One of the last monolingual Irish-speakers in Ireland being interviewed by the British historian Michael Wood for his 1985 BBC documentary ”In Search of the Trojan War”. Does he look like a member of an “affluent, Mercedes-driving, latté-sipping, urban, Gaelic-speaking elite”? Or the last survivor of a people driven to the point of near-extinction? A point, perhaps, for the next Anglophone supremacist bigot you encounter.
Talking of technology, given the level of aggression and subliminal violence that now passes for social discourse in contemporary Ireland perhaps I could do with one of these cameras? The country of a “Hundred Thousand Welcomes” is well and truly dead. Instead we have a country where verbal abuse is so casual on the streets as to be the norm and violent confrontations can be witnessed on the thoroughfares of our major cities on a regular basis.
Fianna Fáil, back from the dead ( (Íomhá: Séamas Ó Sionnaigh, Binn Éadair, Cúige Laighean, Éire, Meitheamh 2012)
Will this be another false dawn for Fianna Fáil’s oft promised yet rarely materialised intention to organise as a political party in the north-east of Ireland?
“Thirty Fianna Fáil members met last night to launch a new Belfast unit. The inaugural meeting took place at The Pavillon, Stormont Estate, Belfast.
Peter Armstrong, an IT entrepreneur from South Belfast, was elected acting Chairperson of Belfast Fianna Fáil. He explained: “Fianna Fáil has a growing membership throughout Northern Ireland, particularly young people involved in our youth group Ógra Fianna Fáil. Ógra have a very active cumann at Queen’s University that meets once a week during term time. We’re now establishing a senior party unit so we can retain university members after they’ve graduated, and so we can continue to recruit new members from across society in Belfast.”
“There is a growing frustration across the north that the current political establishment in Belfast, the DUP and Sinn Féin, are more interested in playing to their political bases than they are in addressing the big challenges facing our community . Fianna Fáil can bring fresh policies and new thinking to the north of Ireland, we can develop new policies that will work right across the island, we can bring our communities closer together and we can further the causes of peace, integration, prosperity and unity, in line with our republican values. We welcome new members of all ages from all communities throughout the greater Belfast area.”
“Fianna Fáil had a very successful Ard-Fheis last weekend at the RDS Dublin attended by more than 4,000 delegates and the largest ever northern contingent. Key motions were passed that will see Fianna Fáil create a northern roadmap with a view to developing the party structure across Northern Ireland. We will work with Party Headquarters in Dublin to move this forward and bring the Fianna Fáil message to more and more communities.”
Another empty announcement to add to a decade of such empty announcements? One would hope not but we will have to wait and see (and wait, and wait, and wait…).
Interestingly Hoboraod draws attention to a claim in the Irish News that Fianna Fáil’s new leader in Belfast, Peter Armstrong, is the son of Rankin Armstrong, the current editor of the Unionist-leaning Belfast Newsletter.
David Alan Tepper, Hedge Fund Manager (Íomhá: Nama Wine Lake)
A video and song by Mick Blake dedicated to David Tepper, the American hedge fund manager and founder of Appaloosa Management whose involvement in Ireland’s economic downfall has only reached wider public scrutiny in the last few months. And mainly down to his own boasting. Via Uathachas in Éirinn.
Joint footpatrol of British UDA terrorists and British Army soldiers, British Occupied North of Ireland, 1970s
Throughout the late 20th century and into the early 21st century the Ulster Volunteer Force or UVF was one of the largest British terrorist organisations on the island of Ireland. From its establishment in 1965 to its cessation of attacks in 2007 the grouping was responsible for thousands of acts of major and minor terrorism. Indeed the forty year war which blighted the north-east of Ireland under the euphemistic title of “the Troubles” began in 1966 with a series of gun and bomb attacks by the UVF that left several people dead, including a 74 year old grandmother and an 18 year old teenager.
Yet the organisation was intimately connected to the British military and paramilitary forces in Ireland, and beyond them the British government itself. Many members of the UVF were serving or former members of the British Army or of the Royal Ulster Constabulary, the notorious paramilitary police in the Occupied North of Ireland. They served as soldiers and policemen by day – and gunmen and bombers by night.
Margaret Thatcher touring the British Occupied North of Ireland in 1981 wearing a beret of the UDR, an infamous British Army militia responsible for scores of terrorist attacks during the 1970s, ’80s and ’90s
From the early 1970s onwards the British military and intelligence services organised, trained, armed and financed all the main British terrorist factions in Ireland including the UVF. However, despite the fact that they supposedly fought as part of Britain’s counter-insurgency war against Irish Republicanism the British terror gangs rarely targeted other combatants. Tellingly some 86% of the UVF’s victims were members of the civilian population: Irish men, women and children.
This was not counter-insurgency. This was state-terrorism.
So much so that by the late 1970s even the British no longer could tell the difference between their military, paramilitary and terrorist arms in Ireland. From the Irish human rights organisation, the Pat Finucane Centre, come’s this revelation about Margaret Thatcher’s knowledge of the war against the “Irish liars“:
“As Margaret Thatcher is laid to rest we thought it appropriate to publish two documents we found in the British National Archives. Both have been published before in the chapter we contributed on Loyalist [British terrorist] infiltration of the UDR.
The first document contains the minutes of a meeting between the then head of the Conservative opposition in 1975 (Margaret Thatcher) and the then Prime Minister, Harold Wilson, just weeks after the Miami Showband Massacre involving members of the UDR. At page 3 the following fascinating admission is made:
the Secretary of State said….
‘Unfortunately there were certain elements in the police who were very close to the UVF, and who were prepared to hand over information, for example, to Mr Paisley. The Army’s judgement was that the UDR was heavily infiltrated by extremist Protestants, and that in a crisis situation they could not be relied on to be loyal.’
Let no-one claim that the levels of collusion between the RUC, UDR and Loyalist paramilitaries was not known at the highest levels of the British Government and opposition.
The second document also concerns the UVF only by this stage, 1979, Thatcher is the Prime Minister. In a hand written note she urged mention of the‘Volunteer Ulster Defence Regiment (? Is that the name)’. Her officials clearly had difficulty reading her handwriting and the typed version of her comment reads.
(viii) The Prime Minister would also like to see some reference to the valiant work being carried by the Ulster Volunteer Force.
Apparently neither she not her officials were fully cognisant of the difference between the UDR, the largest regiment in the British Army, and the UVF, a Loyalist paramilitary group. On this point at least she found herself in agreement with the [Irish] Nationalist/ Republican community.”
Indeed.
The British government acknowledges the infiltration of the RUC and the UDR by the British terror factions in Ireland, London, 1975
British prime minister Margaret Thatcher confuses the UVF, a British terrorist group in Ireland, with the UDR, a British Army militia in Ireland, 1979
The UDR – British terrorists in uniform
The would-be “Hammer of the Gael”, Margaret Hilda Thatcher, has been laid to rest and still the revelations about her true nature come tumbling out through the British media blizzard of obfuscation and adulation. I already highlighted her preferred “solution to the Irish problem” – a little bit of 17th century ethnic cleansing updated for the 20th century. Fortunately for the people of Ireland she didn’t get her way, talked out of her blood lust by shocked colleagues in government and worried officials. However the next best thing was the death squads of the British terrorist gangs and their military allies let loose upon the people of Ireland. And boy did she love them. The ones out of uniform: the UDA, UFF, UVF, RHC, UR. And the ones in uniform: the RUC, UDR, FRU, SAS, BA. All the anodyne acronyms of British terror in Ireland.
