Tag: Irish Republicans

COPS, COMMISSIONER AND REPRESSION

On By rebelbreezeIn Capitalism, Current Affairs Comment, irish history, Police Violence, Political Analysis, Workers' Struggles1 Comment

Diarmuid Breatnach

(Reading time main text: 9 mins.)

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 though for 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

Minister McEntee & Commissioner Drew Harris speaking recently (Photo cred: Niall Carson/ PA)

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.

End.

FOOTNOTES

1https://www.irishtimes.com/crime-law/2023/09/13/huge-majority-of-rank-and-file-gardai-vote-no-confidence-in-garda-commissioner/

2And in that struggle, as is usually the case, the police defended the established capitalist authority and attacked the workers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haymarket_affair

3The Larkin Ballad about the 1913 Lockout.

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.

https://www.marxists.org/archive/connolly/1915/rcoi/index.htm (Chapter V – Belfast and its Problems)

5Especially on Irish Republican homes

6Their centre of operations during the Civil War and for some time afterwards was Oriel House, in Dublin.

7In 1936 the Blueshirts also recruited volunteers for Franco’s fascist-military coup against the elected Popular Front government in Spain.

8https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fine_Gael#:~:text=Fine%20Gael%20was%20founded%20on,the%20legacy%20of%20Michael%20Collins.

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.

10https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eamon_Broy

11The latter until homosexuality was de-criminalised.

12https://sallinsinquirynow.ie/

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

16https://www.rte.ie/archives/category/society/2017/0425/870082-reclaim-the-streets-protest/

17https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/aug/10/shell-pipeline-protests-county-mayo
https://www.irishexaminer.com/news/arid-30317773.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.

20https://rebelbreeze.com/2020/08/31/there-will-be-another-day/

21https://the-beacon.ie/2021/06/21/national-party-member-pleads-guilty-to-assault-on-lgbtqia-activist-izzy-kamikaze/

22https://rebelbreeze.com/2023/07/14/helicopter-and-massive-gardai-numbers-for-what/

23https://www.dublinlive.ie/news/dublin-news/four-arrested-after-building-occupied-27305837

24https://www.irishlegal.com/articles/watchdog-raises-concerns-over-garda-conduct-at-eviction

25https://www.dublinlive.ie/news/dublin-news/garda-chief-under-pressure-after-15145154

26https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garda_whistleblower_scandal

27https://www.newstalk.com/news/domestic-and-sexual-violent-complaints-against-gardai-on-the-rise-gsoc-1473416#:~

28https://rebelbreeze.com/2023/08/26/protesting-death-of-youth-at-hands-of-garda/

29https://www.irishtimes.com/crime-law/2022/07/15/at-least-228-fatalities-in-or-following-garda-custody-over-past-15-years-figures-show/

30https://www.irishexaminer.com/news/arid-30799234.html

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).

SOURCES

https://www.irishtimes.com/crime-law/2023/09/13/huge-majority-of-rank-and-file-gardai-vote-no-confidence-in-garda-commissioner/#:~

Helen McEntee and GRA: https://www.breakingnews.ie/ireland/mcentee-will-not-direct-gardai-on-when-to-work-amid-roster-dispute-1533439.html

Sinn Féin want McEntee proactive on Garda dispute: https://www.breakingnews.ie/ireland/sinn-fein-condemns-governments-hands-off-approach-on-policing-1532379.html

https://www.breakingnews.ie/ireland/six-gardai-suspended-from-the-force-for-over-four-years-1533424.html

https://www.garda.ie/en/about-us/our-history/garda-commissioners-since-1922/

Garda Commissioners

Eoin O’Duffy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eoin_O%27Duffy

Ned Broy and “Broy’s Harriers”: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eamon_Broy

Home

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

https://www.newstalk.com/news/domestic-and-sexual-violent-complaints-against-gardai-on-the-rise-gsoc-1473416#:~

Gardaí and the Far-Right and Fascists: https://rebelbreeze.com/2020/08/31/there-will-be-another-day/
https://the-beacon.ie/2021/06/21/national-party-member-pleads-guilty-to-assault-on-lgbtqia-activist-izzy-kamikaze/

Gardaí supporting evictions, attacking housing activists: https://www.irishlegal.com/articles/watchdog-raises-concerns-over-garda-conduct-at-eviction
https://www.dublinlive.ie/news/dublin-news/garda-chief-under-pressure-after-15145154
https://www.irishlegal.com/articles/watchdog-raises-concerns-over-garda-conduct-at-eviction
https://rebelbreeze.com/2023/07/14/helicopter-and-massive-gardai-numbers-for-what/

Garda violence at Reclaim the Streets protest: https://www.rte.ie/archives/category/society/2017/0425/870082-reclaim-the-streets-protest/

Garda violence and corruption at Corrib Pipeline struggle: https://www.irishexaminer.com/news/arid-30317773.html
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/aug/10/shell-pipeline-protests-county-mayo

50 YEARS OF DAMAGE – VICTIMS SEEK INDEPENDENT STATUTORY INQUIRY

On By rebelbreezeIn Civil Rights, Current Event Report, History, Human Rights, Ireland, Irish Left, Irish Republicanism, Police Violence, Political PrisonersLeave a comment

Clive Sulish

(Reading time main report: 6 mins.)

