including the legal Sinn Féin political party, rather than specified content.

That prevented RTÉ from interviewing Sinn Féin spokespersons under any circumstances, even if the subject was unrelated to the IRA campaign in Northern Ireland conflict.

Visually impacting and clever punning in placard parade protest against Section 31. (Photo sourced: Internet)

Bizarrely even a call-in show on radio about gardening was interrupted once because a caller was a member of Sinn Féin. 

The changes undermined the relatively liberal interpretations by RTÉ of its censorship responsibilities under the original 1971 Order and encouraged a process of self-censorship and illiberal interpretation.

However in 1976 O’Brien attempted to extend the censorship to newspaper coverage of the conflict, targeting in particular The Irish Press, revealing his thinking in an interview with Washington Post reporter Bernard Nossiter, naming as a possible target Press Editor, Tim Pat Coogan.

Nossiter immediately alerted Coogan, who then published the Nossiter-O’Brien interview in the Irish Press (as did The Irish Times).

Due to public opposition the proposed provisions were amended to remove the perceived threat to newspapers.

But Fine Gael and Labour were not to be left out as the 1973-77 Fine Gael/ Labour Coalition Government also tried to prosecute the Irish Press for its coverage of the maltreatment (not to say torture) of republican prisoners by the Garda ‘Heavy Gang’, with the paper winning the case.

SOURCES

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

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt34242057/

1The Workers’ Party grew out of Official Sinn Féin which was declining after the split which led to the creation of Provisional Sinn Féin in 1970 and later another split, resulting in the 1974 creation of the Irish Republican Socialist Party. The WP was extremely hostile to the IRSP and PSF, in particular the latter.

2Inside RTÉ – a memoir, Betty Purcell, New Island Books (2014).

LARGE RALLY ON HISTORICAL 1916 RISING SITE THREATENED BY SPECULATORS

On By rebelbreezeIn 1916 Rising, City Planning, Current Affairs Comment, Current Event Report, History commemoration, Ireland, irish history, Irish Left, Irish Republicanism, Official Corruption, Song, Song in StruggleLeave a comment

Clive Sulish

(Reading time: 7 mins.)

Large numbers attending a rally Sunday afternoon were addressed by a number of speakers from a platform in the centre of the 1916 Terrace organised by the Moore Street Preservation Trust on part of the very site they wished to preserve.

Fintan Warfield, a Sinn Féin Senator (and cousin of Derek and Brian Warfield of the Wolfe Tones) came on stage to perform Come Out Yez Black ‘n Tans followed by Grace, about Grace Gifford’s wedding to Vol. Joseph Plunkett hours before his execution by British firing squad.

Fintan Warfield performing at the event, behind him the portraits of two of the Moore Street Garrison in 1916 may be seen. (Photo: R. Breeze)

Warfield performed in front of a number of large board posters bearing the images of a number of leaders of the 1916 Rising who had occupied Moore Street in 1916 and Vols. Elizabeth O’Farrell and Winifred Carney, two of the three women Volunteers who had been part of the garrison.

The start of the rally however was delayed, apparently awaiting the arrival of Mary Lou Mac Donald, billed as the principal speaker on the Moore Street Preservation Trust’s pre-rally publicity.

Eventually Mícheál Mac Donncha, Secretary of the Trust and a Sinn Féin Dublin City councillor came on the stage to promote some MSPT merchandise (some of it for free) and to introduce the MC for the event, Christina McLoughlin, a relative of Comdt. Seán McLoughlin.

Christina McLoughline, MC of the event. (Photo: R. Breeze)

Vol. Seán McLoughlin had been appointed Dublin Commandant General by James Connolly during the GPO evacuation and was about to lead a charge on the British Army barricade in Parnell Street when the decision was taken to cancel after which he organised the surrender.

He later became a communist and was never acknowledged at Commandant level by the War Pensions Dept. of the State under De Valera, despite his rank in Moore Street and later also in the Civil War in Cork.

Sean’s relative Christina McLoughlin welcomed Mary Lou Mac Donald on to the stage.

Mac Donald’s appearance on the stage received strong applause. In fairness, many present, if not most, were of the party faithful. Despite the presence of some younger people, the general age profile was decidedly from the 40s upwards, indeed many being clearly in the later third.

Mary Lou Mac Donald, President of the Sinn Fein party, speaking at the event. (Photo: R. Breeze)

Mac Donald, who is not an Irish speaker, read the beginning of the address well in Irish before going on to talk in English about the importance of Moore Street site in the history of the 1916 Rising and in Irish history generally and how her party in government would save it.