Even out of office she could not stop herself counselling those who succeeded her on the evils of the perfidious Irish. Including those who were nominally her political enemies (though at least they weren’t Irish, hey, Maggie?). From the New Statesman and the Irish Times newspaper:
“Former Northern Ireland secretary Peter Mandelson said today the only thing Margaret Thatcher ever told him was that the Irish were “all liars” and not to be trusted.
He revealed the 1999 exchange as he explained why he did not want to attend the former prime minister’s funeral service.
“Although I helped to organise the Labour Party’s opposition to her policies throughout the 1980s, I only ever met her once. It was the day I was appointed Northern Ireland secretary and our paths crossed,” he said.
“She came up to me and she said, ‘I’ve got one thing to say to you, my boy … you can’t trust the Irish, they are all liars’, she said, ‘liars, and that’s what you have to remember, so just don’t forget it…””
Margaret Thatcher touring the British Occupied North of Ireland in 1981 wearing a beret of the UDR, an infamous British Army militia responsible for scores of terrorist attacks during the 1970s, ’80s and ’90s
However, on Black Mountain in County Antrim, it is the Irish who are passing judgement on the former British prime minister and writing her epitaph for the world.
RTÉ vs. TG4
Here’s an interesting snippet from the ever-vigilant NAMA Wine Lake. Guess which TV station was the only television broadcaster in Ireland to make a profit in 2011? Not the country’s official “national” broadcaster RTÉ, which ran up losses totalling some €70 million, despite broadcasting little beyond a diet of cheap overseas programming (with €351 million in revenue for 2011 one wonders where all that money went…? Actually one doesn’t since one know’s perfectly well where a large chunk of it went). And certainly not the British-owned tabloid channel TV3 whose dubious strategy for success has centred on becoming an über-trash “ITV Ireland“. It lost nearly €7 million euros in 2011, no doubt irritating quite a few hedge-fund managers back in London. In fact the only TV company to produce anything resembling a gain was none other than “minority” TV station, TG4, which generated €109,000 from an operating budget of €32 million.
Not much you say? Paltry, even? Perhaps. But it wasn’t a €70 million euro loss. A loss equal to one-third of a full year’s TV licence fee payments (or more than double TG4′s total annual budget).
One might argue that if it wasn’t for the vested interests in RTÉ and elsewhere the Irish state would have turned over English language broadcasting in the country to the private sector decades ago. And the politicians might even have done things right and established real regulations guaranteeing responsible ownership and quality of output for non-public broadcasters. We might then have allowed the “national” broadcaster to be what it should always have been – an Irish language broadcaster. This would have created the space for private broadcasters and overseas media providers to fulfil the market need for English language television and radio in Ireland while the public sector provided what the market wouldn’t – TV and radio programming in Irish.
An RTÉ network with two television channels and three radio stations and a state-funded (but independently administrated) budget of €300 million would not only be value for money but actually serve the purpose and spirit of public service broadcasting. Instead what we have now is a mess: a dog’s dinner of a mess that stinks to high heaven. A bloated whale of incestuous back-rubbing represented by RTÉ (which is increasingly indistinguishable from either the BBC or ITV in terms of actual shows broadcast), two foreign-owned, entirely-for-profit trash TV channels, TV3 and 3e, that pump out visual excrement with impunity, and TG4 which almost single-handedly is propping up indigenous television-production in Ireland, particularly in the independent sector, and actually attempting to fulfil its public service mandate.
Or is all this common sense way too radical for the conservative elites that lord it up in Television Centre and Leinster House?
Saoirse
From the Irish Times:
“Campaigners have called on Taoiseach Enda Kenny to take urgent steps to save the buildings that housed the last headquarters of the Provisional Government established in the 1916 Rising.
Relatives of the signatories of the Proclamation of the Republic expressed their shock and anger today at the condition of the buildings on Dublin’s Moore Street following a visit to the site.
James Connolly-Heron, great grandson of Citizen Army leader James Connolly, Helen Litton, great niece of the Irish Republican Brotherhood’s Tom Clarke and Lucille Redmond, grand-daughter of The Irish Volunteer’s Thomas McDonough visited each of the buildings at 14-16 Moore Street this morning. It was the first time the campaigners were given permission to enter the buildings which have been closed to the public since 2008.
The buildings, which date back to 1763, were designated national monuments in 2007 but now face an uncertain future after development company Chartered Land, was granted permission for an 800,000sq ft development on the nearby 2.7-hectare site of the old Carlton Cinema on O’Connell Street in 2010.
A special advisory committee of Dublin City Council recommended recently that Minister for Heritage Jimmy Deenihan withhold the ministerial consent required for development of the site.
Speaking after this morning’s extensive tour James Connolly-Heron expressed his outrage at the “shameful” and “shocking” condition of the buildings.
“I am staggered, I am shocked, I am appalled,” he said.
“These buildings have been abandoned. A cursory glance from the outside would tell you that. But if you walk through them they are in a shocking condition. It’s actually shameful at this stage how they have been allowed to deteriorate.”
Number 16, which he described as “the most important house in the terrace,” is in the “worst condition imaginable”.
Calling on Taoiseach Enda Kenny to intervene, Mr Connolly-Heron said securing the future of the historic buildings is now “a political decision”.
“We’ve been now waiting for two years for a meeting with the taoiseach about this and that meeting is now imperative.”
“It’s imperative that we meet the taoiseach. It’s imperative that Minister Deenihan takes action. And that action needs to be immediate action. There can no longer be any delay in this – it’s too important.”
Proinsias Ó Rathaille, grandson of Michael Joseph O’Rahilly (The O’Rahilly) who died on a street adjacent Moore St after leading a sortie from the GPO in an attempt to break free said he was “horrified” at the condition of the buildings.”
Given the neo-colonial impulses of the Irish political establishment I fully expect ordinary Irish citizens to go on being “horrified” at the deliberate destruction of our non-British heritage. In fact those impulses are perfectly summed up by one of the Comments left beneath the article:
”Noel Walsh: The G.P.O. is memorial enough for any number of republican insurrections.
[a better memorial would be] … a pluralistic democracy with freedom and equality for all in accordance with the basis our Christian traditions and in peace with our siblings on these British Isles. Our culture would blend with our Anglo Irish heritage in the languages and traditions of Ireland augmented by the status of our Irish nationhood.
What did we get? Rome Rule, Irish Aristocracy (self appointed ones lacking the good manners of their colonial forebears), and random self appointed elites…”
As opposed to the old Anglo-Irish colonial elites chosen by bloodline and the barrel of a gun? Sometimes one wonders if this is 21st century Ireland or 19th century? Honestly, the twisted world-view of the British Apologists on this island-nation never cease to amaze. For more information on the campaign to save the 1916 Battlefield Quarter you can listen to some audio interviews by Newstalk radio.
