The Irish State is one of four of the European Union which are not also members of the US/NATO military organisation1 but the Irish national ruling class keeps up propaganda to get its citizens to accept the “need” for membership.
The UK’s colony of Six Counties is included in NATO which means that over one-fifth of Irish land is already formally a part of the imperialist military alliance.2 In addition, successive Irish State governments have long been collusive in permitting US military use of Shannon Airport.
The ruling class’s propaganda is emitted not only by politicians’ statements and pro-NATO conferences3 but also through media articles. In this article4 the headline clearly gives the impression that the UK is rendering Ireland needed protection from Russia:
“UK had to come to Ireland’s aid with Russian submarine hovering off Cork harbour”!
Image shows two RAF Typhoons sitting off of the wing of a Voyager tanker after taking on fuel. A multitude of Royal Air Force aircraft flew in-support of Exercise Joint Warrior 2020, most notably 617 Squadron F-35B’s who flew alongside US Marine Corps (USMC) VMFA 211 Squadron F-35B aircraft. (Image sourced: Internet)
WITH ‘PROTECTORS’ LIKE THAT …!
In fact, throughout the history of the existence of the Russian entity, whether as kingdom, empire, socialist or capitalist state, not once has it caused or even threatened the Irish people (and during the 1916 Rising and war of independence its leaders praised the Irish struggle for independence).
On the other hand, the rulers of England, being cast as our protectors, have invaded and colonised Ireland, stolen our natural resources, exploited and massacred our people, repressed our resistance, undermined language and culture, sabotaged our economy and finally partitioned our nation.
To obliterate that reality from Irish popular consciousness is far from easy but first the English and then the Irish national ruling class or bourgeoisie has been at work on that project for centuries.
In 1366, less than two centuries after invasion, the Statutes of Kilkenny sought to end the cultural integration of its colonists, whom the English rulers called “the degenerate English” and whom they accused of having “become more Irish than the Irish themselves”.
During the 16th and 17th centuries the English Crown carried out a number of wars in Ireland to force the indigenous Irish and many of its colonists to accept the Crown’s religion as their own and even exported Irish people as slaves to their American and Caribbean colonies.5
They also organised a number of settlement colonies on Irish land from which they had expelled the natives, requiring the settlers to be English-speaking, non-Catholics, to build house and town for defence and not to employ Catholics.
In the 1780s the English occupation created an Irish colonial chivalric order, the Order of St. Patrick, with a red saltire, to which Irish settlers and Irish were encouraged to belong. That saltire, along with St. Andrew’s, is worked along with the cross of St. George to make the Union Jack.
Towards the end of the 18th Century the English founded the Orange Order to foster division between those of Catholic faith and adherents of the various Protestant sects; then repressed the Republican rising and instituted a reign of terror.
They followed that up at the turn of the Century by organising the dissolution of the Irish Parliament and repression of another Rising. Later that century they oversaw the elimination of a third of our population once again through starvation, disease and forced migration.
Their colonial education service spread the English language further, penalised Irish-speaking children and encouraged children to think of themselves as “English”: ‘Indeed, the following verse was to be hung in every national school:
“I thank the goodness and the grace That on my birth have smiled, And made me in these Christian days A happy English child.“’6
In the early decades of the 20th Century the English ruling class, by now of the UK, suppressed another rising and sent thousands off to die in imperialist war, outlawed an Irish popular democratic parliament and fought a war or repression and terror against the Irish people.
Following up on that, the Crown subverted a section of the nationalist movement and instigated a civil war against Irish Republicans, arming and clothing the army of the neo-colonial Irish Free (sic) State which executed formally and informally over a hundred Republicans.
During the 1970s British intelligence service agents and proxy militia terrorists carried out a number of bombings in Ireland, the one in 1974 killing 34 people (including a full-time foetus) in Dublin and Monaghan,7 the highest toll of any day during the whole three-decades war.
In the final three decades of the last decade the UK waged a direct military and proxy terrorist war against the Irish nationalist people in their colony.
MASS MEDIA PROPAGANDA
As noted earlier, the Gombeen (neocolonial) Irish bourgeoisie has been trying to obliterate the deep consciousness of that history by promoting equivocation and doubts through reactionary historical revisionism and even removing significant sections from the history curriculum.
The mass media is another important leader in this work. In the featured piece we see that it is the headline that delivers the NATO-and neo-colonial conditioning message, albeit without mentioning those and indeed by adding material that cannot be read in the actual text of the article.
British nuclear submarine (Image sourced: Internet)
“Security and defence analyst Declan Power said Britain often finds out about these things before we do.” Yes, we can be sure that it does!
“What exactly was the Russian submarine doing there? It should be looked at in the broader array of defence arrangements in that the Russians will be regularly testing the defence responses of Nato nations… in particular the UK.”
“Because the UK and the Scandinavian countries have responsibility for monitoring an area known as the Icelandic gap.”8The piece concludes with a suggestion of threat to Ireland, stating that the incident occurred “south of the entrance to Cork Harbour.
Perhaps but over at least 12 miles away, so in fact it would’ve also been in a line west of Devon and Wales in Britain and line north-west of France! The article concludes by stating that “Russia has been regularly testing British air defences off Irish shores in recently (sic) years.”
Yes, “testing BRITISH air defences” and the UK is no doubt doing the same to Russia. Britain, as the UK, is a member of US/NATO, which is not only opposed to Russia but has been encircling it for decades before instigating a proxy war against it.
Far from protecting Irish people, British military manoeuvres around and over9 Ireland, its bases in the Six County colony and US military uses of Shannon airport actually place us in great danger in any wide conflict in Europe or in world war.
And then of course, there’s the little matter of colonial occupation of a part of our nation and neo-colonial domination of the rest through our compliant national ruling class. The UK military is no friend of people anywhere — and least of all a friend of the Irish people.
End.
Footnotes
1The other three are Cyprus, Malta and Austria. As of yet nor is Sweden but the expectation is of joining very soon.
2There are 32 counties in the whole Irish nation and the names of all but three in English are corruption of Irish words (including all of the Six in the colony).
November 17th is the anniversary of the date when a demonstration, mainly of Irish in solidarity with Fenian prisoners in British jails, saved the public Speakers’s Corner in Hyde Park from State control for everyone.
‘Frederick’ (Friedrich) Engels was there and reported on it (see below) with great admiration for the Irish diaspora. In his seminal The Condition of the Working Class in England (1845) he had not had that feeling for the Irish but had matured as a person and a revolutionary since.1
The Clerkenwell jail wall blown by Fenians (Photo sourced: Internet)
Frederick Engels and Karl Marx, both exiles from Germany, one by choice and the other as a refugee, came to form a strong corresponding, writing and organising partnership. Together they formed the International Working Men’s Association.
The First International, as it came to be called, took a position on many international questions but did not shirk the Irish one and indeed exposed and agitated about the terrible conditions under which Fenians were being held in British jails.
Jeremiah O’Donovan Rossa (1831-1915), a Fenian prisoner, wrote that he was for a period chained to the wall and had to eat his food from a bowl on the floor like a dog. It is also recorded that a third of the prisoners died in jail or went insane.
Frederick Engels as a young man (Photo sourced: Internet)
The Irish Republican Brotherhood had been founded in Dublin and in New York on St. Patrick’s Day, 1858 and in the USA quickly became better known as “the Fenian Brotherhood”. In Ireland they were frequently referred to as “the Fenians” or, by those on ‘the inside’ as ‘the IRB’.
Clearly from Engels’ description, “Fenians” was also the common description in Britain too. The Fenians took the war to Britain; the Crown responded by organising a specific police department, the Special Irish Branch of Scotland Yard, to spy on the Irish diaspora and to arrest suspects.
The “Special Branch” became known henceforth as the political department of the British police force but also of British colonial police forces in Ireland, Commonwealth countries such as Australia, and colonies such as Kenya, Uganda, Hong Kong …
We know that that the Fenian prisoners were not forgotten in Ireland, with campaigns for their freedom including articles, public events and even songs composed for them. But evidently they were not forgotten by the Irish diaspora in Britain nor by their socialist and democratic allies.
On November 17th 1872 the First International organised a march to Speakers’ Corner in London to protest the conditions under which those Fenian convicts were having to exist. Engels reported on the march and that he public speaking area was under threat of State control.
The Irish diaspora in Britain, the Irish-born migrants and descendants, contributed hugely to society and especially so to the working class in Britain, including presenting its anthem,2 its classic novel3 and two leaders4 of the Chartists, the working class’ first first genuinely mass movement.
In addition, members of the Irish diaspora helped build up the trade unions and were present in every movement against state repression, police violence, fascism, racism, colonialism and imperialism, fighting in organisations for housing, wages, free speech, political and civil rights.
Depiction of Speakers’ Corner meeting about the Fenian prisoners (Photo sourced: Internet)
Frederick Engels:
III Meeting in Hyde Park
London, November 14, 1872
The Liberal5English Government has at the moment no less than 42 Irish political prisoners in its prisons and treats them with quite exceptional cruelty, far worse than thieves and murderers.
In the good old days of King Bomba, the head of the present Liberal cabinet, Mr. Gladstone, travelled to Italy and visited political prisoners in Naples; on his return to England he published a pamphlet which disgraced the Neapolitan Government before Europe for its unworthy treatment of political prisoners.
This does not prevent this selfsame Mr. Gladstone from treating in the very same way the Irish political prisoners, whom he continues to keep under lock and key.
The Irish members of the International in London decided to organise a giant demonstration in Hyde Park (the largest public park in London, where all the big popular meetings take place during political campaigns) to demand a general amnesty.
They contacted all London’s democratic organisations and formed a committee which included MacDonnell (an Irishman), Murray (an Englishman) and Lessner (a German) — all members of the last General Council of the International.
A difficulty arose: at the last session of Parliament the government passed a law which gave it the right to regulate public meetings in London’s parks.
It made use of this and had the regulation posted up to warn those who wanted to hold such a public meeting that they must give a written notification to the police two days prior to calling it, indicating the names of the speakers.
This regulation carefully kept hidden from the London press destroyed with one stroke of the pen one of the most precious rights of London’s working people — the right to hold meetings in parks when and how they please.
To submit to this regulation would be to sacrifice one of the people’s rights.
The Irish, who represent the most revolutionary element of the population, were not men to display such weakness.
The committee unanimously decided to act as if it did not know of the existence of this regulation and to hold their meeting in defiance of the government’s decree.
Last Sunday at about three o’clock in the afternoon two enormous processions with bands and banners marched towards Hyde Park.
The bands played Irish songs and the Marseillaise6; almost all the banners were Irish (green with a gold harp in the middle) or red.
There were only a few police agents at the entrances to the park and the columns of demonstrators marched in without meeting with any resistance. They assembled at the appointed place and the speeches began.
The spectators numbered at least thirty thousand and at least half had a green ribbon or a green leaf in their buttonhole to show they were Irish; the rest were English, German and French.
The crowd was too large for all to be able to hear the speeches, and so a second meeting was organised nearby with other orators speaking on the same theme.
Forceful resolutions were adopted demanding a general amnesty and the repeal of the coercion laws which keep Ireland under a permanent state of siege.
At about five o’clock the demonstrators formed up into files again and left the park, thus having flouted the regulation of Gladstone’s Government.
This is the first time an Irish demonstration has been held in Hyde Park; it was very successful and even the London bourgeois press cannot deny this.
It is also the first time the English and Irish sections of our population have united in friendship.