“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 Stanley of 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 Justice said 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.”

FOOTNOTES

1 Michael Plunkett died last year; his memorial services were reported on in Rebel Breeze: https://rebelbreeze.com/2022/05/04/death-of-a-retired-warrior/

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.

6 The title of the parliament of the Irish state.

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?

SOURCES & USEFUL LINKS

Sallins Men deserve independent inqury – human rights organisations

https://www.irishtimes.com/ireland/social-affairs/2023/09/19/human-rights-groups-call-for-inquiry-into-sallins-train-robbery-trial-in-the-1970s/

https://www.irishlegal.com/articles/irish-government-urged-to-establish-inquiry-into-sallins-train-robbery

TV & Radio:

https://x.com/nuachttg4/status/1704558300228980980?s=48

https://www.rte.ie/news/nuacht/2023/0919/1406193-imscrudu-reachtuil-faoi-iomrall-ceartais-cailiuil-a-eileamh/

https://www.rte.ie/radio/radio1/drivetime/programmes/2023/0919/1406233-drivetime-tuesday-19-september-2023/ (from 1.39 minutes)

The Campaign site: https://sallinsinquirynow.ie/

Timeline of events: https://sallinsinquirynow.ie/timeline/

Cormac Breatnach’s multimedia production about the case: https://www.thewhistleblower.ie/

CONCESSIONS TO COLONIAL LOYALISM

On By rebelbreezeIn Civil Rights, Cultural Comment, Current Affairs Comment, Human Rights, Ireland, Irish Republicanism, National Liberation, Religious Sectarianism, Song, Traditions & Folk Custom1 Comment

News & Views No.8 – Diarmuid Breatnach
(Reading time: 2 mins.)

According to media reports, Taoiseach Leo Varadkar said he expects to see a united Ireland in his lifetime. I think he’s wrong but he’s entitled to his opinion. However, some of his following remarks are objectionable and need to be challenged.

Varadkar claimed that in a united Ireland “there will be roughly a million people who are British.” That is false. There may – or may not – be a million IRISH PEOPLE who consider themselves British in a united Ireland, we’ll see. But they will be IRISH CITIZENS.

And they should have equal rights with all other citizens. They should have an equal right to vote, to housing, to their language, without any special restrictions, not to mention pogroms – in other words, nothing like the way their statelet treated its large Catholic minority.

A British soldier stands in front of a section of the burned out houses of Catholics in Bombay Street, Belfast in 1969 (which the Army did not try to prevent Loyalists burning). The arson was the Loyalist response to demands of Catholics for civil rights (while the colonial police response was batons, bullets and gas). (Photo source: Clonard Residents’ Association)

I agree with Varadkar that the quality of a country should be judged “by the way it treats its minorities.” So Varadkar, how did and does your Gombeen State treat its probably oldest ethnic minority? You know, the Irish Travellers?

It is true that “a Republican ballad, a nice song to sing, easy words to learn for some people can be deeply offensive to some people.” Presumably he means to Unionists and Loyalists. Yes, and antifascist and anti-racist songs can be deeply offensive to fascists and racists.

It is also true that some people in the Southern States sing songs about the Confederacy and Robert E. Lee and call it their culture. And the comparison fits – but not with Republicans but with Loyalists!

One of the charming annual expressions of Loyalist culture: a huge bonfire to burn Irish Tricolours and representations of Catholicism. Palestinian flags and representations of Celtic FC are frequently burned too. Slogans such as KAT (‘Kill All Teagues [i.e Catholics]) are often displayed also. (Photo source: Wikipedia)

It’s not Irish Republicans who spread racism and sectarianism: the Republican creed came into existence precisely against sectarianism. And we know Varadkar actually knows that because not long ago he made some remarks about the wide embrace of the Irish Tricolour.

The Irish Tricolour: a flag presented to revolutionary Irish Republicans by revolutionary French Republican women in Paris in 1848. Not a flag of monarchism, sectarianism or collusion with imperialism or colonialism.

While we uphold Republican principles we don’t have to apologise to anyone, least of all in our own country, Varadkar. It’s you and your party (and the rest of them serving the Gombeen class who threw away independence and slaughtered Irish Republicans) who need to be ashamed.

Leo Varadkar, Taoiseach (Prime Minister) of the current Coalition Government, who made the remarks this week. (Photo sourced: Internet)

People living in Ireland can think and feel what they like, good or bad. But in public, we will celebrate the valuable things in our history and culture. And we’ll do so proudly without apology to anyone.

On the other hand, public displays of Orange sectarianism, racism, homophobia, fascism and anti-LGBT targeting won’t be tolerated in an independent, reunited Ireland. Not for one minute.

End.

SOURCES:

https://www.breakingnews.ie/ireland/taoiseach-believes-there-will-be-a-united-ireland-in-his-lifetime-1524031.html

INTERNATIONAL DAY OF THE PRISONER – DUBLIN

On By rebelbreezeIn Basque Country, Civil Rights, Current Affairs Comment, Current Event Report, Human Rights, Imperialism, Internationalist Solidarity, Ireland, Irish Left, Irish Republicanism, National Liberation, Palestine, Political PrisonersLeave a comment

Clive Sulish

(Reading time: mins.)

