The death of Glen Hansard, Oscar-winning Irish musician in accident on his motorcycle in the early hours of Wednesday1 shocked and saddened many, not only in the Irish music community but among campaigners against Dublin homelessness too.
Hansard first gained fame playing Outspan Foster in The Commitments, the 1991 Alan Parker film based on Roddy Doyle’s first novel but developed his career in music, first with The Frames band, then as part of the duo The Swell Season and later as a solo artist.
Hansard, while often traveling to perform around the world, lived in both Kildare and Helsinki, home also of his wife, the poet Maire Saaritsa. Hansard won an Oscar in 2008 for the song Falling Slowly, written with musical partner Markéta Inglová2, featured in the John Carney film Once.
The musician was also one of a group of high-profile individuals who occupied the Apollo House building in a protest against homelessness and as a shelter for Dublin’s homeless in December 20163 (ironically the centenary year of the 1916 Rising against British occupation of Ireland).
In the decade since the Apollo House protest occupation, the number of homeless in Ireland has significantly more than doubled.4 Housing is of course part of the property sector in a capitalist society and the current situation benefits speculators, big landlords and financing banks.
January 2016 rally in support of Apollo House occupation in Poolbeg Street, Dublin. The large banner read ‘Homes Not Hostels.’ (Photo: D.Breatnach)
The Irish national ruling class serves those finance-capitalist interests and therefore successive governments have made no impact on the problem other than allowing it to grow. Some politicians are themselves landlords as are also a number of Gardaí and ex-Gardaí.
Clearly the Irish ruling class feels no incentive to end the homeless crisis, though it could do so, even without ending its capitalist system. Glen Hansard admitted in an interview with him I recall viewing that he had been somewhat naive in his hopes of the Apollo House occupation.
The obvious solution, restated many times, is to provide universal rented accommodation through the State and municipal authorities. The rents should be affordable, with the spread of the higher ones helping to maintain those lower income or on social welfare.
Rental income over time finances not only maintenance and repairs but also new building. Employment is provided in construction, maintenance and administration. Streets can become cleaner and safer and more attractive. Addiction problems become easier to address.
But that setup, though not destroying the capitalist system, would cut the swag-bag of the unproductive finance and property parasites so the crisis stays and grows. And the alternative Left movement is not threatening the Gombeens’ overthrow so they have no incentive to change.
Glen Hansard, Damien Dempsey and other musicians performing outside Apollo House. (Photo sourced: Internet)
Many years ago, home in Dublin on holiday from London, someone I was walking and talking with stopped a young red-haired man and they began to chat. I remarked that I had seen the man before — or had we met? Perhaps he thought I was kidding but admitted his role in The Commitments.
He mentioned The Frames also – he was Glen Hansard of course. Naturally I had seen the film in London but never heard of The Frames. As we parted company I felt a kind of disconnect from Dublin but also remarked that I hoped Hansard hadn’t thought I was ‘taking the piss.’
Decades later, as I gathered at rallies outside Apollo House (and sang at one of them) that episode did not intrude on my memory – because it was the homelessness protest upon which I was concentrated and not the famous people fronting it – but it comes to me now.
One of my brothers, Cormac, had a connection with Hansard as in August 2023 the latter requested of Dónal Lunny to play at a friend’s wedding the air of his composition Across the Hill, aired in a Seán Ó Riada Retrospective in 1987. Lunny replied he couldn’t play it but recommended Cormac.
Cormac got a trio together to play the air at the wedding but mislaid his sunglasses when leaving so had to return another day for them and they spent a short time together.
Two years later, in October 2025, Cormac met Hansard again on the occasion of the funeral mass for Manchán Magan, a gathering of many in the fields of Irish language, writing and music.
Glen Hansard (Photo sourced: Wikipedia)
Back in 2023 when Cormac had returned to Hansard looking for his sunglasses, Hansard gave him a Songbird whistle in low D made by Phil Hardy as a present.‘I can’t play it’,said Glen Hansard.‘You might as well have it.’ Cormac demurred, Glen Hansard insisted.
‘I’ll accept it,’ said Cormac eventually, ‘on condition that I record something for you, gratis, or we get together some day and record playing some music together.’ Hansard laughed. ‘That could happen’, he replied.
But now it can’t. Not on this plane of existence, anyway.
End.
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4The number of homeless people in Ireland was approximately 6,900 in late 2016 (and around 6,189 in mid-2016), and has risen to a record high of 17,447 people in state-funded emergency accommodation as of May 2026. But there are also people ‘sofa-surfing’, facing eviction or in otherwise insecure accommodation or even sleeping on the street.
Reprinted from author’s substack 26 July 2026 and reformatted for Rebel Breeze
(Reading time: 9 mins.)
The history of societies is the history of their ruling classes. So it comes as no surprise that we are told that Lord X built a palace, Lady Y built a garden and so forth.
The history of society is the history of great men (and the occasional woman, when she’s allowed) with those who actually do anything written out of history.
Take a tour of any stately home and you will be told that the Earl built the west wing in a given year, an incredible chippie, brickie and plumber all in one with some artistic flair to boot.
The workers who actually carried out the work are not mentioned and if it was slave labour, well let’s not go there at all.
It is the type of situation that led the great German poet and dramatist Bertolt Brecht to ask the question
Who built Thebes of the 7 gates? In the books you will read the names of kings. Did the kings haul up the lumps of rock ?
And Babylon, many times demolished, Who raised it up so many times ?
In what houses of gold glittering Lima did its builders live ? Where, the evening that the Great Wall of China was finished, did the masons go?
Great Rome is full of triumphal arches. Who erected them ?
Over whom did the Caesars triumph ? Had Byzantium, much praised in song, only palaces for its inhabitants ?
Of course it is not just the obvious contribution of workers to the construction of buildings no fat cat could ever build, their contribution to the world of literature and art is also deliberately ignored.
The aforementioned poem of Brecht is titled Questions From a Worker Who Reads. Brecht was well aware that in order to overthrow capitalism you have to be able to question it and reading is part of the process.
His famous quote from his poem In Praise of Learning is “Hungry man reach for the book, it is a weapon”.
It is indeed and the weapon is mightier if you think that people like you wrote it. It is partly why the history of literature is a bit like the history of stately homes, the Lords and the Ladies did everything.
No workers, no peasants, no one putting down the hammer for a minute wrote a poem or pausing the plough either.
Literature belongs to the rich, so working class writers or even just opposition writers are routinely written out of history and their literature is reserved for small literary circles and revolutionaries who have retired to the café.
Under no circumstances should it ever be read by other workers, lest the reader get the idea that they too can produce it. Of course there are lots of writers from a working class background, but they are a minority in comparison to the middle and upper classes.
Or least they are in terms of contracts with commercial publishers and libraries tend not to organise catalogues of their works, as they are not worthy of merit in the eyes of the middle class pedants who populate literary studies.
The working class writer Kit de Vaal asked where were all the working class authors and published an anthology of such authors.[1] There is no anthology of middle class or rich authors, as they are the norm, they are everywhere, ubiquitous, ever present.
Pick a book at random on a library shelf or in a book shop and you will invariably pick one written by someone who is not working class, even with non-fiction.
One thing is writing about the working class, which can be financially rewarding and lead to career advancement especially if you are already not of the working class.