We’ll have none of that Irish shite here! You’re Irish! So speak English! (Íomhá: An Timire)
Below is the list of motions dealing with the Irish language to be debated at this year’s Sinn Féin party convention or Ard-Fheis in Castlebar, County Mayo. Note the anodyne wording and the general failure to couch the motions in terms of the civil and constitutional rights of Irish-speaking citizens in Ireland. Also note the lack of real and substantive policies, particularly in the areas of legislation, to create a truly bilingual Irish state (let alone a monolingual Irish-speaking one).
The misspelling of Ard-Fheis as “Ard Fheis” is in the original (which say’s it all really):
“This Ard Fheis recognises:
- That the ‘20-Year Strategy for the Irish Language 2010-30’ is not being properly implemented;
- That there are continuing attacks by the Government in the South on the Irish language and the Gaeltacht, including on essential institutions such as on Oifig an Choimisinéara Teanga and COGG;
- The hard work of Minister of Culture Arts and Leisure Carál Ní Chuilín on a strategy for the development of Irish in the North;
- That the creation of an Irish Language Act in the North is an outstanding commitment from the St Andrews Agreement.
This Ard Fheis agrees:
- That it is necessary to recognise the Irish language and the Gaeltacht community as stakeholders in the implementation of the ’20-Year Strategy for the Irish Language’;
- There will be the need to adapt the two strategies to bring about an all-Ireland Irish-language strategy.
This Ard Fheis call for:
- The Government in the South to put together a high-level structure, including representation from the community organisations, the department, COGG, Údarás, Fóras and language experts, which would be responsible for giving direction to the Government regarding the of implementation in the ’20-Year Strategy for the Irish Language 2010-30’;
- Sinn Féin to seek a high-level structure in the North, with similar structure and representation, which would be responsible for giving direction to the Executive for language planning and strategy;
- in light of the success of the Liofa 2015 campaign, calls for a renewed dialogue with unionist parties on Irish language rights, including the creation of an Irish Language Act;
- An all-island Irish-language and Gaeltacht action plan rooted in the language policy of the party that will be brought forward in consultation with the Irish-language and the Gaeltacht community and which will build on the recommendations of the ‘Comprehensive Study on the Use of Irish in the 20-Year Strategy for the Irish Language’, and the strategy for the Irish language in the Six Counties, and the recommendations of the sector itself.
Grúpa Parlaiminteach na 26 Contae agus Grúpa Parlaiminteach na 6 Chontae
Motion 238
This Ard Fheis condemns the attitude of the Government in the South towards the Irish language, particularly the decision to amalgamate the Office of the Language Commissioner with the Office of the Ombudsman, and the elimination of elections to the Údarás na Gaeltachta.
This Ard Fheis recognises:
- That the ‘20-year Strategy for the Irish Language’ is not being applied as it should;
- The excellent work undertaken by Minister for Culture, Arts and Leisure Carál Ní Chuilín with the Líofa campaign and her support for the Irish language in general.
This Ard Fheis declares:
- That we are diametrically opposed to Fine Gael’s proposal that Irish not be taught as a core subject for the Leaving Certificate;
- The Irish Government should adopt Líofa as an all-Ireland campaign;
- That it is essential for the Government in South to begin to implement the ‘20-Year Strategy’ immediately and that the funding be provided for this.
Coiste Náisiúnta Óige
Motion 239
This Ard Fheis commends the efforts of the Minister for Culture, Arts and Leisure Carál Ní Chuilín to ensure that the Irish language is accessible to all sections of the community through the Líofa 2015 campaign.
Derry City Comhairle Ceantair
Motion 240
This Ard Fheis calls on Minister for the Environment Phil Hogan to direct all local authorities to adopt a pro-Irish signage policy, such as that in Galway City and county councils amongst others, so that street names and housing estates be given Irish-language names in future.
Galway West Comhairle Ceantair“
Blah, blah, blah…
Whatever Sinn Féin may be they are no Parti Québécois. And the above is no Charte de la langue française.
A few quick posts, a chairde.
British Unionist censorship in Scotland
First up the Edinburgh Coffee House features a number of images that illustrate the actions taken by some in the British Unionist “Better Together” campaign to censor their Nationalist opponents in the upcoming referendum on Scottish independence:
“Is it just me or are things starting to get sinister? Websites being closed and bloggers being intimidated is something we might expect in China or Iran, but not in the UK. As well as being deeply worrying for a country that even post-Leveson purports to value a free press, it could prove disastrous for Better Together. They are already the force of the establishment, the union and the conservative party – a distant coalition of privilege and vested interests. Faced with a young, diverse and progressive independence movement the unionists are fighting back like the rich and powerful always fight back – with intimidation, legality and sheer bullying arrogance.”
Next up we have the Devil’s Agency and an interesting look at the revolutionary and counter-revolutionary rhetoric and propaganda surrounding the Irish Civil War and how its still shapes and influences opinions to the present day. The post also touches upon the works of the controversial historian Eunan O’Halpin of which I will write more next week.
“Something that has piqued my interest about Irish civil war historiography is its skewed nature and lack of context. The more thorough reading of the secondary material that my current work has involved has made the reason clear. Many historians refuse to engage with anti-treaty arguments on their own terms. Very few historians are not affected by pro-treaty propaganda, its scapegoating of individuals and groups (such as women and socialists) and especially its success in depoliticising the core arguments.
Yet, having only glanced at some of the many anti-treaty newspapers, pamphlets, leaflets, cartoons and posters in a rich and increasingly accessible body of sources, it is clear that there was a coherent and logical opposition to the treaty which was based on serious reservations about partition, empire, the rights of workers and the political stance of the Catholic church.”
I’m probably one the biggest fans of Ireland’s Come Here To Me blog and it is easy to see why when they feature fascinating snippets of Dublin history like this: The soldier who was eaten alive by rats in Christ Church Cathedral!
Meanwhile from today’s Oirish Independent newspaper, a few lines from an article by regular right-wing mouthpiece Ian O’Doherty:
“By the time I left school I had learned certain crucial things which would stand me in good stead in later life – an aversion to the Irish language and all forms of religion were also joined by a dislike of Gaelic football and other such rural pursuits.”
Yes, Ian, because only people in rural Ireland speak Irish and play Gaelic games! Oh well, I suppose if O’Doherty can indulge his moronic fantasies in the areas of culture and sports we should hardly be surprised when he applies them to the area of science too. What’s this he writes?
“… global warming nutters”
Hmmm. Well I think we know who the nutter is here…
Margaret Thatcher touring the British Occupied North of Ireland in 1981 wearing a beret of the UDR, an infamous British Army militia responsible for scores of terrorist attacks during the 1970s, ’80s and ’90s
As a citizen of Ireland there is only one Margaret Thatcher that I remember. From the archives of the Guardian newspaper:
“Margaret Thatcher horrified her advisers when she recommended that the government should revive the memory of Oliver Cromwell – dubbed the butcher of Ireland – and encourage tens of thousands of Catholics to leave Ulster for the south.
A year after she was nearly killed in the IRA’s 1984 Brighton bomb, the then prime minister expressed dismay at Catholic opposition to British rule when they could follow the example of ancestors who were evicted from Ulster at the barrel of a Cromwellian gun in the 17th century.
