Tag: Irish Republicans

LEBANON PRESIDENT CITES IRA AS EXAMPLE FOR DISARMING HEZBOLLAH

On By rebelbreezeIn Current Affairs Comment, Guerrilla Action, Imperialism, Internationalist Solidarity, Irish Republicanism, National Sovereignty, peace processes, Political Analysis, Uncategorized, ZionismLeave a comment

Diarmuid Breatnach

(Reading time: 6mins.)

In an 11th January interview with state public television channel Télé Liban, Joseph Aoun, President of Lebanon, cited the disarming of the Provisional IRA with regard to the disarming of Hezbollah, which is being demanded by the USA and ‘Israel.’

Significant points from the interview were translated in summary and posted on The Cradle news updates channel on Telegram on the anniversary of Aoun’s election to the Presidency, for which he was constitutionally obliged to resign from his previous position of head of the armed forces.

In a post-colonial polity balanced between sovereignist and anti-imperialist forces on the one hand and pro-Western imperialist elements on the other, Aoun is widely regarded as the West’s man, a verdict justified by a constant thread in his Presidential statements and replies in this interview.

The whole issue of Hezbollah disarming arises mainly from the Zionist state and its main backer, US imperialism and has been much in the news for months.

Samir Geaga, Lebanese politician of the Christian far-Right, back in his Christian Front days during the Lebanon Civil War. (Photo sourced: Internet)

In addition there is an internal Lebanese element with a background of right-wing Christian fascist militias,1 pro-Western imperialism and recruited as proxies by the ‘Israeli’ armed forces when they occupied Lebanon (1982-2000), before the rise of Hezbollah which led the liberation of the country.

Hezbollah’s last armed action was towards end of October 2025 after bombarding the Israeli occupation of northern Palestine in order to divert the Zionist armed forces from the accelerated genocide of Gaza, then in a defence of the IOF’s attack on Southern Lebanon.

Cartoon comment on the constant defeat of Israeli invading forces by Hezbollah in 2024 and 2025. (Cartoon: D.Breatnach)

This was so effective that the Zionist state sued for a truce.

Meanwhile Hezbollah had been weakened by Israeli-programmed exploding pagers and mobile phone devices, along with the assassination of its widely-respected and charismatic leader, Hassan Nasrallah and agreed to the truce which it has scrupulously observed to the time of writing,

However, the same truce has at the time of writing been violated over 10,000 times by the Zionist armed forces2 in daily drone strike assassinations, bombings of homes and construction sites, troop invasions and checkpoints on Lebanese soil and even kidnappings of citizens.3

All without a word of condemnation from the truce’s guarantors, the USA and France, the former loud in its demands for Hezbollah disarmament along with threats by Trump and Netanyahu.

Joseph Aoun (centre, in civilian suit) upon his inauguration as President of Lebanon, reviewing troops of which had only recently been Commander in Chief. (Photo sourced: Internet)

SUMMARY AOUN’S STATEMENTS WITH COMMENTS

• The Lebanese army has many missions and cannot focus solely on one task. Israeli occupation persists, and attacks continue. Halting attacks and Israeli withdrawal would greatly help accelerate progress.

Yes indeed and people may wonder why a) the Lebanese state forces are not in action repelling that very ‘Israeli’ occupation and attacks and b) why the disarmament of the Resistance is even being contemplated in the current circumstances.

  • Any assistance to the army facilitates operations. The decision has been made, and implementation speed depends on army leadership and available capabilities.”

It is not clear to which assistance Aoun is referring but otherwise he is admitting that the Lebanese Army is unable to disarm Hezbollah, a Resistance better-armed and more widely supported than the State Army and that serious attempts to do so would result in civil war.

• “The [resistance] weapons were initially deployed for a specific purpose when the army was absent. Now the army exists, and Lebanon’s armed forces are responsible for national security.

Clearly Lebanon’s armed forces are either unwilling or incapable of defending national security, since Aoun admits to the occupation and attacks by a foreign entity, which have been ongoing since the October 2025 ‘truce’.

  • The weapons no longer serve their role; their continued presence is a burden on their environment and Lebanon. This is not about Resolution 1701—the weapons’ mission is over.

To whom is the continued presence of weapons a burden? Are Lebanese people being attacked by those weapons? No, they are a burden only to the Zionist entity and its imperialist backers who wish to dominate West Asia – and of course to the domestic collaborators.

• “I want to tell others: it is time to be reasonable. Either you are truly part of the state or you are not. The state must take responsibility for protecting its citizens and land. The entire country bears this burden. Logic must prevail over force.”

This is clearly directed at Hezbollah and Amal, political forces represented in the Lebanese Parliament. If the state must take responsibility for protecting its citizens and land, then why not actually do so and demonstrate the alleged lack of necessity for the weapons of the Resistance?

What Aoun really means is that while there is an effective armed resistance, he will not be left in peace by the Zionist State or by US imperialism. And why not? Because they seek to dominate West Asia, which in itself proves the need for an effective armed Resistance.

• “Official positions are taken by official institutions. Lebanon will not be a platform threatening other states’ stability. During summer rocket attacks, the intelligence directorate apprehended the perpetrators quickly and warned Hamas officials they would be expelled if repeated. We will not allow Lebanon to be used for unwanted actions.”

The ‘Summer rocket attacks’ were not from Hezbollah but, if not from provocateurs, were an independent and unprofessional unit – this is well-known.

• “The appointment of Ambassador Simon Karam was made internally in Lebanon, not at the request of the US or any foreign party.”

Hmmm. Even if that were true, it cannot be denied that he is the choice of the USA.

• “Lebanon’s interest requires that decisions be made within the country. No one will fight or stand for us; all parties must cooperate with the state for Lebanon’s benefit.”

If the state wants cooperation for Lebanon’s benefit, surely it should first show itself deserving of that cooperation by standing up for its sovereignty against Zionist invasion, bombings and assassinations, along with Western imperialist threats and bullying?

• “Lebanon has three tools: diplomacy, economy, and military. We have tried war—it ended. Diplomatic paths offer a 50% chance of progress. Political negotiation, not war, resolves conflicts globally—Vietnam, Irish Republican Army, Gaza. Lebanon must pursue diplomatic solutions.”

The war cannot be counted as ‘ended’ with over 10,000 Zionist violations of the ‘truce’, nor did the State ‘try war’, it was entirely Hezbollah resisting the attempted Zionist invasion although as is its wont, the Zionists did bomb civilian homes and infrastructure in Lebanon.

Political negotiation works when the state with which being negotiating either a) would rather not have war or b) is afraid to attack. The first case clearly does not apply to the Zionist State, nor will the second if the resistance is unarmed and all they have to worry about is Lebanon’s Army.

The examples Aoun quotes actually work against his theoretical trajectory: one proves the exact opposite and another two are not at all functioning in the interests of the people nor of secure peace.

The US was forced to negotiate with the Vietnamese liberation forces because of the strength of the latter’s resistance, after nearly 20 years of war.4 Even so, the US dragged out the negotiations until the liberation forces entered Saigon and US helicopters left in a hurry.

The Zionists continue to attack Gaza daily although they have levelled most of it. The Provisional IRA has not won Irish independence or territorial unity, the aims for which it declared it had been fighting and its political arm5 is now serving the administration of the colonial Occupation.

As has been pointed out many times in Rebel Breeze, the imperialists and their stooges learn from and copy one another’s tactics which was demonstrated very clearly in the trajectory of the imperialist pacification processes and how they contaminated a number of resistance movements.

There is never any reason for a national Resistance movement to surrender any of its weapons before the establishment of a strong independent state, well-armed and led by determined and uncorrupted people.

