An Phoblacht, October 2014

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After Scotland – A Border poll for Ireland

anphoblacht WATER TAX WILL BE AXED

Sraith Nua Iml 37 Uimhir 10

October / Deireadh Fómhair 2014

PRICE €2/£2

SINN FÉIN PLEDGE IN GOVERNMENT SINN FÉIN MINISTER CONOR MURPHY BLOCKED WATER CHARGES IN THE NORTH

MEPs in Palestine and Israel

ROSCOMMON SOUTH LEITRIM BY-ELECTIONS

IN TO WIN

DUBLIN SOUTH-WEST

IAN PAISLEY DEMAGOGUE OR PEACEMAKER?

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anphoblacht

www.anphoblacht.com

IN PICTURES

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WHAT’S INSIDE

5 Taking urgent action on housing

by Dessie Ellis TD 6 Welfare cuts: Martin McGuinness’s challenge to unionists 9 No justice for Robert Hamill 12 Sinn Féin’s Australian speaking tour 13 Gearchéim feirmeoireachta san Iarthar 15 Equality Commissioner Dr Michael Wardlow writes in ‘Uncomfortable Conversations’

5 Sinn Féin MLA Gerry Kelly launches anti-Tory cuts campaign at Stormont. The launch was attended by Assembly members as well as party officals, activists and councillors.

Kelly attacked the Tory-led coalition at Westminster whose strategy to cut benefits is ‘ideologically driven and aimed at the most vulnerable in society’ – See back page

18 & 19 Tales of horror from Ireland’s ‘mother and baby homes’ heard in European Parliament 20 REMEMBERING THE PAST

200th anniversary of the birth of Thomas Davis

5 Paul Maskey MP and Councillor Deirdre Hargey join Gerry Adams TD to sign the Book of Condolences for Ian Paisley – See pages 16 & 17 5 Sinn Féin’s Facebook page now has over 50,000 ‘Likes’. If you haven’t ‘Liked’ it yet, please do and log on to An Phoblacht Facebook and ‘Like’ us too while you’re at it

22 & 23 Colombian trade unionist and human rights defender Martha Diaz talks to Peadar Whelan 24 Ukraine: ‘What’s really going on?’

26 & 27 Paradise Island: Robert Allen reports from the Aran Island of Inis Oírr 28 BOOK REVIEWS

Dublin’s GPO and Hitler’s Irish voices 30 & 31 SPORTS

Skirting the issue Taking the point and the pint

5 Survivors of Symphysiotomy protest outside the Department of An Taoiseach in Dublin. The protesters say the Government redress scheme flouts human rights standards

5 Sinn Féin presents a cheque at Stormont Buildings for £3,350 to Mick Lanigan of Irish Medical Aid for Palestine

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October / Deireadh Fómhair 2014 3

Water tax to be turned off

by Sinn Féin in Government

Overall policy responsibility for Irish Water to rest with the Minister for the Environment, Community and Local Government and both to be accountable to the Oireachtas.

Compel Irish Water to have its annual accounts audited by the Comptroller and Auditor General and ensure an open and transparent approach going forward.

BY JOHN HEDGES

Ensure that the board of Irish Water is “fairly balanced to represent the economic, environmental and societal interests which serve both the public utility and the public interest” — including the workforce.

IN GOVERNMENT, Sinn Féin will abolish the water charges in the 26 Counties, the party has said in launching its proposals on what Gerry Adams has called this “unfair and unacceptable” new tax imposed by Fine Gael and Labour but devised by Fianna Fáil.

The Sinn Féin leader says consumers are being forced to pay twice for water and sewerage services as they already pay once through their income tax.

Bills from Irish Water – Uisce Éireann will start dropping through the letterboxes of almost two million households from January with an average annual charge of €280 for already-struggling families to have to pay.

The household water charge was conceived by the previous Fianna Fáil/Green Party Government who agreed the policy with the EU/IMF/ECB Troika as part of the financial bail-out in December 2010.

Gerry Adams says: “Sinn Féin believes that households already pay for these services through their income tax. Citizens should not be forced to pay twice.

“Ordinary citizens and families across this state are being forced to pay yet another regressive tax to repay a banking debt that is not theirs.

“Those responsible for causing the economic crisis, the collapse of public finances, the forced emigration and mass unemployment remain unaccountable for their actions.

SOME OF SINN FÉIN’S PROPOSALS

Abandon plans to introduce household water charges.

domestic

Stop the roll-out of metering and redirect the €539million loan from the National Pension Reserve Fund towards a capital investment programme, including fixing the massive leakage problems and interruption to supply across the state.

5 Sinn Féin's Mary Lou McDonald TD and Gerry Adams TD with by-election candidates Councillor Cathal King (Dublin South-West) and Councillor Martin Kenny (Roscommon/South Leitrim) “Households already do pay for water and sewerage services through general taxation.

This is how we have financed these vital services to date.

“The Government are imposing a second charge through a household bill which Sinn Féin rightly opposes because it is unfair.

“Sinn Féin in Government will commit to reverse these household charges if they are not stopped.”

Gerry Adams pointed out that, in 2007, Sinn Féin in the power-sharing Executive government at Stormont reversed the plans of British ministers from Westminster to

introduce water charges in the North.

Stopping the introduction of charges saved households an average of €490 a year, according to the Utility Regulator.

Sinn Féin also ruled out any future privatisation of “this critical public service”.

With Sinn Féin in government in the North, more than one billion pounds was poured into a major upgrade of the water and sewerage infrastructure, benefiting almost one million households and businesses in a programme that has improved drinking water quality, protected the environment and supported the local economy

BRIAN STANLEY, Sinn Féin Environment & Local Government spokesperson, said the set-up costs for Irish Water are almost twice that of similar entities in England and Wales.

Taxpayers are funding “a corporate monster” that the public is picking up the bill for, the Laois/Offaly TD said.

“Control of the water service ought to have been left in the hands of reformed local authorities.”

Funding should be generated through mixed income of which the majority is through public subsidy. This would include Exchequer funding (currently committed at €240million in 2014), Local Government Fund, (currently committed at €490million in 2014) and through the accurate billing and collection of non-domestic water charges (income collected estimated to be approximately €200million).

Irish Water must put customers first — “Citizens hold valid suspicions in regard to the Government’s water reform process to date which must be addressed.”

A state-wide audit of assets and infrastructure to determine the exact portfolio within public ownership.

Introduce an immediate capital investment programme to upgrade local infrastructure and fix the huge leakage problems and interruption to supply across the state. This will conserve water, bring about greater efficiency and will save costs in the longer term.

Irish Water must act in an open, transparent and accountable way by engaging with legislators and the Oireachtas, consumer representatives, voluntary and community sector, business sector and customers.

Advocate co-operation and implementation in the delivery of water and sewerage services for mutual benefit on an all-Ireland basis under the aegis of the North/South Ministerial Council.

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anphoblacht Eagarfhocal

anphoblacht Editorial

After Scotland – A Border poll for Ireland SCOTLAND’S referendum seeking independence from Westminster may have been lost but the social and political debate it has energised isn’t over.

Things will never be the same again – for Scotland or elsewhere.

Faced with a possible shock defeat on 18 September, the panic-stricken leaders of the three main Westminster unionist parties (Tories, Liberal Democrats and Labour) scurried to Scotland in the closing days of the campaign. They brandished a solemn “vow” of extended fiscal and social policy powers to the Scottish Parliament to head off the rising challenge of the ‘Yes’ to independence movement.

The fear factor fostered by the mainstream media

and the eleventh hour vow by Westminster won the day for the ‘No’ side over ‘Yes’, 55% to 45%.

The result in Scotland raises two issues for Ireland.

The first is the immediate need to transfer powers to enable the Executive to act in the interests of the people. The second is the need for an informed and respectful discussion on the future constitutional position in a Border poll.