Socialist republicans and communists gathered on a traffic island in Dublin’s city centre to mark the International Day of the Prisoner. They flew flags to represent prisoners in Ireland (‘Starry Plough’), the Basque Country and Palestine.

They also displayed a number of placards.

(Photo: IAIC).

The choice of location, apart from being passed by road traffic in three directions, was because of the presence there of the Universal Links on Human Rights memorial sculpture with an eternal flame, commissioned by the Amnesty International organisation.

A plaque near the sculpture bears the following words: “The candle burns not for us but for all those whom we failed to rescue from prison. Who were tortured. Who were kidnapped. Who disappeared. That is what the candle is for.”

Plaque in the ground on the approach to the sculpture. (Photo: IAIC).

Somewhat ironically, one of the placards carried the words: “Amnesty International, do Irish Republican prisoners not have human rights too?” Irish Republicans have long complained that the organisation in question does not raise any issues with regard to Irish political prisoners.

Some have indicated as a possible reason or part-reason the location of the head office of Amnesty International being based in London, capital city of the occupying power. Its interventions on Ireland even during three decades of war in the colony have been very few indeed.

Other placards displayed referred to political prisoners from the liberation wars in India and in the Philippines, the innocent Craigavon Two still in jail and ongoing internment through refusal of bail to Republicansappearing before the no-jury special courts in both administrations.

Some leaflets were distributed about ongoing internment in Ireland through long remands in custody of Republican activists. Between convicted and awaiting trial there are close to 50 political prisoners in jails in Ireland between both administrations.

The Universal Links sculpture by Tony O’Malley (welding by Jim O’Connor) commissioned by Amnesty International. (Photo: IAIC)

The Zionist Israeli state holds 5,000 political prisoners (almost all Palestinian), of which over 1,132 are not even charged (‘administrative detention’). There are 33 female Palestinian political prisoners and 160 child prisoners. Philippines has 803 political prisoners.

The Spanish and French states hold between them around 170 Basque political prisoners.

The event to mark International Day of the Prisoner was organised by the Ireland Anti-Internment Campaign and a spokesperson gave a short explanation on video of the reason for the event with the human rights sculpture in the background.

End.

Some of the flags displayed (Photo: IAIC).
Passer-by in conversation with a leafleter. (Photo: IAIC).
(Photo: IAIC).

PLAQUE UNVEILED ON DUBLIN HOME OF JAMES CONNOLY

On By rebelbreezeIn Current Affairs Comment, Current Event Report, History commemoration, Ireland, Irish Left, Irish Republicanism, National Liberation, Police Violence, Workers' StrugglesLeave a comment

Diarmuid Breatnach

(Reading time: 5 mins.)

A new plaque commemorating James Connolly was unveiled on the morning of 31st July on 70 South Lotts, the house to which he returned from New York with his wife Lillie and children in 1910 and lived there until May 1911.

(Photo: D.Breatnach)

Connolly was born and reared in Edinburgh, left school at 10 and worked with his older brother John for the local authority as a carter, lied about his age and name to join the British Army, in which he first saw Ireland and where he met Lillie Reynolds; they were married soon afterwards.

Like his brother, Connolly became a militant socialist and trade unionist and returned to Ireland at the request of socialists to form the Irish Socialist Republican Party, the first socialist party in Ireland but left for the USA when the party failed to recruit significant numbers.

The ISRP’s office was in Middle Abbey Street, across the road from the premises of the Irish Independent, owned by Irish nationalist William Martin Murphy who was to become an arch-enemy from the Lockout and strikes of 1913 onwards1.

Connolly was a historian and journalist as well as a socialist, trade union organiser and a revolutionary. A report in Breaking News on the unveiling infers that he reluctantly committed to the Rising with the Volunteers; in fact, he had been pushing them to rise for months!

Unveiling speeches

The event started late and in rain. Dáithí De Róiste2, Dublin’s current Lord Mayor, opened the proceedings and commented that the plaque on the house was a reminder that Connolly lived a life in some ways like many ordinary Dubliners, living in a Dublin house and walking city streets.

Dublin Mayor Dáithí De Róiste speaking at the event. (Photo: D.Breatnach)
Historian Conor McCabe, who did the research for the plaque, speaking outside No.70. (Photo: D.Breatnach)

Historian Dr Conor McCabe, of Queen’s University Belfast, proposed the plaque as his research established the background that Connolly was living at the address around the time that his most famous work, Labour In Irish History, was first published in book form.

In deference to those in attendance standing in the persistent rain, Conor McCabe kept his speech very short. This was not the case with every speaker.

Joe Cunningham, General Secretary of Siptu3, an amalgamation with other unions of Jim Larkin’s ITGWU which Connolly had led for six years, commented in his speech that it was Connolly who ensured that the interests of working people were incorporated in the 1916 Proclamation4.