But there have been many writers, written out of literary history, or relegated to specialist circles in some academic institute where increasingly the working class can be studied, but not study.
There is one Japanese author, Tajiki Kobayashi who had been on my must-read list for a long time before I eventually got around to him. His most famous novel is The Crab Cannery Ship (also translated as The Factory Ship) which is based on a real incident.
In Japan in the 1920s workers revolted on the ships where they were kept in almost slave like conditions harvesting crabs and then canning them on the ships themselves (hence the title).
The novel is a searing indictment of Japanese capitalism, nationalism and the emperor, who was in Japanese law a divinity.
Takiji Kobayashi (Photo source: Wikipedia)
We often think, in fact we are told that Japan is a land of hard working obedient workers who never question authority and this is the key to its success. Nothing could be further from the truth.
Japan experienced waves of social unrest as it industrialised along with brutal repression from the state and following the end of WWII trade union membership boomed reaching 5 million by 1947.
This movement was repressed with the US military occupation playing a key role in the Red Purge with thousands of workers hounded out of their jobs, the Communist Party was effectively banned and freedom of speech was suppressed.
The Japanese consensus is the result of oppression, not of some quaint cultural quirk.[2] But if you are to buy into this consensus myth then not only has history to be ignored, but so too must the literature that talks of it.
Kobayashi didn’t just write about the working class, he wrote for them as part of his political militancy. He paid dearly for his commitment. In 1933, at the age of thirty, the Japanese police tortured him to death, leaving two of his novels incomplete.
The Crab Cannery Ship had been serialised in a magazine, Senki, and was not available as a novel in Japan until 1948, though its English translation was available in the year of his murder.
It is a strange consensus that requires torturing poets and writers to death, but not so strange that we would be asked to forget them.
Not that Takiji’s novel had ever been entirely forgotten.
It occupied a secure position in Japan’s modern history as the best-known literary product of the proletarian movement, a major cultural and political current of the 1920s and early 1930s—a time when labor activism, socialism, feminism, and antimilitarism were briefly in the ascendant, while paintings, posters, prose narratives, poetry, and plays depicting the lives and struggles of the dispossessed enjoyed a considerable degree of popular interest and critical esteem.
By the mid-thirties, however, as the country’s elites led the nation ever closer to an all-out war on the Asian continent, this progressive groundswell had been largely obliterated through a combination of internal dissension, government propaganda, and intensified repression: arrests, beatings, imprisonment, and censorship.[3]
He was part of a movement of proletarian literature and president of the Proletarian Writer’s Guild of Japan.
Proletarian literature was not just written by working class authors (and also middle class authors who had turned their backs on their own class), nor was it just stories about the working class for middle class audiences.
It was for the working class with no middle class filters applied to make it suitable for chats over coffee, and it talked of socialism. His novels are political, in an overtly Marxist sense, class struggle is a key part of the plot.
The clandestine nature of political work in Japan is dealt with in the unfinished novel Life of a Party Member, and would be familiar to anyone who has lived under repressive regimes. Kobayashi himself engaged in clandestine work and was arrested numerous times and tortured.
The use of the term Proletarian rather than working class tells you all you need to know.
He was a fighter, he may well have liked coffee but his life was not that of the quaint coffee shop, arcane academic discussions where the middle class engage in their favourite pastime, talking and writing about the working class, earning royalties and accolades in the process.
His most famous novel The Crab Cannery Ship went through a huge revival in 2008, following the financial crash, selling hundreds of thousands of copies.
In 2008—the year Takiji’s novel skyrocketed to fame—over thirty thousand Japanese people killed themselves, tens of thousands were homeless, some three million were unemployed, twenty million were living in poverty, and more than a third of the active labor force comprised irregular workers who were poorly paid and could easily be fired.[4]
Reading it, it is easy to see why. I am neither Japanese nor a fisherman, yet much of what happens on the ship speaks to me, it speaks to everyone, abusive bosses, people trapped in low income, insecure work with little security, poor safety.
What Kobayashi describes is something that never went away in the third world and has made a comeback now everywhere due to the defeat of the trade union movement and, let’s be honest, the constant sell outs by the bureaucracy.
But that novel and his other writings are not about the plight of the working class or the proletariat to use the more accurate term that the middle class so loathe and despise. It is about the fight of the working class against those conditions.
He argues through his characters for a struggle for socialism, against the Japanese ruling class, nationalism, empire and also for the liberation of women.
In his novel Yasuko, two of the main protagonists are women who as the plot develops become independent forceful characters, through their participation in the class struggle and their fight against the repression of the state.
One of them, Yasuko lends her name to the title. It is obvious why the Japanese literati would not have promoted him so much. There are equivalents all around the world of proletarian writers or other oppositionists who have been relegated to a dusty corner.
The proletarian wave did not just happen in Japan, but throughout the East, Russia and also the United States.
There of course exceptions who became worldwide phenomena within their own lifetime.
One such author is Bertold Brecht who coincides in time with various proletarian literature movements around the world and then there is also the Italian artist Dario Fo, the author of many works such as Accidental Death of an AnarchistandCan’t Pay! Won’t Pay!
The title of this particular play became a catchphrase and slogan in the English speaking world.
Both were products of their time and achieved international fame, making them hard to relegate to dusty corners and though there are always attempts to relativise writers, soften the sharp edges of their plume it is not easy with either.
Brecht was unrepentant till his death and Dario Fo and his wife Franca Rame were lifelong activists and enemies of the Italian state, so much so that fascists under orders from the Italian police kidnapped tortured and raped her in an unsuccessful attempt to silence her.
Franca Rama and Dario Fo in performance. (Photo sourced: Internet)
There was more at stake for her and her husband than artistic awards. Their work was political in all senses of the word and they were participants in the class struggle.[5]
In oppressed countries around the world various writers such as the El Salvadoran Roque Dalton, or the Palestinian Ghassem Kanafani are still remembered and celebrated amongst their people.
But they fought against foreign empires, Kobayashi was from the empire he fought against. It is harder to reinterpret him as anything other than what he was, a proletarian writer who gave his life not so much for a literature that was forgotten but for a revolution that never came.
What literature is remembered and celebrated is a question of power and politics. There is literature that must be remembered and there is that which must be forgotten or in rare exceptions begrudgingly acknowledged.
Kobayashi, however, is now acknowledged so much so that there are now Kobayashi tours, which is itself worrying, but there is no escaping who or what he was, though Sabu, the director of a remake of the film version did make an attempt at this depoliticising the novel.
There is also no escaping that the current Japanese inbred royal family murdered him. All of the post war institutions are the direct heirs of those who murdered him.
That his novel could speak to the Japanese working class 79 years after it was written, is testament to the lasting value of his writing.
Darkness never lasts and despite the best efforts of the media, the cultural gatekeepers in publishing, academia and galleries, it is as Brecht remarked in his poem Literature will be scrutinised.
But at that time will be praised
Those who sat on the bare ground to write
Those who sat among the lowly
Those who reported the deeds of the fighters
With art. In the noble words
Formerly reserved
For the adulation of kings…
Yes, a time will come when
These clever and friendly men
These angry and hopeful men
Who sat on the bare ground to write
Who were surrounded by the lowly and the fighters
Will be publicly praised.
