Category Archives: Democratic rights – general
100 years of partition – on-line talk/discussion
Online discussion hosted by Socialist Democracy
Garda and RUC officers at the Irish border 1920s
Ireland:
100 Years of Partition
Counter-revolution and reaction
Speaker: Philip Ferguson (Irish Revolution blog)
23 March 2021
19.00 London/Dublin
Zoom platform
Register
Register in advance for this meeting:
https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZEkfu2rrDotE9b_EnzBHm4JSaET69Kf_sPn
Speaker
Philip Ferguson is a socialist activist based in New Zealand. He runs the Irish Revolution blog. A member of Sinn Fein in the 1980s and early 1990s; he is now a supporter of the socialist republican group Eirigi.
Summary
This year marks the 100 years since partition. Over that period, it has had a profound influence on Irish politics and society. It has been the foundation of imperialist rule in the north and of reaction across the whole of Ireland and has proved to be a severe impediment to the advance of the labour movement and to the development of socialist politics. The prediction of James Connolly that partition would usher in a “carnival of reaction” proved to be correct.
This discussion will examine the continuing legacy of partition and how it can be overcome. It will also consider whether there is any validity to recent claims that the decline of unionism and the dynamics of Brexit are advancing the cause of a united Ireland.
In memory of republican veteran Donal Ó Sé, 1937-2020
The tribute below is from the Eirigi site, here.
Republican activists in South Dublin woke to the sad news last Thursday morning that the 1950s veteran Donal Ó Sé had passed away. Although Donal had lived in the same house on the Dundrum Road for the last forty years, his life story began far away in the village of Kilgarvan in South Kerry where he was born in 1937.
Donal’s earliest days on this earth were a time of simultaneous joy and tragedy for his family – joy in his arrival and tragedy in the passing of his mother who died in childbirth.
As was common with such tragedies at the time, family members stepped forward to help rear the infant Donal – in his case a childless aunt and uncle who had returned to Ireland after spending decades in the United States. While still a child tragedy again visited the young Donal’s life, with the death of his beloved Unlce Jim.
As the ten-year-old ‘man of the house’ Donal had to grow up fast, helping his adoptive mother Minnie with the many chores that came with running a small holding in 1940s Ireland. It was during these formative years that he developed both a strong work ethic and a deep hatred of injustice of every type.
His republican beliefs too developed as he moved through his teenage years – influenced by the rich republican history of his native county and by his adoptive parents who had supported the republican cause from America during the revolutionary period.
At some point in his late teens Donal joined the Irish Republican Army, a fact that became known to all when he was arrested along with 37 other republican volunteers during training maneuvers in Glencree, Co Wicklow in 1957.
Among the detained republicans were many who went on to become well-known national political figures including Seamus Costello, Sean Garland, Proinsias De Rossa and Peter Pringle.
Following a period of detention in Mountjoy Prison, Donal was moved to the internment camp in the Curragh, Co Kildare. The government of Eamon De Valera had introduced internment without trial earlier in 1957 in response to the IRA’s ill-fated ‘Operation Harvest’.
Unwilling to wait patiently for De Valera to release him, Donal took part in a mass prison break in December 1958. While many other prisoners were captured during the escape or shortly afterwards, Donal escaped the immediate area and remained at large until a general amnesty for all republican prisoners was introduced.
In the early 1960s he emigrated to England where he worked in the construction sector as a carpenter, until his republican activities attracted the attention of British police. A rapidly arranged trip back across the Irish Sea took Donal to Dublin where he gained employment with Dublin Corporation and met his future wife.
Donal Ó Sé remained a committed republican throughout the rest of his life as evidenced by his trade unionism, his love of Gaelic Games, traditional music and the Irish language. In the years leading up to his death Donal offered his support to Éirigí For A New Republic – the party he felt best represented the politics he believed in.
Donal Ó Sé was a quiet, unassuming man of few words. That quietness was not borne out of shyness or lack of confidence. Quite the opposite. It was a quietness borne of a deep understanding of the modern world and an absolute belief in Irish republicanism.