After the applause for Mac Donald, the MC called Proinnsias Ó Rathaille, a relative of Vol. Michael The O’Rahilly, who was mortally wounded leading a charge up Moore Street against a British Army barricade in Parnell Street and who died in the nearby lane that now bears his name.

Ó Rathaille’s address was heavy in the promotion of the Sinn Féin party and, in truth rather wandering so that he had to return to the microphone after he’d concluded, to announce Evelyn Campell to perform a song she had composed: The O’Rahilly Parade (the lane where he died).

Evelyn Campbell performing her composition O’Rahilly’s Parade at the event. (Photo: R. Breeze)

Campell is a singer-songwriter and has performed in Moore Street on previous occasions, the first being at the invitation of the Save Moore Street From Demolition group who were the only group to campaign to have the O’Rahilly monument finally signposted by Dublin City Council.

McLoughlin announced Deputy Mayor Donna Cooney to speak, a relative of Vol. Elizabeth O’Farrell, one of the three women who were part of the insurrectionary forces occupying Moore Street. Cooney is a Green Party Councillor and a long-standing campaigner for the conservation of Moore Street.

Deputy Dublin Lord Mayor and Green Party councillor Donna Cooney speaking at the event. (Photo: R. Breeze)

While speaking about the importance of Moore Street conservation for its history and street market, Cooney also alluded to its deserving UNESCO World Heritage status, adding that the approval of the Hammerson plan for the street was in violation of actual planning regulations.

Next to speak was Diarmuid Breatnach, also a long-time campaigner, representing the Save Moore Street From Demolition campaign group which, as he pointed out has been on the street every Saturday for over a ten years and is independent of any political party or organisation.

Diarmuid Breatnach speaking at event on behalf of the independent Save Moore Street From Demolition campaign group. (Photo: R. Breeze)

Breatnach also raised the UNESCO world heritage importance, as the SMSFD group were first to point out and have been doing for some years, based on a number of historical “firsts” in world history, including the 1916 Rising having been the first anti-colonial uprising of that century.

The Rising was also the first ever against world war, Breatnach said. He told his audience that the Irish State has applied for UNESCO heritage status for Dublin City, but only because of its Victorian architecture and that it had once been considered “the second city of the British Empire”.

Stephen Troy, a traditional family butcher on the street, was next to speak. He described the no-notice-for-termination arrangements which many phone shops in the street had from their landlord and how Dublin City Planning Department had ignored the many sub-divisions of those shops.

Stephen Troy, owner of family butcher shop on the street and campaigner, speaking at the rally. (Photo: R. Breeze)

Troy’s speech was probably the longest of all as he covered official attempts to bribe the street traders to vote in favour of the Hammerson plan and what he alleged was the subversion of the Moore Street Advisory Group which had been set up by the Minister for Heritage.

It began to rain as Troy was drawing to a close but fortunately did not last long.

Jim Connolly Heron, a descendant of James Connolly and also a long-time campaigner for Moore Street preservation was then called. Speaking on behalf of the Trust, Connolly began by reading out a list of people who had supported the conservation but had died along the way.

Connolly Heron went on to promote the Trust’s Plan for the street which had been promoted by a number of speakers and to announce the intention of the Trust to take a case to the High Court for a review of the process of An Bord Pleanála’s rejection of appeals against planning permission.

Jim Connolly Heron, great-grandson of James Connolly and prominent member of the Moore Street Preservation Trust, speaking at the event. (Photo: R. Breeze)

The MC acknowledged the presence in the crowd of SF Councillor Janice Boylan, with relatives among the street traders and standing for election as TD and Clare Daly, also standing for election but as an Independent TD in the Dublin Central electoral area.

MOORE STREET, PAST AND PRESENT

Moore Street is older than O’Connell Street and the market is the oldest open-air street market in Ireland (perhaps in Europe). It became a battleground in 1916 as the GPO Garrison occupied a 16-house terrace in the street after evacuating the burning General Post Office.

At one time there were around 70 street stalls in the Moore Street area selling fresh fruit, vegetables and fish and there were always butchers’ shops there too. But clothes, shoes, furniture, crockery and vinyl discs were sold there too, among pubs, bakeries and cafés.

Dublin City Planning Department permitted the development of the ILAC shopping centre on the western side of the street centre and the Lidl supermarket at the north-east end of the street, along with a Dealz as the ILAC extended to take over the space on its eastern side.

