ANTI-FASCISM, HOUSING AND REFUGEES

On May 16, 2023May 16, 2023 By rebelbreezeIn Current Affairs Comment, Current Event Report, Housing, Human Rights, Ireland, Racism3 Comments

Diarmuid Breatnach

(Reading time: 5 mins.)

Refugees living in tents on streets in Dublin were targeted last week by fascists and antifascists have confronted the latter in defence. Shelters of refugees have been torched.

There’s been some anti-immigrant discourse in Ireland, especially promoted by fascists and racists for a few years but it really took off during the Government’s handling of the Ukrainian refugee influx.

The Irish Government for pro-NATO reasons prioritised these over other refugees, also placing the Ukrainians in empty buildings in working class areas already low on social infrastructure and without consultation with the local community, some of whom reacted angrily.

The Irish Government handed the fascists and other racists a great opportunity and they grasped it.

After that issue had died down a bit, the fascists were looking for something to take its place and found it again in other refugees, this time those who were NOT being housed by the Government and were instead living in tents on streets around the IPO office in Mount Street.

Refugee tents near the International Protection Office (left of photo) in Dublin recently (*credit Sasko LazarovRollingNews.ie*)

The International Protection Office was supposed to organise to provide for the basic needs of refugees – in fact are legally obliged to – while their cases were being processed and had been failing to do so, hence the people it had failed living in tents around the area.

FASCISTS GO TO ATTACK THE REFUGEES

The refugees got some sympathetic coverage in articles in the Cork Examiner and Irish Times¹. Perhaps it was this that stirred up well-known fascist Phillip Dwyer (known hater of women, migrants, LGBT and Muslims) to go and attack those people living on the street.

On Thursday 11^thDwyer turned up with his “security” people, i.e fascist goons, thinking to run the refugees out of there and perhaps do worse. But he was met with resistance including some people helping the refugees, two of the goons got hurt and they backed off.

According to a statement on Revolutionary Housing Action’s Twitter account, one of the defenders was ambushed when he went to collect his bike and while fighting them off, they threw a bike at him. Dwyer and his fascist hounds promised to be back.

Streetlink homeless service stated that on Friday, they were threatened and their outreach van pummelled while they packed refugee belongings and then boxed in so they had to suspend their outreach service for that evening, handing on outreach contacts to other services.

On Friday 12^th Dwyer was back with a larger mob but met by a broad group of antifascists, including RHL, AIA, PBP, CATU, CYM, DCAR and independent antifascist activists² (AIA statement onTwitter, Saturday 13 May). Dublin Republicans Against Fascism were there too.

Section of antifascists in the foreground on Friday, police in the middle distance and fascists and the curious beyond. (*Photo: Rebel Breeze*)

The violence against persons was now turned on the pitiful shelters and belongings which, on Friday night were set on fire.

On Saturday 13^th, the fascist Irish Freedom Party held their rally on Custom House Quay against hate speech legislation being considered by the Government. From there they marched, not against the Government but against the homeless refugees.

According to local sources, the fascists distributed leaflets asking people to be electoral candidates and promising to help the inexperienced.

What was the connection between a protest allegedly about ‘free speech’ and a march on homeless refugees? Absolutely none, except the standard fascist agenda of targeting minorities to divide the working people and scream about free speech while using violence against their targets.

But in a cunning move, the NP who have never helped any area, were there afterwards cleaning up the area and placing flowerpots there.

Meanwhile, on Thursday night, the Revolutionary Housing League stated that they had opened one of the many empty buildings in Dublin to house the targeted refugees. The RHL have been opening up empty buildings for over a year now and encouraging others to do so.

Subsequently, Leo Varadkar, of the very Government that set up the conditions for this to happen, declared how unacceptable the attack on the refugees was. And following strong criticism from the Refugee Council, the State suddenly found it could house most of the refugees.

If true, hopefully good for those refugees but the fascists will now bleat about how “foreigners are getting treated better than the Irish” to the gullible and, also among themselves, be commenting that violence brings results.

The fascists have been stirring up local community fears with allegations that some of the refugees are paedophiles on the run from justice in their own countries, for which there is not a shred of evidence.

Ironically, while they attacked LGBT people as “paedophiles” some of the far-right have for decades been defending the Catholic Church hierarchy in Ireland from criticism and accusations of abuse of children and women in their institutions.

Lies spill from fascist lips as a matter of course: “immigrants are rapists and paedophiles, LGBT people are paedophiles, migrants are rapists, migrants are being treated better than the natives, the whites are being replaced by people of colour, muslims are taking over”, etc, etc.

THE GARDAÍ AND THE FASCISTS

The Gardaí, including the Public Order Unit, stood between the antifascists and the fascist-led mob on Friday, then kettled the antifascists for awhile, then followed the antifascist contingent up Pearse Street with fascists tailing along. When the antifascists dispersed, some of them were attacked.

The Irish Times on Monday 15^th reported on a complaint from the Garda Representative Association that they are unable to police these events, don’t know about refugees, need training, etc.³

What is there to know? Refugees are as entitled as anyone else to be kept free from violence and the Gardaí could have arrested a number of fascists, had they wanted to, under the Public Order Act, which they regularly use against left-wing protests.

In September 2020, when unarmed antifascists went to counter-protest a Yellow Vest⁴ rally against masking⁵ and were attacked by masked (!) thugs recruited by the National Party with wooden and metal clubs, the POU understood enough to draw batons and attack – the antifascists!

Scene on Butt Bridge in September 2020 after armed fascists had attacked the unarmed counter-protesters at Custom House Quay and then the Public Order Unit had attacked them also, pushing them back off the Quay with raised batons, threatening to strike. (*Photo: Dublin Republicans Against Fascism*)

The following week, the Gardaí allowed NP fascists in Kildare Street to jostle and threaten a handful of LGBT campaigners and to club one of them to the ground. The Gardaí then ordered the woman, blood streaming from her head, to leave.

On both occasions the Garda press office issued statements saying that there had been no serious incidents. But the videos of the woman being assaulted and then ordered away went wide on social media and within a few hours, the Gardaí had changed their story.

In September 2020, longtime fascist and member of the National Party Michael Quinn (left, carrying wooden club disguised as Irish Tricolour flag) attacked veteran LGBT campaigner Izzy Kamikaze while she observed fascists in Kildare Street. The Gardaí forced Izzy to leave and later told the media nothing of any note had occurred, later having to change their press statement after the circulation of video footage. Quinn was later convicted of the attack and jailed for two years. (*Images sourced: Internet*).

However, it was ‘up to the victim’ whether she made a complaint (for an armed attack in a public place seen on video?)! She did, and eventually the particular assailant, Michael Quinn of the NP, was jailed for two years.⁶ But for Gardaí collusion with fascists and lying to the press? Nothing.

WHAT NOW?

Given the wars instigated by US/NATO and EU around the world and deprivation by foreign exploitation of people’s natural resources, refugees and other migrants will continue coming to Europe, including Ireland.

The fascists will continue to target minorities and wave their fake patriotism and social concern while they recruit for their parties, diverting attention from the housing profiteers and the facilitating ruling class while they strive to drive wedges into the working people.

The local working class residents, for example in the block of flats overseeing the site of the conflict, will gain nothing except an undeserved bad reputation for what happened in their area and in which perhaps a few teenagers were opportunistically involved.

Already the recently-completed block of apartments just down the road from them is advertising one-bed apartments for 2,000 euro a month and two-beds for 3,000. None of the local working people of course will be renting those.

The cause of the housing crisis in Dublin will continue: property speculators, vulture funds and multi-unit landlords will continue to rake in profits because the Government won’t build housing for affordable rent in case it should compete with them.

Unless, that is, a real hard struggle including militant occupations and defiance of court orders is taken to them forcing a change, be it reform or revolution. This is a task for the Left which of course can never be carried out by fascists.

But hopefully many anti-fascists have learned or had reaffirmed the need for unity in a broad front against fascism and that confrontation and preparedness for physical defence against fascists is needed, while also discussing the most appropriate tactics for different situations.

End.

FOOTNOTES

1 https://www.irishtimes.com/ireland/social-affairs/2023/05/04/homeless-asylum-seekers-its-hard-sleeping-outside-its-cold-its-wet-its-no-life/

2Including anarchists.

3 https://www.irishtimes.com/ireland/social-affairs/2023/05/15/gardai-have-sufficient-resources-to-stop-violence-against-refugees-harris-says/

4The Irish Yellow Vests were a right-wing populist organisation, led by Ben Gilroy and Glen Miller, fascists and islamophobes.

