The First West Cork History Festival and West Cork’s War of Independence: sectarianism, the Kilmichael Ambush, Tom Barry and Peter Hart

This is a great little 24-page pamphlet, edited by the redoubtable Jack Lane and published by the also redoubtable Aubane Historical Society.

It takes up the ongoing anti-IRA, anti-republican campaign being waged by supporters of the late Peter Hart, a Canadian historian who went to great (and questionable) lengths to present the west Cork IRA as being guilty of “ethnic cleansing” and sectarianism against local Protestants in the war of independence.  Hart also made out that the IRA gunned down Crown Forces who had already surrendered at Kilmichael, in the famous ambush led by legendary IRA figure Tom Barry.

The Festival organisers shied away from debating this stuff, and it was left to the Aubane Historical Society to challenge the anti-republican propaganda masquerading as objective history.

Below is a pdf of the pamphlet.  At the same time, please consider making a donation to the Aubane Historical Society and helping them with their very valuable work.

Contact Jack: jacklaneaubane@hotmail.com
Contact their book sales: https://www.atholbooks-sales.org

PAMPHLET

 

March for women’s right to choose, Dublin, Saturday, September 30

The 6th annual March For Choice is taking place this Saturday, 30th September, assembling at the Garden of Remembrance on Parnell Square from 1.30pm, before marching to Leinster House at 2pm.

 

Is the six-county state reformable?

The People’s Democracy organisation (now Socialist Democracy) argued, from its start in 1968, that the northern state is irreformable.

by Socialist Democracy*

In June, following the Stormont elections, the Irish blogger “Sráid Marx” wrote about socialists and elections, arguing for a reformist movement that would open a space for working class politics to advance.

The article contained many assertions that were not strongly based on evidence. Apparently by issuing a call to “Smash Stormont” we in Socialist Democracy had proved ourselves the worst kind of ultra leftists, opposed to any reform, even though our entire history refutes that claim. SM cast a vote for People Before Profit on the grounds that this was the way to build a movement that would go through Stormont in order to destroy it (PBP have expressed no such ambition, rather calling for a left wing Stormont).

A serious weakness is the dismissal of Sinn Fein as a “Catholic party,” the green equivalent of the DUP. It is true that this is their mode of operation in the various carve-ups in Stormont, but it does not sum up the party itself or the dynamic of their supporters. Sinn Fein presents itself as a party of the left. Their main demands at the moment – an Irish Language Act, LGBT marriage rights, investigation of state killings, are essentially democratic demands. Their attitude to supporters of unionism is essentially conciliatory, arguing that the political structures can act to reduce sectarianism. When Stormont was operating they were the main conduit of trade union lobbying campaigns. It is not so long ago that the SM blog itself proposed Sinn Fein as a central element of a reformist movement in the 26 county state!

To assert that Sinn Fein are two-faced and will not deliver or that they do not represent the interests of workers is one thing. To assert equivalence between them and the full-throated sectarian triumphalism of the Democratic Unionist Party is quite another.

It is true that Sinn Fein voters, along with the majority of the nationalist population, hold the 

Robert Emmet commemoration, Dublin, this Sunday

Remembering The 1803 Rebellion

Dublin South Central Remembers would like to invite you to two events to be held this coming Sunday 1 Octoberto Remember the Rebel participants in the 1803 United Irishmen Rebellion.

Firstly we will hold a dignified Robert Emmet Remembrance Event at his monument outside St Catherine’s Church Thomas Street at 2pm.

At 3pm, we will be hosting a Public Talk by historian and author Mícheál Ó Doibhilín on Edward Trevor, the “Beast of Kilmainham”, who contributed to the torment and torture of Anne Devlin amongst other political prisoners of the 1798/1803 era.  This will take place upstairs in Arthur’s Bar and Restaurant opposite St Catherine’s Church.

 

Donegal, partition and the national question

Below is a fascinating piece on the impact of partition on County Donegal (Tir Connaill), which I’ve taken from the 1916 Societies site.  I’ve altered the title, corrected some typos and tenses etc, changed ‘Northern Ireland’ to six counties, and added some subheads, but the overall text has not been changed.  

I don’t agree that simply unifying the six-county state and the 26-county state would solve much, because the national question is inseparable from the socio-economic system of capitalism.  (I know Finnian is not a supporter of capitalism, either!)  The solution to the national question isn’t the merger of the existing states, as the Shinners suggest, but the solution on the national, social and economic issues through the establishment of an all-Ireland workers’ republic.