People very different from Youssef Rajj, Foreign Affairs Minister of Lebanon, who in interview with Sky News Arabia stated that as long as Hezbollah holds on to weapons, ‘Israel’ is entitled to attack Lebanon. Apart from its traitorous nature, the statement is not even formally correct.

Youssef Rajji, Foreign Affairs Minister of Lebanon (Photo sourced: Wikipedia)

Officially a state of war still exists between the Lebanese state and ‘Israel’ so of course the Resistance is entitled to hold weapons. More fundamentally, no Government Minister should justify another state attacking their country (as for example Machado does in relation to Venezuela).

National servility, collusion and treason are seen around the world but fortunately so too is resistance.

End.

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FOOTNOTES

1Most of these were present in the ‘Lebanese Forces’ who carried out the massacres of the Sabra and Shatilla Palestinian camps of 1,300 and 3,500 civilians—mostly Palestinians and Lebanese Shias—in the city of Beirut during the Lebanese Civil War (1975-1990).

2https://www.aljazeera.com/features/2026/1/7/israels-continued-attacks-on-lebanon-could-derail-hezbollah-disarmament

3By October 2025 UN experts had recorded “At least 19 abductions of civilians from Lebanon by Israeli soldiers, which may amount to cases of enforced disappearances …” https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2025/10/un-experts-warn-against-continued-violations-ceasefire-lebanon-and-urge

4That was with the USA (also Australia). Before that the Vietnamese Resistance fought and defeated the French and Japanese.

5The Sinn Féin party, which is also the party with the second highest representation in the parliament of the Irish State and seeks to form a governing coalition with one of the established neo-colonial parties.

SAVE MOORE STREET OUTREACH TO LIBERTINE MARKET

On By rebelbreezeIn Cultural Comment, Current Event Report, History, Ireland, Irish Left, Irish RepublicanismLeave a comment

Clive Sulish

(Reading time: 4 mins.)

The Save Moore Street from Demolition campaign group gratefully accepted an invitation to participate in the Comrade Corner on Sunday 3rd January in order to spread the word about the campaign and to make further contacts.

The Comrade Corner is part of the Libertine Market Crawl that takes place on the first Sunday of each month 12-5pm and is spread through a number of pubs, mostly in the Liberties area of north Dublin city: The 4th Corner, Dudley’s, Lucky’s, Molly’s Barand Peadar Brown’s.

Front of the Peadar Brown’s pub building, Clanbrassil Street. (Photo: R. Breeze)

The Comrade Corner’s section of the monthly market take place upstairs in the Peadar Brown’s pub, open to campaigning and community groups to book a table to promote their campaign or group on which they had campaign leaflets, a QR to sign on line and campaign badges.

The latter represented a grotesque on the roof of No.55 Moore Street, missing wingtips shot off by a British bullet during the battle there in 1916.

Two of a number of visitors to the Comrade Corner engaging with the Save Moore Street From Demolition campaign stall at which campaign activist Orla Dunne is seated. (Photo: R. Breeze)

“Over the 12 years of our group’s existence campaigning on the street we have engaged in outreach work often enough,” said one of the two staffing their table in Peadar Brown’s, “including taking our banner to protest marches, giving talks, interviews and conducting history tours.”

The group has been campaigning with a weekly Saturday table for conservation and against demolition in Moore Street since September 2014. “We want to see a busy street market with small independent shops, not chain stores,” said Orla Dunne, also staffing their table in Peadar Brown’s.”

One of the team staffing the Darragh Ó Faoláin stall in Comrade Corner. (Photo: R. Breeze)

“And the history of the 1916 Battleground properly commemorated,” she went on to say, alluding to the fact that of the Seven Signatories of the Proclamation, no less than five spent their last hours of freedom in the Moore Street houses before taking the painful decision to surrender.

Those were Patrick Pearse, James Connolly, Tom Clarke, Seán Mac Diarmada and Joseph Plunkett, all shot by firing squad, along with Willie Pearse, also late of Moore Street as were another ten prominent figures, including Roger Casement, though hanged in Pentonville Jail somewhat later.

The team staffing the Statue of Pearse by the GPO campaign stall in Comrade Corner. (Photo: R. Breeze)

The GPO Garrison had left the burning building on the Friday of Easter Week and, heading to relocate at the Williams and Woods factory, got only as far as Moore Street before they came under intense machine-gun and rifle fire from the encircling British forces in Parnell Street.

Pausing to take a breath and plan their next moves, around 300 men and women occupied the whole central terrace (Nos.12-25), tunnelling through the walls, along with some other buildings. The leader of a failed charge on the British barricade died in a lane now named O’Rahilly Parade.

As he lay dying he wrote a farewell letter to his wife and children, the magnified script reproduced on an impressive monument in the lane-way.

The current Hammerson plan includes at least seven years of construction on the site (with no food stalls possible meanwhile), a new street cut through the 1916 Terrace to O’Connell Street, a hotel in Moore Lane and a Metro entrance in O’Rahilly Parade additional to the O’Connell Street one.

INSIDE PEADAR BROWN’S

The Peadar Brown’s stall in Comrade Corner. (Photo: R. Breeze)

People drifted into the upstairs room in twos and threes, stopping at some or all of the stalls to examine the literature or merchandise on display and to chat to some of the groups. In addition to SMSFD’s, Peadar Brown’s had their own merchandise of badges and T-shirts.

Also selling merchandise within that range was a revolutionary anti-fascist stall, while another table was held by a group campaigning for the erection of a monument to Patrick Pearse in O’Connell Street, near to the GPO where he was located in 1916 before evacuation to Moore Street.

T-shirts merchandise near the Darragh Ó Faoláin Stall in Comrade Corner. (Photo: R. Breeze)

It was notable that the latter group also directed people to the SMSFD group’s table. Many of the visitors had origins outside Ireland, a sector for which perhaps this kind of event would be more usual. How did the SMSFD team feel their table had done for their hours there?

“We did alright,” said Dunne, “though it wasn’t very busy today.” “If we had boosted our online petition signatures alone, which we did, it would have been worth it,” said Breatnach. “Besides, I always wanted to see the famous Pub,” added Dunne, smiling.

Mural on the side of the Peadar Brown’s building. (Photo: R. Breeze)

Much artwork of an Irish Republican nature decorates the inside of the pub downstairs, including a mural along the wall behind the small stage area. The Irish Tricolour, Starry Plough and ‘Irish Republic’ flags hang from the exterior along with anti-racist posters in the outside drinking area.

Last year officials in Dublin City Council sought unsuccessfully to have Peadar Dunne’s remove the large Palestine flag painted on the side of their building. It has a reputation not only as an Irish Republican pub but also of decidedly internationalist solidarity and antifascist character.

Also last year, some fascist and far-Right elements threatened the pub with a demonstration which failed to materialise, to counter which antifascists had packed the pub to overflowing. The far-Right’s anger was aroused by the banning of a musician for allegedly uttering racist comments.

The Peadar Brown’s T-Shirt rack by their stall in Comrade Corner. (Photo: R. Breeze)

End.

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USEFUL LINKS

Peadar Brown’s pub: https://peadarbrowns.com/

Save Moore Street From Demolition
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/save.moore.st.from.demolition; Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/moore.street_sos; Petition: https://my.uplift.ie/petitions/save-moore-street

Libertine Market: https://www.instagram.com/p/DS8p3ZtCLQP/?igsh=MWc0eWZnbDF2eDNpeQ==

HISTORIC STREET MARKET AND 1916 BATTLEGROUND CAMPAIGN SEEKS ONLINE SIGNATURES SUPPORT

On By rebelbreezeIn 1916 Rising, City Planning, Current Affairs Comment, History, Ireland, Popular Resistance, World War OneLeave a comment

Clive Sulish

(Reading time: 3 mins.)