These two elements of the working class, whose enmity towards each other was so much in the interests of the government and wealthy classes, are now offering one another the hand of friendship; this gratifying fact is due principally to the influence of the last General Council of the International,[307] which has always directed all its efforts to unite the workers of both peoples on a basis of complete equality.
This meeting, of the 3rd November, will usher in a new era in the history of London’s working-class movement.
You might ask: “What is the Government doing? Can it be that it is willing to reconcile itself to this slight? Will it allow its regulation to be flouted with impunity?”
Well, this is what it has done: it placed two police inspectors and two agents by the platforms in Hyde Park and they took down the names of the speakers.
On the following day, these two inspectors brought a suit against the speakers before the ustice of the Peace. The justice sent them a summons and they have to appear before him next Saturday.
This course of action makes it quite clear that they don’t intend to undertake extensive proceedings against them.
The government seems to have admitted that the Irish or, as they say here, the Fenians have beaten it and will be satisfied with a small fine. The debate in court will certainly be interesting and I shall inform you of it in my next letter.[308]
Of one thing there can be no doubt: the Irish, thanks to their energetic efforts, have saved the right of the people of London to hold meetings in parks when and how they please.
Notes
307 By the “last” General Council Engels means the London Council that existed before the Hague Congress of the International at which a decision was adopted to transfer the scat of the General Council to New York.
308 In the fourth article of the Letters from London series: “Meeting in Hyde Park. — The Position in Spain,” written on December 11, 1872, Engels reported that the Justice of the Peace could do no more than impose the smallest possible fine, and since his decision anyway ran contrary to the rules governing behaviour in Hyde Park the accused demanded that the case be brought before a court of appeal.
Engels’s Letters from Londonappeared in La Plebe, the newspaper of the International’s sections in Italy, early in April 1872, and continued throughout the year.
Early in 1873, Engels’s co-operation with La Plebewas temporarily interrupted due to government reprisals against the paper’s editors.
La Plebe was published under the editorship of E. Bignami in Lodi between 1868 and 1875, and in Milan between 1875 and 1883. Up to the early seventies the newspaper followed a bourgeois-democratic line, later it became socialist.
In 1872-73 La Plebeplayed an important role in the struggle against the anarchist influence in the Italian working-class movement. Engels’s contributions greatly promoted the paper’s success.
In 1882, the first independent party of the Italian proletariat the Workers’ Party — formed around La Plebe.
Source: Marx and Engels on Ireland, Progress Publishers, Moscow 1971; First Published: in Italian in La Plebe, November 17, 1872; Transcribed: by Andy Blunden.
1Aided by the Burns sisters Lizzie and Mary when he lived in Manchester, one of whom was his partner until she died and the other, subsequently his wife.
5The two main bourgeois political parties in Britain at the time were the Conservatives and Liberals; over time the latter declined and was replaced in its counterpoint to the Conservatives by the British Labour Party.
6French national anthem now but originally song of the French Republican uprising of 1789. In addition the air has been used for the lyrics other revolutionary songs.
On a wet Tuesday night in the large lobby of Windmill Lane Recording Studios, local community representatives met with representatives of political parties, Dublin City Council and the Gardaí to press for their community’s needs to be met.
The meeting on 24th October 2023 was convened by the City Quay Committee and its organiser, Patrick (“Paddy”) Bray raised concerns about the unmet needs of the local communities currently and for following generations.
Apart from the City Quay Committee, also represented were representatives of housing areas Markievicz House and Conway House, along with volunteer-managed youth service Talk About Youth.
Also in attendance were representation from political parties Fianna Fáil, Labour and Sinn Féin, all of which have TDs (members of Irish parliament) elected in the area. Dublin City Council was represented as the local municipal authority and Pearse Street as the nearest Garda station.
Presumably the presence of a Garda representative was in relation to discussion around a recent period of violent confrontations between opposing gangs of youth on the Samuel Beckett Bridge (but also Sean O’Casey Bridge) connecting South and North Liffey docklands.
It was striking that nearly all the community representatives were female, while most of the political representatives and each of DCC and the Gardaí were of male gender.
Paddy Bray opened the meeting outlining the local concerns about the area’s youth and the lack of constructive activities for them, the local youth service being underfunded, under-staffed and with no permanent base.
Bray went on to outline a dire absence of any kind of community facility for the local community, while property development went on around them, including four hotels in recent times, with no sites designated for affordable housing or community needs.
Looking across from the north quay, central background, the 8-storey Clayton Hotel, along with other buildings dwarfing even the four-storey reconstructed The Ferryman, the last of the original pubs along the South Docks between Tara St. Station and the East Link Bridge. (Photo sourced: Internet)
Other community representatives also pressed their needs hard and raised issues of applications for building on existing sites without consideration of the community’s needs in housing, parking, child and young person development, mental health or green space.
A number raised concerns about rat infestation in a housing area, emanating from a derelict site, followed by some discussion about where responsibility lay to address the problem as the site is in private ownership (though there was a suggestion of an enforceable abatement order).
The responses of the political party representatives and the Dublin City Council Area 2 officer were generally supportive, though a disagreement did emerge as to whether the City Council were doing enough to control the rat infestation.
Evoking a medieval or early 1900s scenario, a community representative reported that a man visited their housing area on a voluntary basis to kill rats and at a recent visit, had killed seven. Photos of live and dead rats on a phone were handed around (to shudders from some of the men).
The meeting concluded with an agreement to form a campaigning committee for the resources and sites needed, for the political representatives to support its aims and for the Area 2 DCC Manager to report back to his own management.
Paddy Bray asked all present to spread the word among their contacts to enlist further support.
THE COMMUNITY: LOSS, NEEDS AND HISTORY
The name of the building in which the meeting was held is famous in Irish recording events though most probably associate it in particular with the previous recording studio on the site and the rock group U2.
A plan for a six-storey block on the site was defeated by local protests in 2008 but the original studios were demolished with the exception of the U2 fans’ graffiti wall, which was later sold and proceeds donated to a charity fundraising for awareness of men’s health and treatment needs.
The new building is owned by the formerly investment trust company, now Hibernia property development company which, despite the name, as is now common in Ireland, is owned by a foreign corporation.1
Property speculators plan to demolish the City Arts Centre, a resource for the community but derelict and empty for two decades on Moss Street on the South docks, in order to build a 24-storey office block.
City Arts Centre building, derelict for years, property speculator high-rise plan appealed by many including Dublin City Council to An Bord Pleanála, now speculator taking DCC to court. (Photo sourced: Internet)
Unusually perhaps, the demolition application is being opposed by Dublin City Council2 which has appealed it to an Bord Pleanála3 and the speculator has taken the case to court.
As mentioned in the meeting, an existing facility for the community, the Markievicz swimming pool, despite 1,600 signatures to save it, is to close for the construction of a station for the projected underground Metrolink, another infrastructure planned for private or part-private ownership.4
As one of the community representatives commented, there is already a train station nearby; not only that but the tracks of that station are several storeys above ground, making an underground connection with Metrolink quite feasible.
A rally to promote saving the swimming pool in 2019 (Photo sourced: Internet)
The swimming pool facilities are now to be located at a site 3 km away in Ringsend, a housing district at the end of the docks and partly on the seafront, which has football pitches and green space very close nearby. 5
It is indeed late in the day as indicated by the huge property development on the South Quays but the communities are getting organised as can be seen from this meeting, a commemoration of a fatal 1960s housing collapse and protests about local church neglect by the Diocese.6
Some may think it is too late or that the speculative property and financial forces ranged against them, with their multiple political and other connections, are too strong. But their community’s needs now and for generations to come are powerful incentives for which to struggle too.
The south and north quays communities, neglected by the authorities and rode over roughshod in the past, with their remnants now under threat, are essentially working and lower-middle class communities which have never been given the resources they earned and deserved.
As in many other parts of Dublin, working class communities were ravaged by the heroin epidemic in the 1980s and regarded in the main by the authorities as a policing problem, with anti-drug campaigners ironically targeted more than drug lords.
In the course of that social crisis, many developments of physical and political nature took place which the working class was not well-placed to resist.
An outing on the old Liffey ferry boat, in regular use when there was no bridge crossing the Liffey eastward and downriver past Butt Bridge (Photo sourced: Dublin Dockers’ Preservation Society)
However, the people of the docklands were an important part of the working class movement in the early 1900s, winning many union battles against the employers until defeated by the latter’s alliance with police, magistrates, churches and media after eight months of struggle 1913-1914.
They rose out of that defeat and rebuilt their fighting organisations, including the first workers’ army in the world (and which recruited women, some of them appointed officers),7 fought again in the 1916 Rising and after that in Dockland areas during the War of Independence.
Indeed, during the 1916 Rising it is remarkable that despite British shelling from naval units in the Liffey, they did not attempt to land soldiers on any of the Dublin quays at that time, disembarking British reinforcements into Dun Laoghaire instead and marching 8 miles8 in from there.
If the working class of the south Dublin dockland is stirring it may still achieve more than many may expect.
End.
The Travelodge Hotel, corner of Townsend and Moss Street (Photo sourced: Internet)
FOOTNOTES
1Purchased by Brookfield Asset Management, a Canadian company, in 2022
3Many applications agreed by DCC Planning Department have also been appealed to An Bord Pleanála and that organisation has been immersed in controversy over criminality in management and low staff morale leading to a high backlog of appeals awaiting judgements.
5One could form the suspicion that the ultimate plan is to move south docks working class facilities to Ringsend and Irish Town, with the communities themselves to follow or to fade away, leaving the whole area free for property speculators.
6The diocese protest was not reported on in Rebel Breeze but the housing collapse commemoration, at which the lack of local affordable housing was raised, was.
7The Irish Citizen Army, founded after calls by both James Connolly and Jim Larkin.
Currently the Garda Representative Association is in a public struggle with the body’s most senior officer and nearly 99% in a high-participation poll of GRA members voted as having no confidence in Drew Harris, the Commissioner.1
The real issue for the GRA (Garda Representative Association) is that they enjoyed the rosters adopted by the Garda Síochána during the Covid pandemic and don’t want to abandon them. Of course not. Four days off after four days on shift must be nice and would we all had that.
But for that, the Gardaí would be required to work 12-hour shifts on their four days on and they are not complaining about that all – they are clamouring to do it. The workers’ movement fought hard for the 8-hours day and in in 1886 Anarchists in Chicago were martyred in that struggle.2
Not so long ago in the West, 12-hours was a usual shift for a worker thoughfor six days (“seventy hours was his weekly chore”).3 There is a well-known close association of fatigue with harmful incidents (as remarked upon by James Connolly)4 — and also with shoddy work.
Most Gardaí working 12-hour shifts will adapt themselves to the long hours by taking care to stretch themselves as little as possible but always being available for short energetic work, i.e evictions, intimidating industrial pickets, batoning protest marches and conducting raids.5
Justice Minister Helen McEntee says that she will not interfere in the dispute though at the same time expressed support for Harris and mildly criticised the threatened strike action by the GRA. Naturally the ruling class does not want to alienate their first line of physical defence.
But Sinn Fein TD Pearse Doherty last Thursday attacked the Government and Fine Gael in particular over what he called a “hands off” approach to the dispute by the Justice Minister. According to SF the Gardaí are a service valued and needed by communities.
This benevolent SF attitude to the Gardaí even extends to “specialist groups”.
Doherty and his party leaders now choose to forget that Irish Republicans, including thousands of their own supporters when it was a Republican party, have been spied upon, harassed, threatened, raided, beaten up, framed and perjured against in order to see them jailed.
Sinn Féin’s attitude to the Gardaí is a clear illustration of its change from revolutionary opposition to accommodation with the Gombeen capitalist system — and when in government they will use the Gardaí against any resistance to the system as currently they are using the PSNI.