Also, none of the major parties, North and South, really want an end to partition.  Sinn Fein would argue it really does, but so far they seem happy enough helping manage partition.

In my view, only the mobilisation of the mass of the Irish people can end partition and the masses can’t be mobilised unless they are convinced the result will be something better – which is also why the national question and the class question are completely interlinked.

by Finnian O Domhnaill

As a child growing up in 90s Ireland in Tir Connaill/Donegal, I was raised on the fringes of the conflict that went on in the North, never knowing it’s full effects and only seeing TV news or glancing at papers my father and mother were reading. On school trips we would rarely go into Derry and when we did, I noticed a slow down of the traffic. I soon realised we had reached the border, being checked by cameras on the road to be searched for bombs or guns. Being looked over by men in army gear and unfamiliar police uniforms.

As the years went by, adolescence beckoned with its insecurities, pimples and female fascinations. I found my peers and I were referred to as the “post-conflict generation”. A generation of peace and reconciliation, a term that would become a favourite of the Northern Executive.  A generation of change, prosperity and a new outlook in the North and South of Ireland. But surely the older generation were to know that the past would soon creep up and rear its ugly head again.  Unbeknownst to some of us was that the effect of partition was still looming over

Seamus Costello on RTE, December 1975, about mini-split

Much as I admire Bernadette (Devlin) McAliskey she was totally wrong to leave the IRSP in late 1975 and she was wrong about the relationship of the armed and non-armed aspects of the struggle at that time.  She has great strengths, but her weakness is that she has never been a party-builder.

http://www.rte.ie/archives/2015/1130/750277-mass-resignations-in-the-irsp/

 

Where, oh where, is our James Connolly?

by Aindrias Ó Cathasaigh

“There is always some excuse ready for evasion. The difficulty is, that every party likes some part of the truth; no party likes it all; but we must have it all, every line of it. We want no popular editions and no philosophic selections—the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.” —Terence MacSwiney, Principles of Freedom

SIPTU’s Head of Research publicly announced in 2001 that the union would be sponsoring “the publication in several volumes of all Connolly’s articles and letters”, which would “at last enable us to appreciate Connolly’s own originality and greatness to the full”.1 I happened to be sitting next to him on the platform, and in my own contribution I welcomed the announcement but hoped people wouldn’t take it as a signal to sit back and think all was now well in the world of publishing Connolly. I was aiming for that curious amalgam that goes under the name of ‘cautious optimism’, and probably came off as a moany old begrudger. In fact, I was guilty of being far too generous altogether.

Recovering Connolly

My presence on that platform was a result of the momentum that had been building up for five years previously. On the unveiling of a statue of Connolly in Dublin in 1996, I was allowed to point out in the programme that hundreds of his articles had never been made available since their original publication, and to republish the first Connolly work for twenty years.2 The year after, The Lost Writings was published, in which I assembled 65 articles of his unpublished since his execution. It never ceased to amaze me how many people were under the sincere impression up until then that all of Connolly’s work was available. The Collected Works title put on a reprint of previous Connolly selections in 1987-8 had been taken all too literally by many. Also in 1997 Red Banner began its ‘Hidden Connolly’ series, underlining that The Lost Writings wasn’t even the half of it.

A group including some prominent labour historians then tried to get an initiative off the ground which would assemble a team of researchers to publish all of Connolly’s works, an initiative which had the blessing of the Labour Party leader (dubious as that may be). But the SIPTU announcement cut the feet from under that. While ‘The Hidden Connolly’ continued to mine a seemingly inexhaustible seam, any impetus towards publishing Connolly’s complete writings was sucked into the Liberty Hall plughole.

The first fruit of SIPTU’s project appeared in 2005 in the shape of a Connolly biography by Dónal Nevin. It was a disappointing work, but promised

C.L.R. James’ visit to Dublin in 1935

In 1935, Trinidadian Marxist C.L.R. James, a leading figure in the Trotskyist movement in Britain at the time, and an important figure in pan-Africanism, visited Dublin to speak about the Italian invasion of Abyssinia (modern-day Ethiopia).

James would meet Nora Connolly O’Brien and the Irish visit would make a significant impact on him.

Later he would write about the impact of James Connolly and the 1916 Rising on himself (see here).

Well worth reading is the piece Donal Fallon has just written about the visit, see here.