A campaign for conservation of the ancient Moore Street Dublin inner-city street market area and 1916 Battleground, in its 11th year of Saturdays on the actual street is seeking to reach 2000 on-line signatures for the group’s petition this year.

The site was formerly under threat of construction of a giant ‘shopping mall’ from the ILAC to O’Connell Street. However ‘shopping malls’ are not making so much money nowadays so the new plan is largely a ‘shopping area’ with an hotel and a new road from the ILAC to O’Connell Street.

Picket/ lobby of Dublin City Council in 2014, petition stretch and posters organised by the Save Moore Street From Demolition Group, founded a couple of months earlier to prevent Dublin City Council City Manager giving property speculator Joe O’Reilly Nos. 24-25 in exchange for Nos.14-17, which would have allowed him to demolish from No.25-No.18. The campaign was successful in preventing that as councillors voted against the swap. (Photo: SMSFD archives)

Moore Street is of course already ‘a shopping area’ but what that means to property speculators is a street of chain stores, something like the Grafton and Henry Streets. Such streets are busy during shopping hours but largely deserted at night and anathema to the living social city centre.

Independent small shops and street stalls characterise a street market, typically with some cafes, a bakery and restaurant. But the agent of Hammerson, the speculator company, has closed down a bakery and a number of successful restaurants and cafés on the street.

On the Friday of Easter Week, 300 or so of the GPO garrison evacuated the burning building and occupied the central terrace in Moore Street to gain a respite, setting up their new HQ there and a field hospital caring for their wounded and for a wounded soldier of the British Army.

The new intended street would cut right through the historic 1916 terrace, the footprint and path traversed by much of the 300 or so GPO Garrison in 1916 as they evacuated their burning former HQ and prepared to relocate to William & Woods site in nearby King’s Inn Street.

Moore Street, according to campaigners, is of great Irish cultural and historical importance but is also of international historical stature: surrender site of the first anti-colonial uprising of the 20th Century and of the first rising against World War and last location in freedom of five of its leaders.

Those five, Connolly, Pearse, Clarke, Mac Diarmada and Plunkett, were also five of the Seven Signatories of the 1916 Proclamation, a document of huge symbolic significance in history and still often referenced in contemporary discourse.

Campaigners point to the presence in the street of the Irish Citizen Army, which they claim as “the first workers’ army” and of its leader, Connolly along with three of the first women’s republican military organisation, Cumann na mBan: Elizabeth O’Farrell, Julia Grenan and Winifred Carney.

The Irish Citizen Army recruited women too, including appointing some of them as officers in command of male Volunteers, another first in world history.

Signed petition sheets sellotaped edge to edge in January 2016, stretched along Moore Street as the 6-day occupation of the endangered buildings came to an end and shortly before the 6-week blockade began. (Photo: SMSFD archive)

SUCCESSES AND DEFEATS

The campaign has had some previous successes, including four buildings being declared a historical monument in 2007, refusal of land-swap in 2014 (see photo), a six-week blockade of the site and a High Court declaration in 2016 of the whole area being a national historical monument.

However, the campaign insists the historical monument is all 16 buildings in the terrace, not just four. And the High Court decision was successfully appealed in February 2017 by the Minister of Heritage on the grounds that a Judge did not have the power to declare a national monument.

The campaigners, now in their 11th year of Saturdays on the street, say that they stopped counting hard copy petition signatures once they passed 380,000. But last year they started an electronic petition in which they aimed for 1,000 by year’s end — and exceeded their target.

Women Christmas shopping crowding around the petition table to sign hard copy and on-line petition last Saturday. (Photo from weekly SMSFD album 20 December 2025.)

This year they’ve aimed to reach 2,000 but, with nearly another 300 needed with a week to go before the end of 2025, reaching their target seems very unlikely.

The campaign group supporters say that they have held the line so long because of the support of hundreds of thousands, not only of indigenous Irish but also of settled migrants (the latter being the mainstay of the traditional fresh fruit and vegetable stalls) and want the signatures to reflect all that.

“At this stage, the strongest help we can get from ordinary people is to sign the on-line petition and to get their contacts to do so too,” said one of the campaigners on the street recently. “On-line signatures are identifiable to one person, verifiable and the total can be checked on line.”

“The authorities will remember that people took direct action in the past to halt demolition, as in the occupation and blockade of 2016 but thousands of online petition signatures are an indication that the activists represent much more than themselves alone”.

The Save Moore Street From Demolition campaigners are on the street every Saturday from 11.30am-1.30pm and their online petition is on https://my.uplift.ie/petitions/save-moore-street The group has Instagram and Facebook pages also.

end.

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SOURCES

GOING THROUGH THE SOLIDARITY MOTIONS

On By rebelbreezeIn Current Affairs Comment, Genocide, Imperialism, Indigenous or Original People, Internationalist Solidarity, Ireland, Irish Left, Irish Republicanism, Israeli Zionism, Middle East, Palestine, Political Analysis, Trade unions, ZionismLeave a comment

Diarmuid Breatnach

(Reading time: 4 mins.)

The week before last in Ireland we were led through motions of Palestine solidarity actions once more, motions without practical effect, first by the Irish trade unions, followed the following day by the Ireland Palestine Solidarity Campaign.

Seen on the IPSC National march (Photo by: Participant)

On Friday, the unions announced a ‘stand out for Palestine’ day – well, not a day exactly, more like a lunch break. It was not a strike, not even a work stoppage, rather some dedicated employees surrendering their lunch break to stand with Palestinian flags etc in front of their workplaces.

Not even a work stoppage of one day, half-day, or even an hour. The union leaderships, in most cases, organised nothing, leaving it up to their members to get together and to sacrifice their lunch breaks.

More of us went through the motions again on Saturday 29 November. From the Garden of Remembrance, down O’Connell Street, across the river, around by Trinity College, up Dawson Street and into Molesworth Street, facing Leinster House.

Seen on the IPSC National march (Photo by: Participant)

The Ireland Palestine Solidarity Campaign organised this ‘National Demonstration’ as it does roughly every month. It is supposed, presumably, to impress the Government with its numbers and pressure them to end their collusion with the ongoing genocide of Palestinians.

It has not done so — nor did it in any month or any year in the life of the IPSC, the longest-active Palestine solidarity organisation in Ireland. Nor have the monthly marches brought about any change in Irish Government collusion since the genocide of Gaza began in October 2023.

That is not the fault of the IPSC. What they are to be blamed for is not recognising that and adjusting appropriately to actions of greater pressure. Or, perhaps they recognised it indeed but nevertheless refused to change towards any effective pressurising methods.

The IPSC was for a long time near the ‘middle of the road’ but it has moved further into that position as the genocidal actions of the Zionist colony became worse and as awareness of Israeli crimes spread and grew in Ireland (which it did in part thanks indeed to the work of the IPSC).

Section of the IPSC National march (Photo by: Participant)

Solidarity work however is not about education in the abstract, raising awareness without using that awareness to bring about change. I am sure the IPSC leadership is aware of that and would wish much change but they do not adapt their actions, rather continuing with the monthly motions.

Probably they do not increase the pressure out of fear of losing their influence with the political class. Which would perhaps be well and good if the political class were delivering on ending collusion with the genocidal state – but they are not, nor is there any indication that they will.

Ireland remains the biggest single importer of Israeli products next to the USA and the biggest in the EU. The Irish Government permits military consignments to fly to Israel through ‘neutral’ Irish airspace and USA aircraft and military personnel to stopover and refuel at Shannon Airport.