The North faces unique economic and social challenges as it emerges from conflict, decades of under-investment by successive British governments, and the inter-related and inter-dependent nature of the economy, North and South.

The North needs the full suite of powers to grow the

economy, sustain jobs, safeguard public services and maintain a welfare system. These powers should rest in the hands of the democratically-elected Executive.

The Scottish referendum campaign engaged and empowered the people. It demonstrated that change is possible. The Good Friday Agreement provides for a Border poll.

It is time for all the people who share this island to have a respectful and informed debate on the future. Is the way forward Irish unity or continued partition?

The people here, like our Scottish cousins, should be given the opportunity in a Border poll to determine the constitutional position.

That is the democratic way forward.

Ian Paisley THE LEGACY of Ian Paisley is a controversial one.

His shadow loomed large over politics in the North for five decades.

He embodied unyielding unionism. He was long a malevolent force in the conflict and many cannot forget or forgive Ian Paisley for this.

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demagogue to democrat is open to debate.

What cannot be denied is that he was a leader.

In the years after the conflict, he led unionism into a new accommodation with republicans and nationalists.

Unionism today could sorely do with a leader of the calibre of the late Ian Paisley.

AN PHOBLACHT is published monthly by Sinn Féin. The views in An Phoblacht are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of Sinn Féin. We welcome articles, opinions and photographs from new contributors but contact the Editor first.

An Phoblacht, Kevin Barry House 44 Parnell Square, Dublin 1, Ireland Telephone: (+353 1) 872 6 100 Email: editor@anphoblacht.com

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CONTACT

In his later life, he assumed a more constructive role, bringing his hardline Democratic Unionist Party into a power-sharing government with republicans despite his historic 1980s election battle cry that he would “Smash Sinn Féin”.

What led to his Damascene conversion from

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October / Deireadh Fómhair 2014 5

How Sinn Féin would build an additional 6,600 homes on top of current Government proposals

Taking urgent action on housing Government could provide an additional 6,600 homes on top of their current targets.

GETTING 6,600 MORE

BY DESSIE ELLIS TD SINN FÉIN HOUSING SPOKESPERSON THE HOUSING CRISIS is deepening by the week.

Some 90,000 households are in housing need across the 26 Counties. Each one of those 90,000 is a family or individual without a proper home.

Many are living with relatives or friends in grossly overcrowded conditions; others are living in sub-standard and over-priced private rented accommodation; others still are in emergency accommodation for the homeless provided by local authorities or charities, or are among the growing numbers sleeping rough on our streets.

This is a shocking indictment of the abject failure of housing policy (if it can be called policy) on the part of the last Fianna Fáil-led Government and the current Fine Gael/Labour Coalition.

The crisis is directly related to the property bubble that led to the collapse of the economy in 2008. The building boom was based not on fulfilling the social need for housing but on the greed of the developers, bankers and politicians who inflated the property bubble with catastrophic consequences. Those who got on the ‘property ladder’ were saddled with unsustainable mortgages and negative equity and those who relied on social housing were left even further out in the cold.

Yet the Irish Troika (Fine Gael, Fianna Fáil and the Labour Party) failed to learn the lesson. They continued to rely totally on the pri-

5 Sinn Féin representatives protest for housing rights outside the Department of the Environment HQ in Dublin vate sector to provide housing, even after the private housing sector collapsed. Since 2008 they have cut over €1billion from the housing budget, not including cuts to Rent Supplement.

The current Government’s ‘Housing Policy Statement’ of June 2011 compounds that failure. It rules out large capital-funded construction programmes by local authorities and it continues to rely on the private sector to meet the massive need for housing.

The ‘Housing Policy Statement’ commits to “making the private rented sector a stable and attractive option for all”. But the very opposite is happening, especially in Dublin. Rents are rising, exceeding Rent Supplement rates, and forcing many people into deeper poverty as rent consumes their incomes, or pushing them out of rented dwellings and into emergency homeless accommodation or on to the streets.

Urgent action is required to address the

housing crisis. Current Government policy must be dumped and the local authorities must be given a lead role once again.

HOW WE CAN DELIVER MORE We have identified €1billion of unused money in Ireland’s Strategic Investment Fund.

Current cost projections from the Department of Environment state the average cost of building a new social housing unit is €151,477 Originally we had planned to spend part of the €1billion on renovating the remaining long-term vacant units which the Department of the Environment had identified but Minister Jan O’Sullivan has committed other funds to do this recently following continued pressure from Sinn Féin to deliver housing.

Using this money we have identified, the

The 6,600 projection is based on costings from the Department of the Environment as well as DoE figures on long-term vacant social housing units.

Using €1billion from the Strategic Investment Fund, 6,600 homes could be built, each costing about €151,477.

These are conservative estimates based on real Government figures but which would have a dramatic effect on the lives of many people in desperate housing need.

In 2012, when Sinn Féin originally proposed a large-scale investment, we projected as many as 9,000 homes could be built for the same money. Regrettably, the Government failed to act and this inaction has meant numbers have had to be revised down.

Sinn Féin is dedicated to offering realistic and achievable solutions to the housing crisis.

This investment is part of that. We are not interested in plucking numbers out of our imagination or accepting the status quo where over 100,000 people are not adequately housed and more and more are homeless or at risk of homelessness.

Additional benefits to investment in social housing: • The construction of 6,600 homes would create tens of thousands of jobs for unemployed construction workers.

• 6,600 new tenants for local authorities would considerable increase rent revenue for areas.

• If 6,600 Rent Supplement recipients were housed it would represent a saving of €29.7million on the scheme based on the average payment.

• Former Rent Supplement recipients will be more secure and better placed to find employment as local authority tenants.

• More housing will lead to lower demand on the private rental market,decreasing rents as well as the bill for state subsidy of rents and increasing disposal income among many rental tenants.

SINN FÉIN DEMANDS AN END TO THE HOUSING CRISIS ANOIS – MAKE HOUSING A RIGHT NOT A PRIVILEGE!

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National Strategy Conference Termonfeckin, County Louth

Martin McGuinness’s challenge to DUP and unionists . . .

‘Bring welfare cuts debate to the Assembly’

5 Gerry Adams speaks to media at An Grianán

5 John McDermott and Megan Fearon MLA

5 TDs Aengus Ó Snodaigh and Michael Colreavy

THE unionist parties wanting to impose welfare cuts ordered by the government at Westminster led by Tory millionaires should bring the legislation before the Assembly where it can be openly debated and voted on by MLAs in public, Martin McGuinness has said.

5 Martin McGuinness MLA, Seán Crowe TD and Gerry Adams TD showing support for the right of Catalonia to self-determination on Catalonia’s National Day

5 Cork’s Sandra McLellan TD

5 Assembly Agriculture Minister Michelle O'Neill MLA and Senator Trevor Ó Clochartaigh discuss rural issues

“That’s the democratic thing to do,” the deputy First Minister insisted.

Martin McGuinness’s keynote address on the morning of the closing day of Sinn Féin’s National Strategy Conference in Termonfeckin, County Louth, on Friday 12 September was to be overshadowed by the news just hours later of the death of Ian Paisley Snr but earlier he told a hall packed with more than 150 elected representatives and key activists: “Let me be absolutely clear today so that David Cameron and his supporters in the unionist parties understand fully my position – Sinn Féin is absolute in our opposition to welfare cuts, north and south of the Border.

“Sinn Féin have attempted to persuade the other Executive parties to unite against these Tory cuts and to join with us in demanding the right to design a system which meets our needs as is now being promised to the Scottish people,” Martin McGuinness said, less than a week before the referendum on Scottish independence.

“It is our primary duty to protect the most vulnerable in our society.