Also that, at the ceremony of raising an Irish flag over Liberty Hall5 in April 1916, had declared that “The cause of labour is the cause of Ireland, the cause of Ireland is the cause of labour.”6

Section of crowd in front of No.70 waiting for event to begin. (Photo: D.Breatnach)

Dublin City Council Commemorations & Naming Committee was responsible for the placing of the plaque, in consultation with the house occupants and its chairman, Councillor Mícheál Mac Donncha7 welcomed suggestions from the public for commemoration of people and events.

Sinn Féin Councillor Mac Donncha also commented that James Connolly was a personal hero of his.

Jim Connolly Heron, great-grandson of James Connolly, was called to say a few words and invited family members present to join him in front of the house while he spoke and commented also on the importance of commemorative plaques in protecting historical sites.

He did so in reference to the plaque on a house in Moore Street that had disappeared and come to light in a property developer’s office, raising concerns that had led to the long Moore Street conservation struggle.8

Music and song for the event was performed by The Pullovers ballad group but the amplification system had been removed by then which was a pity as it was needed for the music.

Ballads were performed at the event by The Pullovers band. (Photo: D.Breatnach)

The 1913 Lockout

James Connolly and family returned to Dublin when Jim Larkin9 offered Connolly a post in the young breakaway Irish Transport and General Workers’ Trade Union, which he took up in 1910. Three years later the union was in a fight for its life.

It is sometimes wrongly claimed that the 1913 Lockout was an attempt by employers in Dublin to prevent workers from joining a trade union but there were other unions operating in Dublin during the period and they were accepted by most of the employers.

Apart from the ITGWU recruiting large numbers of ‘unskilled’10 manual workers, it pursued its objectives militantly, using sympathetic solidarity action by other workers to increase the effectiveness of the workers who were in industrial dispute with their employer.

In August 1913 a combination of around 200 employers presented their workforce with a declaration to sign which committed them to having nothing to do with the ITGWU. En masse, the workers refused to sign, were locked out while others struck work and were locked out too.

Right from the beginning the Dublin Metropolitan Police11 attacked the workers on behalf of the employers and in a baton charge on Eden Quay on 30th August fatally wounded two workers, also beating strikers and onlookers the following day in O’Connell Street (‘Bloody Sunday 1913’)12.

As a direct response, Connolly and Larkin set up the Irish Citizen Army as militant response to police attacks, dedicated also to Irish independence and their flag was the gold Starry Plough on a green background,13 which they flew over the Clery’s building in 1916.14

The only Starry Plough flag unfurled at the event, brought by a member of the attendance. (Photo: D.Breatnach)

Comment

The only Starry Plough to be seen at the event was one unfurled during the event independently of the organisers and speakers.

Many who claim to admire Connolly or even to follow his teachings do so on occasion in words but never in action and if Connolly were alive and acting as he did when he was, most of the speakers at the unveiling event would call, if not for his shooting, certainly for his jailing.

SIPTU is much larger than the ITGWU was but it and other unions are much less effective; as a result of the lack of active resistance by the leadership, union membership in Ireland is at an all-time low in modern times. Nor would Connolly have ever agreed to the partition of Ireland.

The Irish Labour Party, which Connolly and Larkin formed in order to give the working class a voice in municipal affairs, has been in coalition government a few times, always capitalist and most often with the right-wing Fine Gael, when they have joined in attacks on the working class.

Joan Burton, while Tánaiste15 of the Labour-Fine Gael coalition government in 2014, complained about working class people being able to afford video-phones and tried to get people jailed for organising an effective protest against her in Jobstown.16 She too attended the unveiling today.

Joan Burton, who attended the event. (Photo: D.Breatnach)

Fianna Fáil is a party of the Gombeen client class and has been in government more often than any other, whereas Sinn Féin in its current incarnation is seeking to replace it with more of the same.

It is a tribute to the memory of James Connolly held so dearly among the working people that these types, so far from Connolly in their reality, are obliged to pay public homage to the man and to his principles while their daily practice is in opposition to all that he stood for.

End.

FOOTNOTES

1An editorial in his newspaper, The Irish Independent (still one of two main newspapers of the state), after a number of British executions of a number of 1916 leaders, called for continued executions of leaders prior to the execution of Connolly and Mac Diarmada, the last of the 14 to be executed in Dublin (Kent was shot in Cork and Casement hanged in London).

2Fianna Fáil elected councilor.

3The largest union in Ireland, owner of the current Liberty Hall which stands on the ground of the original union building.

4There is no record that this is the case but it is a natural and widely-held assumption. It is a fact that the Proclamation was printed in Liberty Hall.

5Cunningham said it was “the Irish flag” which most would think a reference to the Tricolour. However that flag had not yet been accepted by the majority as the primary flag of the nation, which really occurred after the 1916 Rising. The flag raised instead by teenager Molly O’Reilly at Connolly’s request had the golden harp on a green background, the essential flag of Irish Republicans from the 1790s until the 1916 Rising.

6This was not a random statement by Connolly but rather a strategic one; on an earlier occasion he had observed that of all social classes in Ireland, the working class remained “the incorruptible inheritors of the fight for Irish freedom”. Connolly wrote that in his foreword to his work Labour in Irish History, clearly indicating that only the working class could be trusted to lead the national struggle through to successful conclusion.