5The rally was on Custom House Quay, scene of the NP’s rally last Saturday.

6 Man who used wooden post to strike a woman during an anti-lockdown rally is jailed (thejournal.ie

SOURCES

https://www.irishtimes.com/ireland/social-affairs/2023/05/04/homeless-asylum-seekers-its-hard-sleeping-outside-its-cold-its-wet-its-no-life/

https://www.irishtimes.com/ireland/social-affairs/2023/05/15/gardai-have-sufficient-resources-to-stop-violence-against-refugees-harris-says/

Man who used wooden post to strike a woman during an anti-lockdown rally is jailed (thejournal.ie)

A DANGEROUS DISEASE

On May 8, 2023May 8, 2023 By rebelbreezeIn Creative writing, Cultural Comment, Current Affairs Comment, irish history, Satire3 Comments

Diarmuid Breatnach

(Reading time: One min.)

A deadly disease has struck some people in Ireland, affecting tendons in the legs, control of the tongue and causing partial amnesia. By a strange twist, some of those affected are attracted to the very site of the first outbreak of the disease.

The effect on the tendons in the legs of those affected is dramatic: they can no longer stand up straight and find themselves bending a knee or even collapsing on to both knees, the tongue protruding in bizarre licking motion.

Less visible but in many ways more striking is the amnesia effect. Those affected lose memories of parts of what they learned in school or what they themselves thought and said in the past – even in recent years.

According to Dr. P O’Neill of the Institute of Research and Adjustment, a new symptom was observed recently: “Affected people spent four hours staring vacantly at a film of some anachronistic ritual”.

Dr. T.W.Tone, who has been studying similar outbreaks in the past observed on the affinity of the disease for people of higher social classes: “No-one is guaranteed immunity but it does seem that the lower the social class, the less likely the person is to contract this disease.”

Commenting on the low recovery rate of those who contract the disease, Dr. J.Connolly pointed to the crucial importance of prevention, for which community programs of education can be very effective. “We rely especially on Volunteers,” he said, “men and women who are dedicated to preventing the spread of this disease.”

end.

THE 1st of May, INTERNATIONAL WORKERS’ DAY OF STRUGGLE

On May 1, 2023 By rebelbreezeIn Britain, Cultural Comment, History, Internationalist Solidarity, Ireland, Massacres, Popular Resistance, Workers' StrugglesLeave a comment

Diarmuid Breatnach

(Reading time: 5 mins.)

Revolutionary greetings on the First of May! It is International Workers’ Day, for recalling of the struggles of working people down the centuries past and of resolution to carry the struggle forward until we succeed in building and defending a socialist society.

On that Mayday too we are aware that in some parts of the world, those wishing to mark the date in public will be subject to intimidation or worse: arrest, baton charge or being fired upon. Possibly even trial and death sentence.

HISTORY OF MAYDAY

The day dates from an incident in Chicago 1886, USA, when trade unions and socialist groups of various kinds organised a campaign in many cities of the USA to exchange the common 10-hour¹ working day for the 8-hour day. May 1^st was set for the start of the campaign

On May 3rd in Chicago, a city central to the campaign for an eight-hour working day, a demonstration as part of the campaign took place outside the McCormick Harvesting Machine company. The police opened fire on striking workers, killing one of them and injuring many.

The anarchists and anarcho-syndicalists organised a demonstration for May 4^th to protest the killing of workers. When the police advanced on the peaceful crowd ordering dispersal, a bomb was thrown at them and police opened fire on the crowd, some of whom returned fire.

Some of the police are believed to have shot some of their colleagues by mistake.

Sixty police were injured and one killed; the police chief gave his opinion that more than that number of demonstrators were injured. The media was mostly hostile and many demonstrators wounded would have feared to attend hospital for fear of arrest or worse by police.

Contemporary engraving of the seven originally sentenced to death (*Image: Wikipedia*)

Subsequently, amidst a wave of police repression, including raids on union halls and people’s homes, eight Anarchists were framed, charged with conspiracy to murder and convicted. One of them was sentenced to 15 years in jail.

The sentences of Schwab and Fielden were commuted to life imprisonment. Linng took his own life in jail but August Spies, Albert R. Parsons, Adolph Fischer and George Engel were hanged by the Chicago State authorities.

Artist’s impression of the hanging of the four (*Image: Wikipedia*)

In 1889 the (Second) International Workingmen’s Association, a federation of trade unions and socialist organisations, agreed that in memory of that struggle and its martyrs, the First of May should be marked by all socialists around the world as International Workers’ Day.²

The site of the incident was designated a Chicago landmark in 1992 and a sculpture made in 1893 was dedicated there in 2004. In addition, the Haymarket Martyrs’ Monument was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1997 at the defendants’ burial site in Forest Park.

THE FIRST OF MAY BEFORE THAT

In European agricultural society the First of May was celebrated firstly as a pagan festival and later as an allegedly secular one or named for a Christian saint. It celebrated the coming of summer, of growing of crops and of livestock.

Industrial workers originated in agricultural societies or, in the case of early miners, were located near to such. It was natural that they should participate in such festivals and also even generations later create their own around a similar calendar.

European settlers in the USA, many of them from agricultural societies³, brought those traditions with them. That was probably one of the reasons for the date of the Chicago demonstration, although certainly there had been others on other dates.

MAYDAY IN IRELAND

My father took me as a child on my first Mayday march in Dublin. He was an active member of the NUJ and some members of his union and of others participated in a small march through the city centre led by a brass band.

Returning to Ireland in 2003 after decades working in England and marching there on May 1^st, I was disappointed by the very small size of Mayday demonstrations in Dublin, though I participated in some and on at least one occasion as part of a Basque contingent.

The oppositional movement to the status quo in Ireland, because of our history of anti-colonial struggle, is dominated by Irish Republicanism. And though all of that movement’s parts would claim to be socialist too, the First of May is not of great importance in their annual calendar.

This is unfortunate because the mass of Irish workers who are not members of the Republican movement need leadership for their class and also, as it happens, most Irish Republicans are workers. And practically all immigrants are workers too.

While fighting for an independent Ireland, do we as workers want to exchange one group of exploiters for another? And is a struggle for an independent Ireland even remotely winnable without enlisting the working class fighting as a class in its own class interests?

James Connolly thought not and our history since his day has certainly attested to the correctness of his view.

NATIONAL HOLIDAY?

On 1^st of May for years I took the day off work – unpaid, of course and went into the centre of London, the city in which I was living and working. My destination was usually Hyde Park Corner and if I was then in an organisation I met up others and if not, just joined in as an individual.

Thousands of people met there to rally and perhaps to march and I was aware that around the world not just thousands, or hundreds of thousands but millions were marking that day also. As a day to recall struggles in their own particular countries and in solidarity with others around the world.

Generally the various organisations and tendencies marched with those of their own affiliation but in the same demonstration, with the exception of the Workers’ Revolutionary Party, which on at least one occasion marched in as everyone was leaving.

The WRP was an extremely internally dictatorial and externally politically sectarian trotskyist organisation that at one time up to the mid 1980s was probably the largest socialist organisation,⁴ certainly outside the ranks of the Communist Party of Great Britain.

The latter organisation, with the support of some other socialists, many of them left social-democrats, began to push for Mayday to become a national holiday, an objective they achieved in 1978⁵ (followed by the Irish State 15 years later)⁶.

So now I could go to the demonstrations and not lose pay. Great, right?

No, not really. For a start, the holiday was no longer on May 1^st but instead on the nearest Monday to the date. More importantly, people tended to treat it as a holiday rather than a day of international workers’ solidarity. Of course people are entitled to holidays but the essence of the day was gone.

And rather than being larger, the demonstrations grew smaller.

Sculpture made in 1893 known as The Haymarket Martyrs’ Monument (*Photo: Wikipedia*)

A DAY TO RECALL AND AVOW WORKERS’ STRUGGLE

This is not a day for class collaborationists, politicians or union leaders who try to undermine the struggles, water down demands and act as the ruling class’ police on union activists. It is a date for those at minimum in support of militant resistance.

The essence of the day is what we need to keep. A day upholding our struggle, that of the working class against its exploiters, native and foreign. A day remembering our long history of struggle, of victories and defeats, of sacrifices and why the colour of the workers’ flag is red.

It is a day to remember our internationalist duty of solidarity, not as charity or altruism but as partners in struggle across the world, as on a picket line or demonstration we would shield the person beside us and strike out at the company goon, fascist or policeman attacking us.

And rightfully expect the same from those next to us as we ourselves are the subject of assault.

End.

