Dublin Political History Tours Facebook page reminds us of the 20th September anniversary of the public execution on of “Bold Robert Emmet, the darling of Erin”, leader of the unsuccessful Republican insurrection in Dublin on 23rd July 1803.
Coloured drawing: The executioner holds up Robert Emmet’s head to the crowd, sections of which demonstrate their repugnance of the act and are repressed English soldiers on horseback. (Sourced: Internet)
I reproduce the Dublin Political History Tours text (reformatted for R. Breeze):
On Saturday we passed by the anniversary of the execution by the English occupation forces of Robert Emmet, United Irishman. Emmet had been condemned to death for planning an insurrection for Irish self-determination which the English Occupation called ‘treason’.
Leaving behind in Kilmainham Gaol his comrade Anne Devlin, who had endured torture and death of family members without giving the authorities any information, Emmet was taken to the front of St. Catherine’s Church.2
(This building is) on Thomas Street in Dublin’s Liberties area on the west side of the city centre. The site chosen was sending a message to the populace of the area that had nationalist and republican sympathies.
There, in front of a huge crowd and many soldiers, Emmet was hanged and then beheaded, the executioner holding up the dripping head to the crowd. His body was later returned to the Gaol before being later buried in Bully’s Acres in the grounds of the Royal Hospital Kilmainham.
Emmet’s corpse was later disinterred in secret and reburied elsewhere by friends or family and, despite a number of sites being speculated, its current location is unknown.
There is a monument to the execution inside the grounds of the St. Catherine’s building and a stone plaque on the wall outside it.
The monument inside the ground at the front of St. Catherine’s Church, Thomas Street, Dublin. (Source: Kilmainham Tales)
Robert Emmet was very popular in Ireland at the time and his memory is still. A statue in his honour stands in Dublin’s Stephens Green, a replica of another two at locations in the United States.
Anne Devlin endured three years in Kilmainham Gaol and according to Richard Madden (1798 – 5 February 1886), chronicler of the United Irishmen who sought her out, was followed everywhere in public by police.
(who were) observing anyone who she spoke to, as a result of which many were afraid to speak to her. Her body lies in Glasnevin Cemetery.
“Bold Robert Emmet” is a traditional ballad in the martyr’s honour and “Anne Devlin” also has a much more recent song in hers by Pete St.John.
(quoted passages end)
In the 1916 Proclamation of Independence, “the right of the people of Ireland to the ownership of Ireland” is proclaimed and that “six times in the past 300 years they have asserted it in arms”, probably referring to insurrections of 1641, 1689, 1798, 1803, 1848 and 1867.3
Historians have mostly dismissed the 1803 uprising as never likely to succeed but a minority have rated the preparations highly, including the innovations of signal rockets and folding pike handle for concealed personal carrying.
RH Madden, the first historian of the United Irishmen was of the opinion that the insurrection attempt was engineered by the English Occupation’s administration in Dublin Castle in order to justify continued repression of Irish republicanism and to eliminate some leaders.
Generally historians have tended not to give much credence to Madden on that issue but it is certain that the Occupation had a network of spies in operation in Ireland and that some had penetrated Emmet’s conspiracy.
Emmet on the scaffold with St. Catherine’s Church behind, the executioner beside him, the crowd in the street and many English soldiers, on foot and on horseback. The illustration was employed by Dublin Political History Tours but easily sourced on the Internet.
However it is not for the manner of the 1803 insurrection that Emmett has been fondly remembered in Ireland to this day 123 years later – and abroad for decades after his death4 – but for the calm manner in which he faced his enemies, including his executioner and for his eloquence at his trial.
Past insurrections contain lessons for us today and a serious evaluation should be attempted, perhaps with a number of submissions from historians of different opinions on the matter, to deal with questions around Emmet’s return from France and the planning of the insurrection in Ireland,.
For us today however, whether Republicans or more generally anti-colonialists and anti-imperialists, it is also necessary to revere the memory of revolutionary action for a democratic Irish Republican and to uphold his and Anne Devlin’s spirit of defiance in resistance.
End.
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Statue monument of Robert Emmet in Washington DC, a copy of which stands in St. Stephens Green, looking across the road to his erstwhile homeand other copies stand in Emmetsburg, Iowa and Golden Gate Park, San Francisco, California.Those in the USA were all cast by the artist Jerome Connor between 1916 and 1919. (Photo sourced: Internet)Statue monument in Rathfarnham dedicated to Anne Devlin from Wicklow, a member of the United Irishmen conspiracy, tortured and jailed but never gave her captors any information. Sculptor: Clodagh Emoe(Gracies, Maria, for bringing this to my attention).
FOOTNOTES
1From Emmet’s famous speech from the dock of the courthouse in Green Street that not until then should his epitaph be written. I have no doubt that Emmet meant “nation-states of the world” because Ireland was in his time more than what we would understand today from the vague term of “country” – it was clearly, though under foreign occupation, already a nation with its own unique culture and a long history. She has yet to take that place to which Emmet referred and aspired for her.
2Note that was the Anglican St. Catherine’s Church, as a Catholic St. Catherine’s is also located not far away on Meath St. The Anglican church was closed in the 1960s but later reopened and reconsecrated as an Anglican Church. The interior seems very untypical of Anglican churches. Emmet was raised in the Anglican faith.
3Believed to refer to, in sequence: the Irish and Norman Irish clans in the Confederation’s uprising, the Williamite War’s, United Irishmen’s, Robert Emmets’, Young Irelanders’, the Fenians’. Coincidentally, the large monument to uprisings in Ireland erected by the National Graves Association in the St. Paul’s section of Glasnevin Cemetery also includes only six dates but they are of Republican risings only, beginning with 1798 and ending with 1916.
4I read somewhere that even in England Radicals would read Emmet’s speech as a high point of their events including formal dinners.
An Irish punk rock band, Mongolian throat-singers, a poet and Irish folk singers all performed at Solidarity Sessions No.2 to a good crowd in the International Bar, in in Dublin City centre Wicklow Street on Wednesday 17th..
An Irish and international resistance theme in decor was presented by flags of the Starry Plough and Palestine with Saoirse don Phalaistín as stage backdrop, while flags respectively of Cumann na mBan and Basque Antifa concealed the original decor’s ubiquitous photos of Michael Collins.
Flesh B. Bugged performing (Photo: Dermo Photography)
A PFLP1 flag was also taped to a wall. Hand-written signs on the stairs leading to the basement venue, alternatively in Irish and in English, asked for quiet/ ciúnas for the performance/ racaireacht. The Irish language was present too in some of the performances to follow.
MC for the night, Jimi Cullen, himself a singer-songwriter activist told the crowd the purpose of the organising collective was “to build a community of resistance and solidarity with our struggles and with struggles around the world” through culture in a social atmosphere.
Before the crowd — a flag temporarily changing the decor. (Photo: R. Breeze)
Themes of love, nature and emigration were covered in song; however the dominant theme was resistance – to prison regimes, foreign occupation, fascism, class oppression, racial discrimination – and solidarity with the struggles of others, near and far.
Diarmuid Breatnach, singing acapella kicked off the night with a selection of songs from the Irish resistance tradition and a couple of short ones from the USA civil rights movement. Some of the melodies however, of particular interest perhaps to Back Home in Derry2, were his own originals.
Eoghan Ó Loingsigh, accompanying himself on guitar followed with more material from the same tradition, dedicating one to his late IRA father. A folk song Ó Loingsigh announced as ‘non-political’ performed acapella turned out to be very much political but on the issue of social class.
Áine Hayden followed with poems on a range of topics, from swimming in the Royal Canal during the Covid shut-down, deleting a personal relationship to a dedication to comedian and activist Mahmoud Sharab murdered with family in a “safe zone” tent by the Israeli Occupation Force.