Lady Thatcher’s extraordinary solution to the Troubles has been disclosed by her advisers at the time of the negotiations on the 1985 Anglo-Irish agreement.
Sir David Goodall, then a diplomat who was one of the most senior British officials negotiating with the Irish government, told a BBC four-part documentary, Endgame in Ireland, that Lady Thatcher made the “outrageous” proposal during a late night conversation at Chequers.
“She said, if the northern [Catholic] population want to be in the south, well why don’t they move over there? After all, there was a big movement of population in Ireland, wasn’t there?
“Nobody could think what it was. So finally I said, are you talking about Cromwell, prime minister? She said, that’s right, Cromwell.”
Lady Thatcher’s “outrageous” plan did not stop at reviving the memory of Cromwell.
Sir Charles Powell, then her private secretary, told the programme that she also called for Northern Ireland’s border with the republic to be redrawn.
“She thought that if we had a straight line border, not one with all those kinks and wiggles in it, it would be easier to defend,” he said.
The zigzag border is notoriously difficult to patrol. But Lord Armstrong of Ilminster, then cabinet secretary, told Lady Thatcher of the folly of her idea.
“It wasn’t as simple as that because the nationalist communities were not all in one place, not all in Fermanagh and Tyrone and South Armagh and so on,” he told the programme.
“There were many in Belfast, and the idea of partition in Belfast or moving large numbers of population didn’t seem to be very attractive.”
However, she would not abandon her idea and called for a “security zone” on both sides of the border to help the British army and the RUC to chase IRA terrorists who used to slip over the border after attacks in the north.”
Over on Bloomberg News Timothy Lavin offers an analysis of the effects on Ireland of Thatcher’s premiership:
“…the conflict did not bring out the best in her.
It showed how the character traits for which she is best remembered had some very dark consequences, and how her celebrated “resolve” often came at a brutally high human and moral cost. In Northern Ireland, in fact, that resolve directly obstructed the cause of peace.
The most illuminating example is the hunger strike in the Maze (or Long Kesh) prison from 1980-1981. In many obituaries published today, the story goes that Thatcher “faced down” Irish Republican Army hunger strikers, as the BBC put it. By “faced down” they mean “let them starve to death.” This is often treated as a victory of democratic determination over terrorism.
But history shows quite the opposite: Thatcher’s uncompromising treatment of the hunger strikers led only to an increase in terrorism and the ascension of the IRA as a potent political force.
Violent deaths related to the conflict rose to 101 in 1981 from 76 the year before, including 44 members of the security forces. Injuries rose to 1,350 from 801. Shootings increased to 1,142 from 642, and bombings reached nearly 400 that year. Far from demonstrating that the IRA’s struggle was a lost one, Thatcher only intensified its opposition to rule by what it considered an ever more brutal occupying force.
The other significant consequence of Thatcher’s unyielding position was that public sympathy for the hunger strikers quickly morphed into political support for Republicanism. Bobby Sands, one of the strikers, was elected to the British House of Commons for Fermanagh-South Tyrone while imprisoned. His victory “undermined the entire shaky edifice of British policy in Northern Ireland, which had been so painfully constructed on the hypothesis that blame for the ‘Troubles’ could be placed on a small gang of thugs and hoodlums who enjoyed no community support,” wrote David Beresford in “Ten Men Dead.”
In 1983, Sinn Fein — the IRA’s political wing – gathered 13.4 percent of the Westminster vote in Northern Ireland, compared with 17.9 percent for the moderate nationalists of the Social Democratic and Labour Party. Gerry Adams, then Sinn Fein’s vice president, was elected in West Belfast over the moderate Gerry Fitt. For the British government, these were ominous omens. Today, Sinn Fein is the largest nationalist bloc in the Northern Ireland Assembly and the fourth-largest party in the parliament of the Irish Republic.
Still, “a crime is a crime is a crime,” Thatcher insisted at the time. “It is not political, it is a crime.”
This was to deny reality, especially as international sympathy for the strikers surged. But Thatcher never took a particularly realistic approach to the hunger strike, or to Northern Ireland generally.
[she was] …someone who could occasionally show a staggering indifference to human suffering.”
As Levine continues in the Comments underneath:
“…it isn’t hard, in this case, to differentiate between what violence is “political” and what isn’t. The men in the Maze prison didn’t become political prisoners because they went on a hunger strike. They became political prisoners because they were arrested — often without trial — for violence or activism intended to overthrow what they viewed as an oppressive political order and an illegal occupation.
Let me be clear: This doesn’t make violence a legitimate response.
But the fact that the political order in Northern Ireland at the time violated Catholic civil rights on a grand scale is beyond dispute. And the IRA itself was an objectively political organization: Its terrorism, although reprehensible, was intertwined with a legitimate movement for Catholic civil rights and a party, Sinn Fein, that adhered to an overt platform of political objectives. (Roughly the same platform, as it happens, that Irish revolutionaries had been asserting for 800 years.) Most crucially, the IRA’s intended targets were the military and security forces of occupation and other paramilitaries — not civilians.”
My own feelings on hearing of her passing are best summed up in this post by Football Clichés and another by author Terry Glavin. Like other British leaders who brought war to Ireland she has passed but we the Irish people have endured.
The truth in the headlines
“Irish language schools targeted over restrictive entrance rules”
So screams the headline in today’s Anti-Irish Independent newspaper. In the follow-up article we are told that:
“ANY Gaelscoil that refuses entry to prospective students if they do not speak Irish at home will have to change its approach under new enrolment rules.
Education Minister Ruairi Quinn has expressed concern about restrictive practices at some all-Irish schools, which are prohibiting some pupils from entry.”
And the evidence for these alleged restrictive practices?
“Yesterday, Mr Quinn said he was “concerned that in some cases, Gaelcholaiste have indicated to some applicant parents that unless the language at home is ‘as Gaeilge’ that they would not be inclined to accept a pupil for a place in a Gaelcholaiste”"
Wow. Such damning proof of the wicked ways of the Irish-speaking population of Ireland. How could anyone even begin to challenge the obvious truth of a statement laden with such absolute words as “some“, “indicated” and “inclined“? No anti-Irish hyperbole there.
Don’t worry though in case you are missing your daily dose of hate. The Anglobigots have plenty to contribute in the Comments beneath:
“Tony Dalton: It’s called ‘white flight’. If you do not believe this, take a look at the overall Gaelscoileanna website and than all the associated websites (for individual Gelscoileanna) and answer honestly what you see in relation to ethnic mix in comparison to the schools that are located near any Gaelscoil.
I am Irish and my native language is English and English has been our family language for at least five generations. Indeed, there are many languages that pre-date Gaelic in Ireland. You would do well to look up the definition of ‘native’ language.
I suppose you want the 98% of our citizens who have English as their native and national language to move across the water? Ironically, most of the Gaeliban like your ilk are first to head to England when there are no jobs here and are more than willing to take money with the royal head emblazoned on it. What a muppet you are.
Why do you Gaeliban bother using English? Why not just confine your limited ablities to Foinse and Gaelsceal?”