Footnotes

1That was for a six-day week and 14-hour days were not unknown and in rural areas, even a seven-day week.

2Five years later, U.S. Pres. Grover Cleveland, uneasy with the socialist origins of Workers’ Day, signed legislation to make Labor Day—already held in some states on the first Monday of September—the official U.S. holiday in honour of workers. Canada followed suit not long afterward.

3That would certainly have included most Irish, Italians, Sicilians and East Europeans in the 19^th and early 20^th Centuries.

4The WRP was the result of a split in socialist organisations and by the mid-1980s was disintegrating in many smaller organisations. It exists still in name but as shade or sliver of its earlier form.

5May Day became an official public holiday all across the UK in 1978 with provisions for it being made in the Banking and Financial Dealings Act. Prior to that time it had been a holiday only in Scotland. The May Day Bank Holiday was instituted by Michael Foot, then the Labour Employment Secretary to coincide with International Labour Day.

6In the Irish State, the first Monday of May became a public holiday following the Public Holiday Regulations 1993 Act. The holiday was first observed in 1994.

Sources

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

https://www.britannica.com/topic/May-Day-international-observance

One of the songs of the time for an 8-hour day, recorded by Pete Seeger: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KVWigCuq83w

FOR A SOCIALIST REPUBLIC, AGAINST THE FREE STATE, ENGLAND AND NATO

On April 12, 2023April 21, 2023 By rebelbreezeIn 1916 Rising, Anti-Fascism, Anti-War, British imperialism, Cultural Comment, Current Event Report, History commemoration, Ireland, irish history, Irish Left, Irish Republicanism, National Liberation, NATO, Peace Process, Song, US Imperialism, World War One1 Comment

Diarmuid Breatnach

(Reading time main text: 6 mins.)

On Sunday participants in a 1916 Rising Commemoration organised by the Irish organisation Anti-Imperialist Action were harassed by police as they gathered to march to the Irish Citizen Army Republican plot in Glasnevin Cemetery.

Six political police in plain clothes walked among those gathered beside Phibsborough shops demanding names and addresses of the participants, most of whom were fairly young. Four uniformed Gardaí also stood nearby and a Public Order Unit van parked at the cemetery entrance.

The participants declined to be intimidated and set off on their march, led by a lone piper playing Irish marching airs, followed by a colour party with different banners interspersed among the marchers, among which fluttered many flags.

Organisers had learned that the coach carrying members of the Republican Flute Band from Scotland that was to lead the parade had been prevented by police there from taking the ferry to Ireland.

Centre photo: Four of the six plainclothes political police violating the civil rights of the peaceful people commemorating the Easter Rising. (*Photo: D.Breatnach*)

Centre photo, another two plainclothes political police. The bald man joked while he harassed people. (*Photo: D.Breatnach*)

Historical background

In 1916 a broad alliance the Irish Volunteers, Irish Citizen Army, Cumann na mBan, na Fianna Éireann and Hibernian Rifles¹ took part in a Rising organised by the Irish Republican Brotherhood against British rule in Ireland and against world war.

Due to a number of unfortunate circumstances, the leader of the Volunteers cancelled the Rising which however went ahead a day later than planned and was for the most part confined to Dublin, where a third of the numbers in the original plan took part and fought for a week.

The occupying British Army shelled the city centre from a gunship in the river Liffey and also from artillery on land. Explosions and resulting fires destroyed much of the city centre including the General Post Office in the main street, which had been the headquarters of the insurrection.²

After a week with the city centre including the GPO in flames, the rebel garrison evacuated to Moore Street where the following day, surrounded and vastly outnumbered, the decision was taken to surrender.³ A British military court passed death sentences on nearly a hundred prisoners.

All but fifteen of those sentences were commuted to long jail periods but the seven Signatories of the 1916 Proclamation⁴ and another seven were shot by British firing squad in Dublin, a fifteenth in Cork and after trial months later a sixteenth was hanged in Pentonville Jail, London.

At Easter 1917 Irish Republican and Socialist women commemorated the 1916 Rising; ever since then Irish Republicans and sometimes Socialists in Ireland and in many parts of the diaspora have commemorated the Rising, whether legally⁵ or otherwise, in jail or at liberty.

The War of Independence began in 1919 with many of the Rising’s survivors participating⁶.

The Parade on Sunday – local and national historical memory marked

At Cross Guns Bridge over the Royal Canal the parade halted and flares were lit in memory of events there in 1916.

Marching along the Cabra Road, the wall and a watchtower of the north side of Glasnevin Cemetery on the left of photo. (*Photo: D.Breatnach*)

On Easter Monday 1916 a small group of Irish Volunteers had marched from Maynooth along the canal bank to join the Rising in Dublin and found guarding the bridge two Irish Volunteers who advised them to wait until the following day to go into the city centre.

The Maynooth group spent the night in Glasnevin and the following day marched into the GPO, passing an empty Cross Guns Bridge on the way. Back towards Phibsborough, British artillery had blown a barricade and killed Seán Healy, a Fianna member at the Nth. Circular Road crossroads.

Later, the Dublin Fusiliers unit of the British Army blockaded the bridge, preventing people from crossing it in either direction. They shot dead a deaf local man who failed to heed their challenge because he did not hear it.

We Serve Neither King nor Kaiser but Ireland declared one banner carried last Sunday, Britain/NATO Out of Ireland another, This Is Our Mandate⁷, Our Republic and Collusion Is No Illusion, It Is State-Sponsored Murder were another two.

A large banner also declared alongside the image of James Connolly that Only Socialism Can Be the Solution for Ireland. Some organisations also carried their own banners, such as those of Dublin Independent Republicans, Ireland Anti-Internment Campaign and Irish Socialist Republicans.

Flags fluttering included those bearing the logo of the organising group Anti-Imperialist Action and others bearing the slogan “Always Anti-Fascist”, green-and-gold Starry Ploughs, a couple of Ikurrinak (Basque flags) and another two of Red with Hammer & Sickle in yellow.

Basque and antifascist flags (*Photo: D.Breatnach*)

At the Monument: speeches and songs

Glasnevin Cemetery (Reilig Ghlas Naíonn) covers over 120 acres in North Dublin city and is in two parts, each with Republican Plots separated by the Cabra Road and contains the graves of both famous and ordinary people.

On the north side there is also access to the Botanic Gardens, both on the south banks of the Tolka river. The imposing Monument to numerous Republican uprisings and the Irish Citizen Army Republican plot is on the south side, across the pedestrian bridge over the railway line.

A man chaired the event for Anti-Imperialist Action and spoke briefly, introducing people for readings (all of which were from James Connolly) and for orations. The presentations of these were evenly divided between men and women, three of those being of young people.

Three songs were sung: a woman sang The Foggy Dew (by Charles O’Neill) and Erin Go Bragh (by Peadar Kearney), while a man sang Patrick Galvin’s Where Is Our James Connolly? Two women read out pieces by James Connolly and another read out the 1916 Proclamation.

Person chairing the event (*Photo: D.Breatnach*)

The words of the chairperson and of those giving orations were different but there were common themes: upholding the historic Irish spirit of resistance, the importance of the working class in history and the objective of a socialist Republic encompassing the whole of the Irish nation.

These words were balanced by denunciation of US and British imperialism and the colonial/ NATO occupation of the Six Counties by the latter; the Irish client regime; the special no-jury courts⁸ of both administrations in Ireland and repression by police forces and occupation army.

One of the singers (*Photo: D.Breatnach*)

One of the readers (*Photo: D.Breatnach*)

Also denounced were those political parties that had abandoned the struggle for the Republic and instead had become part of the colonial and neo-colonial administrations or, in the latter case, were on their way to becoming so.⁹

Floral tributes were laid by representatives of a number of announced organisations and then others came forward to lay floral tributes also. The colour party lowered flags for a minute’s silence in homage and salute before slowly raising them again and the piper played Amhrán na bhFiann.

Lowering of the colour party flags in homage to the fallen in the struggle (*Photo: D.Breatnach*)

Colour party raises flags again in symbolism of the struggle continuing (*Photo: D.Breatnach*)

The chairperson thanked all for attendance, listing organisations by name and cautioning all to stay close together as they left, due to the threatening presence of Gardaí and in particular the Public Order Unit. In the event, the celebrants exited the cemetery and dispersed without incident.

End.

FOOTNOTES

1A small unit, an armed wing of a split from the more socially conservative USA version of the Ancient Order of Hibernians, their participation in the Rising was notable.

2Photos of much of the destruction are available on the Internet and accessible by search browser.