Eoghan Ó Loingsigh performing (Photo: Dermo Photography)
The three performers were all introduced as activists as well as artists and the mostly-young crowd, apparently containing a strong representation of political and social activists, responded well to the performers with applause, yells of encouragement and often joining in on choruses.
More people arrived before, during and even after the break – including an elderly couple who had just arrived from the USA and could only pay in dollars but were admitted for free. Leaving later with thanks they promised a contribution to Palestine solidarity when they got home.
Before the crowd — a Cumann na mBan flag temporarily changing the decor. (Photo: Dermo Photography)
Also an activist, Ru O’Shea sang an Irish, Scottish, French and Italian selection, accompanied by bouzouki and guitar and performed a spoken word piece with a refrain of ‘Éire under attack’ before schooling the audience to sing the chorus of Robbie Burns’ Green Grow the Rushes Oh!
Áine Hayden performing (Photo: Dermo Photography)
Nomads were the next act. Composed of two Mongolian musicians playing violins in the style of the viola and a Dubliner modulating on a sound deck they were unusual enough but it was the amazing throat-singing of one of the Mongolians that had the audience enthralled.
It was amazing to learn that there are three different kinds of Mongolian throat-singing and then to hear them performed, one of which was a kind of whistling with a vibrating bass undertone wavering through it. The applause, particularly when they concluded, was rapturous and sustained.
Before the crowd — flags temporarily changing the decor. (Photo: R. Breeze)Ru O’Shea performing (Photo: Dermo Photography)
The evening’s entertainment concluded with Flesh B. Bugged, a punk rock Irish duo of bass guitar and drums with spoken voice pieces in Irish from the bass guitar player. Their volume and beat got some of the crowd up and dancing and the wider crowd responded well to them too.
MC Jimi Cullen went up on stage for the last time to thank venue, performers, audience, doorkeepers, poster designers Ríona and Azzy O’Connor, also Diarmuid for original artwork. At a prompt from the crowd Cullen also got a round of applause from the audience for his MCing.
The Mongolian musicians of Nomads performing (Photo: D.Breatnach)
Remarking they’d “had a great night” and encouraging his listeners to follow the organising collective on its Instagram page, Cullen told them that details of Solidarity Sessions No.3 and the collective’s decisions on recipients of donations from money raised would be posted on there.
Diarmuid Breatnach told the audience that each individual could help build a community of resistance through attending the Solidarity Sessions and encouraging others to attend. He welcomed any ‘competion’ from solidarity sessions around the country.
Bass guitarist of Flesh B. Bugged (Photo: Dermo Photography)
The downstairs area of the International Bar is not perhaps the best layout for this kind of event but it worked out well enough for the collective, audience and performers on the night. Their next event will be back at their launch venue,The Cobblestone, Smithfield on Thursday 30th October.
End.
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The Mongolian throat-singer in Nomads (Photo: Dermo Photography)
FOOTNOTES
1People’s Front for the Liberation of Palestine, one of two specifically secular armed resistance organisations in Palestine.
2Irish mega folk singer Christy Moore had organised Bobby Sands’ poem into song to the melody of The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald by Gordon Lightfoot.
Dublin city centre on Saturday saw two marches scheduled to start at the same time from the Garden of Remembrance, both of which were drenched by heavy showers, as were fans attending the Robbie Williams concert in nearby Croke Park stadium.
The first march to set off was the largest, the Harvey Morrison protest, the Hunger Strike Commemoration organised by Dublin Independent Republicans waiting for the space to clear in order to assemble theirs, with pipers, band and various banners forming up.
Supporters of both marches are mingled here though the majority are there for the Harvey Morrison march. (Photo: R.Breeze)
The Harvey Morrison protest was about the long wait the named boy had for appropriate treatment from the Irish health service for his condition of spina bifada and scoliosis. As he waited, his spine continued to curve causing him pain and though underwent surgery last year died on July 29th.
It emerged last year that Harvey had been removed from Children’s Health Ireland’s (CHI) urgent scoliosis surgery waiting list, without his family being informed. In 2017 Simon Harris declared that no child would wait for more than four months for scoliosis treatment.
Apart from those requiring specialist treatment for rarer medical conditions, people with much more common complaints face many hours in A & E before being seen by a doctor or having an X-ray taken, with an average of 500 people admitted to hospital on trolleys daily awaiting beds.1
Seven different speakers addressed them at their rally on Custom House Quay, being well received by the crowd with a small exception, which was when a participant shouted ‘Traitor!’at Mary Lou Mac Donald, President of the Sinn Fein party, before being told by march stewards to keep quiet.
Calling SF (and any in Government) politicians ‘traitor’ is a frequent position of those on the Far-Right2 in the Irish State, for racist reasons. Indeed, a number of Far-Right activists were spotted among the marchers but it seems they were unable to dominate the event.
THE HUNGER STRIKE MARTYRS COMMEMORATION
A handful of fascists were also observed watching the Hunger Strike martyrs’ commemoration gather and photographing them but when some of their targets began to photograph them in turn, they walked away, presumably to go and promote themselves and their lies on social media.
Fascists who had been filming the Hunger Strike Commemoration moving off as a camera turns on them. (Photo: R.Breeze)
Irish Republicans, who are opposed to (and by) the Far-Right, also call Sinn Féin ‘traitors’ but for the reason that they consider the party has left the struggle and colludes with the neo-colonial ruling class of the state and with the English occupation in the Six Counties.
The pipers prior to setting off on the march. (Photo: R.Breeze)
Two pipers led off the Hunger Strike commemoration organised by Independent Dublin Republicans followed by a full colour party and the James Connolly Republican Flute Band, from Derry. In traditional two lines style they marched through onlooking crowds in O’Connell Street.
The march crossed the Liffey into D’Olier Street, back up O’Connell Street and after a pause at the Government-threatened GPO, into Parnell Street, then around the western and northern sides of the Square and back into the Remembrance Garden for the commemoration ceremony.
The Hunger Strike Commemoration march proceeding down from the Garden of Remembrance and just about to enter Dublin’s main thoroughfare, O’Connell Street. (Photo: R.Breeze)
And it rained – it poured down rain. Which was bad enough on the audience but much much worse on the colour party in shirt and trousers, the RFB members and those holding the portraits of the ten hunger strike martyrs and a number of banners.
Dixie Elliot was introduced as the main speaker, well-known in Republican circles, former member of the Provisional IRA, an ex-POW and ‘Blanketman’.3
(Photo: R.Breeze)
Seemingly undeterred by the pouring rain, Elliot spoke at substantial length though whether through lack of projection or faulty amplifier, much of what he said was lost to many in the audience. From snatches he could be heard going through the history of the recent three decades’ war.
The targets of his condemnation were not alone the British occupation and the Irish State’s complicity but also the leadership of the Irish Republican movement who had abandoned the struggle and become part of the colonial administration in the Six Counties.
(Photo: R.Breeze) (Photo: R.Breeze)
Expressing solidarity with the Palestinian struggle and against imperialism, Elliot also condemned the far-Right in Ireland who claim to be ‘patriots’ in order to promote their racism and he counter-posed the example of Bobby Sands’ internationalism in his poem The Rhythm of Time.
The Connolly Memorial Republican Flute Band setting out on the march from Garden of Remembrance. (Photo: R.Breeze)
Both Elliot and the Chairperson called for solidarity with Irish Republican political prisoners and the framed Craigavon Two, convicted in a no-jury political Occupation court and still in jail 16 years later.