Ah yes, “there are many languages that pre-date Gaelic in Ireland“. A pearl of wisdom there from the David Icke school of history. One wonders, does the writer believe that Irish-speakers are actually 3 metre tall alien lizards?
“Didillusioned: What in heavens name do they think they are trying to do to children. Like it or not, the Irish language is an irrelevancy, and it is this writers opinion that any parent who chooses to have their children educated through Irish are doing them (their children) a disservice. Being realistic, time would be better spent teaching children to speak proper English and in giving elocution lessons. The standard of English spoken is deplorable, as are most regional accents. Most Irish accents are grating on the nerves and proper enunciation of the spoken work would be far better and more relevant in the modern world. Then of course when all of that is achieved, there are the continental and other world languages.
You sir are a fanatic, and, it is the likes of you that keep Ireland in the dark ages.”
So, Irish-speaking men and women are child abusers? Sounds familiar.
“SamVin: Tied in with compulsory Irish for state jobs Gaelscoileanna look like another subtle form of ethnic cleansing.”
More history (and facts) from the fringe there. Though the Irish-speaking population of the island of Ireland and ethnic cleansing do go together. As in the former suffering the latter. No doubt our Anglophone supremacist friends above remember those times with heart-warming fondness.
Cecil O’Donovan, age 18, and his brother Aidan, age 14, murdered by the Royal Irish Constabulary, 20.02.1921
Last Monday I watched the second part of TV3’s drama-documentary series, “In the Name of the Republic”, where once again Eunan O’Halpin claimed to offer an analysis of the alleged actions of the Irish Republican Army during the Revolution of 1916-1923. Despite a few days of thinking it over and trying to see some historical value in the whole exercise it is hard to escape the impression that the programme (like the one before it) was anything other than some weirdly anachronistic anti-Irish Republican propaganda film. If fact it could have come straight from the film archives of the British Imperial War Museum, stamped 1921.
Stripped of the shallow pretence of balance it was obvious that the documentary makers had set out to “prove” that the men and women who fought to defend Irish democracy at the start of the 20th century were simply “terrorists” and “murderers” lacking in any sort of electoral mandate or support. In fact, going further, the programme all but justified British colonial rule in Ireland by taking the point of view of the country’s British paramilitary police force, the Royal Irish Constabulary, the British judicial system, the British Occupation Forces and individual members of the Irish population who actively supported or collaborated with British rule.
I suppose if the Revisionist fringe of academia in the southern United States can produce books and movies to “prove” that the Confederacy was actually a paragon of democracy and morality with hundreds of thousands of happy-go-lucky slaves then why not a “reform” of Colonial Ireland? What is it that the Neo-Confederates in the United States now demand as the proper title of the internecine conflict that scarred the nation during the mid-1800s? It’s no longer the American Civil War, it’s now the War Between the States. Or should that be the War of Northern Aggression?
So what’s next for our own Irish Revisionist tendency? Will the Irish War of Independence become the War of Irish Aggression? Some Neo-Unionists in Ireland are already half-way there with their favoured meme of the moment: the Irish Terror. Not as in the Irish being terrorized by their then colonial rulers from Britain. Oh no. It’s the other way around. The Irish terrorized the British – and the Irish terrorized the Irish. Or so they would have us believe. And sure, if the facts of history don’t fit that interpretation don’t worry, they will be ignored or replaced with some home-made ones of their own. It worked before. Just ask Peter Hart.
Perhaps I should leave it to others to offer a more studied opinion of the televised theatrics of the TV3 documentary? Professor John Borgonovo has his say in the Irish Examiner:
“In the first episode, viewers met an aged Co Laois man who related his boyhood encounter with a neighbouring farmer, who claimed he had dug up a body while ploughing his field, one of three corpses supposedly buried there by the IRA.
Series host Prof Eunan O’Halpin (of Trinity College Dublin) told the audience his research had uncovered two civilians abducted by the Tipperary IRA and “never seen again”. The rest of the episode attempted to prove his theory that they were interred in this Laois field.
At considerable expense, a team of forensic archaeologists dug up the fine pasture, before informing O’Halpin that no corpses could be located. Meanwhile, O’Halpin travelled to Dublin to request the release of Department of Justice files relating to his two missing men.
The episode concluded with O’Halpin opening the sealed files, only to learn that both had survived the conflict. They were never killed by the IRA, much less secretly buried in Laois. The obvious lesson here is: Finish your research before you rent the JCB.
Undeterred, in the second episode, O’Halpin moves to more fertile ground in Cork City and Knockraha, a village a few miles east of Cork. In recent years, the area has attracted considerable speculation about the killing of alleged informers, especially Protestants.
Much interest stems from Gerard Murphy’s 2011 book, The Year of Disappearances, which received overwhelmingly negative reviews from historians concerned by his over-reliance on folklore and supposition. Murphy’s unlikely theories of covert revolutionary activity in Cork included the IRA’s unrecorded killing of up to 30 Freemasons in the spring of 1922, and the drowning of Protestant schoolchildren by IRA intelligence agent Josephine Brown.
The absence of such dramatic events in contemporary and later records (civilian, military, governmental, and religious) leads me to conclude that they did not occur. I was surprised, therefore, by the sight of Murphy relating additional theories for In the Name of the Republic.”
Surprise is one way of putting it. But then birds of a feather an’ all that.
Meanwhile historian John Dorney, who’s truly excellent website The Irish Story has gone to great lengths to present a dispassionate and fair evaluation of the revolutionary period, examines the issue of the 200 “murders” Eunan O’Halpin alleges were carried out by the Irish Republican Army:
“Immediately this set alarm bells ringing. In 2012, O’Halpin published the first results of his and Daithí Ó Corráin’s research, which revealed that the IRA in the War of Independence, was responsible for 281 of the 898 civilian fatalities, with British forces being responsible for 381. A further 236 deaths could not be confidently attributed to any party (the IRA, loyalist, rioters, undercover Crown forces).
This brings up two questions – first of all, where did all the extra ‘disappeared’ victims come from? There was no effort made in the programme to verify this figure of 200 secret killings by the IRA. Secondly, given that state forces actually killed more civilians, why was this not given greater prominence in the programme?
Even worse was the programme quoting the Royal Irish Constabulary as an impartial witness to events. An RIC DI was quoted saying, ‘People are afraid to be associated with the forces of the crown’, by an IRA – ‘system of universal terrorism’, and called for the ‘extermination of these bandits’. What else would a party to a counter insurgency campaign say?
In the second part, looking at County Cork, it was alleged that the IRA Cork Number 1 Brigade, which covered north Cork and the city, abducted and killed up to 90 victims and secretly buried them on the farm of one Martin Corry.
Corry claimed in his IRA pension that 27 bodies were buried on his farm and in a bog (now forest) called Knockraha. In recordings in the 1970s he claimed that there were ’60 even’. The problem with this testimony is that there does not seem to have been 60, 90 or even 30 victims missing that could fit into the alleged mass graves. Corry for instance told local historian Jim Fitzgerald that 17 ‘Camerons’ (of the Highland Cameron regiment) were buried there. In fact, John Borgonovo tells us, the regiment had only 3 men missing in its time in Cork.