GARDAI – A LONG REACTIONARY HISTORY
The Gardaí, as the first line of physical defence of the Irish Gombeen class has a long anti-working class, anti-Republican and anti-Left history. The intelligence branch CID worked with the National (sic) Army in identifying Republicans to kidnap, torture and murder.6
ANTI-REPUBLICAN
After the defeat of the Irish Republican Movement by the State forces armed and equipped by British imperialism, the Irish neo-colonial state used the Gardaí to harass Republicans.
Eoin O’Duffy, the second Garda Commissioner (1922-1933) of the Irish State, hounded Irish Republicans and socialists during the Civil War and after, one of the causes of political emigration from Ireland and in 1932 (still in his post) founded the Irish fascist Blueshirt organisation.7
Eoin O’Duffy reviewing his fascist “Blueshirts” in the 1930s – he founded them while still the second Garda Commissioner of the Irish State (1922-1933). (Photo sourced: Internet)
O’Duffy and his Blueshirts attempted to prepare a coup against the De Valera government of Fianna Fáil and after partial suppression by the government, went on to combine with another two reactionary political organisations to form the Fine Gael Party in 1933.8
Ned Broy, appointed third Garda Commissioner (1933-1938) created the Special Branch9 (nicknamed “Broy’s Harriers”10 after a Bray dog hunting pack) to repress the fascist movement. However, he filled the unit with ex-military who had been anti-Republican during the Civil War.
Subsequently, “Broy’s Harriers” also carried out repression against the Republican movement opposed to De Valera and Fianna Fáil.
In the long line of Garda Commissioners that followed, all have presided over repression of the Irish Republican and Left movements, as well as against Travellers and LGBT11 people and even in persecution of people providing contraception prevention.
Some Commissioners have resigned or retired in controversy: Patrick McLaughlin (1978-1983), retired in the wire-tapping scandal and Patrick Callinan (2010-2014`), over the phone-tapping GSOC and penalty points corruption scandal.
Noirin O’Sullivan (2014-’17) during the breath-testing corruption and persecution of Garda whistleblower controversy, resigned the post and disturbingly, walked into a job as Director of Strategic Partnerships for Europe at the International Association of Chiefs of Police.
Then Garda Commissioner Martin Callinan speaks privately to then Deputy Commissioner Noirin O’Sullivan; she succeed him when he resigned in controversy, herself resigning in a separate controversy not long afterwards (Photo cred: Eamonn Farrell in The Journal)
Republican prisoner solidarity pickets are frequently harassed and subject to attempted intimidation and individual activists are followed, stopped and questioned etc.
The no-jury political Special Criminal Court regularly jails Republicans on charges of “membership of an illegal organisation”, sending people to jail largely on the word of a Garda officer at the rank of Superintendent and above, who never reveal their alleged sources.
In 1976, the Irish State tried to smash the Irish Republican Socialist Party by pinning the Sallins Mail Train Robbery on them, though they knew the robbery wasn’t theirs. Forty homes were raided and false confessions beaten out of victims by the special Garda “Heavy Gang” unit.12
Three innocent activists were sentenced to 12 years in jail as a result and some of the special unit went on to frame others with false confessions also, including Joanna Hayes and family in the “Kerry Babies” case, as outlined in the Crimes and Confessions RTÉ series.
The last time the Gardai took unofficial industrial action by phoning in ‘sick’ was during the “blue flu” of 1998, when however their Special Branch remained very active indeed.
Foiling an attempted robbery by a Real IRA unit, the Special Branch Gardaí shot and killed Volunteer Ronan McLoughlin in the back while he was driving away from them. Despite the victim posing no threat to anyone when he was killed, the Gardaí were judged ‘innocent’.13
ANTI-PROGRESSIVE, ANTI-WORKING CLASS
The long-overdue second inquest into the fatalities of the 1981 Stardust Fire is underway as this piece is being written and in 1983, Garda Special Branch raided the launch of Christy Moore’s vinyl LP An Ordinary Man to seize the record after Stardust owners objected to a song in it.14
Over the years of the State the Gardaí have attacked protests and demonstrations, including with particular infamy those of the 1981 Hunger Strikes solidarity march15 and Regain the Streets in 200216 in Dublin and the Corrib Pipeline protests17 against British Petroleum in Mayo.
Gardaí also harassed and assaulted some of the since-famous Dunne’s Stores anti-apartheid strikers and again the more recent Debenhams sacked workers’ pickets.18
Video online of Gardaí using Covid restrictions to harass picketing sacked Debenhams workers. Later they used violence to remove picketers so Debenhams, defaulting on redundancy payments owed to workers, could remove stock from their closed stores.
The Gardaí have on numerous occasions displayed their tolerance of fascists, even to the extent of tolerating abuse from them and flagrant violation of Covid19 regulations.19 Conversely Gardaí have threatened and attacked antifascist counter demonstrators on many occasions.
In February 2016 a mass mobilisation of anti-fascists and anti-racists prevented the fascist islamophobic organisation Pegida from launching itself in Dublin. Gardaí attacked the antifascists and batoned an RTÉ cameraman in the face.
Gardaí threatening antifascists after the latter had been attacked by armed fascists on Custom House Quay and Gardaí had then attacked the antifascists, pushing and shoving them on to Butt Bridge. (Photo: Rebel Breeze)
On a number of occasions outside the GPO, Gardaí witnessed fascist assaults on opponents without even taking names of perpetrators but on 22nd August 2020 they went much further in showing their true colours as armed fascist thugs attacked a counter protest on Custom House Quay.
The Gardaí briefly separated the combatants and then the Public Order Unit attacked the unarmed antifascists, threatening them with raised batons and pushing and shoving them away on to Butt Bridge. Later they lied to the media, pretending that no serious violence had occurred.20
Three weeks later, on 12th September, an LGBT activist and a couple of friends were observing a rally of the fascist National Party when they were mobbed, threatened and shoved and one was struck on the head with a wooden club which had a Tricolour wrapped around it.
The Gardaí again lied to the media and said there had been no violent incidents. However video of the attack and of a Garda confronting the victim with blood streaming from her head and waving her away, circulated widely and the Gardaí had to change their story.
Ms Izzy Kamikaze being pushed by Gardaí down Kildare Street after being struck on the head with a club by a fascist (Photo sourced: Internet )
It took the victim to swear out a formal complaint and a month’s delay before the specific wooden club assailant was charged. Last year he pleaded guilty and was sentenced to three years prison.21
In the face of criticisms about their failure to prevent random violent assaults in Dublin’s city centre this year, the Gardaí claimed that they did not have enough personnel to prevent them. However it seems they can always find huge numbers to repress people’s resistance.
Early in June 2022, 100 Gardaí, including an armed unit and a helicopter, took part in the eviction of two activists of the Revolutionary Housing League, who had taken over for the homeless a large empty property on Eden Quay, Dublin. (That building remains empty at the time of writing).22
Garda vehicles in their eviction operation against a building occupied by the Revolutionary Housing League in Berkely Road 11 July this year (Source: RHL)
In early July this year, a similarly large number of Gardaí with a helicopter in attendance blocked two ends of Berkely Road in Dublin in order to evict four RHA activists holding a three-storey empty building in which they had recently housed some homeless people.23
Gardaí have acted against a number of housing campaign actions, in one documented case sending an armed response unit. While acting against housing activists, they have at the same time permitted illegal evictions without intervening (except against protesting housing activists).24
On yet others, masked Gardaí have colluded with masked thugs to evict housing activists.25
Masked Gardaí working with masked private thugs in carrying out an eviction in Dublin 2018. (Photo sourced: Internet)
Although Gardaí were nearly invisible on the huge anti-extra-water-tax demonstrations, they were present and active on many of the smaller and more local anti-water-privatisation protests opposing the water meter installations for Denis O’Brien’s Uisce Éireann, assaulting and arresting people.
During the long decades of church sexual predation and other abuse by members of (mostly) Catholic Church institutions, complaints to the Gardaí were routinely ignored. Indeed, the Gardaí often seized escaped victims in order to return them to the institutions.26
It is old news that the Gardaí have abused their power against members of the public but less known is that members have done so for sexual advantage or in the course of their personal domestic relationships. Of course this is not surprising since abuse of power reaches everywhere.27
Terence Wheelock’s28 relatives and their supporters are not the only ones accusing the Gardaí of having killed someone in their custody and Vicky Conway (recently deceased) quoted the figure of an annual average of 15 deaths around Garda custody from 2017 to 2021.29
Corruption in the Gardaí has come to light a number of times, including most recently the false reporting of drink-driving checks and the failure to charge a number of people who were actually found to be driving “under the influence”.
In the course of the above a number of whistleblowers within the Gardaí were intimidated, harassed and in one case an attempt was made to frame a prominent one for abuse of a child.30
CURRENT STRUGGLE BETWEEN THE GRA AND THE COMMISSIONER
Irish Republicans have long held a particular enmity towards Drew Harris, given his previous employment as Assistant Commissioner of the colonial gendarmerie in the Six Counties.31 They regularly refer to him as of MI5, the British Intelligence department operating in the UK.
This is understandable and, in fact, it is less natural that other sections of the Irish polity seem to have had no issue with Harris’ provenance. But in fact, the State’s own senior Gardaí have long been in service, and not always indirectly, to British imperialism, witness Edmund Garvey.32
Former Garda Commisioner Edmund Garvey outside the Four Courts 11/10/1978. (Part of the Independent Newspapers Ireland/NLI Collection). (Photo by Independent News and Media/Getty Images)
The revolutionary Left, socialist republican or just socialist, have no reason to side with the Garda Representative Association in their campaign for a different roster or against Drew Harris. Nor of course do we owe Harris any support either.
Unlike Sinn Féin, our position should be opposition to all of the State’s repressive institutions.
Chief among those institutions and regularly confronting us in repression or exercising its power against working class communities is the Gardaí Síochána, with its long anti-working class, anti-democratic, anti-Republican and anti-Socialist reactionary history.
4Competent investigators, for instance, have found that the greatest number of accidents occur at two specific periods of the working day – viz., in the early morning and just before stopping work at evening. In the early morning when the worker is still drowsy from being aroused too early from his slumbers, and has not had time to settle down properly to his routine of watchfulness and alertness, or, as the homely saying has it, “whilst the sleep is still in his bones”, the toll of accidents is always a heavy one.
After 9 a.m. they become less frequent and continue so until an hour after dinner. Then they commence again and go on increasing in frequency as the workers get tired and exhausted, until they rise to the highest number in the hour or half-hour immediately before ceasing work. How often do we hear the exclamation apropos of some accident involving the death of a worker: “He had only just started”, or “he had only ten minutes to go before stopping for the day”? And yet the significance of the fact is lost on most.
9Now known as the Special Detective Unit; however the “Special Branch” name had a history in Britain, where Scotland Yard formed its Special Irish Branch in 1833 to spy on the Fenian movement among the huge Irish diaspora in the cities of Victorian Britain – and several of its members were Irish. Police services in a number of British present and ex-colonies have also carried on the “Special Branch” name, as far apart as the Six Counties colony and the British Bahamas.
13And McLoughlin’s inquest was delayed for decades.