3The terrace they occupied still stands and is the object of a historical memory and conservation struggle against property speculator plans approved by the municipal city managers and Government political parties (see smsfd.ie).

4A remarkable document, the text of which is available from many postings on the Internet.

5Irish women commemorated it in public in contravention of British WWI martial legislation in 1917 and 1918 and for decades the public commemoration of the 1916 Rising (and even the flying of the Irish Tricolour) was forbidden in the British colony of the Six Counties with attendant colonial police attacks on any attempt to do so.

6Sometimes inaccurately called “the Tan War” (reference to a special colonial police auxiliary force that became known as the “Black n’ Tans”), the war saw the birth of the IRA and lasted from 1919-1921. A British “peace” proposal opened deep divisions in the nationalist coalition and was followed by a Civil War 1922-1923, in which the pro-Treaty government and armed forces were armed and supplied by the British to defeat the Republicans in a campaign of repression and jailing, military actions, kidnapping and torture, murder of prisoners, assassinations and over 80 formal executions.

7Also displaying text referring to the First Dáil’s Democratic Program of 1919.

8The Diplock court in the colony and the Special Criminal Courts in the Irish State, political special courts in all but name, with low proof bar and abnormally high conviction rate and refusal of bail while awaiting trial.

9References to 1) the 1930s split from the Sinn Féin party, the Fianna Fáil political party that became a preferred Government party of the foreign-dependent Irish ruling bourgeoisie and 2) to the Provisional Sinn Féin party who endorsed the British pacification plan in 1998 and embarked on the road to becoming a party of reformist nationalism in the colony and is heading for neo-colonial (and neo liberal capitalist) coalition government at the moment.

Republican Fighter Killed by the Irish State Commemorated in Talbot Street, Dublin

On March 29, 2023April 2, 2023 By rebelbreezeIn Current Event Report, Guerrilla Action, Irish Civil War, irish history, Irish Left, Irish Republicanism, Irish War of Independence 1919-1921, National Liberation, Song, Song in Struggle2 Comments

Diarmuid Breatnach

(Reading time: 5 mins.)

An event was held on a busy Saturday afternoon in Dublin’s city centre to commemorate IRA volunteer Patrick O’Brien, killed by soldiers of the Irish State.

The event included bagpipe airs, a colour party, speeches and a resistance song.

A colour party with Irish Tricolour and the flags of the four provinces, led by a lone piper marched into and a short distance westward up Talbot Street towards where a crowd waited beside a memorial sign that had been erected shortly earlier. The colour party took up station on the opposite side of the road.

Led by a piper playing Irish airs, the colour party (i.e carrying the flags – the Irish Tricolour and those of the four provinces of Ireland) approaches as the start of the commemoration. (*Photo: D.Breatnach*)

Among the airs being played on the short march were Thomas Moore’s Let Erin Remember and The Wearing of the Green or The Rising of the Moon, the same traditional air to both different songs referring to the 1798 Rising.

THE SHORT LIFE OF A LOYAL REPUBLICAN

Framed portrait photo of Vol. Patrick O’Brien on display at the commemoration (*Photo: D.Breatnach*)

Gina Nicoletti, chairing the event, recounted to the crowd a short history of Volunteer Patrick O’Brien who was born on 17 August 1898 in the townland of Woodlands near Castledermot in County Kildare to a local agricultural working couple.

The O’Brien family had 16 children, all of whom survived and ten of whom lived with Patrick and his parents in a three-room house at the time of the 1911 Census.

An obituary published in a Republican newspaper on the anniversary of his death suggests that Patrick moved to Dublin in 1915, joining the Irish Volunteers in December of that year aged 17. He took part in the 1916 Easter Rising under the command of Edward Daly.

Evading capture in 1916 and returning home, O’Brien joined the local Irish Volunteers company in Castledermot but returned to Dublin in May 1917 and became attached to E Company, 3 Battalion, Dublin Brigade, Irish Volunteers, which was based on the south side of the city.

Sean Óg sings *The Foggy Dew* while accompanying himself on guitar and centre of photo is Gina Nicoletti, who chaired the event. (*Photo: D.Breatnach*)

An active IRA member during the War of Independence, Vol. O’Brien took the anti-Treaty side in the IRA split in March 1922.

In a response to a renewal of executions of IRA men by the Free State government, Liam Lynch (IRA Chief of Staff) issued the ‘Amusements Order’ on 13 March 1923 banning all cinema, theatre and sports events “at a time of national mourning” with action threatened against non-compliance.

At midnight on 23 March 1923, Patrick took part in an operation to blow up the Carleton Picture House, O’Connell Street (then near the Parnell Monument opposite the Savoy Cinema). The cinema had closed an hour before a landmine at the front entrance shattered the glass of several windows.

There were no injuries but newspaper articles reported that the sound of the explosion was heard several miles away. Accounts of what happened afterwards were gathered from one of the IRA unit, Volunteer Joseph Doody in his pension application.

The unit unexpectedly encountered Free State soldiers coming from the Parnell Monument who opened fire on them and another patrol was approaching from the southern end of O’Connell Street and the unit retreated through Findlater Place and out to Marlborough Street.

In the running firefight in Talbot Street, O’Brien was hit by at least four bullets (three in his left leg and one in his right leg). He fell wounded on the pavement between Speidel’s pork butchers and the Masterpiece Picture Palace at 99 Talbot Street and died about 30 minutes after arrival at hospital.

The colour party lowers the flags in honour of a martyr as the piper plays a lament (*Photo: D.Breatnach*)

Patrick O’Brien was 24 and his death certificate listed his occupation as an employee of a railway company. His address was 28 Cadogan Road, Fairview which is a cul de sac of Victorian redbrick houses close to Annesley Bridge and opposite the Sean Russell statue.

Only three weeks before Patrick’s death, the Free State CID¹ had raided no. 43 Cadogan Road and captured the press used to print the Sinn Féin² paper An Phoblacht along with eight people who were on site. A number of prominent IRA families lived in the vicinity, including the Brughas.

Patrick O’Brien was buried in the Republican Plot, Glasnevin Cemetery and a volley was fired over his grave, presumably following the funeral in the cover of darkness as the IRA could not have risked such a public display during the burial, in a time of martial law.

The colour party raise the flags again in symbolism of the struggle carrying on after honouring a martyr (*Photo: D.Breatnach*)

Despite the hard repression by the Irish State on combatants, their relatives and friends, O’Brien’s family were proud of Patrick as displayed in an anniversary notice placed in The Nationalist & Leinster Times.

The Irish Independent reported on 27 March 1923 that at the inquest of Patrick’s death, his brother James told those present:

“[My brother] … belonged to the IRA since 1915 being then about 15 years of age. He had never changed his principles since then. He always intended to die as he did … rather than change his principles as he swore allegiance to the Republic in 1916.”

FLORAL WREATH, SONG AND SPEECH

A representative of Anti-Imperialist Action was called upon and stepped forward to attach a green, white and orange floral wreath to the pole beneath the commemorative sign.

The plaque/ placard commemorating Vol. Patrick O’Brien attached in Talbot Street by Independent Republicans with the floral wreath from Anti-Imperialist Action attached below it (*Photo: D.Breatnach*)

Seán Óg accompanied himself on guitar singing The Foggy Dew, a popular Republican ballad about the 1916 Rising composed by Fr. Charles O’Neill.

Dublin City Councillor Cieran Perry gave a fairly short speech stressing the importance of these acts of remembrance upholding traditions of resistance in the Dublin working class, also denouncing the fake patriots who stir up racist divisions and hostility in the community.

Perry’s speech also listed some of the crimes of the Irish state, facts underlined when Joe Mooney read out the list of 70 IRA Volunteers formally executed by the Irish state along with those killed in battle or after they surrendered, or were abducted, tortured and murdered in Dublin 1922-’23.

Cnclr. Cieran Perry speaking at the commemoration. (*Photo: D.Breatnach*)

TRAFFIC AND PEOPLE

Traffic was light along the narrow Talbot Street during the event and slowed down to ease past the crowd that had spilled from the pedestrian pavement into the street. A few minutes’ eastward of the spot is the plaque commemorating the killing of Sean Treacy by the British in November 1920.

There was a substantial number of people in support of the event on both pavements of the one-way street but others gathered too, whether out of curiosity or in sympathy. Some of those present consisted of visitors from other countries, whether as students, tourists or workers.

The crowd grew and spilled on to Talbot Street. [The plaque to Vol. Sean Treacy killed by British soldiers in 1920 is high on the front of a building just beyond the tree on the right of photo] (*Photo: D.Breatnach*).