Donal had no need to shout from the hilltops about his exploits or his politics. He knew exactly who he was and what he believed in. Like thousands of other republican activists of his generation he did what he did because it was the right thing to do and he did so without any expectation of fame or fortune.
His republicanism manifested itself in the support that he offered to friend and stranger alike – in his instinctive rallying against injustice – in his support for oppressed people across the globe – in his political campaigning – in the unconditional love that he gave to his family.
Éirígí For A New Republic takes this opportunity to offer our deepest condolences to Donal’s wife Geraldine, his son Eoin and to their wider family during this most difficult of times. Ar dheis Dé go raibh a anam.
Connolly’s ‘Labour in Irish History’: study/discussion group
A study/discussion group based on Connolly’s Labour in Irish History started a couple of weeks ago. With the lockdown across Ireland (and in other countries where socialist
-republicans and supporters reside) many of us will have more time than we usually do for study, theory, political discussion, so let’s make use of it.
The studies have been initiated by Eirigi general-secretary Mickey Moran, but are open to any socialist-republican-minded people. They take place on zoom and are very easy to access. You can contact Mickey directly or, if you are shy, email me and I’ll put him onto you. He’s: eirigigeneralsecretary@gmail.com
The sessions take place on Wednesday nights at 8.30 (Irish time, and British time). If you’re elsewhere you will need to check what time that is wherever you are.
Last week we delved into two chapters where our political tradition begins to emerge, looking at the democratic and internationalist ideas of the United Irish movement of Wolfe Tone and at Emmet’s movement and the manifesto of the 1803 rebellion, which, if anything, was even more radical – for instance Emmet’s rebellion wanted to confiscate and nationalise Church property.
It was my privilege to do the introduction.
The next 2 chapters will be introduced by Fiona, as the sessions begin to move on from the great revolutionary democracy of the United Irishmen and Emmet, pre-runners of socialism, to the emergence of a more explicitly socialist politics in Ireland. These chapters are:
Chapter 10 – The First Irish Socialist – A forerunner of Marx; this looks at the views and work of William Thompson in the late 1820s and early 1830s
Chapter 11 – An Irish Utopia; this looks at the Ralahine commune in Co. Clare in the 1830s
Anyone who doesn’t have a copy of the pamphlet/book can read it on the Marxist Internet Archive, here.
Brian Leeson in French paper on the February general election in the South
This article gives an overview and the Éirígí perspective on the recent General Election in the 26 counties; it appeared in last week’s issue of the French left-wing publication Informations Ouvrières. The author is cathaoirleach Éirígí.
by Brian Leeson
On February 7th voters in southern Ireland went to the polls to elect a new government for the first time since 2016. When the exit poll was released at 10pm that night it became clear that the electorate had delivered a major blow to the two dominant centre and centre-right political parties.
When counting concluded four days later the outgoing party of government, Fine Gael, had just 20.9% of the popular vote. Fianna Fail came in with the second largest share at 22.2%. And in a shock result, Sinn Féin won the largest share of first-preference votes at 24.5%.
The importance of this result can only be fully appreciated when it is placed in its historical context. In the century since the foundation of the state in 1922, no party has ever secured more Read the rest of this entry
Statement on Sinn Fein and PSNI by families of republicans murdered by UVF, with police help, in Cappagh, March, 1991
On March 3, 1991, pro-British terrorists of the Ulster Volunteer Force attacked people drinking at Boyle’s Bar in the village of Cappagh in the six counties (“Northern Ireland”). They shot dead four people, three of whom were IRA members (Cappagh is a staunchly republican village). Tommy O’Sullivan (51) was the civilian and was in the bar; John Quinn (23), Malcolm Nugent (20) and Dwayne O’Donnell (17) were the IRA Volunteers, who were shot in a car arriving in the car park. Local IRA leader Brian Arthurs survived as patrons barricaded the doors when they heard shooting outside. This was one of the many occasions in which loyalist killers collaborated with state forces. Representatives of the families of the Cappagh Victims have released this statement, as Sinn Fein has been embracing the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI), which is riddled with people involved in collaboration with loyalist killers, collaboration that is integral to the whole repressive apparatus of the British state in the occupied part of Ireland. – P.F.