14 The LP included Moore’s They Never Came Home which alleged that fire exits were chained shut, a matter with which the current inquest is dealing and about which I do not wish to say more at this point. The following account discussing the banning does not mention the Branch raid but I know of it from people who were present: https://theblackpoolsentinel.com/2021/01/11/christy-moore-and-the-stardust-tragedy/
15The marchers were frustrated that they were being prevented from even reaching the British Embassy in Merrion Road, attempted to push through and a battle ensued. Many were injured on both sides but the police baton-charged the whole crowd and even threatened journalists, though most subsequent media reports were either supportive of the Gardaí or blaming both sides; this brief report and photo being the exception: https://www.reportdigital.co.uk/reportage-photo-garda-baton-charging-national-h-blocks-committee-protest—18-jul-image00138214.html
18Indeed in one afternoon, uniformed Gardaí hassled the Dunne Stores picketers in Henry Street under Covid19 pandemic regulations, although all were masked and maintaining social distancing, while around the corner the far-Right were demonstrating mask-less and packed together, without the least interference from the Gardaí. A 100 yards or so down the road, the plain-clothes Special Branch (SDU), the political police, were harassing an anti-internment and political prisoner solidarity picket.
19Occasionally Garda patience snapped and one can see the incredulity in the reaction of the Far-Rightists on those occasions, as they had become so used to doing nearly anything they wanted.
31Previously the Royal Ulster Constabulary (and RIC before that), the PSNI is the armed colonial (and sectarian) police force of the UK State.
32Ned Garvey was ‘outed’ as a British Intelligence ‘asset’ (code name ‘Badger’) by disaffected MI6 handler Fred Holroyd. Garvey denied he was an agent for the British but the Barron Report found that that Holroyd had visited Garvey in his office in 1975 and that he had not made his superiors aware of this. The incoming FF government in 1978 sacked Garvey as having no confidence in him but as a result of not following disciplinary procedures Garvey was able to sue the State and retain his pension. While Garvey was Assistant to Patrick Malone, Garda Commissioner during the British Intelligence/ Loyalist Dublin and Monaghan Bombing in 1974 bomb remains were sent to the Six Counties for forensic analysis. No-one was ever even arrested for the bombing, never mind convicted and the widely-suspected British proxy Glennane Gang went on to murder many more, mostly civilians (see Cadwaller, Lethal Allies).
“Six innocent men” … “Garda oppression and perjury’ … “Longest case in the history of the State”
Four leading human rights organisations this week delivered a petition to the Irish Government asking the Minister for Justice to establish an inquiry into the abuse suffered by six innocent men in the Sallins case almost half a century ago.
Not to do hold such an inquiry, maintained Liam Herrick of the Irish Council for Civil Liberties at a press conference on Tuesday, is to continue the abuse of the victims’ human rights and to fail to prevent such an abuse in the future.
Osgur Breatnach, Liam Herrick and Nicky Kelly at the petition launch press conference (Photo: Rebel Breeze)
Apart from the ICCL, the other three organisations pushing the petition are the Committee for the Administration of Justice (CAJ), the Pat Finucane Centre (PFC) and Fair Trials; the first three are Ireland-based organisations and Fair Trials is a global criminal justice watchdog.
The six innocent men were named as Osgur Breatnach, Michael Barrett, John Fitzpatrick, Nicky Kelly, Brian McNally and Michael Plunkett (deceased1).
At the time in 1976 all were members of a legal political party (the Irish Republican Socialist Party) but were tortured and some jailed in the Irish state.
In the longest series of trials in the history of the State, three of the men were sentenced at the end of 1978 to prison terms of between nine and twelve years each on the basis of no ‘evidence’ but their confessions obtained by torture and which in court they completely retracted.
Michael Plunkett, who had signed no confession walked free while Nicky Kelly absconded the day before the sentence, eventually reaching the USA where he remained until a strong campaign saw Breatnach and McNally freed, whereupon Kelly returned to Ireland and was immediately jailed.
Although the nature of the ‘evidence’ against Kelly was of the same kind as that which had been declared ‘unsafe’ for Breatnach and McNally, Kelly remained in jail forfour-and-a-half years, despite another strong campaign2 and was only freed eventually on ‘humanitarian grounds’3.
PRESS CONFERENCE
ICCL’s Liam Herrick chaired the conference in Buswell’s Hotel4 flanked by survivors Osgur Breatnach and Nicky Kelly, while Chris Stanley of KRW Law sat nearby, all facing the audience which included Sinn Féin’s Pa Daly TD5 and Fionna Crowley of Amnesty International.
Opening the proceedings, Herrick listed the four organisations backing the call for an inquiry and pointed out the present-day relevance of that call, both in terms of the survivors and their families and in terms of wider society.
Not to have that inquiry would be an ongoing violation of human rights, Herrick maintained and pointed out that the ICCL was founded arising out of concerns regarding the post-Sallins robbery arrests and the activities of the Garda CID unit colloquially known as the “Heavy Gang”.
The ICCL Director stated that they could not rest until the demand for an inquiry was met and referenced also “crucial legislation before the Oireachtas”6 and recognition of past injustices in a series of TV documentaries linking the cases, in particular through actual Garda individuals.
Introducing Osgur Breatnach, Herrick acknowledged the leading role he had played in keeping the demand for the inquiry going over the years.
Breatnach read from a prepared statement that there had been cases of torture, perjury and framing innocent people in England, Northern Ireland and the Republic.
It was wrong and hypocritical of the State raising concerns about cases elsewhere not to hold an inquiry into the Sallins case, of which there had been five trials, one the longest in the history of the State.
Breatnach said he went through the process expecting to be jailed but to expose the political nature of their persecution; his and McNally’s convictions were overturned, the ‘confessions’ having been obtained by oppression but despite that none were indicted for that oppression.
Breatnach concluded saying that the State’s refusal to hold an inquiry amounted to cruel and inhuman treatment of the victims and their families and that without the investigation of an inquiry a similar scenario could be repeated at some point ahead.
Nicky Kelly, introduced by Herrick thanked the ICCL for organising the events that day. Speaking apparently ex-tempore with perhaps reference to some bullet-points, he expressed the opinion that the State wanted the victims to die so that they had no need to hold an inquiry.
“Ireland has an impeccable reputation with regard to foreign relations,” Kelly said, but not so within the state. He believed that the Sallins case is “too big in its implications for politicians, judiciary and police force” and all attempts to investigate were obstructed by successive governments.
Liberal politicians in government have been “no different from the rest”, the Wicklow man said and referred to his own personal battle even to get out of jail after the ‘evidence’ to convict him had been discredited and how he had been obliged to undertake a hunger strike to be freed.
Now, rather than hold the inquiry into what went on, they were waiting for him “to be over and done with” Kelly said in conclusion.
Herrick introduced Chris Stanleyof KRW Law who said that cases such as the Birmingham pub bombings and the Dublin and Monaghan bombings, like the Sallins one, all related to the recent conflict and required investigation for the sake of the victims.
Chris Stanley of KRW Law speaking at the petition launch press conference (Photo: Rebel Breeze)
Stanley commented that perhaps the State had been too reliant on the Good Friday Agreement for resolution of these matters.
Commenting on the UK’s new legislation blocking much resolution of historic cases, all but become law, the solicitor regretted the UK had chosen to disengage from Europe but remarked that that they remained signed up to the European Commission of Human Rights.
From among the seated audience, Fionna Crowley of Amnesty International spoke to underline the importance of having an inquiry into the case and that her organisation had been in support of the victims’ campaigns and was fully in support of the current petition for an inquiry.
Breatnach acknowledged that within one week of the arrests, Amnesty had raised public concerns about them.
DELIVERY OF PETITION TO DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE
After the conclusion of the press conference with Herrick’s summing-up and thanks to those in attendance, Herrick and ICCL staff along with Chris Stanley, Breatnach, Kelly and a couple of others walked to the Dept. of Justice’s offices on the south side of Stephens Green.
Delivering the petition to the Department of Justice: (from bottom up) Nicky Kelly, Osgur Breatnach, Chris Stanley, Liam Herrick. (Photo: Rebel Breeze)
Pausing for some photos to be taken, a delegation entered the building and presented the petition. Then some more photos were taken outside and Breatnach was interviewed by a TG4 reporter in Irish and Nicky Kelly in English while a light rain began to fall.
TG4 (Caoimhe Ní Laighin) interviews Osgur Breatnach outside the Department of Justice in Stephen’s Green (Diarmuid, brother of Osgur is centre photo and Nicky Kelly to the right). (Photo: Rebel Breeze)
The group split up into smaller groups then, the ICCL staff returning to their office to issue a press statement and others to hope, perhaps with further pushing, for positive developments further – but not too far – down the road. For all and for some much more than others, it’s been a long haul.
End.
Outside the Department of Justice with copies of the four-agency petition (right to left): Liam Herrick of ICCL, Chris Stanley of KRW Law, victims/ campaigners Osgur Breatnach and Nicky Kelly (Photo: Rebel Breeze)
APPENDIX (A): BACKGROUND
The IRSP was the result of a split from what had remained in Sinn Féin after an earlier split in 1969, the group leaving the party then calling themselves ‘Provisional Sinn Féin’.
Not all who had become unhappy with the direction of Sinn Féin departed into Provisional Sinn Féin because they perceived the new group as being much more nationalist than socialist and being also socially conservative.
After some internal struggle that section remaining within what became known as “Official Sinn Féin” left in 1974 under the leadership of Séamus Costello to form the IRSP.
The armed wing of the Republican movement had split along the same lines into Provisional IRA, Official IRA and the Irish National Liberation Army, the latter loyal to the perspective of the IRSP.7
Bernadette Devlin (now McAlliskey) and Tony Gregory (now deceased) were on the IRSP’s Executive but however departed soon afterwards from the party on what they perceived as the dominant relationship of the armed group INLA to the political party.
It appears that the Irish State at that time viewed the IRSP as more dangerous than the two Sinn Féin parties and determined to ensure its demise, framing them for the Sallins Mail Train Robbery in March 1976.8 And framing, rather than mistaking, it was.
The 40 arrested included IRSP members who, tortured by the SDU Garda unit known colloquially as the “Heavy Gang”, confessed to participating in the robbery but who could not possibly have been there. The State decided to put on trial those whose only alibis were with family.
The court chosen was the Special Criminal Court, set up under the Offences Against the State Act in the panic of the 1974 Loyalist and British Intelligence Bombing of Dublin and Monaghan which somehow got blamed on Irish Republicans. The SCC has three judges and no jury.
Until the SCC moved to the court building near the main gate to Phoenix Park, it was located in Green Street, in the very same building where Robert Emmet was tried in 1803 and sentenced to death, his sentence carried out in public in Thomas Street, in the Dublin Liberties area.
The Four IRSP eventually selected for the second of what became four trials included senior member of the party’s Executive and the Editor of its newspaper, The Starry Plough, Osgur Breatnach.9
In the second trial, one of the three judges hearing the case was regularly seen to be sleeping. Only after the judge died suddenly was there another retrial ordered.
In the fourth trial, Kelly being tried in his absence, the judges accepted as fact10 the Prosecution case that the injuries of the accused were due to beating one another up (in Breatnach’s case, that he’d beaten himself up) and that their withdrawn confessions were true.
Mick Plunkett, in the absence of a ‘confession’, was found not guilty but the other three were sentenced to 12 years in jail. In May 1980 Breatnach and McNally were freed by the Appeal Court on grounds that they had suffered ‘oppression’ and that their confessions could not be relied upon.
No investigation took place into who had carried out the ‘oppression’ or how the judiciary had jailed the victims purely on withdrawn confessions and Garda perjury or which political decisions by whom were behind it.
Nicky Kelly returned to Ireland in 1980 — but to jail.
He was only freed by a Minister of Justice on ‘humanitarian’ grounds after four-and-a-half years in jail, a strong campaign seeking his release and finally a hunger strike of 38 days which pushed the European Court of Human Rights to agree to hear his case.