Finally chairperson Ado Perry thanked people for their attendance, the colour party and audience stood to attention and the piper played the air to the chorus of the song generally known as Amhrán na bhFiann (and of which the chorus melody is also the ‘National Anthem’ of the Irish State).
(Photo: R.Breeze)
CROKE PARK CONCERT
The Gaelic Athletic Association stadium in Croke Park was the venue for a Robbie Williams concert in Dublin and the fans were flocking into town in rainproof macs that the marchers could have done with. The previous weekend it had been the Manchester Gallaghers, i.e. Oasis there.
The finals in Gaelic football for men and women and in hurling have been played in Croke Park in previous weekends and now it seems it’s rock concerts season.
The far-Right protested the couple of occasions that the stadium was rented to celebrate the Muslim feast day of Eid. Apparently English musicians and bands playing there are are not problematic for them. But then nor are the banks and property speculators causing the housing crisis.4
End.
(Photo: R.Breeze) (Photo: R.Breeze) (Photo: R.Breeze)Main speaker, Dixie Elliot, speaking at rally in Garden of Remembrance at end of Hunger Strike Commemoration march. (Photo: R.Breeze)
3One of the Irish Republican ‘blanket protester’ prisoners who resisted the attempt of the colonial prison service to make them wear regulation prison uniform, wearing underwear and a blanket instead. This condition degenerated into the ‘no wash’ and ‘dirty protests’ which the prisoners sought to overcome with the hunger strikes of 1980 and 1981 when 10 prisoners died.
I wish to briefly clear up what I believe to be some confusion about the terminology in the title, basing not so much on opinion but relying in the main on fact as illustrated by history.
I will attempt to show thereby that Republicanism and Irish Republicanism are different things ideologically and that socialism is different from both of them.
Republicanism entered the world as a political aspiration and, after revolutions in Britain, France and the USA, practised as a system of Government. It proclaimed electoral democracy for its citizens (at first men but later women) – but quite clearly the bourgeois class ruled society.
George Washington, Republican, being presented with the flag of the early American Republic. (Image sourced: Internet)
It was a democratic bourgeois (essentially capitalist) ideology characterised by individual choice,1 opposition to feudalism and monarchy and separation of church and state. It was not essentially socialist nor even anti-colonial, as we can clearly see from its early examples.2
Republican government was overthrown in Britain (English and Scottish administrations), the monarchy restored and in time a kind of compromise monarchy-democratic system evolved. The republican system in France and the USA remained and is with us to this day.
Painting of Oliver Cromwell, an English Republican whose name became part of a curse in Ireland (including for Irish Republicans!). (Image sourced: Internet)
Irish Republicanism also developed as a bourgeois ideology (drawing on English, French and US Republican thinking)3 but it was clearly also in favour of Irish sovereignty and therefore against the colonialisation of Ireland.4 Once measures of reform were blocked it became revolutionary.
This gave rise to the revolutionary organisations of the United Irishmen of the 1790s and early 1800s and the Young Irelanders of the middle of the 19th Century; also of the Irish Republican Brotherhood of the later 19th.
The IRB or Fenians however had a strong working class character and were admitted to the First International Workingmen’s Association, the first international socialist organisation. However, Irish Republicanism remained a bourgeois ideology albeit democratic and revolutionary.
Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, founders of scientific socialism. (Image sourced: Internet)
Socialism
The ideology of socialism has a long pedigree but was made more concrete under and in opposition to capitalist society. It found development on a scientific ideological and organisational basis particularly with the work of two German migrants to Britain, Karl Marx and Frederick Engels.
This ideology emphasises communal over individual ownership of the means of production, distribution and use/ consumption and sees the socialist state as a stage on the way to communist society. Its mantra is: From each according to their ability, to each according to their contribution.5
In terms of implementation the Paris Commune of 1871 was the first socialist capture of a city and the October Socialist Revolution of 19176 in Russia the first time a country was taken by socialists.7
Irish Republican ideology continued into the early decades of the 20th Century with its military organisation first the Irish Volunteers of the 1916 Rising and later, the Irish Republican Army of the War of Independence, whose leadership split over the English offer of autonomy with partition.
Ireland had been kept under-industrialised by colonialism but socialist political organisation was developing slowly in some urban areas. In 1896 Connolly and others founded the Irish Socialist Republican Party in Dublin and in 1912 he and Larkin also the Irish Labour Party.
In 1911 Larkin had founded the Irish Transport and General Workers Union.
The employers strove to break the ITGWU and implemented a Lockout of union members or supporters in 1913; attacks on the workers by the Dublin Metropolitan Police led to the defensive creation of the Irish Citizen Army – the first workers’ army in the world.8
Some Irish Republican leaders and followers sympathised with the strikers and some did not but the Republican movement did not mobilise in their support with the exception of a number of members of Iníní9 na hÉireann, which would later split between the ICA and Cumann na mBan.
In 1916 the IRB organised an insurrection with the participation of its Irish Republican military forces of the Irish Volunteers, Cumann na mBan and Na Fianna Éireann united with the Socialist force of the Irish Citizen Army (including women members).10
The War of Independence 1919-1921 was led by the Irish Republican movement with some support, particularly in intelligence and arms smuggling, by the Irish Citizen Army.
The Civil War 1922-2311 followed the British offer of autonomy with partition, as the leadership of the Irish Republican movement, including a section of the IRA split. The ICA had lost its leadership but did not join the neo-colonial side and in subsequent years faded organisationally.
The main opposition leadership to the State returned to being nationalist in the shape of Sinn Féin and the Anti-Treaty IRA, both of which split again with a substantial number joining the De Valera-led Fianna Fáil, which would soon show itself to be also neo-colonial in outlook and practice.
In this period a Socialist current grew within the Irish Republican movement, responding to international and domestic events including the growth of fascism. The short-lived Republican Congress attempted to combine the Socialist and Irish Republican currents in one broad front.
The Irish Republican movement leadership and substantial sections of its membership was however socially conservative and largely dominated by Catholic Church influence. The IRA responded to the Republican Congress with a new anti-communist rule and the expulsion of Congress members.
Frank Ryan, IRA and International Brigades, Socialist (Image sourced: Internet)
This sad part of the history of the Irish Republican movement illustrates very clearly the separate nature of Irish Republican and Socialist organisation. The IRA of the 1930s were Irish Republicans but anti-socialist and those who joined Congress had begun as Republicans but were now socialists.
Or Socialist Republicans perhaps but with the emphasis on socialism. Henceforth other variants would exist, of Republicans who were socially conservative, or liberal, or socialist-influenced … but Irish Republicans first and foremost.
Such an ideology would allow them later to unite to focus on a war against the colonial occupation of one-sixth of the nation but to largely neglect the social, economic and cultural issues arising from a socially conservative neo-colonial regime affecting the majority of the Irish population.12
There may be a tragic illustration of the difference between revolutionary Irish Socialism and revolutionary Irish Republicanism in the last of the Dublin 1916 executions, on 12th May, of the socialist James Connolly and of the Irish Republican Brotherhood organiser Seán Mac Diarmada.
Connolly was one of the leaders of the ITGWU and its Irish Citizen Army which had fought the bitter eight months against the Lockout to smash the union. Mac Diarmada is reported opposing the workers’ action, believing that Irish manufacture and trade would lose out to English competition.13
CONCLUSION
There are Irish Republicans who are revolutionary socialists and Irish Republicans who are not. There are also some revolutionary Irish socialists who are not strictly speaking Irish Republicans. All can and should join in the struggle against British colonialism and other imperialism.
A sovereign Irish Republic on a united 32 Counties would be a great progressive step, for democracy and against imperialism and colonialism. It would not, however, be socialist just because it was Irish Republican, even if it adopted some socialist measures.