Not for the first time I thought that having leaflets to distribute summarising the event and the reason for it would be useful. I spent a little time explaining some aspects of the event and its history to a couple of visitors from Sweden who seemed very interested.

The uniformed Gardaí kept away from the event, though no doubt the plain-clothed political Special Branch had a few of their own in the vicinity to collect faces and try to match names.

THE ORGANISERS: INDEPENDENT REPUBLICANS

The commemorative event was organised by a group by the name Independent Republicans which has been doing great work in conserving and promoting historical memory associated with events such as the 1916 Rising, the War of Independence and the Civil War.

The Irish Free State came to power as an instrument of British imperialism which clothed, armed and otherwise supplied the state’s National (sic) Army. Independent Republicans have collected the names of 70 Irish Republicans killed in Dublin by that Army.

The group has also devoted time and effort to researching the backgrounds and circumstances of death of many on that list, a substantial undertaking for which we owe them a great debt. Their erection of ‘plaque’ signs around the city at the spot where the fighters fell is also great work.

The commemorative plaque/ placard to Vol. Patrick O’Brien’s memory being erected shortly before the start of the event (*Photo: D.Breatnach*)

On Easter Saturday (8 April) Independent Republicans will be holding a 1916 Rising commemoration in Dublin city centre, details below.

Anti-Imperialist Action will be holding theirs on Easter Sunday (9 April), details below.

End.

FOOTNOTES:

1Criminal Investigation Department, based at Oriel House, where police detectives and some soldiers of the Free State organised operations against Republicans including raids, assassinations, abductions and torture.

2This is not the party of the same name today. Sinn Féin began as a dual-monarchy Irish nationalist party, adopting Republicanism later in 1918. Those who later supported the anti-Republican status of the country and partition by England left the party and another large number left to join the Fianna Fáil party upon the latter’s founding. Briefly in the 1960s the party espoused socialism but split at the end of the decade and Sinn Féin under the Provisionals briefly adopted socialism again during the 1970s. The party of that name today is neither socialist nor even Republican.

SOURCES & FURTHER INFORMATION

https://sammcgrathdublin.medium.com/dublin-poster-campaignto-remember-republicans-killed-in-civil-war-baa3651bba83

Broad Cospito Solidarity Picket at Dublin Italian Embassy

On March 24, 2023March 25, 2023 By rebelbreezeIn Current Affairs Comment, Current Event Report, Human Rights, Internationalist Solidarity, Ireland, Irish Left, Irish RepublicanismLeave a comment

Ireland Anti-Internment Campaign

(Reading time: 3 mins.)

A picket outside the Italian Embassy in Dublin on Thursday (23^rd) was part of a day of action across Europe in solidarity with an Anarchist prisoner on hunger strike since October in a struggle for more humane prison conditions.

The picket, organised at short notice, included Irish Republicans, Anarchists and revolutionary Socialists. Banners and placards indicated the presence of Saoradh, Irish Anarchist Network and Ireland Anti-Internment Campaign.

At one point five uniformed Gardaí stood near the Embassy’s gate while three plain-clothes Special Branch (i.e. political police) watched from a car across the road. The police numbers may have been due to a request from the Embassy in the midst of attacks on some Italian Embassies in Europe.

Despite the presence of Gardaí, Embassy staff appeared nervous, meeting one visitor at the gate to check her reason for attendance after speaking to her on her mobile phone, rather than first allowing her to enter the garden and approach the main entrance.

Some of the uniformed Gardaí attending the solidarity picket and some of the protesters. (*Photo: IAIC*)

Three Special Branch Gardaí (political police) parked across from the picketers, surveilling them (*Photo: IAIC*)

THE HARSHEST ITALIAN PRISON CONDITIONS

Alfredo Cospito is an Italian political prisoner kept under the harshest Italian prison conditions, “41-bis”, which include solitary confinement for most of the day, family visit once a month through glass, no reading matter sent from outside and no phone calls in either direction or lawyer privacy.

According to information on the Internet, these inhumane conditions were developed for Mafiosa leaders, in order to prevent them running their organisations from inside jail and also to pressure them into breaking ranks and informing on their colleagues.

Whatever we may say about that, what can be the intention of subjecting a political prisoner to those conditions, except to break him or to destabilise him mentally? EU recommended rules on prisoner management don’t recommend more than three weeks in solitary confinement.

Lawyers for political prisoner Nadia Lioce, who has been living under the 41-bis regime for two decades, have said due to limited hours permitted contact, she has effectively only interacted with people for a total of 15 hours in the space of a year.

Italian media reported Lioce’s lawyers as saying she is now so “psychologically isolated” that, when her mother and sister visit, she is unable to speak to them for more than a few minutes.

Some of the picketers, the Italian Embassy in the background (*Photo: IAIC*)

Amnesty International and the European Court of Human Rights have both criticised several aspects of the 41-bis, and in 2007 a US court refused to extradite a convicted Mafia drug trafficker on the grounds that the 41-bis regime he would face in Italy would have “constituted torture”.

The Anti-Imperialist Front gave a call for an international solidarity day of action which found an active response in many countries.

Alfredo Cospito’s case is up for review by the Italian prison system this month and pickets and other actions have been organised around Europe to exert pressure on the Italian penal authorities to release Cospito into house arrest in his sister’s home.

The picket displayed not only internationalist solidarity but exemplary broad unity of disparate political forces in solidarity with an Anarchist political prisoner. Hopefully this unity will continue to be built upon as time goes on, for the unfolding struggles of class and nation demand it.

Hopefully the international actions will cause the Italian authorities to relax the inhumane conditions of Alfredo Cospito’s incarceration but now Italian authorities are claiming that Cospito is somehow coordinating violent actions from within his extreme isolation.

Another two of the picketers (*Photo: IAIC*)

A side trip into history

The Italian Embassy is in Northumberland Road, on the south side of the Grand Canal (near the Israeli and US Embassies).

As they were leaving, some of the picketers took time to look at a plaque and monument to the Mount Street Bridge Battle between Irish Volunteers and British soldiers in 1916. Four Volunteers were killed and between 26 and 30 Sherwood Foresters, with 134 more wounded.

Mount Street Battle Monument, on the Bridge over the Grand Canal itself. The English explanation is on the reverse. (*Photo: IAIC*)

A number of Volunteers were captured but a number got away also. Two of the buildings from which the Volunteers fought remain, bearing the marks of bullet strikes. The third, Clanwilliam House was set on fire by the British and was replaced by a 1960s-type office building later.

End.

(Photo: IAIC)

Sources

Alfredo Cospito: Hunger-striking Italian anarchist moved amid protests – BBC News

FS_Prisoners_health_ENG (coe.int)

PATRICK AND THE COLOUR OF REBELLION

On March 19, 2023March 20, 2023 By rebelbreezeIn Folk Custom, History, Ireland, Irish Diaspora, Irish Republicanism, National Liberation, Political Analysis, Popular Resistance, Song, Song in Struggle1 Comment

Diarmuid Breatnach

(Reading time: 6 mins.)

Many people know that March 17^th is St. Patrick’s Day, a national holiday in Ireland and a public holiday in some other places in the world where the Irish diaspora has had an impact¹. But why? And why the shamrock and the colour green?

The Christian Saint Patrick, an escaped Welsh slave of the Irish returned as Christian missionary to Ireland is credited with the main role in the conversion of the Irish from their pagan religions to Christianity. As such, he is revered by the Catholic and many Protestant churches.

Unlike many places in Europe, the conversion seems to have been largely peaceful with no evidence of the fire and sword by which it was imposed on many other lands. Perhaps because of this, Irish monks recorded much of the rich mythology and legends of pagan Ireland.

But there is absolutely no historical reason to associate Patrick with the shamrock. The claim that he used it to demonstrate the three-in-one of the Christian Trinity is a fable and copies of his Confessio, widely accepted as Patrick’s authentic autobiography, do not mention it.

Reference to this fable is not recorded until centuries later but a much more convincing argument against its veracity is that pagans had many deistic trinities and the Irish were no exception, among which the Mór-Righean goddess² in the Táin saga³ is the best remembered.

In fact, there seems little reason to believe that the druids favoured the shamrock either and searching the internet years ago threw up no references at all until more recently one reference only surfaced that gave no source for its claim.

So, no authentic reason for the shamrock – but what about the colour green? It turns out that the association of the Irish with the colour green is historically recent also, with blue having an earlier association. Even today only one of the four provinces, Leinster, has green on its flag.

A similar flag to the Leinster one, a golden harp on a green background was first flown and introduced by Eoghan Rua Ó Néill to the Catholic Confederacy, the Irish and Norman settler alliance against Cromwell and the English Parliament in 1642.