And so literature once forgotten or relegated to a lowly category comes forth in all its glory and as Rosa Luxembourg put it, when talking about revolution, proclaims, I was, I am, I shall be.
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[2] For an overview of class struggle in Japan in the post war period see Ichiyo, M (1987) Class Struggle and Technological Innovation in Japan since 1945. IIRE. Amsterdam. https://fileserver.iire.org/nsr/nsr5.pdf
[3] Translator’s Preface to Kobayashi, T. (2013) The Crab Cannery Ship and other novels of struggle. University of Hawai’i Press. Pp ix & x.
If it turns out that the fire destruction of homes in Greenisland, Carrigfergus was caused by Loyalist bonfire embers,1 there may be renewed calls to ban the construction of such bonfires in the cause of safety.
Or even to prevent the deaths of people from Loyalist bonfire tower construction.2
If so, such calls will miss the main point, which is that Ulster Loyalist bonfires are an expression of sectarianism and racism. It is Ulster Loyalism itself which is toxic and more lethal than any mismanaged fire. That is what is expressed in burning Irish Tricolours, Palestinian flags, images of Irish individuals, representations of migrants and of Islam.
A Loyalist bonfire with Irish Tricolour and Palestinian flags to be burned along with images of the popular rap group Kneecap and an attempt at some message aimed at them in Irish. The rejection of SDLP and Alliance colonial political parties is clear, while that of Sinn Féin is taken for granted. (Photo: Niall Carson/ PA Wire).
The record of Ulster Loyalism is as the communal enforcers of settler colonialism upon the indigenous Irish. When the United Irishmen, mostly led by Protestants, were organising in unity with Irish Catholics for Irish independence, the Orange Order was founded in 1795.
At that time it was not controlling the indigenous Irish that was of greatest concern to the British ruling class as much as the Republican Protestants, in particular the Republicans among the Presbyterians and the Orange Order targeted them too with propaganda and intimidation.
Once the threat of Protestant Republican rebellion was contained through intimidation, repression and emigration, the Orange Order concentrated on the majority mostly Catholic indigenous Irish, with general repression and periodic pogroms, continuing after Partition of Ireland in 1922.
The colonial Statelet institutionalised in law and practice discrimination against Catholics, enlisting the help and support of the majority of the Protestant working class, with the result of the worst housing and generally lowest wages in the UK – for workers of both communities.
The Loyalists mobilised against the Civil Rights campaign in the Six Counties, a campaign led by liberal Protestants as well as Catholics. During three decades of war that followed, Loyalist militias with British colonial army and police help, carried out bombings and sectarian murders.3
At this time of year people concerned for their safety or just peace of mind temporarily leave areas near to those under Loyalist control and not only in the Six Counties colony but in parts of Scotland too.
A REACTIONARY FESTIVAL
Unionist and liberal propaganda tell us that some of the bonfires are just good community fun, without flags, politician faces, migrant boat or mosque replicas on top. But the historical excuse for the marking of the 12th of July is the victory of William of Orange’s forces at the Boyne in 1690.
The Unionists celebrate this chiefly because they perceive it as a victory of Protestant forces over Catholic but also because it facilitated the destruction of the remnants of the Gaelic Order, breaking the power of Irish resistance in Ulster and completed the British conquest of Ireland.
Even without a single representation of person, country or religion on top of the bonfires, their very nature and what they intend to celebrate is reactionary, sectarian and colonial.
Most Ulster Protestants are probably unaware that although William was a Protestant and James II a Catholic, from whom Irish Catholics hoped to gain relief from repression, the Battle of the Boyne was actually part of the Nine Years War with William fighting for the League of Augsburg.
And one of the supporters of that League was none other than Pope Innocent XI because of what he and the League saw as the threat of King Luis XIV of France. The News of William’s victory at the Boyne was celebrated with high mass in a number of Catholic countries.
This year’s Loyalist Bonfire in Moygashel, Co. Armagh, with a representation of a Mosque to be burned on top and a placard calling for ‘secure borders’ against emigration. (Photo sourced: Sky News)
Loyalism has gone on to extend its hatred of Catholicism to Islam, of indigenous Irish to migrants from other lands, for example in the recent riots in Belfast.4
‘ONE MILLION PROTESTANTS IN A UNITED IRELAND’
We are frequently counselled to tolerate Ulster Loyalism, told that we must make Loyalists welcome into a united Ireland, that we need to accept their culture on equal level with others and are also subtly threatened with the potential violence of ‘One million Protestants’ if not accommodated.
The culture of Loyalism is toxic. It is intolerant, racist, homophobic, sectarian and violent. Might as well ask black people or native Americans to accept the Ku Klux Klan – after all, the KKK too have a community culture and they live in the USA along with everyone else.
A united 32-County Ireland should of course accept everyone as citizens. That is not at all to say that it should tolerate religious sectarianism, racism or homophobia. On the contrary it should oppose those evils through education and if necessary through application of the law.5
As for the implied threat of “one million Protestants”, that is to assume that all are sectarian Loyalists or at least that such are in leadership over the rest. Not all those reared in Six Counties Protestantism are Loyalists nor in fact even necessarily Unionists.
Removing the military, ideological and structural support for Unionism and Loyalism and also the control exercised by Loyalists on sections of communities will reduce Unionism and its most virulent expression, Loyalism, to a much smaller core who will have to make their choice.
Adjust to get on with your fellow citizens, or leave.
End.
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3According to Wikipedia, Loyalist paramilitaries killed 1,027 people during the 30 Years War, approximately 30% of all conflict-related deaths. 911 according to https://cain.ulster.ac.uk/issues/violence/sutton.htm (a biased source) including 33 in the no-warning Dublin and Monaghan Bombings of 1974.
As the Irish State marked the start of its six-month Presidency of the European Union, a protest march calling for Irish neutrality and an end to EU collusion with ‘Israeli’ genocide in Palestine headed for the formal event, closing a principal street to traffic.
Section of the crowd at Central Plaza.(Photo: D.Breatnach)
A Call to Action poster had promoted the protest to take place at the Plaza in Dublin’s south side city centre in front of a multi-story building, formerly HQ of the Central Bank of Ireland. Curiously, the name of no party, campaign or collective convening the protest appeared on the poster.
Groups of various Palestine solidarity or of pro-Irish neutrality nature, anti-war and left-wing nature, along with many individual activists congregated at the Plaza while a group from the weekly broad Dubs for Palestine meeting outside Leinster House1 marched to meet them there.
Some banners among the crowd at Central Plaza. (Photo: D.Breatnach)
The ‘Granny Squares for Gaza’ quilt was unrolled, featuring up to 2,900 squares, each one representing 10 Palestinian children killed by the IOF and volunteers, along with its custodians, held it at around waist height.
Soon afterwards, the crowd of several hundred took up the westward traffic side of Dame Street and began to march towards Dublin Castle,2 where the Irish Government was marking the first day of its EU Presidency. However a police line blocked progress at the junction with George St.
After a temporary stand-off, the marchers moved to occupy both sides of Dame street and traffic could no longer proceed westward or eastward along the street. The crowd continued with slogans in solidarity with Palestine, against ‘Israel’, for peace, against war, for warplanes out of Shannon.
