Category Archives: Economy and workers’ resistance
Sean McLoughlin, Ireland’s Forgotten Revolutionary
You need to get – or at least read – this book
I actually began this six months ago. It started as a book review and kind of evolved into almost as much a synopsis of the book. But after I had done a lot of the synopsis I worried that people who read it, if I finished it, might decide they now knew the book and so not go out and buy it. So I mulled it over for ages and decided to not take the synopsis any further but deliberately leave it incomplete. Hopefully people who want more will buy the book.
Anyone serious about a free working class in a free Ireland needs to know about Sean McLoughlin. They need to know who he was, what he did, and to read what he wrote.
For a long time, we had no such knowledge and no reason to go hunting for it. But thanks to Charlie McGuire, we now have all these things.
I had come across the name Sean McLoughlin years ago, but only in passing. The name cropped up in a book I was reading that happened to mention some of the Irish soviets from the Read the rest of this entry
Connolly talk, Dunedin, Saturday, June 2
James Connolly (1868-1916) was a leading figure in socialist politics in Scotland, Ireland and the United States and a radical trade union leader in the USA and Ireland. In Dublin, he was one of the key leaders of the new Irish Transport and General Workers Union, through the massive Great Dublin Lockout of August 1913-February 1914. Later in 1914, Connolly became the leader of the workers’ militia, the Irish Citizen Army, that had been estaboished as a workers’ defence force in the lockout. Under the leadership of Connolly, Michael Mallin and Constance de Markievicz, the ICA was transformed into a revolutionary army.
He also wrote stirring songs of working class struggle.
In April 1916 the ICA and the republican Irish Volunteers launched an insurrection against British rule and declared an independent Irish Republic. After a week of fighting the rebels, under heavy British bombardment that was demolishing the centre of Dublin, were forced to surrender. Connolly and other leaders of the rebellion were tried by British court-martial and sentenced to death by firing squad. Connolly, who had gangrene as a result of a wound, couldn’t stand and was tied to a chair for his execution.
The Otago Socialist Society is hosting a talk on Connolly, not only to commemorate this great revolutionary working class leader but also to look at the continuing relevance of his ideas.
The speaker is a former activist in Sinn Fein in Dublin and a current member of Clann Eirigi. He will cover Connolly’s life; his perspectives on the working class and Irish national liberation; and his writings on revolutionary trade unionism.
Speaker: Dr Philip Ferguson
2pm, Saturday, June 2
Seminar Room, Third Floor,
Dunedin Central Public Library (Moray Place)
Charlie O’Neill, socialist-republican, 1937-2016
by Mick Healy
Thomas (Charlie) O’Neill was born in Drimnagh in Dublin on 20th December 1937 and was a dyer by trade. His family had fought with the United Irishman and the Fenians. He was a Socialist Republican with a sharp wit who loved classical music, the Irish Times, a glass of wine and, especially, his family.
As a young man, Charlie joined the Irish Republican Army where, with a large number of Dublin volunteers, he became involved with the breakaway Joe Christle group. In 1956 they joined forces with Liam Kelly’s organisation Saor Uladh in Co. Tyrone. Christle and Kelly were annoyed at the lack of action by the IRA, although the IRA leadership were actually putting together plans for Operation Harvest aka “the border campaign”.
Saor Uladh went on the offensive and attacked the RUC barracks in Roslea, Co. Fermanagh in 1955, custom post telephone exchanges, bridges, B-Special drill halls as well as demolishing lough gates at Newry. When the IRA began its own campaign in 1956, Saor Uladh was subsumed back into it.
Charlie (on left) with folk musician Luke Kelly (on right) and others
With the failure of Operation Harvest, Charlie moved to Cork. He worked in a shoe factory there during the early 1960s and eventually bought a cottage in Crosshaven. He became good friends with many of the University College Cork socialists as well as Jim Lane and Gerry Higgins from Irish Revolutionary Forces. Charlie, Gerry and Jim attended an anti-Vietnam War protest, organised by the Cork Vietnamese Freedom Association, during the berthing of USS Courtyney in Cork harbour in 1967.