Seen on the IPSC National march as passing O’Connell monument (Photo by: Participant)

Occupying the ground near the middle is only a good thing if it can be used to support action for change; it is a hindrance if the act of being there comes to be more important than the end objective: an end to genocide and the Occupation, with freedom and independence for Palestine.

The IPSC could use its mass base to blockade Dublin Port, through which Israeli products come into the country. It could also blockade other major stocking and distribution points.

The IPSC could organise mass days of action against retail and tech outlets handling Israeli exports and mobilise pickets in support of retail workers refusing to handle Israeli products, such as a Tesco worker currently facing disciplinary procedures (i.e punishment) for that very ‘crime’.

The worker in question, employed by Tesco in Newcastle, Co. Down is a member of the IWW and also of USDAW, main union for retail workers in the UK (as in the colony) but while the word is that his union is defending them, it is not seeking to extend and widen the boycott.

Defending a worker’s right not to act against their conscience is an individual and personal issue.1 It is understood that the motivation of this worker is one of solidarity with the Palestinian people and against genocide, which is what the trade unions need to be promoting and mobilising.

Union leaderships become bureaucracies with buildings and paid officials, employing administrative staff, growing more and more cautious and afraid of State action (particularly against their funds), moving further away from the ethos that first led to the unions’ creation.

Organised workers in Italy have shown the potential in dock strikes and mass mobilisations but again it was not the mainstream unions that led the action. Canadian provincial trade union Federations have marked all ‘Israel’ goods and services as ‘hot’2 and not to be handled.

Union membership in Ireland has declined as union leadership collusion with management and government escalated from the 1980s and resistance actions decreased; an increase in militant action is likely to boost recruitment but in any case organising resistance is the supposed role of trade unions.

Questions around solidarity with Palestine bring many other underlying issues to the fore: media partiality, government collusion, imperialist and colonialist influence, effective means of applying pressure, appropriate leadership, resistance to oppression, solidarity with prisoners.

We have been taught lessons of great importance – but at a terrible cost; we owe it to the Palestinians and to ourselves to apply them.

End.

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FOOTNOTES

SOURCES & FURTHER INFORMATION

Tesco worker facing hearing for refusing to sell ‘Israeli’ products

APPENDIX

From The Cradle news updates on Telegram 6 December 2025:

Ontario’s largest labor federation backs ‘hot cargo’ boycott of Israeli goods

The Ontario Federation of Labour has become the fourth provincial labor federation in Canada to adopt a “hot cargo” resolution against Israeli goods and services.

The move designates all trade ties with Israel as products and services workers will refuse to handle due to their connection to exploitation and oppression. The OFL’s decision follows growing momentum across the country as labor groups escalate solidarity actions.

The New Brunswick Federation of Labour first set the precedent in May when it voted to stop handling weapons destined for Israel. Similar resolutions soon followed in Nova Scotia and Newfoundland and Labrador, culminating in Ontario’s endorsement last week.

Together, these federations represent a significant portion of Canada’s organized labor movement.

The OFL’s stance signals a widening labor-led boycott effort, reinforcing a broader push within Canadian unions to apply economic pressure and support calls for accountability over Israel’s war crimes.

1Individual ‘conscience’ can object to many things we consider necessary, for example to give contraception methods information, or about pregnancy termination, to deal politely with migrants, to serving people in the national language, to sending children to integrated education or even to any school, etc. etc.

2‘Blacked’ was a common term for such cases in the recent past, as was ‘tainted’ further back still (á la Larkin and Connolly) – see Appendix.

THE FIRST WORKERS’ ARMY IN THE WORLD – FORMED IN DUBLIN

On By rebelbreezeIn 1916 Rising, Capitalism, Dublin Lockout 1913, Ireland, irish history, Irish Left, Irish Republicanism, National Liberation, Political AnalysisLeave a comment

Diarmuid Breatnach

(Reading time: 6 mins)

Last week saw the anniversary of the creation of the Irish Citizen Army, a militia formed initially to defend the workers from attacks of the Dublin Metropolitan Police on behalf of the Dublin capitalists but that went on to fight in the 1916 Rising.

The ICA was born in the struggle of the consortium of Dublin employers, led by big capitalist and Irish nationalist William Martin Murphy, to smash the militant and successful Irish Transport & General Workers Union in Dublin, where the union had its headquarters, in August​​​​​​​​​​​​​​ 1913.

The workers were presented with a declaration to sign that they would not support the ITGWU but no union in Dublin at the time, whatever they thought of the targeted union and its founder,1 could sign such a declaration. As workers began to be sacked, others came out in solidarity strikes.

Dublin entered an extended struggle between the organised capitalists and the organised workers. In such a struggle of course, the organised capitalists had on their side the magistrates, the hierarchy of the various churches, the mass media2 – and the Dublin Metropolitan Police.

Anti-WW1 banner across Liberty Hall, HQ of the Irish Transport & General Workers’ Union in October 1914, with the Irish Citizen Army parading outside.

The DMP, a British colonial police force for Dublin would have needed no specific instructions to attack demonstrations of the ITGWU, their instincts as guardians of colonial ‘law and order’ sufficing but in addition, the attitude of the media would have outlined their ‘duty’.

And after representation from W.M. Murphy to Dublin Castle, the HQ of British control, the ‘duty’ of the DMP was outlined and they were reinforced by a number of the colonial gendarmerie,3 the Royal Irish Constabulary.4

On the evening of 30th August a mass meeting of the ITGWU in Beresford Place, outside the union’s headquarters, Liberty Hall, was attacked by a baton-wielding force of the DMP, leaving two workers mortally wounded5 with resulting running battles towards city working class areas.6

The following day, the DMP again viciously attacked crowds in O’Connell Street in front of Clery’s from which Larkin attempted to address the crowd in a meeting banned by the city magistrate.7

Not long after, a marching music band leading a strikers’ parade was also attacked by the DMP with musical instruments damaged and members injured and the leadership of the union decided that a counter-strategy was required for self-defence and possibly the very survival of the union.

The Lawrence O’Toole Pipe Band’s website lays claims to having been the victims of this attack while other history talks and articles have claimed that the ITGWU’s Fintan Lawlor Pipe Band was the one attacked. It is not impossible that the DMP attacked both.

On 19th November 1913 the Irish Citizen Army was born8 following a suggestion by Seán O’Casey and a call by Jim Larkin as a workers’ defence militia. After Larkin left Ireland for the USA in 1914, James Connolly took over leadership of the ICA and wielded it into a revolutionary force.

I recall attending a book launch or talk about the ICA in which it was described as “the first workers’ army in the world” but searching for that quotation I now find it refuted by AI online and replaced by “first working-class army”.9 I cannot agree with the latter.

Most armies, especially nowadays, are “working class” in that this most numerous social class will contribute the vast majority of its rank-and-file. In the past, the peasantry and landless labourers would have been the majority.

Despite the overwhelming worker membership of the ICA, its most important distinction was not in the social class of its membership. Nor was it totally working class, containing as it did some notable members of middle-commercial and one of a landowning classes.10

What made the Irish Citizen Army very different from other armies and qualified it, I maintain, for the title of “workers’ army” were the intentions and ideological perspective of its founders, the conditions of its birth, ethos of its members and – most of all – its declared purpose.

The ICA was founded with the express intention and necessity of defending a worker’s organisation which was resisting an attempt by the capitalist employers to break that organisation. The struggle was led by declared openly-socialist leaders who gave the call for the ICA’s founding.

In every respect, I maintain, even without a specifically socialist constitution, this was a workers’ army, formed by workers, in a workers’ struggle in defence of their organisation and of the right to organise, defending their previously-won improvements and their dignity.