“This is about choices for all the parties in the Assembly.

“We do have a choice. In Sinn Féin, we have made our choice.

“We reject this attack on the poor, people with disabilities and the most vulnerable in our society. We will defend and stand with the working-class communities that the Tories are targeting.

“No one in the North of Ireland voted for these vicious cuts.

“No one in the North of Ireland voted for those Tory politicians who are driving this agenda.

“Cuts in welfare payments are not part of our Programme for Government. In fact, the Tory cuts came like a hammer blow after our Programme for Government.

“If, for ideological reasons or in an attempt to curry favour with the Tories, the DUP wish to inflict these devastating cuts on workingclass unionists as well as the rest of us, then they can and should bring the legislation onto the floor of the Assembly, explain their support for Tory policies and let the representatives of the people decide.

“That’s what the Assembly is for, that is the democratic thing to do.

“If Nelson McCausland on behalf of the DUP refuses to bring it to the floor of the Assembly, then the only other option is to put it directly to the people in an election.

“Sinn Féin has no fear of an election.”

SMOKESCREEN The Sinn Féin negotiator said that the DUP has “thrown up” the issue of welfare ‘reform’ as “a smokescreen to the real threat to the institutions that results from the anti-Agreement axis which emerged as a result of the failure of the DUP to show positive leadership”.

“This anti-Agreement axis is opposed to inclusive, peaceful progress and the requirement for parity of esteem, mutual respect and reconciliation.”

The DUP claim that the institutions are not fit for purpose, Martin McGuinness said.

“In reality, the DUP are not fit for purpose – just as unionists were not fit for purpose in 50 years of sectarian, one-party rule.

“The days of repression, inequality and discrimination are gone forever.”

The Sinn Féin figure noted that Peter Robinson and the DUP asserted that new negotiations were needed, what the DUP leader called a “St Andrew’s 2”.

Martin McGuinness said he agreed about new negotiations, convened immediately by the two governments with the support and assistance of the US administration, but added “The context must and will be the Good Friday Agreement which the Irish people democratically endorsed.

“In any negotiations, Sinn Féin will defend that agreement and the institutions that flowed from it.”

He pointed out that the reality is that political unionism and the DUP have repeatedly walked away from negotiations and from agreements already made, rejecting the Haass/O’Sullivan proposals “and then walking out of party leaders’ talks because the Orange Order did not get its way in north Belfast” as well as dismissing the vote at Belfast City Council on flying the Union flag.

All of this, he said, demonstrates a dubious and questionable commitment by unionist leaders to negotiations, agreement and to democratic decision-making.

Martin McGuinness said he has attempted to reach out to the unionist population, not least in his engagements with Queen Elizabeth, a factor acknowledged by many grassroots unionists, he said, but with little reciprocation from the leadership of unionism.

“Sinn Féin is up for negotiations. We are willing to work with all the parties and the two governments to address outstanding issues and to build a process of reconciliation based on mutual respect.

“I firmly believe that all the problems we face are surmountable; that, given the political will, they can be resolved.

“There is no going backwards. The way forward for all in our society is inclusion, equality and power-sharing.”

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October / Deireadh Fómhair 2014 7

BY-ELECTIONS BATTLE

‘We’re in to win’

ON 10 OCTOBER, the people of Dublin South-West and Roscommon/South Letrim go to the polls in two Dáil byelections triggered by the election of sitting TDs to the European Parliament –

Cllr Martin Kenny

and Sinn Féin is fighting for both those seats.

These by-elections will be the first electoral test since May’s European and Local elections which saw Sinn Féin

ROSCOMMON/SOUTH LEITRIM

IN THE Roscommon/South Leitrim by-election, triggered by the election of Independent TD Luke ‘Ming’ Flanagan to the European Parliament, Sinn Féin has selected long-serving Councillor Martin Kenny to represent the party in what analysts predict will be a tough and closelyfought contest.

RTÉ reports that Fianna Fáil, Sinn Féin and the “Ming dynasty” candidate are all in with a chance of taking the seat.

When Martin Kenny was selected for Sinn Féin, news website thejournal.ie reported: “Martin Kenny’s a great candidate, any party would be happy to have him,” a senior figure in a rival party told this website.

First co-opted to Leitrim County Council in 2003, Martin Kenny went on to top the poll – and receive the highest vote in all of Leitrim – the following year.

Married to Helen, and with four young children, as a councillor Martin has been to the forefront of campaigns for the provision of health services in the area. The issue of ‘fracking’ (hydraulic fracturing) has also been of major local concern and Martin has actively campaigned against the use of this

destructive gas extraction technique in the pristine Lough Allen basin. Many fear the introduction of fracking will damage agriculture and tourism as well as the local environment.

Martin has also been a strong advocate of the rights of turf-cutters who have faced eviction from their bogs.

Martin Kenny says the counties of Roscommon and Leitrm are ones that have been neglected for decades. The people saw little benefit from the socalled Celtic Tiger while the bust after the boom has seen them having to contend with huge amounts of emigration, second-class public services and the downgrading of hospitals.

“Roscommon and South Leitrim needs a Sinn Féin TD who will stand up for the people,” he says.

“Someone who will stand up for rural Ireland against the Establishment; someone who will push for the implementation of legislation to ban fracking and who will ensure that communities are listened to on issues such as pylons and wind farms; someone who will fight for a commonsense approach to the issue of turf-cutting. I want to be that TD.”

RTÉ reports that Fianna Fáil, Sinn Féin and the ‘Ming dynasty’ candidate are all in with a chance of taking the seat

BY MARK MOLONEY

make a significant breakthrough in the 26 Counties. With two strong candidates selected, Gerry Adams declared to the Sinn Féin all-Ireland strategy conference in Termonfeckin: “We’re in it to win it”.

Cllr Cathal King

DUBLIN SOUTH-WEST

IN Dublin South-West, Sinn Féin has selected former Mayor Cathal King to contest the seat left vacant following the election of Fine Gael TD Brian Hayes to the European Parliament.

First co-opted to South Dublin County Council in 2003 when Seán Crowe was elected to the Dáil, Cathal King has become well known for being a hard-working, straight-talking campaigner who gets the job done.

Married to Kim, and with two young children, in 2012 Cathal became the first Sinn Féin Mayor in Dublin since the Tan War. During his term the council focused keenly on mental health awareness and support for young people. The council launched the MindMindR smartphone app aimed at removing that initial stigma around asking for help with mental health issues. His term also saw the Council take the lead in tackling problems of anti-social behaviour.

In November, Cathal and other Sinn Féin representatives received widespread praise for their role, along with local residents, in ending nights of serious violence between rival teenage gangs in the Jobstown and Killinarden area.

His commitment to helping the most disadvantaged in society was evidenced when

he spearheaded an initiative by councillors to give up their €4,700-per-year annual expenses and instead put the money into a fund to deliver an emergency homelessness and accommodation programme in the county, which Cathal opened in 2013.

Cathal’s popularity on the ground in his Dublin South-West constituency was seen in May’s local elections when he received a whopping 31% of the vote in his Tallaght Central ward. This ward had the highest Sinn Féin vote in the 26 Counties with the party taking 51.3% of first-preference votes.

The party went from three seats to nine on South Dublin County Council, making it the largest party on the council. Cathal says this successful result is down to a record of hard work and commitment to the people of this constituency “The people of Dublin South-West know only too well the devastating effects of the austerity policies of Fine Gael, Labour and Fianna Fáil. Sinn Féin is the only anti-austerity party that can win this seat,” says Cathal.

“We have proven our credentials on South Dublin County Council where we have brought in a progressive and inclusive programme to deliver for all the people in the council area.”