7A prominent member of one of the groups campaigning for Moore Street Battlefield conservation, the Save Moore Street Trust, of which Mac Donncha is Secretary.

8That occurred at the beginning of this century and the struggle has been ongoing since.

9Like Connolly, also a migrant and member of the Irish diaspora but from Liverpool. He founded the Irish Transport & General Workers’ Union after his departure from the British-based National Union of Dock Labourers, for which for a time he had been chief organiser in Ireland. Most of the NUDL’s members in Ireland left to join the ITGWU but in Belfast there was a division along sectarian lines.

10This is the general appelation for work not requiring long periods of training. However, anybody who has been employed in work of this category soon learns that such work requires skill to achieve the objectives set, to pace oneself and to guard against injury. This is the reason those recruiting for such ‘unskilled’ work prefer ‘experienced workers’, a code for ‘skilled’.

11A police force of the period for Dublin City, most of its members being without firearms, unlike the armed all-Ireland colonial gendarmerie of the Royal Irish Constabulary (of which the Police Service of Northern Ireland is a descendant body). DMP minimum height requirements were 5ft 9” in a city where many working people were of low stature; this disparity gave substantial momentum to the swing of a truncheon.

12The event wrongly named as leading to the death of two workers, whose deaths were caused by the previous day’s police attack on Eden Quay, just by Liberty Hall. However, a previously healthy Fianna Éireann boy, Patsy O’Connor, who was clubbed in the O’Connell Street police riot while he administered first aid to a victim, suffered frequent headaches thereafter and died in 1915 at the age of 18.

13The design has seven stars in the Ursa Mayor configuration, with the design of a plough following the stars and a sword as the ploughshare. There is also a plainer version flown by the Republican Congress of the 1930s, the outline of the Ursa Mayor constellation in white or silver stars alone on a blue background.

14The flag survived the shell explosions and raging fires along the southern half of O’Connell Street and is currently in the Military History Museum, Collins Barracks, Dublin, along with a number of other flags flown by the insurgents during the Rising.

15Title of the Deputy Prime Minister in the Irish government.

16A number of activists from different organisations, including Paul Murphy TD (member of the Irish parliament) were arrested in raids some time later and among the charges was “kidnapping” Burton. The untruthfulness of a number of witnesses for the Prosecution including a senior Garda officer were exposed (ironically by video taken by protesters) and the jury acquitted all the defendants of all charges.

end.

REFERENCE

https://www.breakingnews.ie/ireland/plaque-unveiled-at-james-connollys-former-home-in-east-dublin-1509431.html

Monument for National Army soldiers killed in Civil War unveiled in Dublin

On By rebelbreezeIn British imperialism, Capitalism, Current Affairs Comment, Current Event Report, Guerrilla Action, History, Irish Civil War, irish history, Irish Republicanism, National Liberation, Political AnalysisLeave a comment

News & Views No. 6 (Reading time: 4 mins.)

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.

End.

Source: https://www.breakingnews.ie/ireland/memory-of-fallen-national-army-soldiers-rehabilitated-as-monument-unveiled-1508928.html

LEARNING FROM AND CORRECTING OUR MISTAKES

On By rebelbreezeIn British imperialism, Capitalism, Guerrilla Action, History, Ireland, irish history, Irish Republicanism, National Liberation, Political Analysis1 Comment

Diarmuid Breatnach

(Reading time: 6 mins.)

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: Larry Doherty)

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 struggle was 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.

4Though no-one could fault their physical courage

HELICOPTER AND MASSIVE GARDAÍ NUMBERS – FOR WHAT?

On By rebelbreezeIn Capitalism, Current Affairs Comment, Current Event Report, Housing Struggle, Human Rights, Ireland, Political Analysis3 Comments

Diarmuid Breatnach

(Reading time: 4 mins.)

Late Tuesday night and early hours of Wednesday morning an operation with large numbers of Gardaí and their helicopter circling overhead disturbed residents in the north Dublin city centre area of Berkeley Road and surroundings.

It looked like drug bust, hostage rescue situation or siege, but it was none of those things, instead being an eviction of four housing activists.1

Supporters of the occupation by the RHL gathered at short notice by Berkeley Road during the Garda operation but were roughly pushed far back by Gardaí from the building under attack (Photo: RHL)

The building had been “acquisitioned” by the Revolutionary Housing League which for a couple of years has been occupying buildings lying empty around Dublin in order to house homeless people and to inspire people to take over empty buildings to end the homeless crisis.

One of those buildings was the red-brick building on Eden Quay and corner of Marlborough Street; it had been operated by the Salvation Army as a night shelter for homeless young people but left empty for years after losing funding.

Supporters in front of James Connolly House occupation over a year ago. (Photo: Rebel Breeze)

On 1st May 2022, RHL2 activists ‘acquisitioned’ the building, renamed it James Connolly House and repaired a leak in the roof. In the early morning of 9th June 2022, an estimated 100 Gardaí (some reportedly armed) stormed the building with a Garda helicopter circling overhead.