At this time Charlie also became good friends with the legendary Tom Barry who had commanded the IRA’s Third West Cork Flying Column during the Irish War of Independence, fought on the anti-Treaty side in the civil war and briefly became IRA chief-of-staff in 1937.
(Left to Right) Lucille Redmond with Republicans Charlie O’Neill, Simon O’Donnell and Bryan McNally.
Upon his return to Dublin, Charlie was associated with the radical National Civil Liberties League. The NCLL agitated around industrial disputes and tenant and traveller rights. Later he became involved in the Saor Éire Action Group, a militant Marxist-republican group which included prominent former members of the IRA like Frank Keane and Liam Sutcliffe and Trotskyist activists associated with the Fourth International.
On October 3, 1968, shots were fired in a Read the rest of this entry
Protest outside Leinster House, 9-noon, Thursday, April 26
Protesting the activities of Turas Nua, Seetec and the Dept of Social Protection, in particular the way unemployed people are harassed and corraled into very low-paid work.
The protest is organised by the Dublin branch of United People. All welcome.
Saturday night at the May 9-13 Connolly Festival, Dublin
TRES BILLBOARDS FOR THE REPUBLIC: PRESENTED BY FRIENDS OF THE INTERNATIONAL BRIGADES IRELAND
Saturday, May 12.
7.30pm-11pm, Tickets: €10
A musical, artistic and historic celebration of Ireland’s International Brigaders with Jurama, a film about Charlie Donnelly, the Republican Congress veteran and poet.
We also present One Way or Another, a play on the life of Dinny Cody who was killed at La Rosas 1937, while historian James Durney will give a talk on the life of civil war hero Frank Conroy.
Finishing up the evening with music from the wonderful Sive.
Marx, Engels and the Irish and British revolutions: a note
This year marks the 200th anniversary of the birth of Karl Marx and the 150th anniversary of the birth of Ireland’s greatest Marxist, James Connolly.
Accordingly, I will be running material by Marx (and Engels) on the subject of Irish freedom and its interconnectedness with the British revolution, as well as material by and about James Connolly.
This year also marks the 150th anniversary of the birth of one of Connolly’s great co-workers, Constance Markievicz.
This blog already contains a substantial body of her writings and also articles about her. Most recently, I added her 1923 pamphlet What Irish Republicans Stand For.
Later this year, I will be putting up a substantial piece on her and the Irish revolution, something I began to write well over 20 years ago and put aside unfinished.
I will also continue my (so far rather haphazard) efforts to get up everything I have of Fintan Lalor’s writings and write something substantial on ‘Fintan Lalor and the Irish revolution’. I had made a load of notes for this last year and then lost them, so I have to start again; very frustrating.
I want to get something substantial up soon on Sean McLoughlin too, a kind of precis of the book by Charlie McGuire, a book I urge folks to go out and buy.
As always, I have a bunch of books – and it’s growing, also as always! – which I want to review. They go back to stuff published about five years ago now, I have been so lax in getting these reviews done. Aaaarrrggghhh!
And there are a few old articles from several journals that I want to get up here, but I have to type them up – a very time-consuming task.
Eirigi on the roots of the public housing crisis in the six counties
The Six Counties, like the rest of Ireland, is in the midst of a severe public housing shortage with supply far outstripping demand.
The issue of public housing played a key role in the Civil Rights movement during the late 1960s/early 1970s.
Prior to the creation of the Housing Executive in 1971, public housing had been allocated by local councils, and within unionist-controlled councils, discrimination in housing allocation was widely practiced against members of the minority Catholic community.
Indeed, the right to, and fair allocation of, public housing were key demands of the Civil Rights movement.
Through the creation of the Housing Executive, housing decisions were taken out of the political arena and placed in the hands of a neutral specialised organisation.
By 1983/84, public housing – almost all of which was controlled by the Housing Executive – accounted for 37% of continued here. . .