‘Sinn Féin is the only anti-austerity party that can win this seat’

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Despite the significant progress which has been made, there is still need for further improvement

GERRY KELLY MLA POLICING

15 years on from Patten OUR EXPERIENCE of policing has been totally transformed over the course of the last 15 years.

The Patten Report ushered in hard-fought changes, which changed the entire ethos of policing.

The Patten Report, published 15 years ago (9 September 1999) began that process of change.

That process continued in the St Andrew’s talks to ensure that we can have a police service which is effective, efficient and accountable.

The Good Friday Agreement and the Patten Report were designed to bring about a police service that can enjoy widespread support from and is seen as an integral part of, the community as a whole; a police service that is effective, efficient and free from partisan political control; and policing which is delivered in constructive and inclusive partnership with the community

The Patten Report ushered in hard-fought changes which changed the entire ethos of policing and with the maximum delegation of authority and responsibility.

Working together across society and across the political spectrum, we have made a lot of progress toward that goal.

Rigorous oversight mechanisms have been put in place to ensure the accountability and transparency of policing.

From the Assembly Justice Committee to the Policing Board to the Policing and Community Safety Partnerships, as well as the Police Ombudsman’s Office and the Criminal Justice Inspectorate, we now have bodies which allow us to hold the PSNI up to a high degree of scrutiny in order to ensure acceptable standards of policing are met.

The introduction of unaccountable agencies into the policing arena in the North could set back the progress we have made to date and make further progress impossible. All aspects of policing here must meet the same standards of

5 We must ensure that ‘Policing with the Community’ becomes a reality in all areas accountability. If members of the ‘National Crime Agency’ are to get the powers of a constable then they must operate under the same accountability mechanisms as a constable in the PSNI. Of course, the situation is not perfect. Where the experience of policing falls short of that standard we now have measures to address it. The Office of the Police Ombudsman was set up to provide an independent, impartial mechanism to deal with complaints against the police. Sinn Féin has continually upheld the need for the independence of the Police Ombudsman to be maintained.

One of the key recommendations

of the Patten Report is that “policing with the community should be the core function of the police service and the core function of every police station”.

It must be part of every aspect of policing, not just a piecemeal set of initiatives.

Partnership working with local communities has made a real difference. That community engagement, underpinned with a commitment to international human rights standards, must continue to grow and to deepen.

New partnerships between the police and local communities have been developed which would have been

unthinkable 15 years ago, and we need to see these rolled out in all areas.

Despite the significant progress which has been made, there is still need for further improvement.

Efforts have been made to make the PSNI representative of society as a whole, especially during the time of 50:50 recruitment, but we are not there yet. Specifically targeted recruitment policies have helped to address the historic imbalance in the make-up of the police but it is still not wholly representative of the community it serves.

Many challenges still exist in policing, not least of which is delivering an effective service to local communities. We all have a part to play in ensuring that this happens.

Dealing with the past, particularly the many problems which existed in policing, is also a major challenge.

Of course, addressing the past goes beyond policing and requires a political deal but the

Dealing with the past, particularly the many problems which existed in policing, is also a major challenge absence of such a deal would not excuse the withholding of files from inquests, failure to cooperate with Ombudsman investigations or the cover-up of collusion.

We must ensure that the Haass/O’Sullivan Report is implemented and that the wider community and the two governments take responsibility for dealing with the past.

We must ensure that ‘Policing with the Community’ becomes a reality in all areas.

In particular, we must ensure that impending budget cuts don’t impact on the equality and accountability measures, on human rights standards and on community engagement.

5 Chris Patten’s 1999 report began the process of change within policing

Huge strides have been taken over the last 15 years and Sinn Féin is determined to continue with that progress so that all communities have the police service they deserve.

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October / Deireadh Fómhair 2014 9

NO JUSTICE FOR ROBERT HAMILL

BY PEADAR WHELAN AS THE CASE against three people charged in connection with the sectarian killing of Portadown Catholic Robert Hamill in 1997 was thrown out of Craigavon Magistrates Court on 3 September it became clear that any chance that the Hamill family would get justice had gone with the judge’s decision.

Dismissing the charges against the three – retired RUC Reserve Constable Cecil Atkinson, one of the crew in an RUC vehicle present when Robert Hamill was attacked; his wife Eleanor; and Kenneth Hanvey – Judge Peter King said he wasn’t satisfied there was enough evidence to establish a firm case against the trio.

The killing of Robert Hamill was clouded in controversy from the moment the 25-year-old Catholic was attacked by a loyalist mob in Portadown town centre in the early hours of 27 April 1997.

When Robert Hamill was killed, Portadown and Drumcree were the buzzwords for Orange Order and loyalist bigotry as nationalists opposed their triumphalist parades through Garvaghy Road.

It was such a notorious case that it was one of a number of killings investigated by Canadian Judge Peter Cory as part of his inquiries into collusion.

Pushed by Sinn Féin at the 2001 Weston Park talks, the British Government accepted the need for public inquiries into the killings of Robert Hamill and lawyers Rosemary Nelson and Pat Finucane.

The killings of sectarian assassin and Loyalist Volunteer Force leader Billy Wright by the INLA in Long Kesh and those of senior RUC officers Harry Breen and Bob Buchanan by the IRA in south Armagh were also investigated by Judge Cory.

RUC witness attack

The family of Robert Hamill arrive at the opening of the public inquiry into his death

In the early hours of 27 April 1997, as Robert Hamill and three companions (Gregory Girvan, Hamill’s cousin; Gregory’s wife Joanne; and his sister Siobhán) made their way home after a night out they were set upon by a 30-strong loyalist mob at the top of Woodhouse Street in Portadown town centre.

The loyalists would have known the friends were Catholics as Woodhouse Street led directly to the nationalist Obins Street area.

The group had spotted some loyalists as they approached the junction but decided to go on as the RUC were present in a Land Rover.

In her witness statement to Judge Cory, Joanne Girvan described how, out of nowhere, 20 to 30 loyalists

Robert Hamill appeared and attacked her husband and Robert.

Another eyewitness who came on the scene within minutes heard the mob shouting “Kill the Fenian bastard!” as they kicked Robert, who at this point was on the ground.

The witness maintained that the assault lasted for at least ten minutes.

As this mob attack was taking place, not one of the armed RUC police in the Land Rover, which was parked in a position where the crew could see clearly what was happening, made any attempt to go to the aid of the four friends.

Eventually, when the RUC did intervene they (according to a “Mr H” in his statement to Cory) put one of the assailants in the back of the Land Rover but “within a short time . . . this man got out of the Land Rover” and went back onto the street.

Hamill, a 25-year-old father of two and whose partner was pregnant with their third child, was beaten unconscious. He was rushed to hospital where he died on 8 May without recovering consciousness.

Cover-up

It was the RUC’s later attempts to portray the incident as a fight involving two rival gangs in an effort to cover up their own inaction that exposed the RUC’s willingness to collude with loyalist killers.

In a statement released at 6am, just hours after the attack, the RUC Press Office talked of a “clash between rival factions”.

Later, on 30 April, the RUC claimed they were unable to contain the situation due to the large number of people involved in the situation and they themselves were attacked.

It wasn’t until 7 May, the day before Robert Hamill died, that the RUC finally acknowledged that Hamill and his companions were “set upon by a large crowd”.

It was the alleged conduct of RUC Reserve Constable Cecil Atkinson (referred to as “Reserve Constable B” in the Cory report and by RUC investigators) that goes to the heart of the collusion between Robert Hamill’s attackers and the RUC. At the opening in January 2009 of the public inquiry into Hamill’s killing, lead counsel Ashley Underwood set out the case, saying; “By 10 May, the RUC had the identities of a number of Protestants who were said to have murdered Mr Hamill.?

“Further, it had evidence that one of the reserve constables in the Land Rover, Mr Atkinson, had protected one of them by telling him to get rid of his clothing and by keeping him updated about the investigation.