A number of versions of Harp and Crown on flags followed but the first mass Irish Republican organisation, the United Irishmen brought the Harp without the Crown back on to a green background for their flag, with the motto “it is newly strung and shall be heard” next to the harp.

The United Irish emblem; the harp was reproduced in gold on a green background for the flag. (*Image sourced: Internet*)

John Sheils, a Drogheda Presbyterian and United Irishman, in his aisling-style song The Rights of Man composed sometime before the 1798 Rising, brought the icons of a female Ireland, the Harp, colour Green, St. Patrick and the shamrock together in his call for unity against England.

Alluding to “the three-leaved plant” Sheils has St.Patrick declaim that
“it is three in one,
to prove its unity
in that community
that holds with impunity
to the Rights of Man.”

The “three in one” is an obvious reference to the unity of “Catholic, Protestant and Dissenter⁴” sought by the United Irishmen and vocalised by Wolfe Tone among other leaders. However, there is no evidence of wide-scale use by the Unitedmen of the shamrock to signify that unity.

And the green may have been inspired by the colour which Camille Desmoulins called on Parisians to wear in their hats as a sign of revolution two days before the storming of the Bastille in 1789⁵, though they soon chose blue in emulation of the American Revolution.

The failure of the United Irish risings in 1798 and 1803 was followed by severe repression, reflecting the fear of the Crown and its loyal settlers of losing its Irish colony. The weak Irish Parliament was abolished by bribery and Ireland became a formal part of the United Kingdom.

The Wearing of the Green

As a Christian festival, St. Patrick’s Day might have seemed an innocuous feast day, acceptable to ruler and ruled, therefore safe to celebrate and wearing the shamrock as something innocuous.

It seems likely to me that in an atmosphere of wide-scale repression, people of Irish Republican sympathies might well choose to wear green in public at least one day a year, that being in the form of the shamrock on “St. Patrick’s Day.”

The song The Wearing of the Green references the repression following the United Irish uprising of 1798 with the lyrics “they’re hanging men and women for the wearing of the green” and “the shamrock is by law forbade to grow on Irish ground.”⁶

The Irish Republican Brotherhood, formed on St. Patrick’s Day 1856 simultaneously in New York, USA and in Dublin, Ireland, adopted the golden Harp on a Green background for their flag, though they also used the Sunburst, believed symbol of the legendary Fianna warriors.

The formation of the IRB, or “the Fenians” as they became known by both friend and foe, occurred in a time of huge Irish emigration, then overwhelmingly Catholic in religion and surpassing by far that of the mostly Protestant and Dissenters of the late 18^th Century to the USA and Canada.

Waves of Irish emigrants followed those who managed to leave Ireland during the Great Hunger of 1845-1848. Whenever they went to an English-speaking country or colony, the Catholic Irish suffered discrimination from the White Anglo-Saxon Protestants settled there before them.

The Irish who formed a battalion to fight the USA’s second expansionist war against Mexico (1846-48) may have flown the green flag and harp; certainly they named their unit the St. Patrick’s Battalion and were known by Latin Americans as “Los San Patricios“.

St. Patrick’s Day in Exile

St. Patrick’s Day became one of celebrating Irish identity, more ethnic than religious, a way even of flaunting that identity in the face of their detractors and persecutors. The Irish fighting in huge numbers in the Union Army celebrated it during the actual American Civil War (1861-65).

In their first invasion of Canada in 1866, American Civil War veterans organised by a branch of the Fenians flew a green flag with a harp and, it is said, with the letters “IRA” on it, the first such use of the acronym in history.

Painting depicting the Battle of Ridgeway, Fenian invasion of Canada, 1866 – note the Irish flag (*Image sourced: Internet*).

After the War, the Irish in the US celebrated St. Patrick’s Day in mass parades with their Union Army veterans in their regimental uniforms, flinging their identity and their contribution to the USA in the face of their persecutors, not only the highbrow WASPs but the nativist “Know Nothings”.⁷

Irish convicts in Australia celebrated the feast day in 1795⁸ and, since sentenced 1798 and 1803 United Irish were sent there in chains, likely celebrated often afterwards by them, as well as by subsequent political prisoners, Young Irelanders in 1848 and Fenians in 1867.

The Irish diaspora in Australia, who were maligned due to the opposition of many to fighting for the British Empire in WW1⁹, marched in parade on St. Patrick’s Day in 1921 with WW1 veterans in uniform at the front,¹⁰ calling for self-determination for Ireland.

As an Irish community activist in Britain, there was never any question as to where I would be on March 17^th – I’d be celebrating the feast day with the community in the event we’d organised, whether a parade or a reception.

During a time of IRA bombings and widespread repression of the Irish community¹¹ in Britain there were some calls to abandon St. Patrick’s parades but I and others felt it more important than ever to hold them in public at a time when the community was under attack and we did so.

James Connolly must have experienced celebrating St. Patrick’s Day in his Irish diaspora community in Edinburgh, later as an immigrant to Ireland, again as an immigrant to New York and back again as an immigrant once more to Ireland.

James Connolly Monument, Beresford Place, Dublin. (*Photo sourced: Internet*)

In March 1916, a month before his joint leadership of the Rising for which he would be shot by British firing squad, Connolly wrote supporting the celebration by the Irish of St. Patrick’s Day.

“ … the Irish mind, unable because of the serfdom or bondage of the Irish race to give body and material existence to its noblest thoughts, creates an emblem to typify that spiritual conception for which the Irish race laboured in vain.

“If that spiritual conception of religion, of freedom, of nationality exists or existed nowhere save in the Irish mind, it is nevertheless as much a great historical reality as if it were embodied in a statute book, or had a material existence vouched for by all the pages of history.”

“Therefore we honour St. Patrick’s Day (and its allied legend of the shamrock) because in it we see the spiritual conception of the separate identity of the Irish race – an ideal of unity in diversity, of diversity not conflicting with unity.¹²”

He did not call for – and would have certainly repudiated — the celebrating of the feast day by a British Army unit wearing sprigs of shamrock or by Irish Gombeen politicians celebrating it with leaders of US imperialism.

Commenting on the reverse journey of that kind when President Reagan came to Ireland (amidst widescale Irish State repression of opposition) in 1984, Irish bard of folksong Christy Moore sang in Hey Ronnie Regan:

You’ll be wearing the greeen
Down in Ballyporeen
The ‘town of the little potato’;
Put your arms around Garrett
And dangle your carrot
But you’ll never get me to join NATO.

The Anglo-Irish poet and Nobel Literature Laureate WB Yeats wrote about the colour green in reflection on the 1916 Rising:
Now and in time to be,
Wherever green is worn,
Are changed, changed utterly:
A terrible beauty is born.

It should be “terrible” only to the enemies of Irish freedom and self-determination, to imperialists, colonisers and their fascist and racist supporters but truly beautiful to all others.

In parting, let us come again to John Sheils’ 1790s words which he put in Ireland’s, Gráinne’s mouth:

Let each community
detest disunity;
in love and unity
walk hand in hand;
And believe old Gráinne
That proud Britannia
No more shall rob ye
of the Rights of Man.

End.

Trifolium dubium, the Lesser or Yellow Clover, an Seamair Bhuí, top of the candidate list for the “shamrock” title. (*Photo sourced: Internet*)

Footnotes:

1Newfoundland in Canada and the Caribbean island of Monserrat. It is also the most widely-celebrated of all national feast days across the world.

2Usually rendered in English as “the Morrigan”, a trinity composed of three sisters, sometimes Badb, Macha (number of places named after her, including Ard Mhacha [Armagh]) and Nemain, at other times as Badb, Macha and Anand. They were sometimes represented as sisters of another triad, Banba, Éiriu (from which the name of the country Éire is derived) and Fódla. The triads may be three aspects of the one Goddess in each case.

3Táin Bó Cuailgne/ The Cattle Raid of Cooley, a part of the Ulster Cycle of stories, featuring the legendary warrior Sétanta or Cú Chulainn.

4Catholic (the vast majority of the Irish), Anglican (the tiny minority but reigning religious group) and the other protestant sects, in particular the Presbyterians, which had a much larger following than the Anglicans.

5The Unitedmen were greatly influenced by the French Revolution, of course.

6 The best-known version is by dramatist Dion Boucicault, adapted for his 1864 play Arragh na Pogue, or the Wicklow Wedding, set in Co. Wicklow during the 1798 rebellion (Wikipedia)

7‘Nativist’ gangs of earlier USA settlers that mobilised violently against the Irish and African Americans; when tried in court they claimed to ‘know nothing’.