Two RHL activists performing overnight security on the building were arrested and brought to court, where they declined to be bound over or to give an undertaking that they would not return to the building.

The Salvation Army said that they were renovating the building in order to house Ukrainian refugees. Not only was there no evidence of that in the building when it was occupied but it is empty still, over a year after that eviction3.

Garda evictions have taken place around other acquisitions of empty properties and RHL activists have on each occasion refused to commit to an undertaking not to occupy other properties.

Rather, the RHL has called for empty buildings to be occupied around the country.

The eviction this week

The massive Garda operation this week, including road-blocks, to evict RHL occupants of the Berkeley Road house. (Photo: RHL)

After the eviction in Berkeley Road, four RHL activists were taken to Court where they followed the previous pattern of refusing to be bound over or to promise not to occupy other buildings. Nevertheless they were released with a threat of jail-time if they re-occupied.

The lessee of the building, advertising as Cabhrú and formerly Catholic Housing Aid Society (Chas), has faced allegations of improper use of that building and another, Fr. Scully House on nearby Gardiner Street, some of which were borne out in an investigation by Charities Regulator.4

Supporters of the RHL occupiers outside the High Court (Photo: RHL)

The housing crisis

The numbers of homeless people in the the Irish state passed 12,000 for the first time in May this year and over 4,000 of those are children,5 nor do those figures include people defaulting on their mortgage loans, sleeping on the street or ‘sofa-surfing’ with friends and relations.

According to figures published in April this year, there are over 100,000 empty homes within the Irish state, not counting holiday homes (the Berkeley Road one was empty for three years).

Housing the homeless on the face of it can be accomplished without the revolutionary overthrow of the State and its Gombeen6 ruling class. All that is necessary is a public housing program financed by the State, which it could easily accomplish.

However, the stubborn clinging of the Gombeens to keeping a wide high-return market for property speculators, bank funders and big landlords, year after year as the housing crisis worsens, seems to indicate that a revolutionary remedy is necessary.

This week the Taoiseach,7 Varadkar, inferred that a contributory cause of the housing crisis was that homeless people had turned down alternative accommodation, a nonsensical claim since one person’s declined accommodation could just be offered to the next.

Addressing him in the Leinster House parliament, Sinn Féin TD8 Pearse Doherty9 took him to task for inferring that the homeless were to blame for their situation, in response to which Varadkar denied accusing the homeless and ungraciously amended his statement to “some homeless people”.

He went on to say that homelessness has a number of causes but neglected to name the principal one, viz. that the State does not supply funds to municipal authorities to provide public housing, leaving property speculators, banks and big landlords free to exploit the housing ‘scarcity’.

According to media reports, Doherty neglected to take this opportunity to point out the real cause of the problem and the solution, which confirms the doubts of those who say that his party is “Fianna Fáil Mark II”,10 with no intention to fundamentally alter the economic system in the state.11

Revolutionary Housing League flag on top of the occupied building during the massive Garda operation (Photo: RHL)

In conclusion

The housing crisis shows no sign of being resolved and the ruling class have ridden high-profile ‘shaming’ token occupations such as that of Apollo House in January 2017 without changing anything. RHL occupations do seem to show a way forward if they are widely emulated.

Heavy Garda operations on the one hand and comparatively light treatment by the courts on the other seems to indicate a determination not to tolerate this kind of direct action on homelessness while at the same time moderated by a fear of creating housing action martyrs.

Meanwhile the numbers of homeless grows by the month without any other credible solution in sight.

End.

FOOTNOTES

1This is the police force that has been described by its chief, Commissioner Drew Harris (formerly Asst. Commissioner of the colonial gendarmerie PSNI and therefore also MI5), as his “gang” but which seems unable to prevent serious assaults in the city centre, even in its main street.

2Originally Revolutionary Housing Union, later became RHL.

3And over 30 months after it first became empty.

4Some of those included a friend of the charity’s Chief Exeutive being accommodated in the building allegedly providing only for the elderly, rooms being let to short-stay students without proper guarantees or rights and one of the houses being used as a business address.

5https://www.irishmirror.ie/news/irish-news/politics/homelessness-figures-april-2023-12000-30085446

6From the Irish “gaimbín”, describing opportunist middlemen, now applied to the foreign-dependent native Irish capitalist class.

7Prime Minister of the Irish state.

8Teachta Dála, member of the Irish Parliament, equivalent to “MP”.

9Deputy leader of the party in the Irish parliament. Holly Cairns, leader of the Social Democrats also attacked Varadkar on the statement.

10Fianna Fáil is one of the two main government parties; originally a split from Sinn Féin led by De Valera, it has been in government more than any other party in the Irish state.

11A number of SF party leaders including its current president have publicly stated that big business has nothing to fear from their party.