“However, no one has been convicted of murdering Mr Hamill and only one person was convicted of an affray arising out of the attack.

Reserve Constable Atkinson was eventually charged in relation to a conspiracy arising out of the alleged tip-offs that he gave but was not prosecuted.”

Justice for nationalists in the North is again left wanting.

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World must stop swallowing Israel’s narrative, say Members of European Parliament

13 MEPs blocked by Israel from seeing Gaza carnage first-hand pound in Jerusalem and met Bob Turner, Director of UNRWA Operations in Gaza.

UNRWA, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees, was established in December 1949 and began operations on 1 May 1950. It now provides “assistance and protection” for some five million registered Palestine refugees.

The MEPs then visited the Al-Makassed Hospital and met many of the victims of the Israeli blitz on Gaza before calling on the family of Mohammed Abu Khdeir.

Mohammed Abu Khdeir (16) was kidnapped in East Jerusalem on 2 July, a day after the burial of three murdered Israeli teens. His charred body was found a few hours later in the Jerusalem Forest. The autopsy suggested that he was beaten and burned while still alive.

BY JOHN HEDGES THE 13 Members of the European Parliament refused entry to Gaza by Israel last month are not giving up, delegation leader and Sinn Féin MEP Martina Anderson has told An Phoblacht.

“We shall be writing to the Israeli Foreign Affairs Minister every fortnight and lobbying the Israeli Government until they relent and we are allowed into Gaza,” Martina said.

On being denied free movement into Gaza, Martina Anderson, who is Chair Designate of the European Parliament’s Delegation for Relations with the Palestinian Legislative Council, said: “The Israeli Government refused us entry into Gaza on the grounds that our visit to the region is ‘not directly concerned with the provision of humanitarian assistance’. This is beyond irony considering that the horrific and harrowing humanitarian situation in Gaza is a direct result of Israel’s 53-day military attack on the Gaza Strip, which resulted in 2,145 fatalities, including 581 children, not to mention Israel’s eight-year blockade of the region.

“We want to go to Gaza to assess the situation on the ground first-hand. This would have enabled us to relay that information back to the European Parliament and push for greater provision of EU humanitarian aid to Gaza and an end to the blockade and occupation.

“We call on the Israeli authorities to overturn this decision and grant us access.”

5 MEPs with the family of Mohammed Abu Khdeir (16) who was kidnapped and murdered in East Jerusalem

MEETING ISRAELIS AND PALESTINIANS The MEPs were from the European United Left/Nordic Green Left European Parliamentary Group (GUE/NGL), including Sinn Féin MEPs Lynn Boylan and Matt Carthy as well as Martina Anderson.

They were on a fact-finding mission to see what EU aid is needed to rebuild Gaza and its people’s lives after Israel’s catastrophic military onslaught from 8 July named Operation Protective Edge The four-day visit began on Thursday 4 September in Jerusalem with the MEPs meeting Israeli groups.

These included the B’Tselem Israeli Information Centre for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories, Rabbis for Human Rights, Physicians for Human Rights, Yesh Gvul (Israeli troops refusing to serve in the Occupied Territories), and combat veterans’ associations Breaking the Silence and Combatants for Peace. They also met Haaretz journalist Amira Hass, world-renowned for her reporting on the occupation of Palestine.

They then had a working dinner with Governor of Jerusalem Adnan Alhusseini, Minister of Jerusalem Affairs Ashraf Khatib Nsu, Bishop Attallah Hannah, PLO Executive Committee member Hannah Amireh, and Issa Kassasiyeh, Ambassador of Palestine to the Vatican.

The next day they visited the UNRWA com-

5 Sinn Féin MEPs meet victims of Israel's latest attack on Gaza

ENERGY AND WATER Meetings followed with the Mayor of Hebron, the Governor of Hebron, the Governor and Deputy Mayor of Bethlehem, and the Director of the Alternative Information Centre in Beit Sahour.

Saturday began with the MEPs meeting Palestinian Foreign Minister Dr Riyad al-Malki.

Later, they had discussions with Dr Nabil Shaath of the Fatah Central Committee and then a working lunch with members of the Palestinian Legislative Council (Parliament).

The devastation wrought on Gaza’s water and energy supplies was explained to the MEPs in separate meetings with the presidents of the Palestinian Water Authority and the Palestinian Energy Authority before a meeting with the President of the Palestine Red Crescent Society, part of the International Red Cross Movement.

In Ramallah, the MEPs met Palestine Prime Minister Dr Rami Alhamdallah, who urged them and their governments to ensure the EU plays a more active role in finding a solution.

The Director the Palestinian BDS (Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions) National Committee in Ramallah also met them. Then came talks with the minister heading up the Ministerial Committee for the Relief of the Gaza Strip, and the Minister for Health before seeing the Palestine medical complex in Ramallah.

The MEPs left Palestine to go to Tel Aviv, where they met members of the Knesset (Israeli Parliament) from Labour and Meretz.

‘WE WANT THE WORLD TO KNOW’

5 GUE/NGL MEPs at the ‘Apartheid Wall’ in Bethlehem

That the Israeli authorities refused to let the GUE/NGL delegation into Gaza on the grounds that the delegation was not delivering immediate humanitarian support was laughable, Martina Anderson told An Phoblacht.

“When we visited the Red Crescent headquarters in Ramallah we saw crates of urgent supplies, everything from medical equipment to mattresses to schoolbags, stacked in storage instead of being allowed in to address the urgent needs of the people of Gaza.”

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October / Deireadh Fómhair 2014 11

5 Sinn Féin MEP Lynn Boylan and Bloco MEP Marisa Matias see the impact of Israeli settlers on life in Hebron. The Palestinians erect nets over their streets to protect them from the rubbish thrown down from the settlements

5 Sinn Féin MEP Martina Anderson led the GUE/NGL delegation to Palestine

5 Sinn Féin MEPs visit the tomb of Palestine President Yasser Arafat in Ramallah

5 GUE/NGL MEPs meet Palestinian Prime Minister Rami Hamdallah

The Red Crescent also sends equipment for providing psycho-social support to children.

Much of these supplies are funded by donations from Palestinians in the West Bank and Jerusalem.

“We were moved by the impressive generosity of Palestinians in the West Bank, even though they are struggling themselves,” Lynn Boylan said.

“At the same time it was harrowing to view video footage of Gazans being evacuated from a hospital of distressed elderly and disabled people before it was completely destroyed by Israeli shelling and to see severely injured children receiving medical attention.”

The visit to Al Makassed Hospital to meet victims was even more harrowing, Lynn Boylan said.

“To see a three-year-old child amputee was dreadful but to be told both parents have also lost limbs brought home the horror of what has happened to the people of Gaza.

“The father told us, ‘Come in, take photographs, we want the world to know.’

United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) official Salvatore Lombardo told Dublin MEP Lynn Boylan that, in his 25 years’ experience, he has never seen such destruction as that inflicted on Gaza.

“He told us that the situation in Gaza is about five times worse than it was in 2008

tears when they tell you of what they’ve seen, and speak of the smells. That’s why the Israeli Government didn’t want to let us in.”

and that the amount of explosives used was astronomical.”

“One point is very clear throughout this visit. Everybody here wants politicians to visit and bear witness to what has happened.

Salvatore Lombardo of UNRWA, the doctors at the hospital and the parents of the injured children are pleading for the world’s politicians to visit them, to see the destruction and horrific injuries at first-hand and to tell the world. They want the world to know what has happened and they want those responsible to be held accountable.

“We, as politicians, must pass on their message and tell their story to the world while at the same time encouraging others to visit and bear witness to the horrific situation in Gaza.”