8 https://www.nma.gov.au/exhibitions/not-just-ned/about/about/st-patricks-day

9Such was the popular opposition that the British feared to impose conscription and instead held a referendum which voted not to have conscription. A second referendum failed again though by a smaller majority. Nevertheless many Australian volunteers were killed fighting for the British Empire.

10Of course such identification with the ‘new country’ of settlement may in itself be problematic, particularly should that country be or become imperialist, as has indeed been the case with the USA and with Australia (in subservient partnership with the UK and with the USA).

11Particularly from 1974 onwards until the community’s resurgence in support of the Hunger Strikers in 1981.

12Underlining mine, surely an appropriate message for these times.

Sources:

How the harp became the symbol of Ireland | EPIC Museum (epicchq.com)

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

(84) Judy Garland- Wearing of the Green(1940) – YouTube

https://www.marxists.org/archive/connolly/1916/03/natlfest.htm

AN PHOBLACHT ABÚ – NEW SOCIALIST REPUBLICAN NEWSPAPER

On March 18, 2023May 27, 2023 By rebelbreezeIn Current Affairs Comment, Housing Struggle, Imperialism, Ireland, Irish Left, Irish Republicanism, Journalism, National Liberation, Political Analysis, Socialist Revolution5 Comments

Diarmuid Breatnach

(Reading time: 2 mins.)

A new socialist Irish Republican hardcopy newspaper has appeared in Ireland in recent months. January and February 2023’s editions, believed to be nos. 3 & 4 are reviewed here.

HARD-COPY NEWSPAPERS

While today, at least in the developed world, the production of Internet media is of great importance for the revolutionary movement as much as it is for the capitalist system, the hard-copy newspaper disseminated by hand still has an important role.

Hardcopy newspaper distribution entails contact in the real world with real people, answers given to questions asked and challenges made, contacts made between the potential organisers and potential activist supporters, can go from hand to hand and be left for a random reader.

Online media has no equivalent to this.

Lenin observed that the revolutionary newspaper is an organiser, not only in its calls to action but in the necessary tasks of production and distribution. Ireland has very few revolutionary newspapers and not even one weekly one, to say nothing of daily editions.

An Phoblacht Abú is produced and distributed by Irish Republican Socialists, whose activist manifestations have been seen in the Revolutionary Housing League’s occupation of empty buildings and its calls for a general emulation of such actions.

Another manifestation has been the activities of Anti-Imperialist Action, notably in protest pickets against imperialism and neo-colonialism, antifascist actions and anti-spiking campaigns, also in commemorations of Republican martyrs, often supported by sticker and leaflet campaigns.

*An Phoblacht Abú* Front January 2023, front page.

CONTENT, FORM AND PRICE

Both issues reviewed contained 16 sides of A4 pages, composed of two A3 sheets folded in half, one inside the other. They sold at 2 euros per issue – less than one-third the price of most pints in Dublin and much longer to consume!

In general the articles are well-written and with few typographical errors. The editions reviewed here covered national and international news and the overall line in the content is of revolutionary overthrow of the ruling class and eschewing electoralism.

With regard to coverage of national issues, anti-fascism, anti-racism, building a broad front, opposition to NATO and the British occupation of the Six Counties and the neo-colonial and neo-liberal ruling class of the Twenty-Six Counties have figured prominently.

Apart from such regular themes, January’s issue documented the struggle against student fees and treachery of the student union executive in Maynooth and reported a joint Republican Prisoners’ solidarity picket in Dublin along with the release of a known Loyalist sectarian murderer.

Commemorations of Irish Republicans murdered by the Free State during the Irish Civil War/ Counter Revolution (1922-1923) figured in both issues.

In foreign news coverage, actions of peoples’ guerrilla forces in the Philippines and India, for which one would search the main dailies in vain, are covered in both issues and, in January’s, Scottish independence and John McLean and Israeli expulsion of Palestinian campaigner Salah Hamouri.

The environmental struggle in Germany figured in February’s issue.

Regarding economic questions, the rise in “cost of living” and housing crisis attacks on working people were addressed in short articles. Wider pieces on action were included on class struggle and community representation and action in the February edition.

LOOKING AHEAD

The appearance of An Phoblacht Abú is welcome and it is hoped can be sustained. Hopefully further issues will deal with questions of culture and the Irish language, the war in Ukraine (on which the Left seems deeply divided), historical-cultural conservation, trade union organisation and education of the people.

AVAILABLEat 2 euro per copy (back issues sometimes free) from sellers and supporters or from irsmedia@protonmail.com

End.

2022: Busy Year for the Ireland Anti-Internment Campaign

On March 11, 2023March 11, 2023 By rebelbreezeIn Civil Rights, Human Rights, Internationalist Solidarity, Irish Republicanism, Political PrisonersLeave a comment

Ireland Anti-Internment Campaign

(Reading time main text: 5 mins.)

2022 was a busy year for the anti-internment campaign organisation, involving, along with its public awareness-rising events, a reorganisation with a new constitution, a new name and expansion of membership.

Origins

The formation of an anti-internment campaign was sparked by the revoking of the licence of ex-political prisoner Marian Price in May 2011 for the “crime” of steadying the written speech of an IRA speaker during a windy Easter Rising commemoration in Milltown Cemetery, Belfast.

In addition to revocation of the licence under which Republican prisoners were released under the Good Friday Agreement, other activists were also being charged under “anti-terrorist” legislation and routinely being refused bail, if not granted it under severe restrictions.

The wait for a trial is often two years and regardless of the eventual outcome, the individuals had already spent two years in jail or at home, barred from travel or political activity and harassed by police visits to their homes.

Early banner-placard protesting the internment of Marian Price (*Image sourced: Libcom.org*)

Front section of Anti-Internment March, coming into top part of Parnell Square, Dublin 2013. (*Image sourced: IAIC archives*)

These conditions were considered to be in effect the same as internment without trial and the campaign against internment was founded as an independent one, a status it maintained despite a number of attempts to take it over or to intimidate with threats and State harassment.

Throughout its history the Anti-Internment Campaign has organised the annual Newry event (not since 2021 unfortunately), many pickets (including in protest against Amnesty Ireland) and a march in Dublin, spoken at or participated in public events in Belfast, Cork, Derry, Glasgow and Wexford.

It has also organised and hosted conferences and public meetings, for example with speakers from the campaigns for the Craigavon Two, Munir Farooqi and Tony Taylor and about the Right to Protest with a speaker from the Irish Council for Civil Liberties.

Section of the annual Anti-Internment white-line picket Newry, August 2016 (*Image sourced: IAIC archives*)

Annual Anti-Internment, Newry, rallying after white-line picket, August 2019 (*Image sourced: IAIC archives*)

A busy year

As stated in the introduction above, 2022 was a busy year for the anti-internment campaign group, involving, along with its public awareness-rising events a reorganisation with a new constitution and a new name. The campaign organised nine public events and participated in more.

Most of those public events were awareness-raising pickets with placards, banners, flags and leaflet distribution. Usually the pickets alternated between the Henry Street/ Liffey Street junction and at Crown Alley by the square in the Temple Bar area, both areas busy with shoppers and tourists.

Anti-Internment picket in Henry Street, November, Dublin 2022 (*Photo: IAIC*)

The campaign carried out pickets in Henry Street on 9^th April, 6^th August and 19^th November and in Temple Bar on 5^th March, 21^st May, 2^nd July and 27^th August. On 22^nd October, with a special focus on Palestinian prisoners, we were on the iconic Ha’penny Bridge.

It has always been of particular interest to the campaign group to reach working people and large numbers of that class of all ages pass through those areas. Of interest also are people from other lands and the Basque and Palestinian flags alongside the Irish ones often stimulate discussion.

In September the campaign attended the Peter Daly commemoration in Wexford and provided a speaker at the Dublin meeting to re-launch the End State Repression campaign which our group had supported in the past but which had waned over the Covid epidemic period since.

Our campaign group also took part in the planning of and participation in the joint prisoner’s solidarity picket in Dublin on 17th December 2022.

Reorganisation

It had been clear for some time that the organisation was in need of reorganisation to facilitate expansion but the process had been difficult.

Eventually in July the decision was taken to close down the Anti-Internment Group of Ireland and to reform under another name. This was done and, after democratic consultation process a new constitution was agreed, with the Ireland Anti-Internment Campaign as the new name.

According to agreed decisions, a new banner with the organisation’s new name was commissioned (though it would take some time to come to fruition). A new Facebook identity for the group was constructed with a statement explaining the development.