And the lack of evidence of any such precursor qualifies the Irish Citizen Army as “the first workers’ army in the world.”

The Starry Plough design of the Irish Citzen Army’s flag, created in 1914. (In case of confusion about the design or colour see https://rebelbreeze.com/2025/06/05/changing-the-starry-plough-colour-and-sean-ocasey/)

However, none of the preceding makes it a socialist organisation, in my opinion. A socialist organisation would have as one of its principal objectives the attainment (whether by reformist or revolutionary methods) of a socialist organisation of society.

As to Lenin having allegedly called the ICA “the first Red Army in the world”, I have searched for the original reference without success, finding only it quoted by speakers, writers, organisations and authors – but never with a reference of where and when Lenin supposedly said it.

I strongly suspect that Lenin never said that. But even if he had, the ICA’s constitution does not support it, being rather of a democratic nationalist and anti-colonial character.11

Socialist Republicans today approve of the Irish Citizen Army throughout the 1913-1916 period. But it is not unknown for them to go further and to characterise it as socialist republican in nature and orientation. I don’t see evidence of this in either the ICA’s constitution or in its membership.

Though certainly Irish nationalist in intention, the word ‘Republic’ is not mentioned anywhere in the constitution. One might argue that it was understood but I can’t see the evidence for that either. Some contemporary prominent Irish nationalists were not even wedded to the idea of a Republic.

The 1919-1921 IRA was not a socialist organisation. Nor was the monarchist Sinn Féin party, even after its founder Griffiths permitted its reformation as Republican in order for the disparate nationalist movement to contest the UK’s 1918 General Election on an abstentionist manifesto.

The political leadership of the Republican movement split over the British offer of dominion status with partition as against a unitary Republic. Churchill was quite adamant that the new Irish State could not be a Republic and it was not declared so until the 1937 Constitution.

Certainly the founders of the ICA were socialist Republicans but in the absence of its constitution being of a kind, for the organisation to qualify as such it must be shown to have been also the widely-embraced ethos of its membership.

Even if imagining that the membership of the ICA, like its founders and a number of its officers, were Irish Republicans, it is still a greater step to assert that they were socialist Republicans, in the sense of intending the socialist organisation of society and elimination of capitalism.12

Irish Citizen Army on the roof of Liberty Hall during a flag-raising activity.
(Photo sourced from Internet)

TODAY AND TOMORROW

Whereas these historical questions may fuel debate, no debate should be needed regarding the right of workers to organise to defend and improve their conditions, nor to change the dominant political shape and allegiance of their country, nor to defend their organisation from the police.

Indeed, not only can we take those rights as legitimate and necessary to exercise but it also becomes clear that at some point we will, as workers, as socialists and/ or as Republicans, need such an army. The ruling class has its physical force organisations in the Gardaí and the Irish Army.

The history of ruling classes bears testament to the fact they never relinquish power without using violence against challenges from the rising social forces; even such social and political rights as we have were won through hard struggle, sacrifice and indeed martyrdom.

Commemorative postcard 1916, showing severe British shelling damage to the original Liberty Hall building, Beresford Place, Dublin.

The Far-Right has also given ample proof of their readiness to employ violence against the vulnerable sections of our class and against also those they consider opposed to them ideologically; the history of fascism too warns us of the need to organise our defence.

In that respect too let me briefly comment on the false “ICA” recently proclaimed in a video which, while claiming a 32-County outlook and repeating that Britain has no right in Ireland, filled the rest of their video with racist anti-migrant rhetoric, conspiracy theory and lies.

Of course they contain nothing of the workers’ solidarity ethos of the ranks of the real ICA, not to mention the anti-fascist, anti-racist internationalist and socialist outlook of the ICA’s leadership.

The ICA developed as a force for physical defence of workers’ rights on the streets, which is where the DMP and RIC attacked them. It was some years later, in the course of inter-imperialist World War I that the ICA fought in an armed rising alongside other democratic national forces.

Some, usually only among Irish Republicans, have striven also to organise a fighting force. Typically they concentrated on gaining arms and planning armed actions. Isolated from the masses, they were easily infiltrated by State agents, resulting in activists going to jail.

Captain White & Irish Citizen Army on parade on their grounds at Croydon House, Fairview, N. Dublin City. (Sourced: Internet)

While needed, I believe a workers’ defence force should, in current circumstances, concentrate on street defence-and-offence fighting tactics, also that it should be based on the broad democratic political front, on unity in action against imperialism, colonialism, fascism and Loyalism.

Defence on a broad front basis can and should educate the whole resistance movement, in its disparate ideological influences, as it may be that similar recruits in the Irish Citizen Army were educated and trained under the leadership of revolutionary socialists and republicans.

End.

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FOOTNOTES

SOURCES AND REFERENCES

Click to access ConstitutionOfTheIrishCitizenArmy.pdf

Click to access obrien.pdf

Reprint of Sean O’Casey’s account of the formation of the ICA with a short anti-Irish nationalist introduction: https://libcom.org/article/story-irish-citizen-army-1913-1916-sean-ocasey

In important respects a different account from those by most socialists and Irish Republicans of the origins of the Irish Citizen Army: https://www.thepensivequill.com/2021/04/the-irish-citizen-army-james-connolly.html

St. Lawrence O’Toole Pipe Band: https://slotpb.com/about.html

1913 – A Policeman’s Lot and Murphy’s Law. Talk given at Garda Historical Society at Store Street Station, August 29th 2013  and Dublin Castle at Police Memorabilia Exhibition, November 16th, 2013 (speaker’s name not listed). https://1913committee.ie/blog/?p=1800

1Jim Larkin, a migrant and union organiser from Liverpool, had formed the ITGWU as a split from the British-based National Union of Dock Labourers after serious clashes with the latter’s General Secretary, ?????? Sexton (also an Irish nationalist). Larkin was very popular with the ITGWU’s members but much less so with other union leaders around Dublin.

2Not least the editorial and management boards of the Irish Independent, owned by William Martin Murphy, leader of the union-busting consortium.

3An armed police force under central State control, like the Guardia Civil (Spain), Carabinieri (Italy) and similar in France and Turkey.

4A Policeman’s Lot and Murphy’s Law. https://1913committee.ie/blog/?p=1800

5James Nolan and John Byrne, which Wikipedia has for years erroneously recorded as killed the subsequent day in another DMP riot in O’Connell Street, known as Bloody Sunday (1913).

6South-eastwards along Townsend Street towards Ringsend and Northwards towards Corporation Street in the Montgomery (Monto) Street area. There the residents defended the strikers and attacked the police, an example of class solidarity for which they paid soon afterwhen a DMP force paid them a visit, smashing household furniture and ornaments and beating John McDonagh. Paralysed from the waist down and in bed, McDonagh was unable to effectively defend himself and when his wife attempted to do so, she also was beaten and McDonagh died shortly afterwards in Jervis Street Hospital. (see Police Retaliation [sic] in A Policeman’s Lot and Murphy’s Law https://1913committee.ie/blog/?p=1800)

7See a number of entries, including Wikipedia on Bloody Sunday Dublin 1913. Though some of those claim the deaths of James Nolan and Patrick Byrne were caused then, in fact it was the previous day that they received their fatal wounds from the police. Unmentioned in most is the case of Fianna Éireann youth Patsy O’Connor, knocked unconscious as he gave first aid to another victim of the police. Patsy O’Connor suffered repeated headaches thereafter and died on 15th June 1915 at the age of 18. https://1913committee.ie/blog/?p=2293

8https://www.nli.ie/1916/exhibition/en/content/stagesetters/other/jimlarkin/index.pdf

9https://www.connollybooks.org/product/irishcitizenarmy

10I state this qualification despite Connolly’s remark in Workers’ Republic, 30 October 1915: Hitherto the workers of Ireland have fought as parts of the armies led by their masters, never as a member of any army officered, trained and inspired by men of their own class. Now, with arms in their hands, they propose to steer their own course, to carve their own future.