He received a presidential pardon in 1992 from Mary Robinson and in 1993 Breatnach, McNally and Kelly were awarded compensation, allegedly a six-figure amount. But to get that, they had to forgo any litigation on torture or police brutality.
No official inquiry has ever been carried out in the whole set of State actions and in fact some of the Heavy Gang went on to force false confessions from others, most notably the Joanna Hayes and relatives case.11
APPENDIX (B): SUPPORTING STATEMENTS FROM OTHER ORGANISATIONS
Also speaking elsewhere on the day, Director Daniel Holder of the Campaign for the Administration of Justicesaid they support this call and that
“an inquiry into the case of the Sallins Men is long overdue.”
He went on to say that “Over the last few years inquests and other legacy mechanisms in the north have been finally delivering like never before for families who have had to wait decades.
“They are providing important historical clarification for victims and accountability for past human rights violations but now face being shut down by the notorious UK Legacy Bill.”
Pat Finucane Centre (PFC) Director Paul O’Connor said that
“PFC welcomes this demand to the Irish Government for a human rights compliant investigation into the miscarriage of justice that followed the Sallins Trains Robbery 1976.
For too long human rights violations that occurred in the Republic of Ireland during the Conflict have been at best marginalised or at worst ignored.
Successive Irish governments have either relied upon the British to address the investigatory deficit of the Conflict or deflected it as an inconvenient non-issue.
“Now the human rights deficit created by those successive Irish governments is clear – and will be clearer when the legislative effect of the British Legacy Act starts to bite.
The Irish Government was right to challenge the British about the use of torture suffered by the Hooded Men; now it must look to its own police and criminal justice system and acknowledge the torture suffered by the Sallins Men.”
Verónica Hinestroza, Senior Legal Advisor at Fair Trials said:
“According to international standards, States must investigate complaints and reports of torture or ill-treatment.
We call on the Minister for Justice to ensure that a prompt, impartial and independent investigation is conducted into the allegations made by Mr Osgur Breatnach, Mr Michael Barrett, Mr John Fitzpatrick, Mr Nicky Kelly, Mr Brian McNally and Mr Michael Plunkett (deceased), considering that torture and ill-treatment violations are not to be subject to any statutes of limitation.”
2 The campaign PRO was CaoilteBreatnach, a brother of Osgur’s and was supported by many people in the fields of politics and culture, including the band Moving Hearts who performed Christy Moore’s song about the Nicky Kelly case, The Wicklow Boy.
3 By Minister of Justice Michael Noonan after Kelly’s hunger strike of 36 days. According to law, Kelly had exceeded the time period after conviction permitted for registering an appeal and it was claimed that only a ‘pardon’ could set him free.
4 Buswell’s is across the road from Leinster House, the Irish Parliament building and is frequently host to political meetings and press conferences.
5 Recently appointed to Sinn Féin’s front bench as spokesperson on Justice, he is by profession a solicitor.
7 The history of the IRSP is a separate and contentious story but suffice it to say that of the ten hunger strike martyrs in 1981, three were INLA; at one point a number of INLA factions were feuding within it leading to a number of fraternal murders. After the Provisional prisoners embraced the Good Friday Agreement and left the jails renouncing armed resistance, the much smaller contingent of INLA prisoners did the same. The IRSP remains a legal though much reduced political party.
8 The robbery was carried out by a unit of the Provisional IRA which however did not acknowledge operations carried out within the Irish State, to which ion 27th April 1980 they made an exception in a public statement taking responsibility for the robbery. The Irish State chose to ignore their statement as had the British State when the Balcolme Street group ibn 1977 admitted in court their responsibility forthe Guildford Pub Bombingsfor which the UK had jailed the innocent Guildford Four and Maguire Seven.
9 Apart from anything else, the notion that prominent Executive members under constant police surveillance, including one regularly working on the newspaper in the Dublin office (in the days before this could be done from anywhere else), could carry out such an operation, was clearly ridiculous.
10 According to the Court of Criminal Appeal in the “Madden” Case in November 1976, Appeal Courts should usually accept as a finding of fact anything decided by the Special Criminal Court (SCC) to be a fact. Therefore although a court verdict of guilt or innocence can be overturned on appeal, a decision as to fact made in the non-jury Special Court cannot be overturned in any appeal court.
11 Three separate cases of false confessions obtained by Gardaí, including the Sallins and Joanna Hayes cases, were covered in the three-part documentary series Crimes and Confessions by the Irish TV channel RTÉ July 2022- January 2023: https://www.rte.ie/player/series/crimes-and-confessions/SI0000012595?
The Irish State has issued a new commemorative stamp to celebrate its joining the League of Nations in 1923 to which its representative referred as commemorating “the significance of Ireland taking our place among our fellow nations.”1
Well, sorry to poop on your party, Gombeen Government and to point out your lie. The truncated IrishState was admitted to the League of Nations, not “Ireland”, of which one-fifth was held in arms by the British occupier – who was one of the founders of the League.
Furthermore, the Gombeen state’s management committee entered the League as the victors in the Civil War – Britain’s proxy war in Ireland – dripping in the blood of those who fought for Ireland’s freedom. But that was not unfitting for the League was full of blood-drenched governments too.
The League was formed in 1920 and though the true government of the Irish nation, the First Dáil,2 applied for membership, its emissaries were not even received. At the Paris Peace Conference, US President Woodrow Wilson did not even reply to the Irish Delegation’s letter.3
Irish nationalist media commentary on the exclusion of Ireland by Lloyd George from the Paris Conference (Image sourced: Internet)
The original permanent members of the League’s Executive Council (it had four non-permanent members too) were Britain, France, Italy and Japan and its languages reflected those of the dominant European and American powers: English and French.
Britain came into the League with its Empire of allegedly independent states: Australia, Canada, India (which incorporated present-day Pakistan and Bangladesh), New Zealand and South Africa.
Map showing empires and colonies in the world in 1920 but there were also areas of influence apart from colonies. (Image sourced: Wikicommons)
PEACE?
Allegedly about peace, the League was formed as a club to discuss the areas of the world owned by the European colonial powers and to create a space where the losers and winners could discuss those lines, over which they had just fought a four-year bloody war.
Henceforth, there would be many, many wars, but mostly of colonial conquest and repression of resistance – but the European powers would not war among themselves, leastways except by finance and diplomacy. Until another 19 years, that is.
In fact, one of the major causes of WWII was the Treaty of Versailles, containing the crushing and humiliating WWI reparations demanded of Germany by the British and French imperialist powers. That Treaty was incorporated into the terms of the League of Nations.
The Big Four that framed the Treaty of Versailles; L-R: Lloyd George of Britain, Vittorio Emanuele Orlando of Italy, Georges Clemenceau of France, and Woodrow Wilson of the U.S. (Photo sourced: Internet)
Ireland would see short armed liberation struggles in the 1930s, 1940s and of three decades from 1969. Hundreds of armed liberation struggles would break out across the rest of the world, in every continent except Antartica. And yes, including Europe.
The League of Nations was a club, chiefly of European colonial powers in which the conquest and suppression of a huge number of other nations was agreed and ratified. It was followed by the hugely-expanded United Nations after the next World War.
The UN has much the same role and of its 193 members, its only binding decisions are made by five Security Council Permanent Members voting without dissent: USA, UK, France, Russia and China. The vast majority of the other states are clients of one or other of those five.
The Irish state joined that earlier League not as one of the colonial powers but as a defeated nation, a neo-colonial client regime, an experiment in native self-government under external colonial control, one to be adopted by the other imperial powers and replicated across the world.
The Irish state joined the United Nations in December 1955 in exactly the same client relationship to its old masters but over time the yearly tribute has been shared among new part-masters, first the USA and then EU imperialism.
Neither the state’s advent to the League of Nations nor to its successor, the United Nations, has anything whatsoever of which to be proud. An opportunity for Irish real independence and world friendship of nations was squandered.
The new stamp should carry a black border in mourning.
End.
FOOTNOTES
1Words of Mícheál Martin, the Tánaiste (Deputy Prime Minister) of the Irish Government quoted in numerous media reports.
2The First Dáil was founded in January 1919 in defiance of British occupation, based on the results of the UK’s December 1918 General Election results in Ireland which returned 73 MPs of the newly-reconstituted Sinn Féin party out of a total of 101 MPs elected in Ireland. The SF members set about organising an Irish Government and, though declared illegal by the British occupiers shortly afterwards, continued to operate as a government until it split over whether to accept the terms of the British offer in 1921, which led to the Civil War of 1922-1923.
3 Seehttps://www.irishtimes.com/culture/heritage/how-the-plea-for-irish-independence-made-its-way-to-paris-1.3742328. Though interestingly, Wilson did reply to the young Ho Chi Minh’s in respect of Vietnam (Ho Chi Minh, while working in Britain, had commented admiringly on the Irish capacity for resistance at the time of Mac Swiney’s funeral march in London from Brixton Jail to Southwark Cathedral). Most of Indochina at the time was a French colonial possession.
Original Breaking News article: DAVID YOUNG, PA (with commentary in italics by Diarmuid Breatnach)
The rededication of a memorial to the National Army soldiers killed in the Civil War enables their memory to be rehabilitated, a ceremony in Dublin has heard.
Defence Forces Chief of Staff Lieutenant General Sean Clancy paid tribute to the some 810 soldiers killed serving on the Free State side in the 1922-2023 conflict as he addressed the event at Glasnevin Cemetery on Sunday.
Descendants of some of those who died, representative of all four provinces, were invited guests at the ceremony, among them relatives of Michael Collins, the commander in chief of the National Army who under direction by Churchill, gave the orders that began the Irish Civil War and who was killed in 1922.
Taoiseach Leo Varadkar and Tánaiste Micheál Martin, the leaders of Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil, the two main parties forged from the divisions of the Civil War, also attended the rededication of the National Army Monument.
Sinn Féin TD Matt Carthy also attended the military commemoration, as did Dublin Lord Mayor Daithí de Róiste.
This neatly brought together political parties of the neo-colonial and neo-liberal Irish State with opposing histories: Varadkar to represent the pro-British and fascist neo-colonial origins of Fine Gael; Mícheál Martin and De Róiste representing Fianna Fáil, the allegedly Republican but in reality Irish Gombeen split from the previous iteration of Sinn Féin; Carthy for the current neo-colonial, neo-liberal and colonial servant Sinn Féin.
Taoiseach Varadkar (Fine Gael) and Tánaiste Martin (Fianna Fáil) unveiling monument to soldiers of the ‘Free State’ killed in the Civil War 1922-1923. (Photo cred: Brian Lawless/ PA)Matt Carthy TD, who represented his party Sinn Féin at the unveiling and dedication of the monument to soldiers of the Free State killed in the Civil War 1922-1923. (Photo sourced: Internet)
Prior to the ceremony, there was no monument in the country specifically dedicated to the soldiers of the National Army who fought against the anti-Treaty side in the Civil War.
Weeks after the war ended, on August 3rd, 1923, the Oireachtas passed legislation that led to the creation of the modern-day Defence Forces, Óglaigh na hÉireann. That is, the defence forces of the neo-colonial ruling class who created the Irish state.
The rededication event for the forgotten fallen of the National Army, which had already robbed the Irish language version name of the IRA, adopted the name Óglaigh na hÉireann during the Civil War, took place on the Sunday prior to the centenary of that date.
“It is appropriate then, in the spirit of real inclusiveness, of ethical remembering, and with a full desire to deal with some of the more uncomfortable aspects of our shared history, that we remember some of 810 uniformed members of Óglaigh na hÉireann who gave their lives in the service of the State during the tragic and critical period at the foundation of our democracy,” Lt Gen Clancy told the ceremony.