Back in Ireland, Matt Carthy MEP told An Phoblacht: “The Israeli authorities obviously didn’t want us to see at first-hand the harrowing images of what they’ve done to Gaza but even what we did get to see was phenomenal, something I’ve never witnessed before in terms of suffering and people’s needs.

“When you think that people from the United Nations, who have dealt with war zones and conflicts all over the world, tell you ‘Nothing can prepare you for this’, that’s very strong language and testimony to what Israel has done to Gaza.

“And the volunteers working in Gaza shed

ISRAEL’S GLOBAL IMPUNITY Martina Anderson said that, for the Palestinians, the negotiations are over.

“The Palestinian Legislative Council told us that the negotiations are over and that Israel is killing the two-state solution to achieve a ‘South Africanisation’ of Palestine.

“Israel is attempting to frame the conflict as a religious one but the Palestinians’ struggle is not an Islamic one, it is a struggle for a free, equal, just, and secular Palestine.”

Palestinian Economic Council for Development and Reconstruction Minister Dr Mohammad Shtayyeh told the GUE/NGL delegation: “Israel continues to act in bad faith, using the peace negotiations as a smokescreen for their strategy of building more settlements beyond the Green Line and occupying ever more Palestinian territory, fragmenting the West Bank. It’s this bad faith that has rendered 21 years of negotiations a failure.

“Despite the fact the EU does not recognise any post-1967 Israeli territory as the thousands of settlements built on this land contravene the 4th Geneva Convention, Israel

continues to enjoy global impunity to continue its occupation of Palestine, breaching international law with an apartheid wall, apartheid roads and apartheid buses.”

Lynn Boylan told An Phoblacht that she couldn’t believe the scale of apartheid in an era of social media and 24-hour news that didn’t exist at the time of apartheid South Africa.

“It’s shocking. In Hebron, for instance, one of the most tense areas, there are 400 Israeli settlers protected by 6,000 military and police personnel. There’s 120 checkpoints in a 900metre stretch that schoolkids have to go through.”

Less than 48 hours after she’d left, Lynn said, she was sent a video showing a seven-yearold child detained by three soldiers at one on these checkpoints and held at gunpoint for 40 minutes “in the exact place where we as MEPs had stood in Hebron”.

The Dublin MEP told An Phoblacht that everyone they met – from seasoned aid workers to bereaved families and injured victims of the Israeli war – said that they wanted people from across the globe to come and see for themselves what the people of Gaza have to endure.

“The world must see these heart-wrenching images and we have pledged to spread the truth as far as possible about what really happened in Gaza.”

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IN PICTURES

www.anphoblacht.com

photos@anphoblacht.com

Le Trevor

Ó Clochartaigh

Baol do na ceantair tuaithe agus gá le gníomhú rialtais

5 Construction workers strike at Kishoge Community College in west Dublin over allegations of under-payments to workers. The Unite trade union says the workers on Rhatigan's Kishoge site have been forced into self-employment, with some earning less than €5 an hour. Unite also say that Rhatigan is the main contractor on a range of school building projects and has called on the Department of Education to review its compliance mechanisms

Gearchéim feirmeoireachta san Iarthar LÉIRÍONN taighde atá foilsithe ag Teagasc maidir le h-ioncam na dteaghlaigh feirme go bhfuil deighilt shuntasach idir fheirmeoirí san iarthar agus i gceantar na teorainn agus iad siúd sa chuid eile den tír ó thaobh teacht isteach di. Bhi an teolas dhá chur i láthair ag comhdháil dá gcuid maidir le forbairt tuaithe le déanaí.

5 Sinn Féin Councillors Séighin Ó Ceallaigh, Maurice Quinlivan and Malachy McCreesh at the unveiling of a monument in Limerick to those who fought with the International Brigades

5 Members of the public sign Sinn Féin’s ‘Stop Tory Cuts’ petition in Derry

Bhí sé suntasach go maith freisin go raibh bliain mhaith i 2013 ag feirmeoirí déiríochta ach go bhfuil cuid mhaith den chuid eile d’fheirmeoirí na tíre ag streachailt go mór.

Déanann an suirbhé bhliaintiúil seo rangú ar fheirmeacha ó thaobh iad siúd atá ‘viable’ (inmharthana), ‘sustainable’ (inbhuanaithe) agus ‘vulnerable’ (i mbaol). Tá feirm inmharthana, dar leo, má tá siad ag clúdach a gcuid costais agus ag íoc an meánphá tiosclaíoch le farasbarr 5% ar ioncam na feirme. Tá feirm ‘inmharthana’ má tá siad ag brath ar ioncam neamhfheirme chun an sprioc sin a bhaint amach agus tá siad ‘i mbaol’ muna mbaineann siad an sprioc sin amach ar chor ar bith.

Is léir ó na figiúir nach bhfuil ach aon trian de na feirmeacha inmharthana astu féin. Nó, lena rá ar bhealach eile, tá dhá thrian d’fheirmeacha na tíre nach bhfuil in ann maireachtáil as a stuaim féin - iad ag brath ar mhuintir na feirme a bheith ag saothrú ó fhoinsi eile, nó atá ag cailleadh airgead agus atá i dtrioblóid.

De réir na staitisticí, a bailíodh ó chuntais beagnach míle feirm ar fud na tíre, tá an mheán ioncam teaghlaigh feirme san Iarthar agus cois teorainn níos lú ná leath an ioncam atá acu san oirdheisceart agus i bfhad taobh thiar do na réigiún eile sa tír.

Níl ach thart ar 12% d’fheirmeacha an iarthar inmharthana agus 22% nó mar sin cois teorainn. Cur sin i gcomparáid le idir 40 & 50% sna réigiúin eile. Is léir dá bhrí sin go bhfuil géarghá le tacaíochtaí breise cois teorainn agus taobh thiar den Sionnann má tá muid chun teaghlaigh a choinneáil gníomhach ar fheirmeacha anseo.

Tá an pátrun seo le feiceáil chomh maith ó thaobh fostaíochta de in earnálacha eile agus ceangal nach beag aige le forbairt infreastruchtúr, seirbhísí agus eile sna réigiúin chomh maith.

Bhí an tAire nua stáit a bhfuil cúraimi tuaithe bronnta uirthi, Ann Phelan, ag an ócáid chéanna seo. Cé nach mbaineann cúraimi feirmeoireachta díreach léi, is léir go mbaineann forbairt na gceantair feirmeoireachta is mó atá i mbaol go mór léi. Trasnaíonn a cuid cúraimi riar-mhaith ranna stáit agus é ráite gurb é an t-aon chúis gur ceapadh Aire dá leithéad na chun dul chun cinn Sinn Féin ó thaobh polasaithe tuaithe a chloí.

Caithfidh go bhfuil muid ag déanamh rud éigin i gceart!

Ach, beidh sí ag díriú ar chur i bhfeidhm mholtaí na tuairisce CEDRA maidir le cúrsaí tuaithe, a d’ullmhaigh Pat Spillane don rialtas. Níl aici ach beagan le cois bliain ar a mhéid le sin a dhéanamh. Deir sí go mbeidh sí ag iarraidh ar eagrais agus fhorais stáit spriocanna tuaithe a chur ina gcuid straitéisí agus pleananna agus is maith

‘Tá dhá thrian d’fheirmeacha na tíre nach bhfuil inmharthanach’

sin. Ach, rinne sí dearmad ar an gníomh is tábhachtaí a d’fhéadfadh sí a dhéanamh – sin cur ina luí ar a cuid comhleacaithe ag bord an rialtais profáil tuaithe a dhéanamh ar a gcuid buiséid féin! Muna mbeidh sin déanta is beag an mhaith a bheith caint leis na h-eagrais eile.