Another banner at the Plaza. (Photo: D.Breatnach)
The Irish State is the second-biggest single importer of ‘Israeli’ exports, next only to the USA. Permitted flights over Irish airspace have been identified carrying war material to ‘Israel’ and US warplanes regularly refuel at Shannon Airport, despite the state’s ‘neutral’ status.
Richard Boyd Barrett of the People Before Profit, which seemed now to be leading the demonstration addressed the crowd informing them that the police had said earlier that they could proceed to the square immediately before City Hall and hold the protest event there.
They had reneged on that which is the reason why traffic was now blocked in the street, Barrett told the crowd and introduced Jimi Cullen to perform for the crowd. Cullen, who has performed at a US Embassy picket for 122 weeks up till then, sang his We Are All Palestinians composition.
Jimi Cullen in full voice. (Photo: D.Breatnach)
The crowd joined in the chorus, words with which they have become familiar in chants through many demonstrations.
A police officer approached Barrett requesting to speak to him and both went aside as one of the Dubs for Palestine group took up leading the chants. Barrett returned later to inform the crowd that the police had offered a different route down side streets, which had been rejected.
Cullen then performed his song defending the Irish State’s neutrality status with which the Irish ruling class are trying to dispense, after which Barrett invited the crowd, while the megaphones sounded sirens to lie on the ground in evocation of the many Palestinians being killed by the day.
Also another banner at the Plaza before the march. (Photo: D.Breatnach)
COMMENT
It was good that the capital city saw agitation opposing the Irish State joining military ventures of the EU and USA imperialist alliances and also against Irish collusion in the genocide in Palestine.
Those leading the march were unwise to accept the police assurance that they would allow the march to proceed to just before City Hall. A PBP-led march to protest Hillary Clinton’s 2012 visit to Dublin Castle had been told they could proceed there but were stopped just before City Hall.
Wednesday’s march was stopped even further from the Castle, which is a step further in curtailing protest, ensuring those inside the Castle will not even hear a hint of opposition. The police obstruction could have been bypassed by diverging through side streets but it was not attempted.
Though individual members may have been there, no Irish Republican organisation was notably present which probably accounted to an extent for the very scarce presence of Tricolour flags (and only one Starry Plough). PBP and their followers do not generally fly those flags.
However their absence cannot be attributed to any ambivalence: Irish Republicans are in strong antipathy to the Irish Government and to the institution of the European Union.
Only one of the slogans called from the front of the march referred to the colonial occupation of one-sixth of Ireland, viz. ‘From Ireland to Palestine/ Occupation is a crime!’ but it was from the Dubs and as is usual with PBP, in none of the speeches was there a mention of it.
Not one word of Irish language was spoken through the PA, not even the Saoirse don Phalaistín slogan.
The lie down to conclude the protest. The Gardaí may be seen in the distance blocking any advance of the march towards Dublin Castle or even the square beside City Hall. People are in most cases lying on the quilt of which each square represents 10 Palestinian children killed by ‘Israel’. (Photo: D.Breatnach)
MOVING FORWARD
For the defeat of colonialism, imperialism and capitalism in Ireland, a revolutionary mass movement will be essential. For that in turn, construction of an anti-imperialist broad front is an essential task.
That requires those claiming Irish Republicanism to be present on mobilisations alongside those claiming revolutionary socialism or just anti-imperialism.
If use of the Irish language is to be popularised and the civil rights of Irish speakers in Ireland protected, Gaeilge must be heard in particular among the most progressive sections of society.
End.
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FOOTNOTES
1This broad group meets every Wednesday from 12 noon to around 1.00 pm. listening to speeches, songs and poems. Two of their major campaigns are seeking to have the genocide-funding Allianz company kicked out of the Gaelic Athletic Association and, more recently, to prevent the Irish soccer team playing the ‘Israeli’ one.
2For centuries centre of administration and repression of Ireland by the English occupation.
On 25th March 2026 the Irish State’s UN representative declined to vote in favour of the UN Declaration of the Trafficking of Enslaved Africans and Racialized Chattel Enslavement of Africans as the Gravest Crime against Humanity.1
The voting patterns reveal much about the world and the position within it that is occupied by the Irish state. The total voting membership present was 193, out of which 123 voted YES, i.e. in favour of the resolution. But where was the Irish State? It abstained, along with 51 other states.2
The Western Powers, its chief the United States and including Australia, Canada and all western Europe, including of course all EU states, abstained.
But most of the eastern Europeanstates also abstained: Albania, Armenia, Bosnia & Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Czechia, Estonia, Georgia, Hungary, Latvia, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Poland, Republic of Moldova, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia and Ukraine.
Voting YES in Eastern Europe were Azerbaijan, Belarus and the Russian Federation,
In Africa, including North Africa, all states voted YES for the motion.
In East Asia, China, Mongolia, North Korea and South Korea voted YES but Japan followed the Western Powers in abstaining (Taiwan is not a UN member state).
In S.E. Asia only Cambodia abstained, the rest of the states in the region voting YES.
In Central Asia, all UN member states voted YES.
In Western Asia (previously termed ‘the Middle East’), only Oman abstained, all other states in the region voting YES, i.e. in favour of the resolution.
In the Western Pacific only Palau and in the Southern Pacific, only Fiji abstained (along with Australia and New Zealand, as noted earlier, as medium powers within the Western Bloc).
In Latin America, only Paraguay abstained and as we’ll see, Argentina voted No to the motion. All other Latin American countries vote in favour.
Yes, Argentina actually voted against the motion, one of only three states voting NO, the other two being the United States and Israel.
The Irish state’s excuse for their abstention included3 “ … concerns regarding certain legal references and assertions that are either inaccurate or inconsistent with international law.”
While the Minister’s response seems to indicate concern over terminology and legality, the Irish representative’s abstention coincided with the whole of the EU, as the Minister indicated but also with most European states and with the Western Powers.
Or in line with the ‘Global North’, in other words. And against the votes of the overwhelming majority of the states of the ‘Global South’. Ireland is geographically located in Western Europe but as a neo-colony (and direct colony in the Six Counties), Ireland belongs much more to the Global South.
In declining to join the vote for the Declaration, the representatives of the Irish State not only aligned themselves with the Western Powers and took a shameful stand in modern times but also went against the history of the Irish people and even of the Irish bourgeoisie itself.
In one of the two recorded writings of 5C St. Patrick, he wrote fiercely denouncing Coroticus, the British Celtic leader who was raiding Ireland and taking slaves.4
Cromwell in 1649 after his sack of Drogheda had Irish men and women sent as slaves to English colonies in Virginia and Barbados.
Yes, I say SLAVES. Although later Irish people were transported to the British colonies as contracted indentured servants, bound to their master for up to 10 years, the notion that Cromwell managed some kind of servant recruiting service among surviving captives in 1649 is ludicrous.5
Irish patriotic songs are full of hostile references to symbolic slavery, for example The Soldiers’ Song: No more our ancient sire land/ Shall shelter the despot or the slave and Who Fears to Speak of ‘98: He’s all a knave or half a slave/ Who slights his country thus …
Many Irish Republicans of the late 18th Century including the United Irishmen abhorred slavery and boycotted sugar because it was harvested by slave labour from sugar cane on colonial plantations.