The new constitution, more explicitly democratically-based than had been previously the case, was published.

Anti-Internment picket in Temple Bar, Dublin, March 2022 (*Photo: IAIC*)

Year planning

In the reorganisation process, the IAIG lost one member but gained three new activists and the return of two lapsed members. With renewed energy, members began planning for the rest of the year, to conclude with participation in the annual Bloody Sunday March for Justice in Derry.

Issuing a statement to explain the reorganisation, commissioning a new banner, scheduling a number of pickets in Dublin and organising the annual Prisoners’ Solidarity Picket in Dublin December were part of the planning and most of the target actions were completed.

In December and in good time, the campaign’s members organised to purchase, sign and mail Christmas cards to all Irish Republican prisoners, also a number of non-complying Basque political prisoners and the Catalan jailed revolutionary Catalonian rapper Pablo Hasel.

The proposal to organise the annual Prisoners’ Solidarity picket in December jointly with the Irish Republican Prisoners’ Welfare Association and with Ireland Anti-Imperialist Action was agreed and the joint event went ahead on 17^th December with around 40 participating.

Section of the joint AICI, AIA and IRPWA Republican Prisoners’ solidarity picket 17 December 2022, O’Connell Street, Dublin 2022 (*Photo: IAIC*)

The picket with placards and banners, including the illuminated words of the IAIC’s “SAOIRSE” (“Freedom”) attracted attention and passers-by, both Irish and from abroad engaged leafleters and other participants in discussion. A speaker from each group gave a short statement.

The year’s programming ended with the specific scheduling of participation with a new banner in the annual Bloody Sunday March for Justice in Derry.

New Banner Aired at Bloody Sunday March for Justice in Derry

The new banner got its first public airing at the annual march in Derry, commemorating the massacre of unarmed civilians by the British Army in Derry in January 1972 and was carried as part of the march from the Creggan, through a large part of Derry and down to Free Derry Corner.

The marchers in different political parties, campaign organisations and independent individuals marched trough cold rain and strong wind-gusts through the nearly 5-kilometre walk. The members of four Republican Flute Bands played bravely throughout.

The new banner of the Ireland Anti-Internment Committee carried in the Bloody Sunday March for Justice in Derry in January 2023. (*Photo: IAIC archives*)

The IAIC will shortly begin its year-planning for the rest of the year, its calendar again probably ending at 2024’s Bloody Sunday March for Justice and meanwhile organising events to publicise the on-going undemocratic jailing of activists without trial both sides of the British Border.

The IAIC considers that the jailing of people without trial by both administrations is, in addition to political repression, a significant assault on civil rights and a threat to all opposition groups and that it is in the interests of all to unite in opposing the practice.

The Campaign welcomes the active support of all democratically-minded individuals at its public events.

End.

USEFUL LINK

Ireland Anti-Internment Campaign:https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100063166633467

FIGHTER FOR CLASS AND NATION LAID TO REST

On January 16, 2023January 16, 2023 By rebelbreezeIn Anti-Fascism, Housing Struggle, Human Rights, Ireland, irish history, Irish Left, Irish Republicanism, National Liberation, Obituary, Personal Blog, Song in Struggle, UncategorizedLeave a comment

Diarmuid Breatnach

Eamon McGrath (31 October 1955 – 11 January 1923) singer and song lyrics-writer, activist in areas of housing, water and national sovereignty, historical memory and anti-fascism.

He was getting buried on Saturday and I wasn’t able to be at the service nor at the celebration of his life with comrades afterwards.

I hope this eulogy, if that’s the right word for this, will make up for my absence to his family, comrades and friends and, of course, to me.

Eamon came into my life through the Moore Street occupation in January of 2016. The property speculator Joe O’Reilly (Chartered Land) and the State were about to collude in the demolition of three buildings in the 1916 Terrace.

The State had declared only four buildings in the 16-building terrace, after a long struggle, to be a historical monument and even later, purchased – but around 300 men and women hadn’t occupied just four buildings in 1916.

The Save Moore Street From Demolition campaign group had called emergency demonstrations on to the street following which the buildings had been occupied by protesting conservationists.

The weather was bitterly cold but the occupiers held firm for a week until a stay of demolition had been imposed by the High Court. Despite his health status and challenged mobility, Eamon was there throughout, with humour and song.

Eamon McGrath to far right of photo while Dave Swift (centre) in Irish Volunteer uniform reads a historical document April 2017 in Moore Street, during historical commemoration event (the hoarding behind is covering the extension of the ILAC further into Moore Street, killing the market appearance for that side of the street for the block).

Subsequently, to prevent internal damage by contractors, a six-weeks’ blockade was imposed on the building by conservationists from 6.30am to 4.30pm each weekday. Eamon was very much a part of that too, driving himself and his close comrade Sean Doyle up from Wicklow every day.

Eamon was intensely loyal to close friends and comrades. On occasion I found him prickly or grumpy (especially at 6.30 am) but throughout any disagreements he never lost sight of who were his comrades and other people he respected.

Though a proud man, when he recognised himself in error, he didn’t hesitate to apologise.

A new broader group came out of the occupation and blockade, called Save Moore Street 2016 and Eamon attended and contributed to internal organising meetings and events we called on to the street – re-enactments, fake funerals of history, pickets, demonstrations and rallies.

As others drifted or were called away from the group by other commitments, Eamon remained with the active core.

(L-R) Paddy Reilly and Eamon McGrath in period costumes having a conversation during a history education event and anniversary commemoration of the founding of the Save Moore Street From Demolition campaign group. (*Photo from Save Moore Street From Demolition FB page*)

Of course, Eamon had been active before 2016: certainly very much so in the general awareness-raising and mass campaign against planned privatisation of our water and the installation of water meters.

He was to continue that activism, which resulted in assaults by a water contractor on him and Seán Doyle, court appearances for both and in May 2016 both of them went to jail for a period but remained unbowed.

Eamon was one of the original occupiers of Apollo House in December 2016 in protest against homelessness and as a co-founder of the Anti Eviction Flying Column, Eamon was to the fore in resisting evictions across the country and also a co-founder of the Bring It to Their Doors campaign.

The State authorities were making things awkward for Eamon by then, both in terms of working as a taxi driver and claiming benefit when he was not. His ability to reach events in Dublin declined but he still got there often enough on public transport, while remaining active nearer to home.

As his physical mobility declined further, comrades in Carlow started an on-line collection to buy him an electric wheelchair. Even as I made enquiries to contribute, the fund had already reached its target, so quickly did people support it.

Later still, his family installed a new chairlift for his home so he could access the room where he recorded his songs with lyrics commenting on the ongoing political struggles, adapted to popular airs.

Though our voices didn’t go well together, we sang together a couple of times – outside the GPO and outside Dublin City Hall.

Eamon McGrath, centre right after April 2016 event in Moore Street after which we brought it to in front of the General Post Office in Moore Street for awhile. Myself near centre, Glenda further to the left of photo, Sean Doyle nearly out of shot.

He remained active on social media but in particular in keeping an eye on the activities of right-wing people, covid-deniers, racists, fascists …. Eamon was a handy source for a quick update on the status of many of them.

Eamon arranged an interview for us both with the Dublin Near FM radio station, the interviewer being then a former drug addict who sadly returned later to his addiction and died on the street. It was on the way back from the interview that Eamon told me a little about his earlier years.

He had a difficult time in his childhood, including institutional confinement and his formal education suffered as a result. However, he educated himself about many things by reading, listening, discussing and viewing on line.

I think the last time I saw Eamon was at a commemoration at the Peter Daly monument in Wexford inSeptember 2022, in his electric wheelchair and attached oxygen cylinder for his lung condition and all in good cheer, asking me for Moore Street campaign updates in detail.

Eamon McGrath, centre in wheelchair, at Peter Daly commemoration in Wexford, September 2022 (*Photo from Peter Daly FB page*)

His comrades in Anti-Imperialist Action Ireland, which he had joined at its foundation in 2017 correctly called him “one ot the most dedicated political activists of the last decade” and no-one who knew him could argue with that.

I knew little of Eamon’s family life but he often emphasised how important family was, not just to him but in general. Though I do not know them tá mé i gcomhbhrón leo, offering them my condolences along with the many they have received and are no doubt still arriving.

A partner, father, grandfather, great-grandfather, extended family member and friend to many.

Eamon McGrath of Kenmare Heights, Greystones & formerly Wolfe Tone Square, Bray, Co. Wicklow, was buried in Radford Cemetery, Greystones Saturday after a service in the Holy Rosary Church, Bray, attended by family, comrades and friends.

End.