Constance Markievicz and Katherine Lynn were officers in the ICA but neither were born into the working class.

11See https://cartlann.org/dicilimt/2022/05/ConstitutionOfTheIrishCitizenArmy.pdf

12I am not unaware that a significant number of individuals and organisations claiming to be Irish socialist Republicans currently spend hardly any time at all discussing the socialist organisation of society.

“NO TO NATO” PROTEST AT DUTCH AND GERMAN WARSHIPS IN DUBLIN PORT

On By rebelbreezeIn Current Event Report, Ireland, Irish Left, Irish Republicanism, National Liberation, National Sovereignty, NATO, OTANLeave a comment

Clive Sulish

(Reading time: 2 mins.)

Dutch and German warships docked in Dublin’s Liffey Port were met by anti-NATO protesters late Saturday afternoon with banners, an Irish Tricolour and Starry Plough flags and shouts through a loudhailer with passing traffic beeping in solidarity.

The huge Dutch naval landing platform Johann De Witt was immediately visible on the north Liffey quay just on the seaward side of the Tom Clarke Bridge and the protesters took their stand there in front of the security gates, visible to airport and south and northbound Dublin traffic.

German NATO frigate FGS Hamburg entering Dublin Bay, bound for the Port security gate. (Photo cred: Afloat)

The Dutch ship was flying Holland and NATO flags. Among the slogans the protesters periodically chanted were: No NATO troops in Ireland! NATO, NATO, NATO: Out, out, out! From Belfast to Killarney – We don’t want your NATO Army! NATO imperialism – Out of Ireland!

Anti-Nato stickers being affixed to the Dublin Port security gate. (Photo: R.Breeze)

The chants grew louder as military personnel (in street clothes) approached or emerged from the security gates behind the protesters but there was no physical confrontation from either side. No Gardaí attended either, unlike the protest at Ireland’s NATO HQ in April this year.

On that occasion Gardaí pepper-sprayed the peaceful protesters and broke the ankle of one of their number, in addition to arresting them. Some of the arrested were bailed and are due to appear in court in Dublin on 23rd February 2026.

Anti-Nato protesters, the Dutch NATO naval ship clearly visible in background. (Photo: R.Breeze)

NATO was originally claimed to be a western European military defensive force against the Soviet Bloc. However, after the Bloc’s collapse, NATO continued to expand until it has now an additional 17 member states (and the threat of Ukraine joining led to the current war with Russia).

The individual western member states, for example the US, UK, France have been waging imperialist wars for decades. But the NATO military alliance’s forces also fought imperialist wars in a number of countries: Bosnia, Kossovo, Afghanistan and Libya.

Anti-Nato protesters. (Photo: R.Breeze)

The protest on Saturday was organised at very short notice by Action for Palestine Ireland and Anti-Imperialist Action Ireland. Many passing vehicles, both private, company and taxi sounded their horns in support and also gave a thumbs-up or clenched fist salute.

Clearly the protest context was not only a lack of welcome for a member of the western imperialist military alliance but also fears that the Irish ruling class wants to join that alliance too and is currently trying to remove the ‘Triple Lock’ impeding its move in that direction.

End.

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Anti-Nato protesters on Saturday, the Dutch NATO naval ship clearly visible in background. (Photo: R.Breeze)

SOURCES

https://afloat.ie/port-news/naval-visits/item/69129-dutch-navy-visits-dublin-port-with-german-frigate-also-in-capital

https://ondisc.nd.edu/news-media/news/the-addition-of-nato-members-over-time-1949-2023/

https://www.tni.org/en/publication/saving-the-triple-lock

SAVAGE GARDA REPRESSION OF PALESTINE SOLIDARITY ACTION

On By rebelbreezeIn Current Affairs Comment, Current Event Report, Internationalist Solidarity, Ireland, Irish Left, Irish Republicanism, Journalism, Mass Media Criticism, Police Violence, Political Analysis, US Imperialism1 Comment

Diarmuid Breatnach

(Reading time: 4 mins.)

PALESTINE SOLIDARITY MARCHERS PEPPER-SPRAYED AND BATONED WITHOUT WARNING.

An action on Saturday in an attempt to stop the genocide of Palestinians was brutally repressed by Gardaí pepper-spraying the marchers without warning before beating many with truncheons and threatening others, then issuing a lying statement.

On Saturday (4th October) the Ireland Palestine Solidarity Campaign had organised another of their monthly National marches from the Garden of Remembrance through Dublin city centre to Leinster House1 but a much smaller section departed for Dublin Port.

View of a section of the Palestine solidarity march on Saturday proceeding along O’Connell Street. (Photo: D.Breatnach)

In the context of port protest shut-downs in various parts of the world, Italy in particular, the intention seemingly was to blockade traffic into and out of Dublin Port; also in the context of the Irish state being a huge importer of Israeli products, second only to the USA.

The shut-down marchers left the main march at O’Connell Bridge and proceeded along the Liffey quays heading for the Port as IPSC stewards tried to discourage anyone from joining them, stooping as low as to accuse them over a loudspeaker of splitting the march and of betraying Gaza.

There had been a number of Port traffic blockade actions recently, all of which had ended without violence. No doubt the Irish ruling class were worried that they might escalate and spread and gave orders to the Gardaí to attack the marchers and to terrorise any others from emulating them.

As the marchers reached the Public Order Unit police line and stopped, some of the police began to push marchers, almost immediately some Gardai standing in a second row starting to pepper-spray marchers over the heads of their colleagues but the wind pushed some of it back in their faces.

POU Gardaí to the right of the crowd then drew their truncheons and started to strike viciously at the marchers, who were now pushing into the Garda line. Eventually the marchers broke, people staggering off to the side, eyes streaming, unsteady on their feet. Even then, they were pursued.2

At least two marchers were arrested at the event and another in a solidarity demonstration outside the Criminal Court building that evening. The charges include Public Order charges and resisting arrest. Once again, marchers complained they were forcibly strip-searched in the police cells.3

CAPITALIST MEDIA

RTÉ online’s report was clearly totally based on a Garda statement without any attempt to investigate, although video footage was soon circulating on social media. Try to contact participants for their side of the story? See whether there were photos or video clips available? Don’t be silly!

The Garda account is totally at variance with what can be seen on the video, as has often been the case. One recalls the assault with a length of wood by a fascist on an LGBT campaigner who was observing a National Party rally outside Leinster House and a Garda told her to leave the area.

The Garda statement to the media on that occasion was that there had been no incidents but unfortunately for them there was ample video recording of the event, the assault, the victim’s head streaming with blood, the senior Garda ordering her away … and they had to change their story.

A few weeks prior to that, unarmed antifascists counter-protesting an anti-masking protest organised by fascists on Custom House Quay were attacked by fascists wielding clubs and metal bars. As the antifascists fought back, the POU charged in and attacked the antifascists!

On that occasion too their statement to the press completely omitted that event.

The media is doing a good job of exposing themselves as not only keeping to the imperialist pro-Zionist discourse about events in Gaza and the rest of West Asia, but keeping also to the home front discourse that big business and cops are good and protesters a problem.

We appear in the Irish state to be entering a period of Garda repression backed up by media acquiescence, similar to what was passed through in the 1980s, with Garda repression on the street but also operations by the ‘Heavy Gang’, raiding and beating up detainees to obtain a ‘confession’.

The liberal civil rights sector was quite active then calling out Garda violence, framing of innocent people and judicial collusion. There is much less of that liberal resistance to be seen these days.