A socialist Ireland would be one in which the working class ruled and its measures would include socialisation of all productive enterprises including factories, agricultural and construction enterprises and distribution centres, i.e any which employed workers not of the owner’s family.
And socialisation of all transport and communication networks and social and health services in addition to financial services.14
If it did all the above the regime in Ireland would be socialist and would not even need to call itself ‘Republican’.15 If it were not socialist then it would be capitalist and the struggle for socialism would need to confront the Irish state which would in turn seek to repress the socialist struggle.
Republicanism and Irish Republicanism are different things and socialism is different from both of them.
If people wish a socialist society they should not expect Irish Republicans to present them with that but will instead need to educate, organise and lead their own revolutionary socialist forces while simultaneously participating in the broad anti-colonial and anti-imperialist struggles.
2English Republicanism did not in general envisage the right of Ireland to self-determination, nor France agree with the national rights of the Breton and Basque nations, nor of the colonies abroad for independence; nor the USA of the rights of the Indigenous not to have European settlers occupy their land.
3Largely adopted by sections of business and professional classes of the Occupation, i.e settlers and descendants of settlers.
4Many Irish Republicans were historically able to collude in English settler colonialism in Australia and early colonial occupation of America, as well as later USA settler colonialism into lands still held by the Indigenous Americans.
5However, in communist society, it was understood that the second half of that slogan would be ‘to each according to their needs.’
6The earlier February Revolution had been a workers’ strike and bourgeois uprising against war and the absolutist power of the Tsar. Incidentally it had been only the second revolution against world war, as the 1916 Rising in Ireland had been the first.
7I am not discussing its development or degeneration here, which would take us away from the central topic of discussion.
8Most armies chiefly recruit from the working class but the ICA was specifically for as well as of the workers.
10That they were distinct forces is clear in their development and leadership but in the membership the differences would not always be so clear-cut. The Constitution of the ICA was Irish nationalist but required all members to be trade union members and people chose an organisation to join on the basis of family and social circle loyalties.
US Imperialism is currently meeting resistance in two Middle Eastern/ West Asian states as, through pressure on their governments, it tries to disarm the guerrilla organisations.
People in most Western states are familiar with political binaries of Right and Left but in many parts of the world, though that exists, the dominant binary is sovereignist or clientist1, the former placing national interests above all and the latter aligning with the interests of imperial powers.
LEBANON
This country is known as the heartland of Hezbollah but many may not be aware that this resistance movement is fairly new in historical terms, coming into existence as it did in opposition to the ‘Israeli’ occupation of 1982 and instrumental in forcing total IOF withdrawal by 2000.
Hezbollah has been described more recently as “a state within a state”, with its Loyalty to the Resistance Bloc political representation and its Jihad Council army. It works in alliance with the Amal Party, also majority Shia and the Free Patriotic Movement (mostly Christian).2
Lebanon had been earlier occupied by French colonialism and its colonial elite was typically among the Catholic Christian sect known as Maronites,3 as were half the population then, the reason why the Constitution (National Pact of 1943) gives half the seats to Christian candidates.
However no population census has been carried out since 1932 and many believe that a census today would not justify half the Parliament seats allocated to Christian representatives, even in a sectarian Constitution. The others sects are Muslim (Shia and Sunni) and Druze.
This has been the case in Lebanon which, outside of the Civil War of 1975-1990, has been governed in a balance of these forces, with the recent former President, though a Maronite, sympathetic to the country’s sovereign interests and therefore also to Hezbollah and the Amal party.
On the clientist side (but proclaiming Lebanese ‘independence’) are the remains after its 2016 dissolution of “the March 14 Alliance,” consisting now of the Lebanese Forces party, with the largest parliamentary representation4 and of the Ketaeb, the fascist Phalangist party of the Civil War.
The main political representation of the Druze community, the Progressive Socialist Party, has supported one bloc or the other at various times.
The Lebanese Constitution (National Pact) stipulates that the President must be a Maronite but cannot be a serving member of the military. On 9th January, Josef Aoun was elected President of the Government, for which he had to give up his position of Commander of the Armed Forces.
His election and cabinet choices were not good news for the sovereignists since the USA, as in many countries had been penetrating the armed forces through weaponry and recruitment grants and Aoun was considered their proxy – a description which his conduct has done nothing to refute.
Josef Aoun (centre right) in discussion with US Envoy Tom Barrack (middle left).
On 5th August the Lebanese Parliament began to discuss the question of who is entitled to bear arms with a clear intention to follow the US lead that it should be the State only.5 Many in the West would perhaps think this a normal position but only Hezbollah fighters have defended Lebanon.
Since the ‘Israeli’ armed forces attacked Lebanon on 1st October 2024,6 not once has the Lebanese Army fought them. Hezbollah fought the IOF to a standstill in the south of Lebanon, also bombing troop concentrations in northern ‘Israel’7 in support of Gaza and causing large settler evacuations.
The IOF had to beg for a ceasefire, to which Hezbollah and the Lebanese Government (also US, France …) agreed and which the IOF, true to form, has violated since thousands of times in bombing flights, drone assassinations, invasion of Lebanese land and kidnapping of Lebanese civilians.8
Hezbollah and Amal’s representatives walked out of the Government disarmament discussions, accusing their reigning opposition of failing to stand up to US threats and seeking to disarm the Resistance while at the same time failing to confront ‘Israeli’ occupation and ceasefire violations.
The Government went ahead and tasked the Army with preparing a plan – not to defend Lebanon against the occupation and constant attacks by the IOF but instead to disarm Hezbollah.
No observer thinks the Government or Lebanese Army are capable of disarming Hezbollah and serious commentators view this move by US proxies as seeking to delegitimise the Lebanese Resistance and blame them for the attacks of the IOF upon targets in Lebanon.
Hezbollah in fact is the only force that has fought the Zionist occupation9of 1982 after the PLO left, also during later IOF invasions of 1993 and 1996. Josef Aoun is widely believed to have asked Hezbollah to defend Lebanon’s western border with Syria against infiltration from ISIS.10
Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi commented on the reason for trying to disarm Hezbollah “is that it has shown its capability on the battlefield”, and “that the positions of the party and its Secretary-General are strong showing the Resistance’s steadfastness in the face of pressures.”11
The Lebanese Foreign Minister accused Araghchi of “violation of Lebanon’s sovereignty,”12 which might have been considered fair comment, were it not for the fact of Lebanon’s government’s acting under admitted US pressure and toleration of ‘Israeli’ bombing and assassinations.
This kind of dialogue continued up to very recently as Ali Larijani, Iran’s Secretary of the Iranian Supreme National Council visited the country but he pointed out in public statements that interference in Lebanon’s internal affairs is not by them but rather by others in an overseas faraway office.
Nightly protest demonstrations,13 including huge motorcades have been carried out in many areas since the Government’s decision, mostly by young people, often flying Hezbollah flags.
An opinion poll taken between 27 July and 4 August 2025 indicates that 76% wouldn’t trust diplomacy with ‘Israel’, 71.7% don’t believe the Lebanese Army is capable of defending the country against ‘Israel’ and 58% don’t think Hezbollah should surrender its weapons at this point.14
On Saturday, the Lebanese army said an explosion at a weapons depot near the Israeli border killed six soldiers as troops were sent to dismantle Hezbollah infrastructure in the area as part of a disarmament plan; the Government is now mourning them but blaming Hezbollah.
However, observers note that people in the south are angry that the Government never had a word to say about all the Lebanese civilians killed by the IOF since October 24 or about the Hezbollah fighters that fell fighting the ‘Israeli’ invasion then.