I am informed that Jim Fitzgerald himself estimates that between Corry’s farm and Knockraha there may be 15 bodies buried. The figure of 90 secret deaths comes from Gerard Murphy, whose book, the Year of the Disappearances, was rightly savaged here on the Irish Story by Pádraig Óg Ó Ruairc for presenting supposition as evidence.
But there was no evidence presented for scores of disappeared civilians. Nor for tendentious talk about the Cork IRA’s campaign of ‘extortion’ and ‘torture’. The casual viewer would never have guessed that the IRA represented a political movement with overwhelming electoral support in the elections of 1918 and 1920.
…this was a bafflingly biased programme. It presented and inflated all the bad things the IRA did, shorn of context while proposing a thesis of hundreds of disappeared which was never even remotely proved.
So why the sensational anti-republican tone of ‘In the Name of the Republic’?
There is nothing to be gained by treating nationalist history as a sacred cow but nothing either by making radical claims unsupported by evidence.”
But that begs the question, is there nothing to be gained by the falsification of Irish history as it relates to the War of Independence? Or are there in fact real political gains to be made by inflicting untold damage on the Irish people’s understanding of their own history? Are we seeing in Ireland a larger “culture war”, as has been witnessed in the United States, over the nation’s past, present and future? A war played out in the pages of our national newspapers every week, and on our radios and TVs? The United States has Glenn Beck or Fox News. We have Kevin Myers or the Sunday Independent. In the struggle between Progressives and Regressives in Ireland the Irish Revolution represents the greatest loss of status and influence for the latter. Is it any wonder that they wish to contest it, even in retrospect?
And what about Ireland’s British-owned television channel TV3? Some more analysis and dramatic re-enactments of supposed events from world history in a series of exciting new TV programmes? Perhaps the “truth” about Anne Frank? Or a sympathetic examination of the Lost Cause? But after the farce of the last two weeks will anyone be watching?
Éamon Gilmore – Calm The Rich, Con The Poor
One definition of madness is doing the same thing over and over but expecting a different result each time. So take the words of Robin McAlpine in the Scotsman newspaper on the SNP’s policies for an independent Scotland and more importantly the example of Ireland’s calamitous slide into cowboy capitalism during the 1990s and 2000s.
“Currently, the SNP exists in a third-way fudge between two political philosophies. Critics have named this delusion “the myth of Scandimerica”, the belief that you can have Scandinavian social services with US-level taxes. Actually, there was no need since the delusion already had a name – the Arc of Prosperity.
The Arc of Prosperity was a knowing fantasy predicated on the belief that corrupt, housing-and-speculation-gone-mad Ireland was actually the other side of the coin of socially democratic Norway.
The opposite is the truth; economically and socially the politics of Ireland were diametrically opposed to Norway. The former followed unstable get-rich-quick doctrines with an unsustainable faith in short-term trickle-down. The latter emphasised productive growth, a balanced economy and long-term investment strategies where the equality and high standard of living these generate make higher taxes painless.
Let’s call these the neoliberal model and the European social model. There isn’t space here to detail their characteristics but very loosely one promotes progress-through-conflict (markets, competition, wealth-creators) and one promotes progress-through-mutuality (productivity, balanced economy, public services).
…they are more-or-less mutually exclusive. The things you do to increase real productivity work against short-term speculative gain. The things you do to encourage competition create unbalanced economies. The ideology of “wealth creators” is at odds with the ideal of a strong welfare state.”
Which begs the question, why are the three establishment parties of Fine Gael, Fianna Fáil and Labour working so hard to revive a socio-economic model that has proven to be such an economic, social, cultural and environmental disaster for our island nation? What is driving the political, business and media elites in this country to recreate the Celtic Tiger economy and society of a decade ago when they – and we – are well aware of its superficial and ultimately corrosive nature? Are the political classes in Ireland so lacking in wit that like a dog returning to its vomit they must nose at the mess they have created in the hope of lapping it up again?
We Fight For Neither King Nor Kaiser (Íomhá: éirígí)
Or do they wish to replace a failed Celtic Tiger economy with another certain-to-fail Neo-Celtic Tiger economy that is little more than a self-perpetuating Ponzi Scheme for the top 1%? And where does that leave the other 99% of the population who have nothing for their labour but bitterness and resentment? What then of any concept of social or communal responsibility by the majority when a minority can simply act as if they exist above such things?
We have a choice in Ireland. We can become the Celtic Norway or Finland of western Europe with our social and cultural mores reflected in our economic structures. Or once again we can become the Wild West of Europe, where society and culture are dirty words, where concepts like responsibility are deemed to be an unnecessary restraint on our freedom to do our worse.
The origins of the Celts in western Europe – the ancient Atlantic homeland of the Celtic-speaking peoples
For the last century and more historians have believed that the homeland of the Celtic-speaking peoples lay in central Europe and from there they spread across the continent in several waves of migration bringing their language, culture and way of life to almost every corner of the European landmass. The Celts, we were told, originated in the Late Bronze and Early Iron Age communities of southern Germany and northern Austria and this became the default reading of early Celtic and indeed early European history.
However there is problem with all this. Why? Because the theory is wrong and has been suspected or known to be wrong in professional academic circles for decades.
The homelands of the Celtic-speaking peoples were never in central Europe. They were in the one place where Celtic-speakers have always been known to exist and where some still do exist: north-western and western Europe. The modern nations and territories of Ireland, Scotland, Wales, the Isle of Man, Cornwall, England, Brittany, western France, Spain and Portugal formed the historic heartland of the Celts – and their ancient place of origin.
The BBC has news on a new three-year project to trace the origins of the Celtic peoples, including an interview with Professor John Koch, who points out the failure of the old theories to explain the origin of the Celtic-speaking nations.
Local Property Tax form and booklet – no taxation without representation!
So the documentation for the latest state-sponsored extortion racket has arrived in the post under the guise of the Local Property Tax. However the information is entirely in the English language. I’m sorry, but where is the Irish language text? What happened to the regulations in force under the Official Languages Act of 2003? Where is the bilingual Irish and English documentation that has become the norm over the last decade? Even the website of the Property Services Regulatory Authority is in English only.
Is that legal?
Irish-speakers are tax-payers too. So, if for no other reason, when it comes to the Local Property Tax – no taxation without representation!
The Property Services Regulatory Authority – but where is the Irish?
Meanwhile, the next venue for the Pirates of Taxation? From the NAMA Wine Lake:
“Might the government reach into your deposit accounts for a levy?
…in the past week Labour’s chairman of the Oireachtas finance committee Ciaran Lynch and Fine Gael’s jobs minister, Richard Bruton have both indicated that a levy on sub-€100k could be on the cards despite the existence of the sub-€100k guarantee. There seems to be a feeling that the guarantee only applies if a bank is allowed to go bust, but if there was an intervention before the bank was actually liquidated then all depositors including those with sub-€100k deposits would face “levies” despite the existence of the deposit guarantee scheme. Minister Bruton said on radio today that Cyprus imposing a levy on sub-€100k deposits was “in the remit” of the Cypriot government. The experience of this Government taking €1.88bn from private pensions between 2011-2014 to fund the Jobs Initiative (mostly the reduction in VAT on certain services), would also make you ill-at-ease that the Government would regard as sacred the guarantee for sub-€100k depositors.”