A rare enough sight – an Irish-language placard on Saturday’s march in Dublin. (Photo: D.Breatnach)

THE IPSC MARCH

The IPSC went ahead on Saturday with many thousands on their march, demonstrating once again, as over the past two years, that the Irish public is overwhelmingly in support of the Palestinians and totally against the genocide and ethnic cleansing by the Zionist state.

Over the years, the IPSC’s activities have contributed to that awareness and sympathy in Irish society but so too have the actions of the Israeli governments and their armed forces, captured in photos and videos by journalists and ordinary Palestinians and posted on social media.

But Israel has not ceased its genocide; not one Palestinian life has been saved by the marches. The Irish Government has not ceased any of its concrete collusive actions with Israel. The imports continue, the armaments fly through Irish airspace, Shannon airport continues militarised.4

The IPSC’s Chairperson admitted as much, speaking at their rally near Leinster House: “Simon Harris has called Israel’s actions ‘genocide’, ‘unconscionable’ and ‘unacceptable’ — yet the Irish Government is barely lifting a finger to end Ireland’s deep complicity in this genocide.”

A section of the Palestine solidarity main march in Dawson Street, while thousands more are already in Molesworth Street (out of sight to the right of photo). (Photo: D.Breatnach)

Had the IPSC mobilised the thousands to march down to the docks, it would have been a very different story on Saturday. Something to make the Government really reconsider its collusion. The IPSC could still do that. But will it? We can hope but current practice tells us otherwise.

Then others will have to do the deed. Others like Mothers Against Genocide, Action for Palestine Ireland and Saoirse Don Phalaistín, for example. And they will continue to be assaulted and arrested, facing fines, restrictions on freedom of movement and … ultimately, no doubt … jail.

Apart from the baton and pepper-spraying injuries, one of the marchers is reported to have a broken arm. Two were arrested at the Port and one at the court solidarity protest Saturday evening. Today others attended court in solidarity with one of the arrested (who had abrasions on her cheek).

We should be part of these disruptive actions and if we are not, for whatever reason, the least we can do is to call out those who denounce them and to organise support for those who are, in and out of the courts.

End.

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Gathering outside the Dublin Court in solidarity with one of the assaulted and arrested Port marchers. Her case was postponed. (Photo: D.Breatnach)

FOOTNOTES

1Sometimes another Government building.

2All of that is evident from the video footage shot from that side of the event. Violent shoving by Gardaí sent some people to the ground, including a disabled woman.

3There was outrage expressed when Gardaí compelled detainees at a Mothers Against Genocide protest outside Leinster House to strip in the police cells. The Minister for Justice claimed that Garda CCTV footage refuted those claims but strangely, it appears that no CCTV footage was available when lawyers asked to view it. https://www.instagram.com/mothersagainstgenocide/p/DJ_nOewxQAp/

4And the Irish Central Bank intends, after a pause, to offer Israeli war bonds once more.

SOURCES

Capitalist media: https://www.rte.ie/news/dublin/2025/1004/1536847-two-arrested-after-protest-near-dublins-port-tunnel/

https://www.breakingnews.ie/ireland/thousands-call-for-sanctions-on-israel-during-dublin-rally-1815092.html

Citizen video of the POU attack at the Port: Instagram

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

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

Diarmuid Breatnach

(Reading time main text: 4 mins.)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

MERL

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The 5 Demands:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

FOOTNOTES

SOURCES

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

13Ibid.

14Various sources

“WHEN MY COUNTRY TAKES ITS PLACE AMONG THE NATIONS OF THE EARTH”

On By rebelbreezeIn Cultural Comment, History, irish history, Irish Left, Irish Republicanism, National Liberation, Political Prisoners, Song, Torture, Uncategorized, USALeave a comment

Diarmuid Breatnach

(Reading time: 3 mins.)

Dublin Political History Tours Facebook page reminds us of the 20th September anniversary of the public execution on of “Bold Robert Emmet, the darling of Erin”, leader of the unsuccessful Republican insurrection in Dublin on 23rd July 1803.

Coloured drawing: The executioner holds up Robert Emmet’s head to the crowd, sections of which demonstrate their repugnance of the act and are repressed English soldiers on horseback. (Sourced: Internet)

I reproduce the Dublin Political History Tours text (reformatted for R. Breeze):

On Saturday we passed by the anniversary of the execution by the English occupation forces of Robert Emmet, United Irishman. Emmet had been condemned to death for planning an insurrection for Irish self-determination which the English Occupation called ‘treason’.

Leaving behind in Kilmainham Gaol his comrade Anne Devlin, who had endured torture and death of family members without giving the authorities any information, Emmet was taken to the front of St. Catherine’s Church.2

(This building is) on Thomas Street in Dublin’s Liberties area on the west side of the city centre. The site chosen was sending a message to the populace of the area that had nationalist and republican sympathies.

There, in front of a huge crowd and many soldiers, Emmet was hanged and then beheaded, the executioner holding up the dripping head to the crowd. His body was later returned to the Gaol before being later buried in Bully’s Acres in the grounds of the Royal Hospital Kilmainham.

Emmet’s corpse was later disinterred in secret and reburied elsewhere by friends or family and, despite a number of sites being speculated, its current location is unknown.

There is a monument to the execution inside the grounds of the St. Catherine’s building and a stone plaque on the wall outside it.

The monument inside the ground at the front of St. Catherine’s Church, Thomas Street, Dublin. (Source: Kilmainham Tales)

Robert Emmet was very popular in Ireland at the time and his memory is still. A statue in his honour stands in Dublin’s Stephens Green, a replica of another two at locations in the United States.

Anne Devlin endured three years in Kilmainham Gaol and according to Richard Madden (1798 – 5 February 1886), chronicler of the United Irishmen who sought her out, was followed everywhere in public by police.

(who were) observing anyone who she spoke to, as a result of which many were afraid to speak to her. Her body lies in Glasnevin Cemetery.

“Bold Robert Emmet” is a traditional ballad in the martyr’s honour and “Anne Devlin” also has a much more recent song in hers by Pete St.John.

(quoted passages end)

In the 1916 Proclamation of Independence, “the right of the people of Ireland to the ownership of Ireland” is proclaimed and that “six times in the past 300 years they have asserted it in arms”, probably referring to insurrections of 1641, 1689, 1798, 1803, 1848 and 1867.3

Historians have mostly dismissed the 1803 uprising as never likely to succeed but a minority have rated the preparations highly, including the innovations of signal rockets and folding pike handle for concealed personal carrying.

RH Madden, the first historian of the United Irishmen was of the opinion that the insurrection attempt was engineered by the English Occupation’s administration in Dublin Castle in order to justify continued repression of Irish republicanism and to eliminate some leaders.

Generally historians have tended not to give much credence to Madden on that issue but it is certain that the Occupation had a network of spies in operation in Ireland and that some had penetrated Emmet’s conspiracy.

Emmet on the scaffold with St. Catherine’s Church behind, the executioner beside him, the crowd in the street and many English soldiers, on foot and on horseback. The illustration was employed by Dublin Political History Tours but easily sourced on the Internet.

However it is not for the manner of the 1803 insurrection that Emmett has been fondly remembered in Ireland to this day 123 years later – and abroad for decades after his death4 – but for the calm manner in which he faced his enemies, including his executioner and for his eloquence at his trial.

Past insurrections contain lessons for us today and a serious evaluation should be attempted, perhaps with a number of submissions from historians of different opinions on the matter, to deal with questions around Emmet’s return from France and the planning of the insurrection in Ireland,.