Daniel O’Connell (1775–1847), better known for campaigning for an end to the anti-Catholic laws of the English occupation, was nevertheless a tireless campaigner against chattel slavery. Escaped slave and campaigner Frederick Douglass recorded hearing him mentioned by Irish labourers in the US.
Douglas came to Ireland to escape slave-catchers, staying from 31 August 1845 to January 1846, being welcomed into upper class private houses across Ireland and to address meetings and congregations. In Dublin, Douglass attended a Repeal Association meeting to hear O’Connell speak.
Frederick Douglass (Photo sourced: Internet)
At the meeting at Conciliation Hall on September 29, 1845, learning that the famous abolitionist was in the crowd, O’Connell invited Douglass to join him on stage and to address the audience, which experience made a deep impression upon Douglass’ life.
Although Irish migrants enlisted in the US Army and fought in wars of conquest, in the US-Mexican War (1846-1848) a significant number had deserted to form the St. Patrick’s Battalion and fought on the Mexican side against the USA.
Mexico had abolished slavery in 1829 while many states in the US still upheld it, including Texas which the US had conquered earlier from Mexico.
The Young Irelanders received the Irish Tricolour from women activists of the 1848 French revolution in Paris. They supported the Second French Republic and its Abolition of slavery.
Although John Mitchell, one of the Young Irelanders’ leaders, espoused the Confederacy other Young Ireland leaders supported the Union in the American Civil War (1861-1865), including Thomas Meagher as Captain in the 69th New York Militia, later as Brigadier-General in the Union Army.
Thomas Francis Meagher as Union Army officer and Governor of Montana. (Photo sourced: Internet)
The vast majority of Irish young males who survived emigration to the US from 1845 to 1866 fought in the Union Army in the American Civil War, which is to say on the anti-slavery side.The Fenians in the USA too, as an organisation, mostly fought on the Union side.
The Irish capitalist bourgeoisie, now the neo-colonial Gombeen class, has degraded so much, sunk so far that it cannot even stand by its own weakly progressive strands, never mind by the principles of the earlier Irish Republican bourgeoisie or those of the democratic populace today.
end.
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APPENDIX
First modern abolition of slavery
Vermont Republic (later a State in the USA) 1777
Second
Republic of France 1794 but reinstated briefly by Napoleon 1802
Third
Haiti Revolution and Independence (1791), 1804.
Fourth
Mexican Republic, 1810-1829
Fifth
UK 1833/ 34 (but the UK undermined the US Union during the American Civil War by building warships for the Confederacy, contraband smuggling and raids from Canada. See also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trent_Affair)
5Unlike the case of the imported black slaves, their slave status continuing on to their children if occurred at all, would have been rare unless of course the children were visibly part-African.
SOURCES
2026-03-25 UN General Assembly Resolution on the Declaration of the Trafficking of Enslaved Africans and Racialized Chattel Enslavement of Africans as the Gravest Crime Against Humanity: https://digitallibrary.un.org/record/4106660
Cycling along the Liffey quays some time back I saw a crowd waving Tricolour and other flags and heard a roar of “Get them out!” No mystery about the origin: the far-Right racists that crawled out into the light in recent years, targeting migrants.1
The same cry has been heard outside proposed IPAS centres and in other demonstrations that can mostly be characterised as anti-immigrant and anti-refugee.
Scene with cars set alight by racist Loyalist mobs in Belfast on 6 June.At least three houses were also set ablaze. (Photo: Getty images)
But why should we be “getting them out”? In answer to that question all we get is lying propaganda. “They are getting housing instead of Irish people.” No, they are not. Some refugees are getting hostel accommodation and many are not, even though Ireland has signed up to accept some.
If refugees are getting such good treatment, why would so many be living in tents on streets, parks or along canal banks? And why are far-Right fascists threatening them and slashing their tents? Are they claiming that refugees are doing them out of living in tents themselves?
In fact we never had widespread affordable decent housing but high emigration made it less noticeable. All the same there were struggles in the 1960s and 70s led by the Dublin and Dun Laoghaire Housing Action Committees, involving occupations of houses and fighting evictions.
Another claim is that migrants are a threat to Irish women. Why would that be the case? Yet, every day in the mass media we read of cases of rape, sexual harassment and controlling behaviour of women — by Irish men!
The far-Right also claim that migrants are a threat to children (actually, they often claim that LGBT people are also, calling them ‘paedos’). Fact: the major threat to children in Ireland have been Irish institutions including the Catholic Church, which is strongly defended by the far-Right.
Sociological research shows that most sexual abuse of children happens in the family or friend circle and we regularly read in the media of those cases also – nearly always by Irish men.
Then there’s the “military-age single men” mantra – what does that even mean? Military age is usually understood to be between 17 and 45 years of age. It is in other words the age at which most men emigrate to work in other lands. The age at which most Irish emigrated!2
It’s also an age of most health and physical ability to travel, to work and to send money home, as hundreds of thousands of us Irish did, whether single or married, or the optimum age to risk the dangers of being a refugee trying to find somewhere safe for one’s family to follow.
Research shows that the “military-age single men” mantra is a recent addition to Irish far-Right discourse, some believing it an import from the far-Right in the USA, along with the racist “great white replacement” conspiracy theory, adapted here to “replacing the Irish” conspiracy theory).
Which reminds me that the arrival of migrants is often characterised as “an invasion.” Really? When we emigrated in the past or today for work or safety from persecution, were or are we invading England, Scotland, Wales, the USA, Canada, Australia, New Zealand? Or other countries?
We are not being invaded by refugees or migrant workers. But we have been invaded by British troops and colonial police, foreign multinationals, and US and NATO flights.
The far-Right in Ireland hate foreigners and their imagined ‘invasion’, but not it seems the reality of British troops occupying one-sixth of our country and patrolling it with their colonial and sectarian police force. Nor the reality of the RAF and the USAF violating our airspace.
Nor the foreign multinationals and vulture funds controlling our housing market, taking over Irish firms and public infrastructure and plundering our national resources.
Get them out? Well if migrants and their contribution to Irish society were to be ‘got out’, there would be a massive task facing the far-Right.
We should then get rid of the Tricolour, as it was presented to us by foreigners: revolutionary Republican women in Paris in 1948. We should also reject the Irish Republic flag, which was created on domestic material in the home of Constance Markievicz, who was born in London.
Yes, and she delivered it in 1916 to the GPO so that it was raised on the Princes Street corner of the GPO by a man who was born in Argentina. Of course, inside the GPO were Thomas Clarke and James Connolly, the first born in England and the second in Edinburgh (where he was raised too).
I do recall a racist recently denouncing the Save Moore Street From Demolition campaign for pointing out the foreign origins of those two signatories of the 1916 Proclamation and insisting that it was where their parents came from that mattered.
What then of Patrick and Willie Pearse, whose father was English or Tomás McDonagh, whose mother was English too? Or Thomas Davis, whose father was Welsh? Clearly there’s a massive job ahead with “getting them out”, all these foreign connections in our resistance history.
Many of our martyrs and heroes, writers, song composers, musicians, flags, songs, poems, literature, documents “contaminated” by migrants will need to dumped if the far-Right are honest in their slogans. But they are not, of course – they only use them to fool the masses.
“But who is he writing this for? The organised fascists won’t care and their followers won’t read it.” A good question – to whom we speak and write is as important as what we speak and write. I don’t write it for the organised fascists of course, the debate with them will inevitably be a physical one.