IRAQ
The position in Iraq is very different, although the USA is also keen to restrict arms to the State there only. The US armed forces have a base in Iraq and in addition, control its air space.15 However, the resolve of the Iraqi Government is different to that of Lebanon’s.16
US State Department spokesperson Tammy Bruce criticised the recent visit of Ali Larijani, Iran’s Secretary of the Iranian Supreme National Council and the signing of a joint security pact between Iraq and Iran. Iraq’s Embassy in New York replied that they are a sovereign state.17
Let us recall for a moment that Iraq was ruled by the Sadam Hussein regime, first a client of the US when it went to war with the Islamic Republic of Iran 1980-1988 but an enemy when, in pursuit of his own policies in 1990, his armed forces invaded Kuwait, a US client state.
In order to justify their regime-change war of 2003, political leaders of both the USA and the UK lied to their populations claiming that Iraq held WMDs (Weapons of Mass Destruction) which were an imminent threat. The subsequent war overthrew Hussein but destroyed the country for years.
The US occupation was widely criticised even by sources within the imperialist camp for its absence of an integrated governing policy and structure to replace the Hussein regime, with jihadist and Kurdish warlords ruling different areas and at times in conflict with one another.
Until the US forces agreed to pull out in 2011,18 the US proxy Iraqi administration and armed forces, along with the armed forces of the US itself faced constant attacks from both Iraqi national resistance organisations and Islamic jihadists, including by roadside bombs and suicide bombers.
The independent or citizen armed forces19 mostly came into existence during the war against the ISIS invasion of Iraq in 2014, being instrumental not only in defence of Baghdad but also in taking the war to the sectarian jihadists at a time when much of the Iraqi armed forces were failing.
Most of the media commentary on those Popular Mobilisation Forces characterises them as proxies of Iran and raises fears about their integration into the state armed forces without being under direct control of the military command, instead answerable only to the President.
While such media raises concerns about dangers to Iraq’s sovereignty from the militias, the same media sees no problem with the USA control of Iraq’s airspace, of foreign troops installed on their land past the date they agreed to leave, and openly pressuring Iraq on how to deal with the militias.
With regard to the call that all armed forces should be unified under the State, that generally suits the USA since they often arm, train and educate the armed forces in countries where they have influence, not to mention actual military bases.
The position of Western powers that only the State should have weapons is hypocritical given their history of supporting armed insurrection to topple regimes they consider unfriendly, also with regard to the right for citizens to bear arms in the USA’s own Constitution.
The hypocrisy of the USA and Western powers is exposed not only in that but also by the fact that they sponsored Muslim fundamentalist terrorist forces to overthrow secular regimes such as Assad’s in Syria, including supporting a prominent former ISIS commander to take over that state.
The multitude of militias under the self-proclaimed current President of Syria, Al Julani, former second-in command of the Nusra Front,20 have been massacring Alawites, Druze and Christians but despite some murmurs of concern Macron welcomed Julani to the Elysée Palace in Paris.
For the US and the Western imperialists then, the real issue is not about a need for one effective central military command or state sovereignty, but rather about whether or not all the armed forces within the State are under a command over which the imperialists can exercise control.
And even more so, whether the guerrilla groups or at least their commanders are orientated towards the western powers or instead towards an oppositional centre, whether that be a state such as the Islamic Republic of Iran, or an internal force in favour of national sovereignty and anti-imperialism.
4According to the National Pact sectarian allocation of seats between the various religious communities. However, as noted, there has not been a census since 1932 and many suspect that the Christian community no longer has dominance in numbers.
9And the main force that drove the Zionist occupation out in 2006.
10Hezbollah is reputed to have refused, not surprisingly, while the current Lebanese regime is following US dictates (which is the major cause of the presence of ISIS in Syria) and demanding the disarmament of the Resistance.
12Ibid: “The recent statements made by Iranian Foreign Minister Mr. Abbas Araghchi, in which he addressed internal Lebanese matters that do not concern the Islamic Republic in any way, are rejected and condemned. They constitute a violation of Lebanon’s sovereignty, unity, and stability, and are considered interference in its internal affairs and sovereign decisions.
Relations between states can only be built on the basis of mutual respect, equality, non-interference in internal affairs, and full adherence to the decisions of legitimate constitutional institutions. It is completely unacceptable for these relations to be exploited to encourage or support internal parties outside the framework of the Lebanese state and its institutions, and at its expense.”
15Over the protests of the Iraq Government, the US used its airspace from which to bomb Iran in the recent attack.
16Though one might not think so from the predominance of current media headlines announcing government and resistance groups’ alleged acquiescence.
17‘Iraq is a fully sovereign state and has the right to conclude agreements according to its constitution and laws, without being subject to any country’s policies‘. Details of the agreement remain unknown.
19This excludes the Kurdish peshmerga who fought ISIS mostly to defend their areas and many with a desire to create an independent Kurdish authority there.
The Oasis rock band are performing on 16 and 17 August in Croke Park, the Gaelic sports stadium in Dublin, to a sold out capacity of 82,300. Brothers Liam and Noel Gallagher are the two leading members of the band.
Oasis-marked t-shirts and caps are being sold from stalls in the city and posters announcing the forthcoming concerts adorned shop windows and lampposts but how many fans know the Gallaghers’ background?
Liam and Noel Gallagher of Oasis (Source imag: Internet)
Liam and Noel were born in Manchester to Irish migrant parents but their mother Peggy split from her abusive husband and moved elsewhere in Manchester, taking the kids with her. Liam dedicated Stand by Me to her on Saturday night and gave a shout-out to her her birthplace in Co. Mayo.1
Ireland fed the British ‘industrial revolution’ and the Irish have a long association with Manchester. In 1845 the city’s factories were already attracting Irish workers and its farms probably also agricultural workers to replace English labourers deserting the farms for the factories.
Friedrich Engels wrote The Condition of the Working Class in England,2 published in 1845 (the first year of the Great Hunger) and mentioned the Irish migrants not too favourably. He was writing mostly about Salford, the subject of Ewan McColl’s Dirty Old Town,3 just outside the city then.
By the time Engels’ book was published, the Great Starvation was gearing up. Uncomplimentary references to the Jews can also be found in that work but whatever about that ethnic minority,4 Engels changed his mind radically about the Irish in Britain and came to admire them greatly.
Instrumental in learning about the Irish for Engels were two Irish sisters living in Manchester, Lizzie and Mary Burns, illiterate but intelligent and militant mill workers. Mary and Friedrich became life partners and, after her death, Friedrich became Lizzie’s partner thereafter.
The Irish, as the natives and diaspora of what is often referred to as “England’s first colony” were of considerable interest to the revolutionary partnership of Engels and Karl Marx and more so still as the Fenian movement, the Irish Republican Brotherhood, spread throughout Britain.5
Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, leading theoreticians and activists of the revolutionary socialist movement. (Source: Workers Liberty)
A largely proletarian movement, the Fenians were admitted to the First International Workingmen’s Association6; no doubt the Irish struggle against British domination greatly influenced the political opinions of Marx and Engels in relation to nations under colonialist rule by capitalist states.
The struggle spilled over from Ireland into the Irish diaspora, particularly that in North America, Australia and Britain. In Australia the Fenians’ role seems to have been mostly in facilitating and escaping British jails there7 while in America, they invaded the British colony of Canada.8
The charge of the Fenians (wearing green uniforms) under Colonel John O’Neill at the Battle of Ridgeway, near Niagara, Canada West, on June 2, 1866. In reality, the Fenians had their own green flags but wore a very mixed bag of Union and Confederate uniforms (if they still had them, or parts of them left over from the Civil War), or civilian garb, with strips of green as arm or hat bands to distinguish themselves. (library and archives canada, c-18737)
In Britain itself, the Fenians went to war against the ruling class with dynamite. To spy on them, Scotland Yard created the Irish Special Branch which evolved into the Special Branch, the political police in Britain and in any colony the British had since then.9
The activities of the US Fenians intersected with those of Britain-based Fenians when two of the former, Thomas J. Kelly and Timothy Deasy, American Civil War veterans, were arrested in England. On their prison van’s journey to jail it was ambushed10 and both officers spirited away.