It is necessary, in order to bury any idea of achieving the Republic declared at the start of the 1916 Rising, that we honour some of the 810 men we recruited to bury that Republic in 1922, kitted out in uniforms, armed and transported by our ancient enemy. We wish to pass over quickly over not only the kidnappings, torture, murders, killing of disarmed prisoners and even sexual assaults by this fine body of men – the precursors to the current army of the Irish State – but also their terrorising of major part of the country with raids on homes and internment of men and women. Although this fine body of men were fighting to establish a neo-colony not even covering the whole of Ireland, we make no apology for calling them what they clearly were not, Óglaigh na hÉireann, i.e “Warriors of Ireland”.
The monument in Glasnevin to soldiers of the Free State killed during the Civil War – apart from the Free State Army having appropriated the name in Irish of the IRA, the legend claims they “died for their country”, a clearly inaccurate statement since at best they were fighting for the government and state of the 26 Counties, which excludes the UK colony of the Six Counties (‘Northern Ireland’ sic). (Photo cred: PA)
“For far too long there has been no memorial of any kind, nor any complete listing of the National Army war dead.” Understandably.
“Indeed, this year represents perhaps the last real opportunity to rectify that.”
As we prepare to commit this armed force to NATO at some point in the future and to PESCO in the nearer future, it is important to take a further step in legitimising this armed force of the neo-colonial state.
The remains of some 180 of the 810 soldiers who died serving in the National Army are buried at the plot in Glasnevin Cemetery. Uncomfortably close to graves of many of their victims.
“Sources at the archives show that the average soldier buried here was in his early 20s, was unmarried and from a working-class background,” said Lt Gen Clancy. In other words, the typical recruitment profile of lower-rank soldiers in capitalist and imperialist armies.
“Many had previously served in the IRA during the War of Independence, some even in the 1916 rising, many others had served in the British Army, underlying yet again how complex is the weave of Irish history.”
Actually, “many” is a questionable though vague estimate of the numbers who had “served in the IRA during the War of Independence”, though some had, including some of the most vicious, such as Major-General Paddy Daly, torturer and murderer.
The chief of staff highlighted the “poignant example” of two young Belfast-born Dublin-raised brothers – Frederick (18) and Gerald McKenna (16) – who were buried in Glasnevin after being killed together in action in Cork in August 1922 only a month after joining the National Army.
Aye, two men born in Belfast, a city which the Free State was fighting to ensure remained a direct colony of the United Kingdom.
“Whatever the often very legitimate reasons our forebears may have had for forgetting in the intervening 100 years, I think it’s appropriate now that I as the 32nd Chief of Staff of Oglaigh na h Eireann should finally take this opportunity to rehabilitate their memory,” said Lt Gen Clancy.
Especially as I try to establish a legitimate background to the armed force of an illegitimate State preparing to enter foreign imperialist wars and suppression of legitimate uprisings.
After all, we have great experience in all that, as the history behind this monument shows.
In all areas of endeavour and no less in revolutionary work it is essential to review our actions (and those of others) periodically in order that we may draw lessons to improve the success of future activity.
Irish history provides an abundance of material to revise.
The most recent period worthy of intensive review in my opinion is the three-decade war, mostly in the Six Counties but also having repercussions within the territory of the Irish State, in Britain and even further abroad.
An article in the July issue of An Phoblacht Abú1, monthly hard-copy newspaper of the Anti-Imperialist Action organisation, discusses the psychological and organisational problems arising from the way that three-decade struggle came to an end and its effects on the resistance movement.
That period in Ireland commenced with a struggle for democratic civil rights, not one of the demands of which were for more than was already well established in the rest of the ‘UK’. But it soon changed into a guerrilla war with huge numbers of political prisoners and jail struggles.
The movement experienced a number of splits and changes of leadership but for most of of the time it was led by the Provisional organisation’s leadership although changes took place inside its own leadership too.
Ruairí Ó Brádaigh, President Provisional Sinn Féin 1970-1983, speaking at GPO rally 1976. He led an unwinnable war. (Photo cred: Pat Langan/ Irish Times)
Some of the Provisional IRA leadership following the 1970s split: Martin McGuinness, Dáithí Ó Conaill, Sean Mac Stiofáin, IRA press conference 1972, Derry. (Photo cred: LarryDoherty)
The period ended with that leadership not only abandoning armed struggle but being coopted with its structures into joint management of the colonial occupation and preparing for joint management of the neo-colonial Irish state, a number of smaller splits in the movement a much disillusion.
The An Phoblacht Abú article concentrates on building or rebuilding trust in leadership through measures such as clear communication, discussion, organisational restructuring, collective solidarity, open discussion, transparent communication and education.
The article does not say this but in my opinion one of the basic educational needs is to acknowledge that in the circumstances, what happened was inevitable (and to consider how different circumstances might be constructed in future).
UNWINNABLE
It is essential in my view to acknowledge that the struggle, as it was waged, was bound to lose. Yes, unwinnable: an unassisted armed struggle against a world imperialist power fought primarily in one-fifth of our territory where the population is deeply divided – how could we think otherwise?
Clearly, the Provisional leadership did think otherwise. Assuming they were not insane or very stupid, on what could their belief have been based?
I can see only two rational possibilities:
1) They believed the British had no essential need to retain the 6-Co. Colony and would abandon it if put under enough pressure, or
2) that the Irish ruling class, through its government, would step in and join the struggle.
If they believed the first, their analysis was not historically-based. Since its invasion and occupation of Ireland in the mid-12th Century, the British ruling class has repeatedly gone to enormous efforts to suppress Irish self-determination.
When they had the opportunity to leave in 1921 they had cultivated a client bourgeoisie, then instigated a civil war and partitioned the land, leaving themselves a firm foothold in the country.
Their initial response to a call for simple civil rights in the late 1960s was violent suppression on the streets, abolition of habeas corpus and introduction of internment without trial – and army massacres.
If the previous lessons of history were not clear to the movement’s leadership, then those events up to 1972 should have made them crystal clear.
If the Republican leadership believed the Irish ruling class would step up, they failed to draw the lessons of history since at least 1921 and to understand the neo-colonial nature of the Gombeen class, amply illustrated in the preceding 50 years of the Irish State.
As embarked upon and fought, the war could not be won but a strugglewas potentially winnable.
However, to have a chance of winning, the struggle would have to be over the whole 32 Counties. And to engage the maximum number of people, it would have to take up the social, cultural, economic and political deficits across the Irish state and across the colony.
The social rights of women and LBG2 people were widely-acknowledged deficit areas, yet the Republican movement did not seriously address them. Of course, doing so would have put the Movement in direct opposition to the Catholic Church hierarchy and its followers.
Why should that be a problem? Hadn’t the Hierarchy been pro-British occupation since the late 1800s3 and anti-Republican since the 1790s? Wasn’t it one of the cornerstones of the neo-colonial Irish State, its social prop and social control mechanism?
Yes but the problem was that some of the leadership themselves were in that ideological ambit and were in any case afraid to disaffect many of their followers. A natural fear, of course. Yet only in that way could the struggle go forward across the Irish state’s territory.
It was left to campaigners mostly outside the Republican Movement, including social democrats and liberals, to fight for the rights to contraception, divorce, equality for women, LGB rights. And later, to take on the huge institutional abuses of the Catholic Church in Ireland.
Those issues affected directly well over half the population of the Irish state and the the leadership lacked the interest or the courage4 to take part in their struggles, never mind lead them, which it left to mostly non-revolutionary leaderships.
There were many other issues that affected people in the 32 Counties which a revolutionary leadership could take up and, I would argue, should have taken up.
The latter includes emigration, rights of the Irish diaspora (particularly in Britain), foreign penetration of the Irish economy, foreign land ownership, housing shortage, industrial struggles, academic freedom, Irish language rights, Church control of education and the health service …
Some of those issues were taken up for a while by the movement in parts of the 26 Cos. prior to the split in the Republican Movement but were progressively dropped as the armed struggle in the 6 Cos. took off.
When years later the Provisional leadership got interested in social democratic reformism, they found they could hardly make any headway in the unions against the Labour Party and the remains of the Workers’ Party – because of the Provos’ earlier overwhelming neglect of that area of struggle.
SUMMARY
The struggle in the Six Counties could not be won precisely because it was primarily confined to that area and also one in which a powerful enemy had seduced a huge section of the population.
When the leadership acknowledged the unwinnability of the struggle as being waged, instead of changing their methods and aims of struggle to take in the whole 32 Cos, they decided on capitulation and getting the most possible out of it for themselves.
A change in the top leadership of Sinn Féin and the IRA: Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness photographed in 1987. They recognised they could not win and set about managing abandoning it while getting something out of the system for the leadership. (Photo: PA)
The leadership of the Republican movement was unwilling to widen the struggle because they believed that it was unnecessary to do so and/ or they were unwilling to overcome their own ideological indoctrination and/or lacked the courage to confront prejudices among their following.
Some of the social struggles have now been won or hugely progressed but without the leadership of the Republican Movement, in fact by leaderships of mostly reformist trends.
Due to leaving the industrial struggle to social democrats, the trade union movement has degenerated hugely and is in a poor state to take on any substantial economic or rights struggle, to say nothing of a revolutionary one.
The surviving Republican movement seems unwilling to acknowledge those historical facts and its failure thus far in leadership. Admission of the facts is necessary in order to commence to repair the movement and to prepare for a struggle with a prospect of success.
End.
FOOTNOTES
1Page 9, entitled COMRADESHIP – GUARD AGAINST BETRAYAL; I intend to review the July issue of the newspaper separately some time soon.
2I have omitted the T from LGB because it is only comparatively recently that the transexual issue has gained wide acknowledgement, whereas the Gay, Lesbian and even Bi-Sexual issue were widely known about at the time under discussion.
3The Irish (settler) Parliament passed an act giving middle-class and higher Catholics the right to vote in 1793.
A broad group of socialist Republicans gathered at the grave of Theobald Wolfe Tone on Sunday 2nd July to honour his memory and to reiterate their commitment to an independent and socialist Ireland outside of imperialist military alliances.
Wolfe Tone’s grave in the Bodenstown Church graveyard has been a place of pilgrimage for Irish Republicans at least since the days of Thomas Davis1 of the Young Irelanders of the 1840s, who wrote of his own visit to the grave and composed the song “In Bodenstown’s Churchyard”.
The late 1960s saw huge numbers of people in attendance at annual commemorations there near the village of Sallins, Co. Kildare, including not only Sinn Féin2, who led them, but many political and social organisations, GAA clubs, along with many non-aligned people.
Over the years, the voluntary and unfunded National Graves Association has improved the site comprehensively and sensitively, leaving the ruins of the Protestant church as they are but building a stage attached to one side, fronted with plaques and commemorative flag stones.
Commemorations currently are usually organised around a Sunday near the date of the patriot leader’s birthday on 20th June but have to be managed between different groups wishing to hold their own commemorations.
Speeches, songs and Garda harassment
The Annual Wolfe Tone commemoration organised by the Wolfe Tone Commemoration Committee took place over the weekend with members of a number of groups and Independent Republicans in attendance.
A Socialist Republican Colour party led the march up from the bottom of the road, turning in to the graveyard through a side gate and taking up positions in front and to one side of the monument, at ordú scíthe (parade rest) position but with flags held high.