SOURCES

Charities Regulator report: https://www.charitiesregulator.ie/en/information-for-the-public/our-news/2021/july/charities-regulator-publishes-inspectors-report-into-the-affairs-of-cabhru-housing-association-services

Irish Times articles regarding concerns over the years: https://www.irishtimes.com/tags/cabhru-housing-association/

Video about the RHL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rSL453gVHAg

https://www.irishmirror.ie/news/irish-news/politics/homelessness-figures-april-2023-12000-30085446

Taoiseach Varadkar and his controversial remark about the homeless: https://www.independent.ie/irish-news/taoiseach-refuses-to-apologise-for-saying-plenty-of-people-on-housing-list-refuse-offers-of-accommodation/a1546284704.html

SOCIALIST REPUBLICANS HONOUR “THE FATHER OF IRISH REPUBLICANISM”

On By rebelbreezeIn Current Event Report, Folk Custom, History commemoration, Imperialism, irish history, Irish Left, Irish Republicanism, National Liberation, Song, Song in StruggleLeave a comment

Clive Sulish

(Reading time: 5 mins)

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 Flowers at 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.

4Police force of the Irish State.

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.

USEFUL LINKS

https://www.parliament.uk/about/living-heritage/evolutionofparliament/legislativescrutiny/parliamentandireland/overview/catholic-emancipation/

THE TRICOLOUR: A WEAPON FROM THE MOMENT IT WAS SEWN

On By rebelbreezeIn Cultural Comment, Current Affairs Comment, Internationalist Solidarity, irish history, Irish Republicanism, National Liberation, NATO, Political Analysis, Song, Uncategorized1 Comment

Diarmuid Breatnach

(Reading time: 6 mins.)

Recently the Taoiseach1 of the Irish State criticised people protesting the Government’s plans to slide the state into external military alliances of “misappropriating” the Irish Tricolour and, incredibly, even of “weaponising” it.

The Irish tricolour was a weapon from the moment it was sewn – a psychological weapon, laden with political meaning, sewn by French revolutionaries, presented to and flown by Irish Republican revolutionaries from generation to generation.

Painting by Philoppoteaux depicting the revolutionaries of the French 1848 Revolution outside the Paris Town Hall and Lamartine rejecting the Red Flag in favour of the French Republican one. Women participants in this revolution presented the Irish Tricolour sewn in silk to Young Irelanders including Thomas Francis Meagher (Source photo: Wikipeda) [When Paris rose again in 1871 under the Paris Commune, the preference was for the Red flag.]

Prior to the advent of the Tricolour, the Irish Republican flag was typically the gold harp on a green background2 but when a group of Young Irelanders went to Paris in solidarity with the revolution of 1848 there, the Tricolour sewn in silk was presented to them by revolutionary French women.

The symbolism of the Tricolour was firstly in its form; the French Revolution adopted a tricolour in opposition to the monarchist Fleur-de-Lison a blue background and different tricolours became popular as flags of new republics.

In the Irish Tricolour, the ancient Irish and the Norman-Irish, basically Catholics, were represented symbolically by green, with orange for the settlers (after William of Orange) of one sect or another of the Protestant faith; the colour white, symbolised peaceful national unity in an Irish Republic.

And it presented an equal unity, as opposed to the unity of Scotland and Ireland with England but under the clear domination of the latter, as represented in the Union Jack, which incorporates the St. Andrew’s and St. Patrick’s crosses with the English one of St. George.

THE TRICOLOUR UNFURLED IN IRELAND

The Irish Tricolour we know was first unfurled by Thomas Francis Meagher “of the Sword” at the Wolfe Tone Club in Wexford on 7th March 1848 and in Dublin in Lower Abbey Street on 13th April 1848.

Meagher’s nickname was due to his renunciation of the Gombeens of his day trying to deny the right to resort to arms if necessary to win freedom3.

Meagher and other Young Irelanders were arrested around the failed uprising of 1848, just after the worst year of the Great Hunger and, after wide-scale international and domestic protests at the sentences of execution, transported to penal colonies, from which many escaped.

Taking his Republicanism and inclusivity seriously, both in Ireland and abroad, Meagher raised and commanded the Irish Brigade (composed of five regiments4) in the United States, fondly nicknamed Mrs. Meagher’s Own, to fight for the Union against the Confederacy and slavery.

As the years of struggle progressed, the Tricolour took its place among the ranks of Irish Republicans alongside the older Harp on Green or, for some Fenians, the gold or orange Sunburst on a blue background and so it was in the 1916 Rising when it began to be the most chosen.

Other flags were flown during the 1916 Rising also but the Tricolour was one of two erected on the roof of the GPO, headquarters of the Rising and became the most prominent during the War of Independence (1919-1921).

The Irish Tricolour in modern times flying over the General Post Office building in Dublin City’s main street (Source photo: Internet)

During the Irish Civil war by the British-supported, armed and provisioned Free State Army against the Republican movement (1922-1923), it was flown by both sides. Even after the defeat of the Republican movement and repression, it was not immediately named the state’s flag.

Though it was displayed by the Free State when joining the League of Nations in 1923, and denounced by the Republican movement as an usurpation, it did not seem that the new state was too attached to it5 and some Irish ships flew the British Red Ensign until 1939 and WW2.

The first time the Tricolour was formally adopted by the Irish State was in the 1937 Bunreacht (Constitution) which was brought in by De Valera’s Fianna Fáil6 Government and even then it was under a pretence of Republicanism with claim laid to the whole of Ireland.