Nor do I write it for their deluded followers, who would hardly be reading articles in the Rebel Breeze blog. I write it for you and you and you, to use in your discussions with the deluded followers, those who are willing to listen because you are neighbours, workmates or families.
And if you already knew all this or I have not written it well enough or you fail in using it and other arguments you use, I’m sorry, I and you did our best. In the end, the argument will be resolved in the street and on barricades. And we need to get ready for that too.
End.
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FOOTNOTES
1I wrote this quite some time ago but it never got posted for some reason or other. After the racist riots in Belfast seems a good time to dig it out and post it.
A group mainly of relatives of the deceased are seeking an official inquiry into the Chinook helicopter crash at the Mull of Kintyre, Scotland in 1994 killing 25 intelligence experts and four special forces crew on their way to a conference.
The crash wiped out almost all the top officers in command of intelligence gathering and operations in the occupied Six counties of Ireland from MI5, Army, RUC Special Branch and state Security Service.
Photo of the crashed Chinook helicopter on the Mull of Kintyre 1994. (Photo: Sky News)
The first crash inquiry failed to confirm pilot error which was then overruled by State reviewers who blamed the pilots on the basis of supposition without any evidence. After campaigning by a number of people including families of the deceased pilots, a 2011 inquiry exonerated the pilots.
The current campaign wants to focus on questions as to the reliability of the aircraft but an alternative and darker interpretation developed at the time, alleging that the different departments of British spooks, MI5 and MI6 had a fatal falling out over territory and policy.1
The remit of MI5 is of domestic ‘UK’ matters while that of MI6 is external. However, the Six Counties, though being under the rule of the UK, was also geographically part of a foreign country, Ireland — and the Irish State, just across the border, a government foreign to the UK.
In addition, the Republican armed resistance groups frequently had contacts abroad and many people with connections to other resistance organisations in the world; both parts of Ireland were visited by representatives along with many media agencies in the pursuit of their reporting work.
Whereas a resort to assassination as a result of rivalry or difference in objectives between different arms of a state’s security service is no doubt extreme, the existence of the rivalry itself is quite likely and the stakes in terms of funding, staffing and operational management can be high.
If the rivals are working towards opposing ends, that will raise the stakes much higher. The secrecy of the State’s reaction to the event did nothing to dispel such theories and the mismanaged attempt to blame the pilots only lent added credence to such suspicions and belief.
The fact of the collusion of British secret service with Loyalist murder squads in the 6-Counties colony is well known and has been documented by a number of investigations. Such collusion from the Royal Ulster Constabulary, especially its Special Branch, is well known too.2
Quite a few familiar with the British colonial security forces in the Six Counties believe that there was an ‘inner force’ inside the RUC with the support of MI5 and British Army Intelligence, all colluding with or even managing assassinations and Loyalist sectarian murder gangs.
The British ruling class had set their sights on achieving the cooperation of the Provisionals in a pacification process and MI6 was in favour of this initiative. It is posited that MI5, the Inner Force inside RUC and Army Intelligence opposed this, believing that they could defeat the IRA.
It was the clash of these radically different approaches (albeit with the same ultimate objective of ending Republican armed resistance) that is believed by some to have culminated in the assassination of the anti-pacification section in the Mull of Kintyre crash.
We may never know for certain and the Ministry of Defence (MoD) sealed key files relating to the 1994 Mull of Kintyre Chinook crash for 100 years, locking them away until 2094
‘HEROES’?
Sorcha Eastwood calls those who died ‘heroes’,3 confirming herself and the Alliance political party she represents as on the side of British colonialism and its violent repression of Irish resistance, repression in the forms of internment, no-jury trials, assassinations and sectarian murders.
Those features are the reality of colonial repression and were very much in evidence in the colonial war of three decades which was approaching an end at the time of the crash.
The leadership of the Provisionals had accepted that although they could not be beaten, nor could they win the war4 and so were ready to participate in a pacification process.
British Intelligence had compromised or recruited elements of that leadership at highest and medium levels and had targeted assassinations of the less malleable individuals.5 The leadership was heading for the process culminating in the Good Friday Agreement of 1998.
Up to 3,500 people had died violent deaths 1969-1994 as the hands of of British military, colonial police, colonial proxies and Irish Republican resistance.
There were no tears shed for the dead at Mull of Kintyre among the subjected population of the colonial entity nor in many quarters of the Irish community at home or abroad and resistance culture soon produced a dark mocking parody to the air of Paul McCartney’s ‘Mull of Kintyre’ song.6
Confirmed assassination and suspicious deaths by aircraft crash are not unknown, among UN Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjöld’s 1961 plane crash on his way to negotiate peace in the Congo,7 General Zia-ul-Haq8 and commander of Russian mercenary force Yevgeni Prigozhin.9
end.
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1What is more often but inaccurately called ‘the Irish peace process’; inaccurate because it was not designed to address the underlying reasons for the conflict and approaching three decades later has not done so. It resulted in The Good Friday Agreement, signed in 1998.
2See for example the Stevens Inquiries, Barron Tribunal, Dirty War by Martin Dillona (1990), also Lethal Allies (2013) by Anne Cadwallader.
4The war against a major imperialist power was concentrated in a territory one-sixth of Ireland and with a population divided along sectarian lines.
5See the cases of Denis Donaldson and Scappaticci (British Intelligence code name Stakeknife) for example and there are well-founded suspicions of a number of others that were never publicly exposed. See also the elimination of Volunteers Jim Lynagh and Padraig McKearney and their unit in the Loughgall Ambush/ Massacre.
6‘Mull of Kintyre, oh Brits falling into the sea’ etc
Two famous people addressed a crowd outside Leinster House, home of the Parliament of the Irish State on 25th May. Rami Elhanan, an Israeli graphic designer, and Bassam Aramin, a Palestinian scholar, had forged a remarkable friendship.
Section of participants in the Dubs for Palestine noontime event outside Leinster House 27 May 2026. (Photo: D.Breatnach)
Bassam Aramin, now a Palestinian scholar, had been sentenced to a 7-year term of imprisonment for throwing a grenade at Israeli soldiers when he was 17 and had lost his daughter later to a plastic bullet fired at short distance by an IOF soldier.
Rami Elhanan, an Israeli graphic designer, had also lost his daughter Smada but to a suicide bomber in 1997. Both men became advocates of peace and dialogue and friends to one another.
Their audience was the weekly Dubs for Palestine gathering outside Leinster House on Wednesdays 12 noon to about 1.00 pm, with speeches, songs and poetry and David Hickey as MC. This week’s was the 113th such weekly gathering and the duo had been invited to speak.
The broad group has of late been concentrating on parting the Gaelic Athletic Association1 from its sponsor and insurance underwriter, the former Nazi and since Zionist-friendly Allianz company, along with now campaigning for the Irish soccer team not to play the ‘Israeli’ team.
Rami Elhanan (L-R) and Basam Araminaddressing the Dubs for Palestine noontime event outside Leinster House 27 May 2026. (Photo: D.Breatnach)
Rami Elhanan referenced his descent from Holocaust survivors and outlined the different living standards of the Palestinian and Israeli Jewish communities, commenting on the sickness in Israeli society, that they did not want to know what is being done in their name to the Palestinians.