Colour party in front of Wolfe Tone monument, Bodenstown Churchyard (Photo: Rebel Breeze)
Behind the colour party followed a crowd carrying banners bearing the legends “Irish Republicans against NATO”, “We serve Neither King nor Kaiser but Ireland” and an assortment of flags including green-and-gold Starry Ploughs, Irish Tricolour, Palestinian and Basque national flags.
The event was chaired by a young Socialist Republican who spoke about the importance of the event before introducing a representative of a midland Republican commemoration group who read a short message of solidarity.
This was followed by a socialist republican accompanying himself on guitar singing The Three Flowers.3
The main oration was delivered by veteran Independent East Tyrone Republican Margaret McKearney who linked the past with the present, including the current housing crisis, the British occupation and the Irish State’s push to join PESCO and NATO military alliances.
Musician performing The Three Flowersat the Wolfe Tone monument (Photo: Rebel Breeze)Veteran Republican from Tyrone delivering the oration at the commemoration event (Photo: Rebel Breeze)
There was a clear message at the event that the push towards NATO will be energetically resisted at every turn by the people of Ireland.
Wreaths were laid and a minute’s silence was observed, while the colour party lowered the flags in memory of all those who paid the ultimate sacrifice in the ongoing struggle for Irish Freedom. The event was brought to a close with the musician playing and singing Amhrán na bhFiann.
A handful of Gardaí4 in uniform and in plainclothes (Special Branch, the political police) were parked outside the graveyard watching people arriving and leaving but at that point having no direct interaction with those attending the event.
Part of long tail-back cause by Garda checkpoint very near to Bodenstown Churchyard after the commemoration event (Photo: Rebel Breeze)Gardaí in uniform and Special Branch in plain clothes harassing and attempting to intimidate people who had attended the commemoration event (Photo: Rebel Breeze)
However, once the event concluded, the Gardaí set up a checkpoint at the bottom of the road and began to harass and attempt to intimidate drivers of vehicles, stopping them, asking for identification, where they were from etc, causing a long tailback.
This is part of the regular harassment of Irish Republicans by police on both sides of the British Border.
“The Father of Irish Republicanism”
Theobald Wolfe Tone (1763-1798) was formally a member of the Church of Ireland5 congregation (Anglican), in his time the dominant religious group in England-occupied Ireland but also one of the smallest.
No-one could be elected to the Irish Parliament unless of that congregation.
In the early 19th Century a section of the Irish bourgeoisie, nearly all Anglican or of the other Protestant churches, “dissenters”, wished to develop the Irish economy free of interference, control, patronage and bribery associated with being an English colony.
Many of them understood the need for a strong base in the population, for which they recognised the need to include representation for the majority population in the country, the Catholics, along with the most populous of the Protestants, the Presbyterians.6
When the liberal but pro-English Crown Henry Grattan brought the issue to a vote in the Westminster Parliament, his motion failed due to many MPs’ sectarianism or vested interests, a situation which continued for decades afterwards.7
That seemed to point to revolution as the only logical way forward.
Theobald Wolfe Tone was one of the founders of the Society of United Irishmen in October 1971, the first broad Republican organisation in Ireland, which soon developed a comprehensive revolutionary agenda, for Irish independence and a Republic based on universal male suffrage.8
In order to accomplish a successful uprising, they invited assistance from Republican France and planned a simultaneous uprising across Ireland, with particular concentration on Antrim (largely Presbyterian and Anglican), Wexford and Wicklow, Midlands and Mayo (largely Catholic).
Colour party leading a march towards the Wolfe Tone monument (Photo: Rebel Breeze)
Spies and informers working for the English occupation betrayed some of their plans and most of the Leinster Directorate of the United Irishmen, including Wolfe Tone, were arrested, a disaster for uprising plans in Dublin but also for overall leadership in Leinster.
The 1798 Rising had initial great success in the south-east, particularly in Wexford but was quickly and bloodily suppressed in the Midlands and in Antrim. Mayo rose when a too-small detachment of French soldiers arrived under Humbert in Kilalla but they were outnumbered and beaten.
Tone was was unapologetic at his trial, was sentenced to death by hanging but appears to have attempted to take his own life while awaiting execution, surviving for a few days in great pain before dying on 19th November 1798 as British and Orange loyalist repression swept the country9.
Wolfe Tone Monument by Edward Delaney (d.2009) at S.E entrance to Stephen’s Green, Dublin city centre (image sourced: Internet)
Many leaders of the United Irishmen are honoured in song, writing and in commemorative events to this day but Theobald Wolfe Tone is still the most widely remembered of them all.
End.
The Colour Party and some of the participants line up for a group photo by the monument (Photo: AIA)
FOOTNOTES
1Thomas Davis (1814-1845), journalist, author of the song A Nation Once Again and other works, also co-founder of The Nation newspaper.
2Prior to its split resulting in Provisional Sinn Féin and the later split resulting in the Irish Republican Socialist Party.
3Composed by Norman G. Reddin, a Republican ballad honouring the memory of three United Irish leaders, Robert Emmet, Michael Dwyer and Wolfe Tone. Both Tone and Emmet were sentenced to execution, the latter carried out in 1803 on Thomas Street in Dublin. Dwyer was transported to exile in Australia where he was later accused of planning an uprising in New South Wales for which he was twice imprisoned and tried but exonerated, became Police Chief in Liverpool, Sydney in 1813 but was imprisoned again in 1825 for alleged non-payment of a £100 debt, contracted dysentery, was released again and died very soon afterwards.
5A branch of the Church of England, the state religion of the UK of which their Monarch is the titular head (in addition to being the commander-in-chief of the Armed Forces).
6“Catholic, Protestant and Dissenter”, as Wolfe Tone famously called the alliance.
7In May 1808 Grattan proposed emancipation in the House of Commons, with certain qualifications, but his motion was defeated by 281 votes to 128. In June 1812 the Commons accepted, by 225 votes to 106, a motion in favour of considering Catholic claims. An emancipation Bill, introduced in February 1813, received a second reading but was lost in committee by a narrow margin. Frustration at this lack of progress led to the formation of the Catholic Association in 1823 (of which Wolfe Tone was an active member). Parliament passed an Act to restrict the Association’s activities two years later.
8Very few radical or revolutionary individuals, not to mention movements of the 18th (or even much of the 19th or early 20th) Centuries proposed universal female suffrage, one reason why the 1916 Proclamation of Irish Independence is such a remarkable document, beginning its address with the words “Irishmen and Irish women”.
9Which many, in particular Protestants, fled the country to escape, some settling in the United States and in Canada. The great Catholic emigration from Ireland did not occur until the Great Hunger of the mid-19th Century and later.
Pat Reynolds gave this oration in East London Cemetery on Sunday 21st May 2023 for Michael Barrett, the last man publicly hanged in Britain
A cháirde agus a chomrádaíthe,
Tá fáilte go leor romhaibh chun chruinnithe i gcuimhne Michael Barrett inniu. Welcome friends and comrades to this commemoration today for Michael Barret and Patrick O’Donnell. I have been asked to speak of Michael Barret and the movement he represented.
Michael was born in Ederney in the Maguire County of Fermanagh in 1841 and was judicially hanged though innocent by the British Government in 1868 at Newgate Prison, where the Old Bailey now stands.
Newgate prison was closed in 1903 and his remains with others were interred here in this cemetery. He was the last person to be publicly hanged in Britain.
A Fenian bombing took place on 13th December 1867 to try and rescue O’Sullivan Burke the Fenian who planned the successful prison van escape in Manchester.
The bombing blew a huge hole in the wall and demolished nearby tenement buildings, killing 12 people and injuring many others. It led to a huge State-engineered backlash in Britain against the Fenians and put their cause back some 10 years.
Michael Barret, who had gone to Glasgow to work was an innocent man and was in Glasgow at the time of the incident.
False evidence given by a police informer Patrick Mullaly who was given a free passage to Australia implicated Barrett, but he had compelling evidence that he was in Glasgow at that time. After two hours the jury declared him guilty.
One of the trial lawyers Montagu Williams stated of Barrett:
‘On looking at the dock, one’s attention was attracted by the appearance of Barrett, for whom I must confess I felt great commiseration. He was a square built fellow, scarcely five feet eight in height and dressed like a well-to-do farmer.
This resemblance was increased by the frank, open, expression on his face. A less murderous countenance than Barrett’s I have not seen. Good humour was latent in his every feature and he took the greatest interest in the proceedings’.
Barrett ended his speech from the dock thus:
‘I am far from denying, nor will the force of circumstances compel me to deny my love of my native land. I love my country and if it is murderous to love Ireland dearer than I love my life, then it is true, I am a murderer.
If my life were ten times dearer than it is and if I could by any means, redress the wrongs of that persecuted land by the sacrifice of my life, I would willingly and gladly do so.’
The Daily Telegraph the next day stated that Barrett had:
‘Delivered a most remarkable speech, criticising with great acuteness evidence against him, protesting that he had been condemned on insufficient grounds, and eloquently asserting his innocence.’
Michael Barrett monument detail, Co. Fermanagh (Sourced: Internet)
In Fermanagh his aged mother had walked many miles to appeal to the local Tory MP Captain Archdale, a noted Orangemen, who rejected her. Barrett was hanged in front of 2,000 jeering people singing Rule Britannia. The following day Reynolds’ News recorded that;
‘Millions will continue to doubt that a guilty man had been hanged at all; and the future historian of the Fenian panic may declare that Michael Barrett was sacrificed to the exigencies of the police, and the vindication of the good Tory principle, that there is nothing like blood.’
His hangman was the notorious Calcraft who had botched the hanging of the Manchester Martyrs, Allen, Larkin and O’Brien.
There is a huge difference between an accident leading to deaths by patriots fighting tyranny and the deliberate actions of the imperialists, which is why patriots have to be always careful to avoid civilian deaths.
There are many similarities between the Clerkenwell bombing and the Birmingham bombing of 1974.
In both cases they set back the cause of Irish freedom for many years, deeply harmed the Irish community in Britain and was used by the State for repressive measures against the community and to divide off the Irish community from the English working classes.
Disraeli brought in the Habeas Corpus Act and created the Special Branch. Of interest is that their first definition of Irishness was ‘Persons who were born in Ireland or whose recent forebears came from Ireland.” Back in the 1980s the GLC adopted the same definition.
We also had the Birmingham Six case with the ‘appalling vista’ of Lord Denning the Appeal Judge, who later regretted that the six innocent men were not hanged. For Gladstone it set him on his mission ‘to pacify Ireland’.
I ask you two questions today, what kind of people and community gave rise to patriots like Michael Barrett and the Manchester Martyrs, and the second question, what kind of regime or government would hang knowingly innocent men.
To understand the Fenians we have to understand the colonisation of Ireland and in particular the Great Starvation of Ireland An Gorta Mór. Over one and a half million people were starved to death by British imperialism and another two million forced to emigrate to Britain and the USA.
There was no famine in Ireland at this time, and it is imperialistic propaganda to call it such. It was clearly genocide in a land overflowing with food.
The potato crop made up under 25% of the agricultural produce of Ireland, but at this time Ireland was part of the UK where the potato crop was about 5% of the total produce of the UK. I know of no country where there was famine because of a 5% failure of the crops.
Michael Davitt back in 1904 called the Great Starvation a ‘Holocaust’ as did others. Ken Livingstone drew some comparison between the Great Starvation and the experience of the Jewish community during the Second World War.
Hitler named his strategy ‘The Hunger Plan’ where he starved Poles and Jews and others groups of food, and these victims are included in the Holocaust figures including also his starvation of the Warsaw Ghetto.
The shipment of food grown by the people of Ireland to Britain during the Great Starvation was a clear decision by the British government to starve the Irish people.