Display of the Tricolour was suppressed in the Six Counties colony from 1922 and officially banned under the Flags and Emblems Acts (1954). Many a battle was fought with the colonial police by people asserting their right to display it, the Act not being repealed until 1987.7

“A FLAG OF INCLUSIVITY, MISAPPROPRIATED BY A MINORITY”

One must agree with Varadkar that the flag signifies inclusivity and was misappropriated by fascists and other racists in recent years but it is shameful of him to attribute similar exclusivity to Republicans, who in many cases fought those same fascists to which he referred.

Leo Varadkar, current Taoiseach of the Irish Government, who accused protesters for Irish neutrality of “weaponising” the Irish Tricolour (Source photo: Internet)

Not only fought them in recent years but also back in the 1930s, when Irish fascists were called the Blueshirts. Surely Varadgar is familiar with the latter’s history also, since they were one of three reactionary groups that joined to create Fine Gael – yes, Varadkar’s own political party.

And the first Irish Republicans, the United Irishmen, sought the unity of “Catholic, Protestant (Anglican) and Dissenter (other Protestant sects)” for an independent Republic, an ideology carried on by all Republican groups thereafter and given expression in the 1916 Proclamation.

But this is not the first time that people in authority have tried to equate Irish Republicans with fascists, as a few years ago Garda Commissioner Drew Harris issued a press statement in which he accused Republicans of having organised a far-Right demonstration — which he later recanted.

One would think Drew Harris, ex-Assistant Commissioner of the British colonial police force, the PSNI8, well-known for their sectarianism and collusion with the colonial brand of fascism, the Loyalists, would be able to distinguish between Irish Republicans and fascists with ease.

Varadkar is ridiculous in accusing Republicans of “weaponising” the Tricolour since it was always an ideological weapon from the moment of its creation and then eventually used by the State to try, with monumental lack of success, to deny it to Republicans.

But Varadkar is right in that the Irish Tricolour has been misappropriated by a minority; but rather than Republicans, that minority is the Gombeen ruling class, foreign-dependent, neo-liberal, selling out the country’s resources and networks to foreign capitalist monopolies.

And causing homelessness, or rent and mortgage hopelessness, emigration and austerity for the vast majority of the people in the Irish state, both native and immigrant, for the benefit of a tiny minority of parasites incapable of even developing a viable Irish national economy.

Republican groups, like all groups are minorities but so are the elites, though even smaller. But in representation? Republicans, whatever faults they may have from time to time clearly represent a much larger and wider section of society than do the Gombeens.

This has been evidenced by the militant opposition of wide Irish society to triple water taxation and privatisation, repugnance for the celebration of British occupation forces and the wide opposition to joining a military alliance, all projects pushed by the Gombeens in different governments.

The Irish Tricolour has been commented upon in a number of Irish Republican songs, sometimes even in the song title: White, Orange and Green and Green, White and Gold.

Probably it is most appropriately referenced in the chorus of a song directed at the Gombeens, the very minority who have misappropriated it:

Take it down from the mast, Irish Traitors,
It’s the flag we Republicans claim;
It can never belong to Free Staters
For you’ve brought on it nothing but shame9.

End.

The Irish Tricolour that was flown over the GPO in 1916 (Source photo: 1916 Rebellion Tours)

FOOTNOTES

1 Currently Prime Minister of the Coalition Government of Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael and the Greens.

2 Flag of the Society of United Irishmen, who led insurrections in 1798 and 1803.

3 Daniel O’Connell’s son intended to force a motion of that kind on the Irish Repeal Association founded by his father and also sought to have the motion passed without debate. O’Meagher said that while he did not exalt violence, neither would he allow his sword to be taken from him in case it should be needed. He and others such as Thomas Davis left the Association at that point and became known as “the Young Irelanders”, first mockingly and later with pride.

4 Including the 69th New York Infantry or “Fitghting 69th”. 7,715 men served in the brigade, 961 were killed or mortally wounded and around 3,000 were wounded. (Wikipedia The Irish Brigade)

5 A 1928 British document said: The government in Ireland have taken over the so called Free State Flag in order to forestall its use by republican element and avoid legislative regulation, to leave them free to adopt a more suitable emblem later. (Wikipedia)

6 The party was a split from the losers of the Civil War of which De Valera had been leader, formed in order to participate in elections for Government and presented itself as Republican. The 1937 Bunreacht also laid claim in Articles 2 & 3 to the whole of Ireland which were removed in

7 During a period of direct rule by the British Government.

8 The colonial gendarmerie, formerly the Royal Ulster Constabulary for the Six Counties, preceded by the Royal Irish Constabulary for the whole of Ireland.

9 Soldiers of ‘22 by Brian Ó hUigín, acclaiming the Republican resistance to the counter-revolution of the Free State during the Civil War.

REFERENCES

History of the Irish Tricolour: https://www.1916rising.com/cms/history/leaders-soldiers-and-poets/history-of-the-irish-flag/#:~:text=Irish%20tricolours%20were%20mentioned%20in,accorded%20the%20flag%20until%201848.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flag_of_Ireland