For us today however, whether Republicans or more generally anti-colonialists and anti-imperialists, it is also necessary to revere the memory of revolutionary action for a democratic Irish Republican and to uphold his and Anne Devlin’s spirit of defiance in resistance.

End.

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Statue monument of Robert Emmet in Washington DC, a copy of which stands in St. Stephens Green, looking across the road to his erstwhile home and other copies stand in Emmetsburg, Iowa and Golden Gate Park, San Francisco, California. Those in the USA were all cast by the artist Jerome Connor between 1916 and 1919. (Photo sourced: Internet)
Statue monument in Rathfarnham dedicated to Anne Devlin from Wicklow, a member of the United Irishmen conspiracy, tortured and jailed but never gave her captors any information. Sculptor: Clodagh Emoe (Gracies, Maria, for bringing this to my attention).

FOOTNOTES

1From Emmet’s famous speech from the dock of the courthouse in Green Street that not until then should his epitaph be written. I have no doubt that Emmet meant “nation-states of the world” because Ireland was in his time more than what we would understand today from the vague term of “country” – it was clearly, though under foreign occupation, already a nation with its own unique culture and a long history. She has yet to take that place to which Emmet referred and aspired for her.

2Note that was the Anglican St. Catherine’s Church, as a Catholic St. Catherine’s is also located not far away on Meath St. The Anglican church was closed in the 1960s but later reopened and reconsecrated as an Anglican Church. The interior seems very untypical of Anglican churches. Emmet was raised in the Anglican faith.

3Believed to refer to, in sequence: the Irish and Norman Irish clans in the Confederation’s uprising, the Williamite War’s, United Irishmen’s, Robert Emmets’, Young Irelanders’, the Fenians’. Coincidentally, the large monument to uprisings in Ireland erected by the National Graves Association in the St. Paul’s section of Glasnevin Cemetery also includes only six dates but they are of Republican risings only, beginning with 1798 and ending with 1916.

4I read somewhere that even in England Radicals would read Emmet’s speech as a high point of their events including formal dinners.

SOURCES

https://www.facebook.com/profile.php

“A GREAT NIGHT” AT SECOND SOLIDARITY SESSIONS

On By rebelbreezeIn Cultural Comment, Current Event Report, Gaeilge, Internationalist Solidarity, Ireland, irish history, Irish Language, Irish Left, Irish Republicanism, Poetry, Political Prisoners, Resistance Art, Song, Song in Struggle, Traditions & Folk CustomLeave a comment

Clive Sulish

(Reading time: 3 mins.)

An Irish punk rock band, Mongolian throat-singers, a poet and Irish folk singers all performed at Solidarity Sessions No.2 to a good crowd in the International Bar, in in Dublin City centre Wicklow Street on Wednesday 17th..

An Irish and international resistance theme in decor was presented by flags of the Starry Plough and Palestine with Saoirse don Phalaistín as stage backdrop, while flags respectively of Cumann na mBan and Basque Antifa concealed the original decor’s ubiquitous photos of Michael Collins.

Flesh B. Bugged performing (Photo: Dermo Photography)

A PFLP1 flag was also taped to a wall. Hand-written signs on the stairs leading to the basement venue, alternatively in Irish and in English, asked for quiet/ ciúnas for the performance/ racaireacht. The Irish language was present too in some of the performances to follow.

MC for the night, Jimi Cullen, himself a singer-songwriter activist told the crowd the purpose of the organising collective was “to build a community of resistance and solidarity with our struggles and with struggles around the world” through culture in a social atmosphere.

Before the crowd — a flag temporarily changing the decor. (Photo: R. Breeze)

Themes of love, nature and emigration were covered in song; however the dominant theme was resistance – to prison regimes, foreign occupation, fascism, class oppression, racial discrimination – and solidarity with the struggles of others, near and far.

Diarmuid Breatnach, singing acapella kicked off the night with a selection of songs from the Irish resistance tradition and a couple of short ones from the USA civil rights movement. Some of the melodies however, of particular interest perhaps to Back Home in Derry2, were his own originals.

Diarmuid Breatnach performing (Photo: Dermo Photography)

Eoghan Ó Loingsigh, accompanying himself on guitar followed with more material from the same tradition, dedicating one to his late IRA father. A folk song Ó Loingsigh announced as ‘non-political’ performed acapella turned out to be very much political but on the issue of social class.

Áine Hayden followed with poems on a range of topics, from swimming in the Royal Canal during the Covid shut-down, deleting a personal relationship to a dedication to comedian and activist Mahmoud Sharab murdered with family in a “safe zone” tent by the Israeli Occupation Force.

Eoghan Ó Loingsigh performing (Photo: Dermo Photography)

The three performers were all introduced as activists as well as artists and the mostly-young crowd, apparently containing a strong representation of political and social activists, responded well to the performers with applause, yells of encouragement and often joining in on choruses.

More people arrived before, during and even after the break – including an elderly couple who had just arrived from the USA and could only pay in dollars but were admitted for free. Leaving later with thanks they promised a contribution to Palestine solidarity when they got home.

Before the crowd — a Cumann na mBan flag temporarily changing the decor. (Photo: Dermo Photography)

Also an activist, Ru O’Shea sang an Irish, Scottish, French and Italian selection, accompanied by bouzouki and guitar and performed a spoken word piece with a refrain of ‘Éire under attack’ before schooling the audience to sing the chorus of Robbie Burns’ Green Grow the Rushes Oh!

Áine Hayden performing (Photo: Dermo Photography)

Nomads were the next act. Composed of two Mongolian musicians playing violins in the style of the viola and a Dubliner modulating on a sound deck they were unusual enough but it was the amazing throat-singing of one of the Mongolians that had the audience enthralled.

It was amazing to learn that there are three different kinds of Mongolian throat-singing and then to hear them performed, one of which was a kind of whistling with a vibrating bass undertone wavering through it. The applause, particularly when they concluded, was rapturous and sustained.

Before the crowd — flags temporarily changing the decor. (Photo: R. Breeze)
Ru O’Shea performing (Photo: Dermo Photography)

The evening’s entertainment concluded with Flesh B. Bugged, a punk rock Irish duo of bass guitar and drums with spoken voice pieces in Irish from the bass guitar player. Their volume and beat got some of the crowd up and dancing and the wider crowd responded well to them too.

MC Jimi Cullen went up on stage for the last time to thank venue, performers, audience, doorkeepers, poster designers Ríona and Azzy O’Connor, also Diarmuid for original artwork. At a prompt from the crowd Cullen also got a round of applause from the audience for his MCing.

The Mongolian musicians of Nomads performing (Photo: D.Breatnach)

Remarking they’d “had a great night” and encouraging his listeners to follow the organising collective on its Instagram page, Cullen told them that details of Solidarity Sessions No.3 and the collective’s decisions on recipients of donations from money raised would be posted on there.

Diarmuid Breatnach told the audience that each individual could help build a community of resistance through attending the Solidarity Sessions and encouraging others to attend. He welcomed any ‘competion’ from solidarity sessions around the country.

Bass guitarist of Flesh B. Bugged (Photo: Dermo Photography)

The downstairs area of the International Bar is not perhaps the best layout for this kind of event but it worked out well enough for the collective, audience and performers on the night. Their next event will be back at their launch venue,The Cobblestone, Smithfield on Thursday 30th October.

End.

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The Mongolian throat-singer in Nomads (Photo: Dermo Photography)

FOOTNOTES

1People’s Front for the Liberation of Palestine, one of two specifically secular armed resistance organisations in Palestine.

2Irish mega folk singer Christy Moore had organised Bobby Sands’ poem into song to the melody of The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald by Gordon Lightfoot.

USEFUL LINKS

@solidaritysessionseire