The Nazi Governor in Poland Hans Frank wrote of the starvation of Jews ‘that we sentence 1.2 million Jews to die of hunger should be noted only marginally’.
The economic theory of laissez-faire is a total invention, within years they could spend millions in Crimea, a place most English had never heard of.
I recall the great Irish writer Frank O’Connor stating ‘Famine is a useful word when you do not wish to use words like ‘genocide’ or ‘extermination’, and again ‘It was not that the people were too simple to realise the Dachau-like nightmare of their circumstances’.
He goes on ‘The word famine itself is a question begging for its meaning ‘an extreme and general shortage of food’, and to use it of a country with a vast surplus of food, cows, sheep, pigs, poultry, eggs and corn, is simply to debase a language’.
O’Connor went further: ‘Irish historians who are firmly convinced that the Famine was all a mistake in the office, explain it in terms of an economic theory called laissez-faire. This is another cock that won’t fight.
Anyone who can believe that the British government maintained a garrison of 100,00 men in Ireland for the purpose of not interfering in trade and industrial affairs attaches some meaning to the word history that escapes me’.
The Great Starvation of the Irish people was a daily planned strategic intervention by the English government which is borne out by the evictions and forced migrations which followed and by the white supremacist and racist beliefs held in England at that time, which has largely been ignored by the historians.
The failure of the Young Ireland movement in the 1848 rebellion led to the deportation of their leaders and a flight of others to France and the USA. From this came the Fenian movement and the Irish Republican Brotherhood set up in the USA and Ireland in 1858.
There was of course also the French Revolution of 1848 which inspired people all over the world and which also inspired the Fenians.
The American Civil War of 1861-65 was to inspire the Irish in the USA. Over 30,000 Irishmen were to lose their lives in War the vast majority fighting for the Union and for the abolition of Slavery.
Revisionists question whether the Irish were really fighting for the abolition of Slavery, yet the same historians in hindsight claim that the British and Irish who fought in the 2nd World war were fighting against fascism and the Nazis.
The Irish men who died firing against slavery are entitled to the same respect from history.
The 1867 rebellion in Ireland did not really take off. Frantz Fanon stated: ‘Each generation must, out of relative obscurity, discover its mission, fulfil it, or betray it’. The Fenians took a more measured road and passed it on to the next generation, but not without a fight.
In the USA they invaded the British Canadian Dominion twice in 1867 with about 700 Fenian soldiers, veterans of the American Civil War. They held a convention in in 1867 with 6,000 armed men present.
In Britain the Fenians massed near Chester Castle in an attempt to seize the guns there and get them to Ireland via Holyhead for the Fenian Rising. As in the USA they were betrayed by spies and with Chester Castle reinforced by soldiers, the raid was called off in February 1967.
In September Colonel Kelly was arrested in Manchester and was released when Fenians attacked the prison coach which later led to the Manchester Martyrs, Allen Larkin and O’Brien who were innocent men framed up by the English government.
The impact of the Manchester Martyrs in Ireland was huge with some 17 monuments put up in their honour and with the Catholic Church forced to backtrack on their anti-Fenian stance and allow masses and commemorations to be widely held in Ireland.
Michael Barrett is part of this sacrifice of the Irish abroad to Irish freedom made within a year of each other. My call is for Michael Barrett to be included within the Manchester Martyrs’ history and commemoration.
By the 1870s the Irish had moved to parliamentary means to move their fight for liberation onwards. You will notice that the fight for Irish freedom goes in flows, a rebellion often followed by political and parliamentary activity along with agitation. Both means were effective for their times.
In Ireland we had Michael Davitt and the Land League, again we have the huge contribution from Britain to this effort from Davitt. We also had the bombing campaign in Britain by O’Donovan Rossa and Tom Clarke from 1880-87, the Invincibles in Dublin and the execution of Lord Cavendish in 1882.
We have the great Irish Literary and Gaelic revival. Again, the Irish Literary Society was founded in Southwark, SE London in the 1880s which spread to Dublin, Belfast and Cork.
We had the Gaelic League and the GAA as part of this revival which led on to the 1916 Rising and the founding of the nation.
What kind of regime or government could knowingly judicially murder innocent men like Michael Barrett and the Manchester Martyrs? We know the history of British colonisation of Ireland and British Imperialism.
This is the same British Imperialism which would in 1919 lead to the Amritsar massacre in India. But let us stay in 1860s iwith this colonial Empire.
In 1865 the Jamaican people rose up against British colonial rule in Jamaica which left 400 dead in a colonial reign of state terrorism. They hung the leader Paul Bogle and 14 others and executed seven women and prosecuted George William Gordon who had nothing to do with the Rebellion.
They executed him. The Fenians at the time raised funds to help the survivors bring action against the English government. You see here a long history of hanging both Irish and Black people across their colonies.
Today I salute the Irish in Britain who marched in the 1980’s against apartheid in South Africa and who today march with the Palestinian people following a noble Fenian internationalist tradition.
British rule in Ireland was based on Imperialism, White Supremacy and Racism. This was first formulated by Gerald of Wales in 1187 some 700 years before they hanged Barrett and the Manchester Martyrs.
Gerald in his books Topography of Ireland and Conquest of Ireland used racism to justify the conquest of Ireland and portrayed the Irish as inferior, backward, inhuman, uncivilised, feckless and lazy.
This was a litany of manufactured racist lies when Ireland had been the ‘Island of Saints and Scholars’ and the seat of learning in Western Europe bringing enlightenment to Europe during the Dark Ages.
Gerald’s views were published across Europe and held sway until around 1650 for about 500 years. This first racialisation of the Irish did not require any religious framework.
When Henry 8th split with Rome in 1534 the racist code used for conquest in Ireland was then overlaid with a state-sponsored sectarian religious code.
Irish scholars were driven out of Oxford where they were a dominant force and Henry sought to build up his fleet to destroy Irish fleets on the south coast to control trading in Irish sea ports and towns.
There followed the Plantation of Elizabeth 1st who knighted Gilbert the mass murderer of Munster who later founded a British colony in Newfoundland.
Later on, we had the Cromwellian conquest of Ireland with large-scale massacres at Drogheda and Wexford, widespread smaller massacres and the forced transporting of Irish slaves to the Caribbean.
Revisionists deny this history and seem to wrongly believe that these people were on some kind of ‘Cromwell Tours of the Caribbean’. For the record these forced transported people were not indentured people.
It is of interest that Gerald of Wales’ views on the Irish were not held of African people from 1200 onwards but were lifted from the Irish situation and applied to African people on the advent of enslavement to justify what the European colonial powers were doing.
So now Africans can be perceived in the same way as the Irish, as backward, inferior, childlike and have their freedoms taken away.
Let us now look at racism and the White Supremacist views of British Imperialism in the 1800s which gave rise to the great Starvation, the Manchester and London hangings of innocent men.
Robert Knox in The Races in 1850 described the Celts as an inferior race which became part of the ‘scientific’ racism of the day, with Knox updating Gerald of Wales.
Even Engels came out with his racist views of the Irish ‘The race that live in these ruinous cottages in measureless filth, and stuck in this atmosphere penned in, as if on purpose, this race must have reached the lowest stages of humanity’, instead of seeing what British imperialism and racism had done to the Irish people at home and abroad.
John Bedoe in his Races of Britain in 1862 views the Irish as Africanoid and having African roots, and again as ‘European Negroes’. Punch portrayed the Irish as apes and monsters, even Parnell, and the Irish as Aboriginals and on the same level as gorillas.
Charles Kingsley on visits to Ireland in the 1860’s states ‘I am haunted by the human chimpanzees I saw’ and ‘to see white chimpanzees is dreadful’. A new Gorilla at London Zoo is called ‘Paddy’ and the ‘Irish Yahoo’ is seen as the missing link between man and gorilla.
The Irish are described ‘as half naked savages who retain a vast amount of their primitive savagery to this day’.
We can see how scientific racism is now applied equally to Black and Irish for the purpose of colonisation and oppression.
In this context we can see the mindset of the British establishment who committed genocide against the Irish people, and who over centuries had murdered Irish people at random. We can see how the same regime of government can hang innocent people at home and abroad.
Michael Barrett, a self-educated man emerges from this dunghill of White Supremacy and pure racism as a heroic figure, like the Manchester Martyrs a true patriot as shown in his speech from the dock. He should be remembered with the Manchester Martyrs and not separated from their heroic end.
Barrett, a Christlike figure and a Cúchulainn who died on behalf of his people and for his political beliefs.
He was part of an Irish tradition in Britain of being in the forefront of democratic rights for liberty justice and freedom, not just for the Irish but also the British people.
We see in the Chartist movement of the 1840s being led by Irishmen Fergal O’Connor and Bronterre O’Brien that fight for liberty and the rights of man.
Also the leadership of Donegal man Doherty leading the workers of Lancashire and the ongoing links in the trade union movement to today from leaders like Mick Lynch inspired by James Connolly to Pat Cullen of the RCN.
We see it in the gift of The Red Flag song from a County Meath man and The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists novel by Noonan to the British working class.
In honouring Michael Barrett today, we stand full square for a United Ireland as proclaimed in the Fenian and 1916 Proclamations and for working class liberty in Britain.
I will finish today by reading the Fenian Proclamation of 10th February 1867 from the Irish People to the World. In it we can see what the 1916 Proclamation borrowed and built on. It is also what Michael Barrett lived and in the end died for.
Fenian Proclamation, 1867
Proclamation of the Irish Republic, issued February 10th, 1867, by the Irish Republican Brotherhood.
I.R. — PROCLAMATION! —
THE IRISH PEOPLE TO THE WORLD
We have suffered centuries ofoutrage, enforced poverty, and bitter misery. Our rights and liberties have been trampled on by an alien aristocracy, who, treating us as foes, usurped our lands and drew away from our unfortunate country all material riches.
The real owners of the soil were removed to make room for cattle, and driven across the ocean to seek the means of living, and the political rights denied to them at home, while our men of thought and action were condemned to loss of life and liberty.
But we never lost the memory and hope of a national existence. We appealed in vain to the reason and sense of justice of the dominant powers. Our mildest remonstrances were met with sneers and contempt. Our appeals to arms were always unsuccessful.
Today, having no honourable alternative left, we again appeal to force as our last resource. We accept the conditions of appeal, manfully deeming it better to die in the struggle for freedom than to continue an existence of utter serfdom.
All men are born with equal rights, and in associating together to protect one another and share public burthens, justice demands that such associations should rest upon a basis which maintains equality instead of destroying it.
We therefore declare that, unable longer to endure the curse of Monarchical Government, we aim at founding a Republic based on universal suffrage, which shall secure to all the intrinsic value of their labour.
The soil of Ireland, at present in the possession of an oligarchy, belongs to us, the Irish people, and to us it must be restored.
We declare also in favour of absolute liberty of conscience, and the complete separation of Church and State.
We appeal to the Highest Tribunal for evidence of the justice of our cause. History bears testimony to the intensity of our sufferings, and we declare, in the face of our brethren, that we intend no war against the people of England —
our war is against the aristocratic locusts, whether English or Irish, who have eaten the verdure of our fields — against the aristocratic leeches who drain alike our blood and theirs.
Republicans of the entire world, our cause is your cause. Our enemy is your enemy. Let your hearts be with us. As for you, workmen of England, it is not only your hearts we wish, but your arms. Remember the starvation and degradation brought to your firesides by the oppression of labour.
Remember the past, look well to the future, and avenge yourselves by giving liberty to your children in the coming struggle for human freedom.
rebelbreeze 