Read the full article for the background to the story (and to understand why the sale of cash-boxes and home-safes in Ireland have risen significantly over the last two years).
The mutilated remains of Harry Loughnane, age 22, Volunteer of the Irish Republican Army, tortured to death alongside his older brother Patrick, age 29, by the Royal Irish Constabulary or RIC, Britain’s loathed colonial police force in Ireland, 1920
I’ve just finished watching a history-documentary (and I use that term advisedly) on Ireland’s British-owned private television channel, TV3, called “In The Name of the Republic”. Presented by Eunan O’Halpin it set out to investigate the alleged “disappearance” of some 200 Irish people during the Irish Revolution, supposedly executed by the Irish Republican Army as part of its struggle against the British Occupation Forces from 1918-1923. Beginning with an archaeological dig searching for the corpses of three men found shot dead in 1921/22 by a local “eccentric” farmer the program goes on in drama-documentary style to present a case for the mass and indiscriminate murder by the IRA during Ireland’s War of Independence of countless innocent civilians (who may or may not have been British spies or informers, officers of the feared British paramilitary police, the Royal Irish Constabulary or RIC, or soldiers of the British Army).
Of course the archaeological dig failed to uncover any evidence of any murdered men (spies or otherwise), despite the fact that the program makers offered us some identities for two of the three supposed victims, complete with dramatic reconstructions of their capture and deaths. However (and quite bizarrely) at the end of the program we were told that the two suggested victims actually survived the conflict completely unharmed.
Not only do we not have the bodies of the ”murdered” we don’t even have any suggestions for who was “murdered”. In fact we don’t have any evidence that any “murders” happened in the first place! What we do have is a supposed drama-documentary from the Peter Hart school of Irish history, with a hefty dollop of Gerard Murphy (of which more here).
By the by, if any historians are looking for murder victims from the Irish Revolution with, you know, real actual identities and, hey, actually physical remains, here they are. The photographs above and below are of Patrick and Harry Loughnane, aged 29 and 22, both Volunteers of the Irish Republican Army, detained, tortured and murdered by members of the RIC’s Auxiliary Division in November 1920. From Pádraig Óg Ó Ruairc’s article that featured on The Irish Story in 2012:
“The Loughnane brothers were arrested in daylight at their family home at Shanaglish, Co. Galway on the 26th November 1920. Their partially burned and mutilated bodies were discovered in a pond near Ardrahan on 5th December that year. The two brothers had been tied to the back of an R.I.C. lorry and forced to run behind it until they collapsed from exhaustion and were dragged along the road. Both of Pat’s wrists, legs and arms were broken. His skull was fractured and there were diamond shaped wounds, resembling the cap badge worn by the RIC Auxiliaries, carved into his torso. Harry’s body was missing two fingers; his right arm was broken and nearly severed from his body. Nothing was left of Harry’s face except for his chin and lips. A doctor who examined the Loughnane’s bodies stated that the cause of death was “laceration of the skull and the brain.” The attached photographs of the brothers’ bodies at the time of their discovery show some of the horrific injuries they suffered. The same month that the Loughnane brothers were killed, members of the RIC in Galway also killed a pregnant woman and a Catholic priest.”
The mutilated body of Patrick Loughnane, age 29, Volunteer of the Irish Republican Army, tortured to death alongside his younger brother Harry, age 22, by the Royal Irish Constabulary, Britain’s feared colonial police force in Ireland, 1920
If I might also add, all that archive film shown in the “documentary” of supposed victims of violence by the Irish Republican Army during the War of Independence, including men, women and children made homeless sitting in ditches at the side of the road? They were actually from a contemporary newsreel showing Irish civilians hiding in the fields of north County Dublin following the Sack of Balbriggan. That is the burning of the small Irish coastal village of Balbriggan by the British Occupation Forces in 1920.
Irish refugees hiding in the countryside following the Sack of Balbriggan, the destruction by the British Occupation Forces of the small village of Balbriggan during the War of Independence, Ireland, 1920
A column of Irish refugees fleeing the ruins of their homes following the Sack of Balbriggan by the British Occupation Forces during the Irish War of Independence, Ireland, 1920
English versus An Ghaeilge
So I took a few days break away from An Sionnach Fionn. Not to celebrate Saint Patrick’s Day, you understand, which to be honest is a festival that I have little regard for. My own form of Irishness has more in common with the Feis na Samhna than the Féile Phádraig. Rather I simply sought some rest and recuperation after fending off a torrent of abuse stemming from my highlighting of the (almost certainly illegal) arrest and detention of a young citizen of Ireland by the Gardaí (police) in Dublin for answering in the Irish language to a question put to him in the English language. As his description of the incident to the Language Commissioner makes clear, he was made to feel (English translation):
“…shamed and insulted and I was told several times that I did not have a right to conduct business through Irish, that I should desist and that I would not have been arrested if I hadn’t spoken in Irish. It was approximately one hour from the time of my arrest to my release but I felt under threat and nervous all the time. I am convinced that I was arrested for speaking Irish and for that reason alone. Their excuse was that I was refusing to give them my licence but that was not true at all. I am very disappointed, angry and upset about what happened and about the lack of respect and the infringement of my rights…”
The Gardaí who arrested the man and kept him in handcuffs during the incident were of the opinion that:
“…those who wished to conduct their business through Irish should be treated
in the same way as “foreign nationals”…”
I’m not sure what that say’s about how members of An Garda Síochána view non-Irish nationals but it certainly says a lot about how they view Irish-speaking Irish nationals. But then they have plenty of supporters in that view. Just take prominent newspaper columnist Declan Lynch in the Irish Independent:
“…Irish is not part of what we are… And it never will be part of what we are…
They have tried everything, including torture.
The only thing they haven’t tried is laying off the bullshit for a while, and abandoning their insane policies of compulsion… And if it doesn’t work, that’s all right too.
They can start the beatings again.”
So Irish-speakers, by the virtue of speaking their indigenous language, are torturers and abusers?
That brings to mind many of the Comments left under my previous post by some of the more militant anglophone zealots out there which shocked so many new and regular readers (while of course leaving many others with a feeling of resigned familiarity):
“Gaelic is a backward primitive language a barbarian language from barbarian times. That is reflected in the culture and mindset of those who speak it. The militant Gael who runs this site is an obvious throwback to the violent low intelligent ancestors of most Gaelic speakers.”
“I have never spoken Irish and never will. I hate it and I hate you bog savages who speak it… When you are not speaking your Irish you are busy raping your daughters. That is what being an Irish speaker is about. Look at the Abos in Australia. Drunken violent cretins…”
One wonders how far this has to go before someone somewhere will be effected by this subliminally violent propaganda in a way far worse than simple institutional or social discrimination? Does the powerful anglophone elite that dominates the media in Ireland wish to create a climate in this country where Irish-speakers are in the same position as the Jews were in 1930s’ Germany? That Irish-speaking citizens and communities in Ireland are so demonized, so stripped of humanity, that they become the scapegoats for all of Ireland’s cultural, social and economic ills?
