Monthly Archives: March 2013
Niall Farrell recalls Gibraltar executions
The following letter from Niall Farrell appeared in the Irish Times on Thursday (March 28):
A chara,
Some things seem never to change: 25 years since the Gibraltar killings and the only reference we find in The Irish Times is a preview of a London play setting out how the British establishment would prefer the shootings to be remembered. All other cultural events marking the anniversary are ignored: from a play on the life of my sister Mairead Farrell to the re-publication in e-format of the epic satirical poem on those shootings, Gib: A Modest Exposure by a Scots academic, the late Jack Mitchell. Mark Hennessy (Weekend Review, March 23rd) uncritically presents a hackneyed thesis in the play placing the blame for the killings on IRA “doves”, who wanted the three hardliners killed. Unsettling for the British lawyer playwright no doubt is that the European Court of Human Rights didn’t see it that way. It found the British government guilty of the “unlawful killing” of the trio, who were unarmed – something your report fails to make clear. The report attempts to dilute that powerful verdict by noting the Strasbourg court did not grant “compensation” to the families – nothing could have compensated my elderly parents for the loss of their only daughter.
What should stand centre stage 25 years on, is Read the rest of this entry
EU warmongers go home
People’s Movement
Protest
EU warmongers go home!
Dublin Castle
Monday, 25 March 2012, 1:00 p.m.
Assembly point to be announced.
Information about the EU’s inter-parliamentary conference on Common Foreign and Security Policy is available here.
Brigadista Ben Murray commemorated in Aughnacloy
Below is the speech delivered by Eugene McCartan of the CPI at the unveiling in Aughnacloy of a memorial to Ben Murray, a member of the International Brigades who died in Spain in 1938, fighting fascism; thanks to Steve McCann for passing on the text and pic
Comrades and friends.
First of all I would like to thank Eddie O’Neill and his comrades for the invitation to address you today, at this unveiling of a memorial to Ben Murray, who died “ in the heroic stand on the banks of the Ebro river” in 1938.
Ben Fredrick Murray was born on the 19th of July 1895 in Enniskillen. His family lived outside Aughnacloy, Moy Bridge, Co Tyrone, the son of an RIC man, reared in the Methodist tradition.
Ben was only 15 when he emigrated to Canada. Like tens of thousands of young men enlisted to fight in the First World War as part of the Canadian Army, that barbaric inter-imperialist slaughter, a war to re-carve up the world between the victorious imperialist powers.
Ben was clearly affected by what he experienced during that war but also with events in Russia and the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917. He joined the Communist Party of Canada and set up his own local communist newspaper, living and working in Montreal until his return to Ireland in 1933.
On returning he joined the Revolutionary Workers Groups an all-Ireland network of revolutionary workers’ organisations, which came together to form the reconstituted Communist Party of Ireland.
Ben was both a thinker and a doer. On his return he threw himself into Read the rest of this entry
Revised date for Dublin Lockout event Down Under
Please note the revised date for the Dublin lockout event in Christchurch (New Zealand). It is on March 23, not March 16 as was advertised on an earlier version of the poster below.