Basam Aramin’s contribution was against the Occupation and claimed that without that, Palestinians and Israelis could live in peace (it was not clear whether he was referring to the ‘Two State’ proposal2). David Hickey, the MC of the group presented them with an Arum Lily each.3
After their speeches had been applauded, they were asked to comment on the recent Leinster House debate and the Government’s refusal to endorse a boycott of Israel. Rami Elhanan replied that boycotts entrenched opposing sides and that continuing to talk was the answer.
Singer and activist Emma Browne, invited next to the microphone, sang Keep the Little Flame Alive, among the lyrics of which Faye, Dolores, Bernadine, Table grapes and gasoline, Homemade rifles, kitchen knives, Kept the little flame alive riposted the previous speakers.
Soon afterwards, Paul Lynch read a poem of a Palestinian father mourning the killing of his child. Poet and activist Dorothy Collin declared that in order to have peace there must be justice first and that we must support the oppressed in whatever way they choose to resist.
Áine Ruttley reading her poem while addressing the Dubs for Palestine noontime event outside Leinster House 27 May 2026. (Photo: D.Breatnach)
Áine Rutley also upheld our duty of solidarity and the right of the Resistance movement to choose its own methods, as did Jimi Cullen who then performed his own song composition The Freedom Fighter about a fighter from Gaza.
As I was called to the microphone, I commented that my views had already been well expressed in song and speech and that one of the forms of resistance is song, of which we had more than probably any other people in the world and sang An Dord Féinne,4 which is banned in Germany.
A little later the event came to an end with another song from Emma Browne, Never Again Is Now and with group chanting for Palestine, against Allianz and against playing the ‘Israeli’ team.
IN CONCLUSION
It is a popular proposition in certain circles that all social conflicts can be resolved by discussion, by understanding our opponents’ view. It is an attractive idea but flies in the face of history and of contemporary reality.
The interests of Occupied and Occupier are opposed and cannot be reconciled through understanding. The Occupier understands that the Occupied wish to be rid of them. The Occupied do understand that the Occupier wishes to continue appropriating their land and resources.
In this kind of situation one must win and the other lose. Far from understanding leading to peaceful resolution, the more the oppressed understand the nature of their oppressor, the more resolutely they are likely to resist and this is surely true of the Palestinians resisting the Zionist settlers.
The false proposition of resolving irreconcilable interests through discussion is usually of liberal or social-democratic origin when applied to anti-colonial, anti-imperialist and anti-racist struggles and though appearing even-handed, always ends up disempowering the victimised.
The journeys of both these men is extraordinary and interesting but it should not be presented as representative of the Palestinian struggle against Occupation, Theft and Genocide. Each father lost a child but the Palestinian is losing a lot more on top.
Furthermore, a just resolution can only come about through the total defeat of the Zionist forces and the dismantling of their State, so that if we really want that kind of resolution we are called to support the Palestinian side, unequivocally and resolutely.
Of course, in reality there is no question of real peace without justice, for ultimately the oppressed (unless wiped out) will rise in struggle again and again. The proposition of accommodation of opposites by discussion can only undermine or distract the struggle of the oppressed.
We cannot take the story of Bassam Aramin and Rami Elhanan, however remarkable, as even a metaphor for a just resolution nor allow ourselves to be seduced from resistance nor our struggle undermined by it.
End.
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FOOTNOTES
1The management of the Gaelic games, including hurling and Gaelic football. The GAA has teams in every one of the 32 counties of Ireland, crossing the colonial border and is the biggest community sports association not only in Ireland but also in Europe and perhaps in the world.
2This proposal came out of the Oslo Accords, to give the Palestinians 20% of their land for peace with the Zionist settlers who would own the remaining 80%. Apart from its basic injustice the proposal was never realistic since Zionist settlers continued to construct settlements on additional land. Despite this, supporting that proposal is the formal position of most western imperialist states and the Irish State and of most parliamentary political parties.
3In Ireland these are often viewed as symbolic of the 1916 Easter Rising.
4Also known as Gráinne Mhaol and Óró Sé Do Bheatha ‘Bhaile, an Irish traditional song of some antiquity refashioned into an Irish resistance song by Patrick Pearse, a martyred leader of the 1916 Rising.
Outside the German Embassy in Dublin speakers denounced the German State’s repression of Palestine solidarity activists and their treatment as terrorists in solitary confinement in dispersed locations, increasing the visiting difficulties for relatives.
Organised by the broad group Dubs for Palestine, scores of people attended a lunchtime picket of the Embassy on Monday 27th April.1 In addition to the speeches and chants, songs were sung with particular relevance to the occasion and location.
The focus of this rally was in support of a group of five activists that includes a young man formerly of Dún Laoire, Daniel Tatler-Devally and have become known as the Ulm Five. They were alleged to have broken into an Elbit Systems facility in Ulm, Germany and caused damage inside.
Lynn Treacy, of the Devally-Tatler family support grou, speaking outside gates of the German Embassy, Dublin on Ulm Five solidarity rally April 29th. (Photo: R.Breeze)
Their action was in protest at the Israeli military systems company and its part in the genocide of Palestinians supported by the German state. One of the speakers was Daniel’s father, Conor Devally while Lynn Treacy, a friend of Daniel’s mother spoke on her behalf too.
Jimi Cullen, accompanied by Dermot outside gates of German Embassy, Dublin on Ulm Five solidarity rally. (Photo: R.Breeze)
The activists are being treated as terrorists, in seven months of solitary confinement, separated and dispersed throughout different jails long distances apart. Their trial is scheduled for separate days over a period from April to July, also causing relatives and friends great difficulty.
Jimi Cullen singing and playing guitar performed his own We Are All Palestinians, developed from the well-known chant on Palestine solidarity demonstrations, accompanied by Dermot Sheehan on drum.
Two prominent members of People Before Profit spoke, Richard Boyd Barrett TD and Eoghan Ó Ceannabháin, a political and cultural activist and noted singer in the sean-nós style. Raymond Deane, composer and founding member of the IPSC spoke too as did political activist and singer Diarmuid Breatnach.
Richard Boyd Barret speaking at Ulm Five solidarity rally at German Embassy April 29th. (Photo: R.Breeze)
Ó Ceannabháin spent some time demolishing the discourse that Germany has an excuse for its repression of pro-Palestine solidarity because of alleged guilt due to its perpetration of the Hollocaust. He pointed to its genocidal history in Namibia and its leadership of EU imperialism.
The PBP member and election candidate for a councillor vacancy in DCC told the rally of Germany’s banning not only some Palestinian solidarity chants2 but also the song known as ‘Óró Sé do Bheatha Abhaile’3 which he proceeded to sing, the participants joining the chorus with gusto.
Ó Ceannabháin at Ulm Five solidarity rally at German Embassy April 29th. (Photo: R.Breeze)
Diarmuid Breatnach pointed out that the German working class had a strong history of struggle and at one time led the world in socialist and social-democratic representation, even recording a vote of 4.8 million votes for the Communist Party in the midst of Nazi repression.
Hans Beimler, a communist trade union activist, Breatnach said, escaped from a Nazi concentration camp, went to Spain to fight in the Anti-Fascist War there and was killed. In his honour Breatnach sang two verses of The Peat Bog Soldiers4 followed by the ballad about Beimler.