Tá ciorruithe damanta feicthe againn ó na ranna comhshaoil, oideachas, leasa shoisialaigh agus eile ar sheirbhísí agus bhuiséid do na ceantair tuaithe agus muna gcuirtear feabhas ar sin go luath beidh an daonra ag meath agus aos-óg na tuaithe a d’imigh ar an mbád bán ag fanacht i Sasana, san Astráil nó cibé áit a ndeachaigh siad agus tuilleadh dhá leanúint.

Ní bheidh sa bhfeirmeoireacht thiar agus cois teorainn ach finscéal a bheidh dhá n-aithris cois teallaigh do na turasóirí a bheidh ag triail le breathnú ar an áit a mbíodh pobail ghníomhacha ag cónaí tráth. Agus ní fada uainn sin ma leantar cur chuige an rialtais seo I bhfad eile tá faitíos orm.

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October / Deireadh Fómhair 2014 13

Mary Lou McDonald TD and Francie Molloy MP

Australian speaking tour promotes Uniting Ireland campaign

BY EMMA CLANCY A FIVE-CITY national speaking tour of Australia by Sinn Féin Vice-President Mary Lou McDonald TD and Mid-Ulster MP Francie Molloy to promote the Uniting Ireland campaign included public meetings attracting more than a thousand people.

The coast-to-coast tour, from 30 August to 9 September, included events in Perth, Sydney, Canberra, Melbourne and Brisbane to meet with the Irish community, labour movement activists and leaders, and academics.

Mary Lou and Francie also met with dozens of Australian political representatives from the Australian Labour Party, the Greens, the Nationals, and the Liberal Party from across the country.

The Sinn Féin representatives outlined the role of the Diaspora and the Australian labour movement and political forces in supporting the international campaign for a referendum on Irish reunification.

The Sinn Féin representatives also raised with Australian political representatives issues faced by the local Irish emigrant community, including the campaign against unaffordable school fees for the children of skilled migrants working in Australia on the 457 visa (which affects Western Australia, New South Wales and the Australian Capital Territory).

Another goal of the tour was to raise awareness among Irish workers in Australia of their workplace rights and entitlements.

5 Francie Molloy MP, Australian Congress of Trade Unions President Ged Kearney and Mary Lou McDonald TD in Melbourne In Western Australia, they met with Parliamentary Secretary Vince Catania, while in Victoria they met with a group of MPs, including the President of the state Legislative Council, Bruce Atkinson, at a briefing hosted

by MP Bronwyn Halfpenny.

The federal parliamentary briefing was hosted by Senator Gavin Marshall.

Altogether they met with 38 MPs and senators across Australia, many of whom had already signed up to the ‘Australian Irish Unity Motion’ or did so during the tour.

Other highlights of the speaking tour included meeting with Aboriginal activists in Perth and Sydney; visiting the Global Irish

Studies Centre at the University of New South Wales; a meeting of women trade unionists with Mary Lou McDonald in Sydney; Francie Molloy meeting with the Australian Tamil Congress; and Mary Lou addressing a rally against austerity in Perth.

Supporting workplace rights for Irish workers The tour was warmly received by the Australian trade union movement, which supported and hosted several of the events.

Australian MPs support ‘Irish Unity Motion’ During the tour, the Sinn Féin representatives spoke with several Australian MPs and senators in the state and federal parliaments, including federal Shadow Minister for Workplace Relations Brendan O’Connor and Education Minister in the Australian Capital Territory Government Joy Burch.

A political briefing was held in the federal, New South Wales and Victorian parliaments.

They met with New South Wales Parliament Labour Party leader John Robertson as well as Shadow Attorney General and long-time Irish solidarity supporter Paul Lynch and several MPs.

5 Francie Molloy MP gave a political briefing to New South Wales MPs hosted by Shadow Attorney General Paul Lynch in Sydney

Mary Lou and Francie met with Australian Congress of Trade Unions President Ged Kearney in Melbourne, as well as Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union national leaders Dave Noonan and Tony Maher, and Maritime Union of Australia Assistant National Secretary Mick Doleman at a union-hosted event in Sydney on 2 September. They also met with several state leaders of the Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union, including Brian Parker and Mick Buchan, as well as leaders and activists from many other unions throughout the tour.

As well as building links of solidarity between progressive forces in Ireland and Australia with the trade unionists, the Sinn Féin representatives also discussed developing joint efforts to combat the exploitation of Irish workers in Australia on temporary visas and to promote union membership among Irish workers as part of this.

Following the speaking tour of Australia by Pearse Doherty TD in 2012, Cairde Sinn Féin worked with Australian and Irish unions to produce the Know Your Rights at Work Down Under pamphlet which Mary Lou and Francie continued to promote among Irish workers during this tour.

The speaking tour was organised by Cairde Sinn Féin Australia and supported by the Casement Group Melbourne, the Brehon Law Society and the Irish National Association.

For full details of the tour, and to download the Know Your Rights at Work Down Under pamphlet, visit cairdesinnfein.com.

For a full list of signatories to the Australian Irish Unity Motion, visit irishunity.org.

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5 There is a right-wing retreat by political unionism into old Orange state ideology

North’s political logjam requires engagement and visionary leadership THE INTRASIGENCE of political unionism has been emboldened by the British Government’s refusal to endorse the Haass package, Sinn Féin National Chairperson Declan Kearney told the 26th Desmond Greaves School in Dublin.

Speaking in a section on The Good Friday Agreement Today, which also featured journalists Anne Cadwallader and Tom McGurk, Declan Kearney said both the Irish and British governments have stepped back from their responsibilities as co-guarantors of the Good Friday Agreement.

The current political deadlock, he said, has been compounded by the failure of both governments to implement core elements of the Good Friday Agreement itself and subsequent agreements made at Weston Park, St Andrew’s, and Hillsborough Castle.

The Irish Government has become “passive and detached”, he said.

“The consequence has been that the political process has remained constantly fragile throughout. In turn, the potential for developing authentic reconciliation has been undermined and held back.”

Since David Cameron’s Conservative Party took power four years ago, the Sinn Féin National Chairperson argued, this British Government’s Irish policy has become markedly pro-unionist and increasingly resembles the explicitly partisan nature of John Major’s government policy in the mid-1990s.

Declan Kearney said that the current situation stems back to the

marching season of 2012, the subsequent street disturbances orchestrated by unionist paramilitaries from the UVF and UDA that summer and autumn, and then the refusal of Peter Robinson’s Democratic Unionist Party and Mike Nesbitt’s Ulster Unionist Party to respect the democratic decision of Belfast City Council to compromise on flying the Union flag.

“That led directly to months of street violence, and attacks on the

defined the nature of DUP participation in the political institutions, within the Executive, and OFM/dFM. “A renewed toxic, sectarian incivility has infected the political atmosphere of the Assembly itself.

“The DUP and UUP may well have bought into the political institutions in terms of electoral influence, salaries and status but that does not extend to embracing a genuine willingness to share power with republicans, support

‘There is no alternative to or any avoidance of the need for engagement, dialogue, and visionary leadership’ DECLAN KEARNEY Alliance Party, Catholic homes, the PSNI, and threats against Sinn Féin members.

“Later, in August 2013, Peter Robinson reneged on the Programme for Government decision to develop the Maze/Long Kesh site. His announcement was made in a letter sent to DUP members from his summer holiday in Florida. He made no contact with deputy First Minister Martin McGuinness.

“That approach has increasingly

for real partnership government, the development of North/South cooperation, mutual respect, parity of esteem, or reconciliation.”

The contemporary agenda of unionism has been set by what the Sinn Féin figure described as “Orange and unionist extremists”, including negative, anti-Agreement elements in the Traditional Unionist Voice party, the Orange Order, the UVF and UDA, and UKIP. Political unionism has shifted to the

5 DUP leader Peter Robinson and UUP leader Mike Nesbitt Right, adopted a strategy of political blockage, and “acquiesced in the face of escalating sectarianism and growing racism across the Six Counties”, he added.

