On-line talk on Constance Markievicz, Wednesday, March 31, 8.30pm (Irish time)

The next in a series of on-line talks organised by Eirigi is a re-running of the talk on Constance Markievicz.

It’s being given again by myself, Philip Ferguson, a member of Eirigi and the person behind this blog.

I’ll be looking at Markievicz’s life, activities and her ideas, as she was a major socialist-republican figure during the revolutionary era.

There will be an Q & A afterwards.

The meeting will take place at 8.30pm on Wednesday the 31st of March (Irish time; check for time differences if are in the USA, Australia, NZ, continental Europe etc)

Contact eirigigeneralsecretary@gmail.com if you would like to attend.

 

After registering, you will receive a confirmation email from Rúnaí Ginearálta Éirígí, Mickey Moran, containing information about joining the meeting.

 

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.

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.

Veteran activist Diarmuid Breatnach on the Save Moore Street Campaign

Interview by Mick Healy with Diarmuid Breathnach on the Save Moore Street Campaign.

 

Mick also did an earlier interview with Diarmuid on his decades of political activism:

 

 

Ireland’s Marxist guerrillas: the story of the Saor Éire Action Group, 1967-73

by Mick Healy, in collaboration with several former Saor Eire members

(Mick wrote an article about Saor Eire which appeared on this site in 2011;  this is an updated and expanded version of that article, including new material added by former Saor Eire members; the article has been proofed and edited by me – PF)

The 1960s was a time of upheaval and change in conservative Irish society; social attitudes, fashion and music, for instance, all changed dramatically. New social movements reflected the thinking of a new generation that, in particular, wanted more freedom. The huge student-worker protests of May-June 1968 in France, the Vietnamese struggle to remove the US, its allies and their Vietnamese toadies, the US civil rights and anti-Vietnam War movements, and the national liberation struggles in Latin America and Africa galvanised opposition to the existing order. In Ireland, these events inspired people, especially the new generation, into action. This was especially the case around the civil rights movement in the north of Ireland. Among the new organisations which emerged here as a result of this new ferment and revolutionary idealism was the Dublin-based Saor Éire (SE) or, to give it its full name, the Saor Eire Action Group.

Saor Éire Action Group was established in the late 1960s by former members of the Republican Movement and newer young Irish political left activists coming together. As an organisation they claimed to have their roots in the

Protest Poem

Over 750,000 people are currently living in poverty in the South; the total population in the South is about 4.8 million

 

The poem below was read by its writer, Valerie Bryce, at the open mic night at The Cottage Bar in Letterkenny, on January 28.

 

PROTEST POEM

‘There but for the grace of God’, they say
‘Did you see on the news the aul woman in Dublin
Eating left over chips from a windowsill
And her living rough on the street and worse still
She’d dementia
God love her ‘tis awful, isn’t it?’.

‘It’s a national scandal’, they say
‘Having hundreds of patients waiting on trolleys
Sometimes for days
Pyjamas and drips all on public display
‘Tis inhumane’.

‘We’ve a right to the truth’ they’ll protest
When billions of public funds remain unaccounted for
And there’s no arrests
When facts about institutional abuse are withheld
To keep us in the dark and that tongues cannot tell
Of the manner in which Church and State are complicit
In protecting abusers
Making victims lives hell.

It’s a sure sign of madness, I say
To repeat the same thing again and again
Expecting a

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

The Democratic Programme – as Gaeilge and in English

January 21 marks the 101st anniversary of the adoption of the Democratic Programme by the First Dail, the revolutionary Dail.  The Programme was not so much a specific programme of work for the Dail, which was soon driven underground by British state repression, as an indicator of where the revolutionary government and parliament was going – working towards a more equitable society where the rights of the masses came ahead of the interests of capital.

For the background, see the following:

Republicanism and the national independence struggle, 1916-1921

The working class and the national struggle, 1916-1921

Women’s rights and the national struggle, 1916-1922

Below is the text in both Irish and English.

First meeting of the First Dail, January 21, 1919.

Dearbhuighimíd, i mbriathraibh for-fhógra Saorstáit Éireann go bhfuil sé de cheart ag muinntir na hÉireann sealbh na hÉireann do bheith aca agus cinneamhain an náisiúin do bheith fé n-a riar, agus nách féidir an ceart san do bhaint díobh; agus fébh mar dubhairt ár gceud Uachtarán Pádraig Mac Phiarais, dearbhuighimíd gur ceart go mbeadh, ní amháin fir agus mná na hÉireann, acht adhbhar maoine na hÉireann fé riaradh an náisiúin, idir talamh agus gustal na hÉireann, gach

Máirín Keegan commemoration, 1997

Commemoration in 1997, marking the 25th anniversary of the death of Irish revolutionary fighter Máirín Keegan.  Frank Keane is the main speaker.

In Review: Jeffrey Leddin’s “The ‘Labour Hercules’: The Irish Citizen Army and Irish Republicanism, 1913-23”

by Daniel Murray

“If you or anybody else expect that I’m going to waste my time talking ‘bosh’ to the crowds,” James Connolly was heard to say, “for the sake of hearing shouts, you’ll be sadly disappointed.” He preferred instead to “give my message to four serious men at any crossroads in Ireland and know that they carry it back to the places they came from.”

This would prove to be more than just ‘bosh’ on Connolly’s part. A stiffening of the Irish Citizen Army (ICA) was noted in October 1914, upon his assumption of its leadership, with the announcement of a mandatory parade for all members. Rifles were to be “thoroughly cleaned”, anyone absent would be noted and latecomers refused admittance.

Meanwhile, articles by Connolly started to appear in the Workers’ Republic, critiquing the. . .

continue reading here.