Artists’ impression of the rescue of the Fenian prisoners. (Image source: Internet)
Unfortunately and entirely unintentionally, Constable Brett was killed during the breakout. Refusing to hand over the keys from inside the wagon, he was bending to look through the keyhole when in order to release the prisoners one of the Fenians fired at the lock, the bullet entering Brett’s brain.11
The British police swept vengefully through the Irish quarters of Manchester and Salford arresting at least 28 people but eventually sending five for trial on ‘murder’ charges. Three were hanged, all innocent of intentional killing and at least two probably not even present at the scene.
As sentence of death was passed upon them, all five cried “God save Ireland!” Although the sentences on two were commuted, Timothy Sullivan used those words for his ballad about The Manchester Martyrs, as the executed three became known among the Irish at home and abroad.
The song travelled quickly and became an unofficial national anthem of Ireland and the Irish until it was decisively supplantedafter the 1916 Rising by Peadar Kearney’s The Soldiers Song (latertranslated: Amhrán na bhFiann).12 A memorial to the three was erected in Mostyn Cemetery.
Artist’s impression of the trial of the five convicted including the three Manchester Martyrs. (Image source: Internet)
Manchester continued to be a destination for Irish migrants, for factories still, including motor car production but also post-WW2 reconstruction and motorway building.
Manchester United FC, along with a number of other British soccer teams, recruited Irish players and Irishman Liam Whelan was one of the eight players killed in the Munich air crash of 1958. Another 30 Irish have played for the club at one time or another, some quite famous.13
The city is one of a number of British cities that has a name in the Irish language; Mancunians would probably be delighted to know that their city’s name in Irish is Manchuin.
From the late 1960s to late 1990s the city was host to an active branch of the Troops Out Movement in solidarity with Ireland, also from 1980s to an active branch of the Irish in Britain Representation Group; the Special Branch was active in monitoring and, from time to time, harassing their activists.
The Provisional IRA bombed the city in 1996 as part of its campaign against the British State and — despite a 90-minute warning — 212 were injured.
Today Manchester, alongside South Asian ethnic influences, continues its Irish ethnic presence with Irish traditional cultural activities14 and no doubt the sons and daughters of Manchester’s Irish diaspora will continue to contribute to other sport and artistic culture in Britain and in the world.
8https://www.irishcentral.com/roots/history/irish-fenian-invasion-canada Unlike many other accounts easily available this one gives a reasonable assessment of the rationale for the invasion, including its potential and the reasons of its ultimate failure, the interests of the ruling class of the USA, which the Irish Republican movement should have learned from forever afterwards – but failed to do.
9Often referred to simply as ‘the Branch’ or ‘Branchmen’ (though the organisation of course also recruits women).
10The location, by an arch under a railway bridge, is still unofficially known as “Fenian Arch.”
14Manchester has a Comhaltas Ceoltóirí Éireann club (for Irish traditional music) and informal music sessions, also an Irish dancing school https://www.facebook.com/profile.php; Gaelic Athletic Association clubs including St Brendan’s, St Peter’s, Oisín, and St. Lawrence’s.
Even as European imperialists and imperialist client Arab states try to save the Zionist state with a proposal to disarm the Palestinian Resistance and put the quisling Palestine Authority in charge of Gaza,1 many Israeli Zionists are signalling that it’s too late.
Middle East Spectator reports that six hundred members of the ‘Commanders for Israel’s Security’ (CIS) have written a letter to President Trump urging him to pressure Benjamin Netanyahu to stop the war in Gaza due to Israel’s ‘desperate situation’ regarding ‘global legitimacy’.
The MES source is TheJerusalem Post. The ‘Commanders’ consists of former senior officials from the IDF, Mossad, and Shin Bet, which is to say the ‘Israeli’ armed forces, external and internal state intelligence services.
On the popular free-to-air Channel 12 TV, ex-general Noam Tibbon complained that ‘Israel’ was facing international isolation through its starvation of Gaza while its unsuccessful “Gideon Chariots”2 military campaign has resulted in the deaths of 50 of its soldiers.
Cartoon by D.Breatnach
Actually the Zionist army’s deaths are almost certainly under-reported3 as are the 6,145 wounded stated by the IOF, in comparison to the Defense Ministry’s Rehabilitation Division reported 18,500 soldiers and other security forces wounded with varying severity.4
In addition, seven of its soldiers took their own lives during July this year. Seventeen IOF suicides were recorded in 2023 and twenty-one in 2024 with another 17 already this year. Those figures do not include reservists taking their lives in periods after military duty.5
The IOF’s losses in damaged tanks, armoured bulldozers and personnel carriers are also high. Despite this situation, the Zionist State is also carrying out military operations in Syria and Lebanon and its leaders talk about resuming its war with Iran, which had disastrous results for ‘Israel’.
Palestinian Resistance operations of various factions occur every day, while every second day or so ‘Israeli’ media reports “a security incident” in Gaza, their coded description for a Resistance operation resulting in the death of at least one IOF soldier.
In addition to the armed resistance of Palestinians particularly in Gaza putting a strain on the armed Zionist Occupation, it has strained also the relationship between the latter and the Government coalition led by Netanyahu, as discussed on Zionist Army radio and reported by The Cradle.
IOF Army Chief of Staff Eyal Zamir is quoted as saying that the Zionist army lacks clear strategic direction from the Government and that it favours a deal with Hamas allowing it to return to Gaza’s periphery as before October 8th and to ‘exhaust’ Gaza.6
As a practical alternative the IOF could occupy the whole of Gaza, which Zamir says can be done in a period of months but the ‘clearing’ of the Resistance above and below ground (in the tunnels) would take years and though he left it unsaid, would drain the IOF to cracking point.
The Resistance is fighting a long war of attrition. While the IOF can and does kill civilians in thousands it cannot operate with impunity on the ground against the Resistance fighters, despite its high technology and drones, both for surveillance and attack, in addition to artillery and air cover.
2IOF Codeword for the military operation since they broke the ceasefire agreement in March this year and restored the genocidal blockade, along with bombing of residential areas and ethnic cleansing of whole districts.
6What this term entails is not clear but could be a return to the conditions of constant power cuts, restriction on food entry to the minimum and heavy restrictions on entry and departure, along with regular raids in force to capture or kill Palestinians.
No, I’m not being sarcastic – I am quite serious. Thank you for making it clear that you support the Irish State joining the imperialist alliance of NATO.1 I take it that opinion is at least widespread among your social class.
After all you are among the biggest of the native Irish monopoly capitalists, right? Number eight of the eleven richest people in Ireland.2
From the statements and actions of politicians I had assumed your Gombeen neo-colonial class was of that opinion but I suppose there was always a slim chance that the politicians were out on a limb, going it alone, not representing their bosses … but sure now you’ve confirmed it yourself.
I see you’re concerned about the defence of Ireland. That’s really good – so am I. Hold on, you just mean the Irish state – the 26 Counties? Oh, of course, that’s right, the Six Counties are already in NATO. They didn’t get to vote on that, did they? But we will here, of course.