While many Irish families turned to supermarkets, people with backgrounds in other countries kept the remaining street traders in business; but the property speculators ran down the street in terms of closing down restaurants and neglecting the upkeep of buildings.

The authorities seem to have colluded in this as antisocial behaviour that would not be tolerated for a minute in nearby Henry Street is frequently seen in Moore Street.

The new craft and hot food stalls Monday-Saturday run counter to this but are managed by the private Temple Bar company which can pull out in a minute. On Sunday, the street is empty of stalls and hot food or drinks are only available in places that are part of the ILAC shopping centre.

The O’Reilly plan was for a giant ‘shopping mall’ extending to O’Connell Street and was paralysed by an objectors’ occupation of a week followed by a six-week blockade of the site, after which a High Court judgment in 2016 declared the whole area to be a National Historical Monument.

A judge’s power to make such a determination was successfully challenged by then-Minister of Heritage Heather Humphries in February of 2017. NAMA permitted O’Reilly to transfer his assets to Hammerson who abandoned the ‘shopping mall’ plan as not profitable enough.

The Hammerson plan, approved by DCC and by ABP is for a shopping district no doubt of chain stores like Henry Street or Grafton Street, also an hotel and a number of new streets, including one cutting through the 1916 central terrace out to O’Connell Street from the ILAC.

In the past dramatist Frank Allen organised human chains in at least three ‘Arms Around Moore Street’ events and the Save Moore Street 2016 coalition organised demonstrations, re-enactments, pickets and mock funerals of Irish history (i.e under Minister Humphries).

The preservation campaigning bodies still remaining in the field are the SF-backed Moore St. Preservation Trust and the independent Save Moore St. From Demolition group. The former is only a couple of years in existence and the latter longer than ten years.

However, both groups contain individuals who have been campaigning for years before that. The MSPT tends to hold large events sporadically; the SMSFD group has a campaign stall on the street every Saturday from 11.30am-1.30pm. Both have social media pages.

Fully in view, four prominent members of the Moore Street Garrison (L-R): Patrick Pearse, Commander-in-Chief; Vol. Elizabth O’Farrell, of Cumann na mBan; Vol. Joseph Plunkett, one of the planners of the insurrection; Vol. Willie Pearse, Adjutant to his brother Patrick. All but O’Farrell were tried by British court martial, sentenced to death and shot by British firing squad in Kilmainham Jail. (Photo: R. Breeze)

LEGISLATION & COURT CASES

2007 Nos. 14-17 Moore Street declared a National Historical Monument (but still owned by property developer Joe O’Reilly of Chartered Land)

2015 Darragh O’Brian TD (FF) – Bill Moore Street Area Development and Renewal Bill – Passed First Reading but failed Second in Seanad on 10th June 2015 by 22 votes against 16.

2015 – Colm Moore application — 18th March 2016: High Court judgement that the whole of the Moore Street area is a national historical monument.

2017 – February – Minister of Heritage application to Court of Appeal – judgement that High Court Judge cannot decide what is a national monument.

2021 — Aengus Ó Snodaigh TD (SF) – 1916 Cultural Quarter Bill – reached 3rd Stage of process; Government did not timetable its progress to Committee Stage and therefore no progress.

2024 – Property Developer Hammerson application to High Court Vs. Dublin City Council in objection to decision of elected Councillors that five buildings in the Moore Street area should receive Protected Structure status as of National Historical Heritage. Hammerson states that the decision is interfering with their Planning Permission. Case awaits hearing.

Five prominent members of the Moore Street Garrison (L-R): Vol. Winifred Carney of Irish Citizen Army and Cumann na mBan; Vol. Sean Mac Diarmada, one of the planners of the insurrection; Vol. Tom Clarke, one of the insurrection’s planners; revolutionary socialist James Connolly, Irish Citzen Army and Commandant General of the Rising (especially of Dublin); Patrick Pearse, Commander-in-Chie. All but Carney were tried by British court martial, sentenced to death and shot by British firing squad in Kilmainham Jail. (Photo: R. Breeze)

POSTSCRIPT

Someone commented later that in general the rally, from the content of most of the speeches, had been at least as much (if not more) of a Sinn Féin election rally as one for the conservation of Moore Street.

That should have been no surprise to anyone who knows that any position taken by Sinn Féin activists tends to be for the party first, second and third. And with the Irish general elections only weeks away, well …

And while Mac Donald spoke in Dublin of the importance of Ireland’s insurrectionary history and the need to conserve such sites, her second-in-command Michelle O’Neil was laying a wreath in Belfast in commemoration of the British who were killed in the First imperialist World War.

End.