Breatnach was accompanied on drum by Dermot Sheehan, a regular attendee at the weekly Wednesday Dubs for Palestine event outside Leinster House, seat of the parliament of the Irish State. An anti-Zionist Jewish activist spoke against Israeli Zionism and its support by Germany.
Naoise Dolan speaking at Ulm Five solidarity rally at German Embassy April 29th. (Photo: R.Breeze)
Speaking in German, Irish and English, Naoise Dolan, novelist, supporter of Palestine Action who was captured in piracy action by the IOF on the October 2025 Gaza aid flotilla, also spoke to denounce the attitude and actions of the German Government and Berlin police.
Ken Powell of Dubs for Palestine, who had acted as MC throughout, led the rally in chanting slogans of solidarity with Palestine including calling for the freedom of each of the Ulm Five by name before thanking all for their attendance and concluding the event.
end.
Early view of Ulm Five solidarity rally outside German Embassy April 29th as people are still arriving. (Photo: R.Breeze)
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FOOTNOTES
1The day the trial began in Germany but however did not proceed due to the presiding judge refusing to allow the Defence lawyers to sit with their clients and the lawyers’ refusal to proceed under those restrictions
2“From the River to the Sea, Palestine will be free,” which they claim is ‘anti-Semitic’; also “Globalise the Intifada.”
3An Dord Féinne is the actual title given by Patrick Pearse in his adaptation of a traditional song in Irish.
4A translation from the German song of the Communists in Nazi concentration camps which was eventually banned by the camp authorities under pain of death.
Alerted by a sibling to a short exhibition on the life of the Spice Man (Thom McGinty), a remarkable performance artist and character of Dublin streets particularly associated with Grafton Street, I was fortunate to view it on its final day.
The exhibition was part of the annual Phizzfest’s annual program and was staged in the Bohemians FC room above the Phibsborough shopping centre. The space was a moderately-sized room with a few installations, a film projector, panels of images and text displayed on the walls.
One of the panels at the exhibition.
Sadly the chatter of a number of people made it difficult – for me at least – to understand all the audio accompanying the film footage but some of the images were very interesting, in particular the reaction of Dublin adults and children to the Spice Man’s street performances.
When he spoke it was with a Scottish accent, having been born to a father from Donegal and mother from Wicklow and reared in a village outside Glasgow from where he recalled journeying on holidays to Baltinglass for family reunions.
He came to economically-depressed Ireland in 1976, trying his hand at a number of occupations before he found the one that both gave him success and defined him publicly.
Typically, his performance was silent, his movement stilled or gradual, slow but moving to avoid arrest.1 But his costume and makeup were something else. Though McGinty later initiated performances in social and political protest, his initial ones in Dublin were commercial promotions.
A gaming shop called The Dice Man was the first of these and the one that gave him the nickname by which he became known and found fame. It was one of the commercial promotions, ironically not a political one, that ended with his arrest.
The promoters of a run of The Rocky Horror show in Dublin hired Thom to promote their show which he did, walking the street in ‘horror’ facial makeup, a cerise basque, fishnet stockings and a thong. He was arrested.
McGinty was charged with acts contrary to public decency under Section 5 of the Summary Jurisdiction (Ireland) Amendment Act, 1871, and with breach of the peace. Thom protested that these were his working clothes and he had been contracted to wear them.
According to the arresting gardaí, complaints had been made that Thom’s buttocks were clearly visible, “and the only thing covering his genitals was a G-string.” He was bailed from Store Street Garda Station pending the trial but could not be released until he was given a raincoat to wear.
The Act, which is still on the statute books (according to the exhibition text) had sexual connotations and could be used against gay people. McGinty’s lawyer raised the ramifications of a conviction under this Act and the judge sentenced him to probation without recorded conviction.
The 1991 production of the Rocky Horror Show at the Bord Gáis Theatre could not have asked for better publicity and McGinty personally got exposure (!) internationally and offers of work abroad as a result, from which he always returned to Ireland.
Among social causes which Thom protested with performance was the financial penalty on the Union of Students in Ireland for breach of injunctions by publishing anti-pregnancy choice information in a case pursued by SPUC.2 Another was against restrictions on the sale of condoms.3
Thom’s performances and the causes espoused would have been of interest to me had I been living in Ireland at the time but they touched on my family in Dublin a number of times. Foremost was his support for the wrongly accused, framed and brutalised of the Sallins Mail Train robbery.
One of the panels at the exhibition.
It is nearly 50 years since three socialist Republicans were wrongly convicted and sentenced to nine and twelve years imprisonment. As a result of much campaigning, two of the accused, one of whom is a sibling of mine, were released with convictions revoked after 18 months in Portlaoise jail.
The third accused, who had absconded the day prior to the sentence, returned to Ireland and was immediately jailed, campaigners then switching to obtain his freedom, gained only ‘on humanitarian grounds’ after four years in jail and a hunger strike of 38 days.
Satirising the ‘sleeping judge’ in one of the Sallins trials (he was clearly seen sleeping but his co-judges and State denied it and then to embarrassment of State, he died days later). In suits, two of the framed, (l-r) Nicky Kelly and Osgur Breatnach.One of the panels at the exhibition.
A recent concert, packed both by audience and performers in the Vicar Street Dublin venue was organised by yet another sibling to promote a campaign for an inquiry into how that travesty of justice could be carried out by state police, Government and judiciary right up to the High Court.4
Thom was a strong supporter of liberal social rights such as the right to prevent pregnancy or birth and for gay and lesbian rights. His defence of framed Irish Socialist Republicans centred on their right to a fair trial and not to be brutalised, as did his support for the Birmingham Six.
One of the panels at the exhibition.
But he was far from being an Irish Republican. Dressed as the Grim Reaper with scythe, Thom also led a delegation of ‘Peace Train’5 people in protest to the offices of Provisional Sinn Féin where, in a twist of fate, it was another sibling of mine who had to receive him and to face the cameras there.
At the time, SF was the political party leading a struggle for Irish reunification and independence from British occupation and, though its leadership and much of the party’ base support was socially conservative, it was not that which focussed the attacks of two states and a statelet6 upon it.
And those armed and judicial attacks were backed by the imperialist and neocolonial-dominated liberal and social-democratic sector of society, the likes of the ‘Peace (sic) Train’ and ‘Peace Women’.7 I would have argued strongly with Thom I’m sure but regret very much his passing.
Thom McGinty (1952-20/21 February 1995)
Thom McGinty’s funeral, from one of the panels at the exhibition.
end.
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2Society for the Protection of the Unborn Child. After a long struggle ending pregnancy became legal within the Irish state but regulated under the Health (Regulation of Termination of Pregnancy) Act 2018, allowing for termination on request up to 12 weeks of pregnancy. Following a 2018 referendum, abortion services began on 1 January 2019, providing free access for residents.
3Following campaigning and public defiance of the law, restrictions on the sale of condoms were only finally removed in 1993 in the Irish state.
5https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peace_Train_Organisation The issue is not whether bombing the railway line was a useful activity or not but rather that its condemnation took the place of condemning and drawing attention to the British occupation of a colony in Ireland and the brutal repression of resistance to that occupation.
6Although it has the trappings of a state, the Northern Ireland (sic) Assembly is a UK colonial administration.
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