Wait now, didn’t Mícheál Martin say he didn’t believe it would have to be voted on? And isn’t the Government now trying to get rid of the Triple Lock stopping us sending many soldiers anywhere without approval of the government, a majority vote in Leinster House and a UN mandate?3
The Government and majority vote shouldn’t be a problem for you, should it? You’ve got a comfortable majority in Leinster House on abiding by the Western Imperialist stance. Ah you have, Denis, you have – sure isn’t the Irish State the biggest customer of Israel, next to the USA?
Getting a UN mandate might be a bit trickier, especially these days. After all, a lot of UN members have been at the sharp end of NATO, or that of the USA, or UK, or France – which is all pretty much the same thing. The Security Council would work if Russia or China didn’t veto it.
Anyway, back to defending Ireland. We should really discuss what that means. Defending our physical lives and homes? A lot of our homes belong to the banks and vulture funds so I’m thinking maybe THEY should defend them.
Or maybe defending our natural resources and public infrastructures, i.e the ones that our governments for decades have been giving away to native and foreign monopoly capitalists. I think you’ve benefited from a bit of that yourself, Denis. Ah you have, you know you have.
Many of those foreign monopoly capitalists taking over our industry come from NATO countries too, as it happens.
Cartoon by D.Breatnach.
Defending our physical lives? The thing I find hardest to understand, however, Denis, is how you think we’d be safer within NATO, of which the UK is a major part. I mean, since Britain invaded us in 1169 it has caused wars in Ireland, famines, genocide, linguicide, sectarianism and division.
You could say that’s in the past but it’s not, is it though? And they do say that the best predictor of future behaviour is previous behaviour, after all.
I know you’re concerned about the undersea cables. I’m not just worried about the UK in NATO – the top boss of NATO is the USA. And their record is more of sabotaging undersea pipes than protecting cables! I know, I know … no concrete evidence. But who else had motive, opportunity and capability?
Now, you want to see the Irish armed services expanded. But I can’t see why we have to be a part of NATO to do that. And if, as part of NATO, our armed services go to war, will you be ok with your grandchildren Meghan, Catherine, Denis, Michael, Kevin, and Patrick risking being killed?
Of course, I do know that big capitalists generally ensure that it’s the lower classes they send to the battlefield while they guarantee safe positions for their own family. I think you’d want to emulate John Redmond,4 whose son joined the army of a foreign King and Country but didn’t die for it.
Unlike the 35,000 other Irish who were killed in the British Army in WWI, not to mention the Irish wounded and permanently disabled, for which figures apparently do not exist.
However, I have to say, credit where credit is due: I did think the account of your visit to Venezuela was interesting and how the officer in charge of the President’s Office there was impressed by Ireland’s solidarity with Palestine and other stands, probably in support of underdeveloped countries.5
Thanks for that, it was very interesting – and heart-warming, to be honest. But I wonder, would the Venezuelan diplomat have been as friendly to you, Denis, if the Irish State, your point of origin, had been a member of NATO, practising imperialist wars and supporting genocide?
4In 1914 John Redmond was leader of the Irish Parliamentary party, representing the native Irish colonial capitalist class. He not only delivered thousands of Irish to the British Army for WWI but also supported the suppression of the 1916 Rising.
5O’Brien charted his own experience in subsea communications cables, starting with an Esat Telecom funded cable between Land’s End and Wexford in the late 1990s, and several projects in the Carribean, including the $75 million (€64 million) Deep Blue One cable in Trinidad which was completed last year.
O’Brien recalled how – due to a “cock up” – the cable had been designed to run through contested waters between Venezuela and Guyana.
“When the Venezuelan government got wind that our cable laying ship was about to start they sent us a cease and desist letter,” he said. O’Brien explained how he then flew to Venezuela to meet Jorge Elieser Marquez who was in charge of office of the presidency to “fall on his sword” and apologise.
“He graciously accepted my apology but then to my surprise he started to talk about Ireland and how we had supported the Palestinians, like Venezuela, in their quest for a two-state solution in Gaza,” he said.
“For some reason, he knew everything about Ireland and our principled stand over many decades – dating back as far as when Brian Lenihan senior was minister for foreign affairs.
(Reformatted entire for publishing in Rebel Breeze from article of same title in his Substack
(Reading time: 6 mins.)
The saga of the Occupied Territories Bill (OTB) has been dragging on for years now. It was first put forward by Senator Frances Black in 2018 and was approved by both houses of the Oireachtas (parliament) but never enacted.
The Irish capitalist class that is resolutely on the side of the Israelis, despite the illusions of many and the odd PR stunt, dragged its heels on the issue, even boasting that it had effectively blocked it.
Simon Coveney who was the Minister for Foreign Affairs at the time said during a visit to the Zionist state in 2019 that:
We don’t believe that it is legally sound because trade issues are EU competence as opposed to national competence in Ireland. And because we don’t believe it’s legally sound we have effectively blocked the legislation from moving through parliament as it normally would…
It’s essentially frozen in the process and it isn’t making progress. And I don’t expect that it will make progress, either, unless the government supports it, and the government won’t be supporting it.1
A demonstration outside Leinster House, parliament of the Irish State recently. (Image chosen and sourced: by RBreeze on line)
This came as no surprise to anyone paying attention. Ireland is not an independent capitalist state; it is what Marxists term a neo-colony with 88% of all corporate tax paid by foreign companies and just three companies accounting for 38% of all corporate tax.
Foreign corporate tax in turn represents 29% of the total tax take in the country.2 It is entirely dependent on the US and also the British state.
Many months prior to Coveney’s boast, the then Taoiseach (prime minister), Leo Varadkar had written a grovelling letter to Joe Biden to apologise for the behaviour of Irish politicians who had voted for the bill. In it he stated:
The Government has consistently and strongly opposed the Bill on both political and legal grounds and will continue to do so… Can I take the opportunity to reiterate my deep appreciation for the strong bonds of friendship between Ireland and the US, including our growing and mutually economic ties.3
There is no world in which the Irish state will stand up to the US. It won’t stop US planes shipping arms to Israel through Shannon Airport, just like it allowed the US to use the airport during the Iraq war.
Putting the OTB to parliament was not a bad idea, believing that is how we would achieve something concrete was.
They are now attempting to water it down further and exclude services from its remit, limiting it to only goods. (Note: at the time this article was written campaigners were still fighting an attempt to limit the bill in that way – Rebel Breeze)
IBEC (the Irish Business and Economic Confederation) came out with a statement that it would harm the Irish economy to enact the bill, whilst paradoxically accepting that trade in goods with Israeli “settlements” in the West Bank only amounted to €240,000.4
On the radio the Government reminded us that we are a trading nation, as if any of us thought that everything we buy in the country was made here and we exported nothing.
The reason they can make these statements of course, is because of the limited scope of the bill itself and the intentions of those pushing for its enactment.
The Irish government was at great pains to say that it would only apply to the territories occupied in 1967 and not to Israel itself i.e. not to the territories occupied in 1948 during the Nakba and the foundation of the Zionist state.
If you accept the legitimacy of the state of Israel or if you are one of those liberals still prattling on about a Two State Solution then all of this makes sense. It could have even been argued when it was first proposed that it was a stepping stone to a wider boycott of Israel, not that any of them said that.
For those who believe in the two-state solution (sic) the map shows what’s available for a Palestinian State (sic). (Image chosen and sourced: by RBreeze on line)
Events have overtaken our liberal friends and they shudder at the consequences. There is no longer any case to be made for a bill that limits business dealings with modern Zionist invasions of the West Bank.
Francesca Albanese in her recent report made it abundantly clear that many companies doing business with Israel are profiting from or contributing to the genocide.5 Now is not that time for half measures. Israel, just like the Nazis is carrying out a genocide.
Asking for a boycott of goods from the Warsaw Ghetto, rather than Nazi Germany would have seemed stupid at the time and actual calls for a boycott of the Nazis were portrayed as anti-German.