Statement by Representatives of Families of Cappagh Victims
“On Sunday 3rd March 1991, our sons and brothers were stole from us, brutally murdered by agents of the state.
“Like many families out there who have lost their loved ones to state agents, the past can never be the past until we have the truth, until we have vindication that these deaths were wrong. We deserve recognition that these horrible acts were perpetrated upon us and that it should never have happened. We, as families have a right to the truth and any denial of this truth is a further act of vengeance on us.
“Any attempts to investigate the murders of our loved ones are faced with obstruction. The government fails to disclose material it holds that would allow us the truth to be established, inquests, ombudsman’s inquiries, litigation and police reviews that have been dragged on for decades for the sole purpose of delaying the process.
“The initial inquest was a whitewash! The forensics were Read the rest of this entry
The blinding of Emma Groves – front cover of ‘Socialist Woman’, March-April 1972
I met Emma Groves back in the early 1990s, or possibly very end of the 1980s, as she came to Dublin to help support the campaign against extradition. The story of her blinding by a British soldier, who deliberately shot her in the face at point-blank range with a rubber bullet, shocked people in Dublin and elsewhere in the south. Many southerners were simply unaware of the harsh realities of daily life as experienced by northern nationalist working class people.
This morning I was looking at a copy of a British left-wing women’s liberation journal from the early 1970s, Socialist Woman, and saw it had a short item on Mrs Groves’ blinding on the front cover of its March-April 1972 issue. Here is the item:
Emma Groves, of Anderstonstown, Belfast lost the sight of both her eyes when a paratrooper fired a rubber bullet into her face at point-blank range.
The incident occurred on the morning of 4th November (1971 – PF) when yet another military search was taking place in her area. One group of soldiers had completed their work and left, and then the paras moved in.
Mrs Groves opened her window. She was told by a para to Read the rest of this entry
“Our choice lay in submitting to foreign lawlessness or resisting it, and we did not hesitate to choose” – Roger Casement on trial for his life
In his 1914 book The Crime Against Ireland and How the War May Right it, Sir Roger Casement wrote, “Sedition (is) the natural garment for an Irishman to wear”. Casement wore it well.
A participant in the preparations for the 1916 Easter Rising, Casement landed at Banna Strand (northwest of Tralee) in Co. Kerry on board a ship from Germany with a large consignment of weaponry for the rebels. However the rendezvous did not take place and Casement was captured on April 21, 1916. He was subsequently held in Pentonville Prison in London, tried in London over four days in May, and hung for treason on August 3. At his trial, he made a speech from the dock; he had written the body of it while in prison. Below is the text. I have broken up some paragraphs which were huge in the original.
This text is longer than that often found on the internet. I had to type up additional chunks of text from where I found this – I have it taken it from The Great Prisoners: the first anthology of literature written in prison, selected and edited by Isidore Abramavotich, New York: E.P. Dutton & Company, 1946. Abramovitch lists the range of his Casement sources on p869.
I have added subheads to break up the text.
Roger Casement:
My Lord Chief Justice, as I wish to reach a much wider audience than I see before me here, I intend to read all that I propose to say. What I shall read now is something I wrote more than twenty days ago. I may say, my lord, at once, that I protest against the jurisdiction of this Court in my case on this charge, and the argument that I am now going to read is addressed not to this Court, but to my own countrymen.
There is an objection, possibly not good in law, but surely good on moral grounds, against the application to me here of this old English statute, 565 years old, that seeks to deprive an Irishman to-day of life and honour, not for “adhering to the King’s enemies”, but for adhering to his own people.
When this statute was passed, in 1351, what was the state of men’s minds on the question of a far higher allegiance – that of a man to God and His kingdom? The law of that day did not permit a man to forsake his church or deny his God save with his life. The ‘heretic’ then had the same doom as the ‘traitor’.
Today a man may forswear God had His heavenly kingdom without fear of penalty, all earlier statutes having gone the way of Nero’s edicts against the Christians, but that Constitutional phantom, ‘The King’, can still dig up from the dungeons and torture chambers of the Dark Ages a law that takes a life and limb for an exercise of conscience.