Éire in chains
Following on from my post examining the scandal of a young Irish man arrested and detained in handcuffs by the Gardaí (police) in Dublin for answering in Irish to a question put to him in English by a Garda, here is a recent story from Brian Ó Broin, a professor of linguistics, medieval literature and Irish studies at William Paterson University, New Jersey, on the casualness of anti-Irish discrimination in Ireland:
“While hurrying for an American departure in Dublin Airport last week I heard the latecomers being paged on the terminal intercom. Reaching the gate several seconds later I humorously chided the gate agent for forgetting to call my name. “No,” she said, “I saw your name, but it was in Irish, so I left it out.”
I made my flight, and no damage done, but I returned to America amazed that casual acts of discrimination like this can still occur in Ireland without apology or consequence. Would the gate agent still have a job if she applied this policy to names in German?”
Ah, the joys of being a “non-person” in 21st century Ireland.
Just ask Irish Independent journo and professional Irish-hater Declan Lynch. He can tell the real Oirish from the Gaels when he sees ‘em! And thank God we have RTÉ, Ireland’s national public service broadcaster, to give airtime to the not-at-all-prejudiced views expressed so vigorously by so many Irish people journalists.
Eoin Ó Catháin has some more views on the increasingly strident anti-Irish sentiment being publicly expressed in Ireland here.
Update 11.00: To the guys from the same four or five IP addresses who keep trying to post abusive (and frankly racist) Comments don’t bother. I allow the vast majority of views and opinions on An Sionnach Fionn without interference or censure. However there is a line and you people are going well beyond it. If you oppose the Irish language and culture, and the rights of Irish-speaking citizens in Ireland to equal treatment with their English speaking peers, then make your case. I have no problem with a contrary argument, no matter how objectionable to me personally. However sinking to the level of hate-speech will get you nowhere.
Update 13.00: And here comes Squire Myers of Ballyshoeneen with his studiously gratuitous anti-Irish rant. At least I know where the anglophone fundamentalists leaving Comments on An Sionnach Fionn pick up their lexicon of discriminatory words and phases. “Young chimps” is it?
John Boyle O’Reilly, Irish revolutionary and Fenian prisoner in British Australia, 1866
Two articles from the United States exploring the Irish Republican heritage of Ireland and the US. First up is the Past Imperfect history blog of the Smithsonian Museum examining one of the most famous prison escapes in history: the Catalpa Rescue of 1876. Carried out by the American-based Clann na nGael (CnanG) and its counterpart in Ireland, the Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB), the operation freed six Fenian revolutionaries from British captivity in Australia and galvanised world opinion in favour of the cause of Irish freedom.
“The plot they hatched was as audacious as it was impossible—a 19th-century raid as elaborate and preposterous as any Ocean’s Eleven script. It was driven by two men—a guilt-ridden Irish Catholic nationalist, who’d been convicted and jailed for treason in England before being exiled to America, and a Yankee whaling captain—a Protestant from New Bedford, Massachusetts—with no attachment to the former’s cause, but a firm belief that it was “the right thing to do.” Along with a third man—an Irish secret agent posing as an American millionaire—they devised a plan to sail halfway around the world to Fremantle, Australia, with a heavily armed crew to rescue a half-dozen condemned Irishmen from one of the most remote and impregnable prison fortresses ever built.
To succeed, the plan required precision timing, a months-long con and more than a little luck of the Irish. The slightest slip-up, they knew, could be catastrophic for all involved. By the time the Fremantle Six sailed into New York Harbor in August, 1876, more than a year had passed since the plot had been put into action. Their mythic escape resonated around the world and emboldened the Irish Republican Brotherhood for decades in its struggle for independence from the British Empire.”
From the mid-1800s onwards several Irish-American revolutionary organisations operating in the United States and Ireland (as well as globally) were referred to as Fenians, an umbrella title used both by supporters and opponents. These were the Fenian Brotherhood (the FB and the original Fenian organisation), the Clann na nGael (the CnanG which has survived in various forms into the 21st century), the United Irishmen, the Irish National Brotherhood and the Irish Republican Brotherhood (the original and long-lasting sister-organisation of the Fenian Brotherhood).
Meanwhile the Huffington Post carries a story on New York’s Irish revolutionary links examining the American-related lives of James Connolly, Jim Larkin and Éamon de Valera.
The Battle of Eccles Hill – a young soldier of the Irish Republican Army, the military wing of the Fenian Brotherhood (FB), lies slain on a roadway during the 1870 invasion of Canada
Out of interest, below is a casualty list of the first known soldiers of a military force styling itself the Irish Republican Army or IRA to die on active service. The thirteen men were slain or mortally wounded while fighting in Canada during the Fenian Invasion of June, 1866, and all were members of the military wing of the Fenian Brotherhood; known variously as the Irish Republican Army, the Army of the Irish Republic, the Irish Army, the Army of Ireland or the IRA.
“Thomas Rafferty, 18th Regiment “The Cleveland Rangers”, Cleveland, Ohio, United States. Died on active service 02-06-1866.
Patrick Buckley, 18th Regiment “The Cleveland Rangers”, Cleveland, Ohio, United States. Died on active service 02-06-1866.
Major John C. Canty [Caunty], 18th Regiment “The Cleveland Rangers”, Cleveland, Ohio, United States. Died on active service 02-06-1866.
Colour-Sergeant Michael Cochrane, James Hugh Haggerty’s Company, Terre Haute, Indiana, United States. Died on active service 02-06-1866.
James John Geraghty [Gerrahty], 18th Regiment “The Cleveland Rangers”, Cleveland, Ohio, United States. Died on active service 02-06-1866.
Captain Donohoe [Donoghue], 19th Regiment “Irish Republic Volunteers”, Cincinnati, Ohio, United States. Died on active service 02-06-1866.
Lieutenant Edward R. Lonergran, 7th Regiment “The Irish Army of Liberation”, Buffalo, New York, United States. Died on active service 02-06-1866.
Edward [Richard] Scully, 18th Regiment “The Cleveland Rangers”, Cleveland, Ohio, United States. Died on active service 09-06-1866.
Private John Lynch, 18th Regiment “The Cleveland Rangers”, Cleveland, Ohio, United States. Died on active service 11-06-1866.
Sergeant John Lynch, 18th Regiment “The Cleveland Rangers”, Cleveland, Ohio, United States. Died of wounds received while on active service 27-07-1866.
Lt. Colonel Michael Bailey, 7th Regiment “The Irish Army of Liberation”, Buffalo, New York, United States. Died of wounds received while on active service 18-01-1868.
S. Thompson, 13th Regiment Memphis Company, Tennessee, United States. Died of wounds received while on active service ?-?-?”
During the Easter Rising of 1916 and the establishment of the Provisional Government of the Irish Republic, several existing Irish revolutionary groups came together to form a new Army of the Irish Republic or Irish Republican Army. These were principally the Irish Volunteers (Óglaigh na hÉireann or ÓnahÉ) and the Irish Citizen Army (Arm Cathartha na hÉireann). This is why the IV/ÓnahÉ is commonly known in the English language as the Irish Republican Army or IRA.
Below is the RTÉ drama-documentary, “The Catalpa Rescue”.