Some Jewish organisations opposed the boycott and the US government response to violence against German Jews was that the
U.S. Secretary of State Cordell Hull issued a mild statement to the American ambassador to Berlin complaining that “unfortunate incidents have indeed occurred and the whole world joins in regretting them.” He expressed his personal belief, however, that the reports of anti-Jewish violence were probably exaggerated.6
We know how this ended. The Nazis in the face of the timorous and timid response from the US and other western powers would eventually enclose Jews in ghettos, then camps and then push six million of them through the ovens.
Now is not the time to repeat history but to be bold and decisive. Now it is equally ridiculous to meekly petition, those who grovelled to Genocide Joe in 2019, to restrict goods from the West Bank.
In the midst of a genocide there is only one option on the table: a complete and total severance of all trade, military and diplomatic ties with Israel. There are no “settlements” without the Nazis in Tel Aviv, without the Israeli military, without the companies that keep Israel going.
A Banner on the IPSC National March 19th April 2025 in Dublin, appearing to show a believed organic connection between the enacting of the OTB and ending the Zionist genocide in Palestine. (Image sourced and chosen: R.Breeze)
Total isolation of the entire regime is needed. Not an orange, not a single electronic component, not a kilobyte of software. Such isolation should continue not just till the acts of genocide have ceased.
They will cease when the repugnant reality that Israel has run out of Palestinians to murder comes to pass.
Israel should be isolated until all those involved have been tried, had all their assets confiscated, given lengthy prison sentences or hung until dead, depending on the actual degree of participation.
This is not an outrageous proposal, it is what was theoretically done at Nuremberg, though many of the businessmen were given back their assets after a number of years and only a handful of Nazis got the actual death penalty and most never saw the inside of a jail.
No such leniency should be shown to the Zionists.
Those campaigning on the OTB will never make such a call. They will continue to petition the government. They do have another weapon to hand in fighting the Nazis in Tel Aviv, but they won’t call for that either.
The Irish Council of Trade Unions denounced the government’s handling of the OTB and called on the Oireachtas to reject the “business lobby scaremongering” and to pass the OTB.7
Of course, the unions don’t need to persuade the Zionists who dominate the coalition parties, they could just have told their members in 2018 to refuse to handle all products coming from the Occupied Territories, or indeed the entire Zionist state and that would have settled it.
They would have to organise that and back all their members who engaged in such boycotts. But under no circumstances will the fat cat bureaucrats ever confront the government over this issue.
If they are not prepared to fight for decent wages, a proper health system, public housing etc, all of which directly affect their members, less still will they fight for Palestinians. They are traitors to their class and also betrayers of the Palestinian people, despite all their lofty statements.
The OTB was a nice propaganda measure whose time has passed. It is, in the midst of a genocide, no longer fit for purpose, neither is a solidarity movement which limits itself to half measures. We need to be bolder.
Around 80 people attended a concert in the back room of Dublin’s Cobblestone pub launching an initiative to “build a community of solidarity and resistance through culture”. Flags of Irish and other struggles around the world decorated the venue.
The evening’s entertainment consisted of five musical acts and one of poetry. The MC for the evening, Diarmuid Breatnach, told the audience that Irish struggles had always found an expression in culture and that culture itself encouraged further resistance.
He gave the example of Thomas Davis who founded with others the patriotic newspaper The Nation in the mid-1800s, publishing contributed songs and poems and his own, including The West’s Awake and A Nation Once Again, songs still sung in Ireland nearly two centuries later.
The first act of the evening was the folk duo The Yearners, specialising in harmonies around renditions of song covers and their own song about the Mary of the New Testament, as a woman pressured to bear a child because “How can you say no to God?
The audience joining in on Pearse’s Gráinne Mhaol was followed by some songs with hard satirical edges like the Kinky Boots song from the Irish Republican repertoire and their own Save A Landlord.
The Yearners during their performance. (Photo credit with thanks: Dermo Photography)Dúlamban during their performance. (Photo credit with thanks: Dermo Photography)
The MC introduced another all-female duo, Dúlamban, recently formed from two individual singer-musicians. Among their material, Sinéad on violin played two compositions of her own while Aisling sang her adaptation and translation of the Rising of the Moon: Ar Éirí na Geallaigh.
The one poet of the evening, Barry Currivan, performed a number of shorter and longer pieces of his repertoire. He was particularly applauded for his “anti-othering” piece Those People and his humorous concluding piece comparing himself to a good cup of tea or coffee.
After the break, the MC spent a few minutes outlining the Solidarity Sessions collective’s project and encouraging the audience to take part in it by spreading word of its events and supporting them in person, in addition to stepping forward to assist in organisation and in poster design.
Barry Currivan during his poetry performance at the Solidarity Sessions launch. (Photo credit with thanks: Dermo Photography)Section of the audience presumably during Currivan’s performance. (Photo credit with thanks: Dermo Photography)
Another female duo took the stage, Sage Against the Machine on guitar accompanied by Ríona on violin, performing a number of love pop covers and SAM’s own song against patriarchy.
Some remarks about Bob Dylan’s Zionism followed in Sage’s introduction of the former’s Masters of War which she performed with great feeling and followed with El Gallo Rojo, an anti-fascist song from the Spanish ‘Civil War’.
Sage Against the Marchine (right) and Ríona during their performance. (Photo credit with thanks: Dermo Photography)Jimi Cullen during his performance at the Solidarity Sessions launch. (Photo credit with thanks: Dermo Photography)
Breatnach then introduced Jimi Cullen who he said has been hosting a weekly musical protest picket for an hour on Wednesdays (2-3 pm) outside the US Embassy for a great many weeks, in which the MC had sometimes accompanied him amidst the solidarity beeping of passing traffic.
Jimi accompanied himself singing his Housing for All and Guthrie’s You Fascists Bound to Lose, then commenting on Bob Marley’s Zionism while introducing the latter’s One Love song, saying that love above all is what binds humanity together, a theme also of his We Are All Palestinians.
His monologue The Genocide Will Be Televised was much sharper and renewed an earlier Death, death to the IDF!1 chant from the audience.
Trad Sabbath during their performance. (Photo credit with thanks: Dermo Photography)
There was much irreverent comment about the name of the band to conclude the evening, Trad Sabbath, a four-piece band of guitars, banjo, bodhrán and fiddle, apparently in the context of the very recent death of the Black Sabbath band’s lead vocalist, Ozzie Osbourne.
Sardonic cries about “his poor widow”, Sharon Osbourne2 were also heard, a Zionist personality star in a ‘reality’ TV show about the late Ozzie’s family. To fill in the delay in their setting up with the sound engineer, Breatnach sang Kearney’s Down by the Glenside ballad.
The band concluded the evening with traditional melodies and some songs from Eoghan and Hat with others backing on choruses.
Poster advertising the event (Design: Ríona and D.Breatnach)
The MC thanked all for their attendance, performances and technical support before reiterating the Solidarity Sessions’ objective and encouraging participation. His comment that “Repression is here and more is coming down the road” was underlined by the presence there of a prominent victim.
In the audience was Richard Medhurst, the Britain-based journalist specialising in Middle Eastern coverage who was recently detained under anti-terror (sic) legislation and charged by British police as he returned from abroad and again later detained though not actually charged by Austrian police.
Richard Medhurst’s tweet during the evening at the event.
End.
FOOTNOTES
1Made famous by the Bob Vylan duo at Glastonbuy getting the audience chanting the slogan. The IDF is what the Israeli Occupation Forces call themselves.
2Who had called for the banning of the the Irish rap group Kneecap.
rebelbreeze 