If true religion rests on love, it is equally true that loyalty rests on love. The law I am charged under has no parentage in love and claims the allegiance of to-day on the ignorance and blindness of the past.
I am being tried, in truth, not by my peers of the live present, but by the peers of the dead past; not by the civilisation of the twentieth century, but by the brutality of the fourteenth; not even by a statute framed in the language of an enemy land – so antiquated is the law that must be sought to-day to slay an Irishman, whose offence is that he puts Ireland first.
The Government of Ireland by England. . . can evoke no loyalty
Loyalty is a sentiment, not a law. It rests on love, not on restraint. The Government of Ireland by England rests on restraint and not on law; and since it demands no love it can evoke no loyalty.
But this statute is more absurd even than it is antiquated; and if it is potent to hang one Irishman, it is still more potent to gibbet all Englishmen.
Edward III was King not only of the realm of England, but also of the realm of France, and he was not King of Ireland. Yet his dead hand to-day may pull the noose around the Irishman’s neck whose Sovereign he was not, but it can strain no strand around the Frenchman’s throat whose Sovereign he was.
For centuries the successors of Edward III claimed to be Kings of France, and quartered the arms of France on their royal shield down to the Union with Ireland on 1st January, 1801. Throughout these hundreds of years these “Kings of France” were constantly at war with their realm of France and their French subjects, who should have gone from birth to death with an obvious fear of treason before their eyes. But did they? Did the “Kings of France” resident here at Windsor or in the Tower of London, hang, draw and quarter as a traitor every Frenchman for 400 years who fell into their hands with arms in his hand? On the contrary, they received embassies of these traitors, presents from these traitors, even knighthood itself at the hands of these traitors, feasted with them, tilted with them, fought with them – but did not assassinate them by law. Judicial assassination today is reserved only for one race of the King’s subjects, for Irishmen; for those who cannot forget their allegiance to the realm of Ireland.
Slide by Robert Ehrlich
The Kings of England as such had no rights in Ireland up to the time of Henry VIII, save such as reasted on compact and mutual obligation entered between them and certain princes, chiefs and lords of Ireland. This form of legal right, such as it was, gave no King of England lawful power to impeach an Irishman for high treason under this statute of King Edward III of England until an Irish Act, known as Poyning’s Law, the 10th of Henry VII, was passed in 1494 at Drogheda, by the Parliament of the Pale in Ireland, and enacted as law in that part of Ireland. But if by Poyning’s Law an Irishman of the Pale could be indicted for high treason under this Act, he could be indicted only in one way and before one tribunal – by the laws of the realm in Ireland and in Ireland.
The very law of Poyning’s, which, I believe, applies this statute of Edward III to Ireland, enacted also for the Irishman’s defence, “All those laws by which England claims her liberty”. And what is the fundamental charter of an Englishman’s liberty? That he shall be tried by his peers.
“Not a jury of my peers”
With all respect I assert this Court is to me, an Irishman, not a jury of my peers to try me in this Read the rest of this entry
Éirígí – for a New Republic: New Year Statement
Released January 1, 2020:
Today marks the dawning of not only a new year, but also a new decade. The last ten years have been largely defined by the response of the Irish and British political establishments to the collapse of the private banking sector in 2008.
Both states chose to reward the malpractice and criminality of the private banks with unlimited political and financial support. The cost of this support was transferred to the people at large in the form of vast public debts and the savage austerity programmes that were implemented on both sides of Britain’s border in Ireland.
Éirígí activists were heavily involved in the fight against the bank bailouts and austerity. We take this opportunity to recognise and applaud the significant contribution that current and former party members made in these critical battles to defend the interests of the Irish people.
We also take this opportunity to thank all of thos
e who have supported the party over the last decade, by attending party events, through financial donations and by entrusting our election candidates with their votes.
The decision of the Dublin government to bail out the private banks in 2008 exposed the underlying ideology that has informed all important decision-making by all Dublin governments since the foundation of the state. When faced with choosing between protecting the interests of capital or protecting the interests of the Nation, they have always chosen the former, at great cost to the latter.
Decades of blind, unquestioning, fanatical commitment to the concepts of private property, private capital and private markets has Read the rest of this entry
the irish revolution 