“All this has inevitably undermined the credibility of the Executive and Assembly, and fettered the potential of these institutions to work as delivery mechanisms for sufficient economic and social change.

An anti-Good Friday Agreement axis now exists within unionism, he said, one that is aimed at subverting the Good Friday Agreement, principles and process.

“This anti-Agreement axis is against equality, democratic compromise, and management of continued change in Northern society. Its agenda is to turn back the clock.

“There is a right-wing retreat by political unionism into old Orange state ideology.”

The senior Sinn Féin activist said that if political unionism is unwilling to engage positively in new talks based upon acceptance of Good Friday Agreement principles, then the required momentum must be applied by the Irish and British governments to ensure that all outstanding commitments are finally implemented with political structures in place to entrench the gains of the peace and political processes to date.

“This much is clear,” Declan Kearney said. “New negotiations are now both essential and inevitable.

“But it is not for political unionism to set or dictate the terms or conditions and scope of a new talks process on the basis of what it wants.

“That will not be happening.

“Any approach to negotiations which starts in reverse, or seeks to

‘The DUP and UUP may well have bought into the political institutions in terms of electoral influence, salaries and status but that does not extend to embracing a genuine willingness to share power with republicans’ narrow and reduce the talks agenda, or panders to threats and preconditions, will fail.

“There is no alternative to or any avoidance of the need for engagement, dialogue, and visionary leadership.

“That is the legacy of the Good Friday Agreement today and will be the key to creating an agreed, multicultural, united Ireland.”

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October / Deireadh Fómhair 2014 15

UNCOMFORTABLE CONVERSATIONS

DR MICHAEL WARDLOW

Chief Commissioner, Equality Commission for Northern Ireland

LOOKING AT OUR PAST THROUGH A LENS OF GENEROSITY CONVERSATIONS involve sharing opinions, but we need to remember that opinions, however passionately held and compellingly presented, remain opinions. Too often they are presented as irrefutable facts which do not allow for an alternative point of view to be recognised.

Some of the most uncomfortable conversations I have had involve equality and good relations, two key issues which lie at the centre of building a united community.

Although there has always been a debate around how the two elements inter-relate, I do not believe that there are any who doubt the significance of both in creating a foundation for a shared society. The problem occurs either when equality and good relations are presented as alternatives, or when we insist that our exclusive understanding of what either means is the only understanding.

If we are to have uncomfortable conversations, ones that inform debate rather than close down communication, it is important that some myths around equality are dispelled.

There is the view that “it is all done”. Although huge advances have been made in addressing discrimination in employment and in the provision of goods and services through strong enforcement of the law and developing best practice, much still needs to be done to ensure we live in a more fair and equitable society.

Even a brief consideration of the 3,500 enquiries we receive annually from people who believe that they have been the victim of unlawful discrimination will quickly dispel such a fanciful notion. Sectarian and other forms of harassment at work, job segregation, pregnancy discrimination and unequal pay, and unequal terms and conditions at work still need to be tackled.

There is also evidence that equality is understood by some as “one for me and one for you”, an attitude which must be challenged at every opportunity lest we collude in creating a future which is shared out rather than shared.

Challenging inequalities involves addressing objective need, wherever evidenced and however uncomfortable the outcome might be for some. This will involve uncomfortable conversations amongst our political leaders who will have to take hard decisions on policy priorities in times of increasing austerity, some of which might have to deliver “two for you and one for me”!

Although huge advances have been made in addressing discrimination, much still needs to be done to ensure we live in a more fair and equitable society

Equality is fundamentally colour blind in that it is not more likely to be found addressing “green” rather than “orange” needs. That said, we recognise there is the view that equality is something that delivers more for one section of the community than the other.

Although we can garner some confidence from our 2011 public awareness survey (where 65% of respondents expressed confidence in the Commission’s ability to promote equality of opportunity for all, with 64% agreeing that the Commission is respected by all sections of the community, without distinction by way of community background of those surveyed), work remains for us to do if we are to convince some sections of our society that equality can deliver for them as well. This task is one for all society, not just for the Commission. It will involve many uncomfortable conversations.

Too often we build our futures alone, looking only to the interest of our community without recourse to any consideration of how the drive for our equality plays out in building good relations in this place we call home.

We can’t change the past, how we believe we have been treated by “the other”, but what if the lens in which we viewed it was one of generos-

ity?

This would involve two elements. First, a looking back and considering how we currently locate the story of “the other” in our past; and the second is to imagine how things today might have been different if we had acted in another way, if we or our community had been more generous to “the other”.

In other words, if we took time to re-examine our past through a lens of generosity, we might just be able to see how “our equality rights” might have been enhanced by including “their equality rights” and, through this process, we might be able to re-imagine a shared future in which our future narrative has a space for “their story”.

In order to reimagine the future, we need to ensure that our future embraces the needs of the “other” and so we should seek common values, common goals, the common good.

This is a big ask: to embrace the other, equally, in generosity of spirit.

Are we up for the uncomfortable conversation?

Are we up for doing things differently?

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Death of former First Minister and ex-leader of the Democratic Unionist Party

IAN PAISLEY

DEMAGOGUE OR PEACEMAKER? Ian Richard Kyle Paisley Born 6 April 1926 Died 12 September 2014

1946 Becomes Minister in Presbyterian Church

5 Ian Paisley rose to the top of the unionist pile through his fundamentalist anti-Catholic demagoguery

AS THE NEWS of Ian Paisley’s death at the age of 88 flooded the airwaves on Friday 12 September, it was clear that the broadcasters, commentators and politicians who went in front of the cameras and into print were caught between two stools.

For the bigots, the zealots and the ‘No Surrender, 1690 brigade’, the Paisley colossus now had feet of clay.

Despite his previous standing as the undisputed leader of the DUP and by extension the kingpin of unionist politics, Paisley was, in the space of a year, out of office, usurped from the DUP leadership, and ousted as the head of the Free Presbyterian Church that he had founded.

The Frankenstein-esque monster he created had turned on him.

Do they hang their analysis of Paisley’s 50 years or so in public life on his impact on the political events from the 1960s – a place in history built on anti-Catholic zealotry, stoking bigotry and racism – or do they opt to focus on ‘Paisley the Peacemaker’?

Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness found themselves in that quandary in the immediate aftermath of the ex-leader of the Democratic Unionist Party and former First Minister.

Martin McGuinness and Ian Paisley did gel in the Office of First Minster and deputy First Minister after the DUP ended its ‘boycott’ and agreed to go into government with Sinn Féin in 2007.

Their relationship confounded almost everyone who thought the DUP/Sinn Féin combination wouldn’t work. To the chagrin of the nay-sayers they became friends.

For republicans, the imperative of advancing the peace process by applying the dictum ‘You build peace with your enemies, not your friends’ gave a rationale and context to the McGuinness/Paisley relationship.

It was in that same relationship, however, especially Paisley’s public expressions of bonhomie with McGuinness — the bźte noire of unionism — that lay the seeds of Paisley’s downfall.

Ian Paisley rose to the top of the unionist pile through his fundamentalist anti-Catholic demagoguery and his opposition to republicanism.

He forced his way into the consciousness of Northern nationalism (and a young Gerry Adams) when in 1964 he demanded that the RUC remove a Tricolour from the election headquarters of the republican election candidate Billy McMillan.

Two days of serious rioting followed as nationalists reacted to the RUC’s brutality.

In the late 1960s, Paisleyite counter-demonstrations gave the Stormont government the pretext it needed to ban civil rights marches.

In 1968 – first in Dungannon, County Tyrone, and then in Duke Street in Derry – the RUC viciously attacked and used wooden batons to beat peaceful protesters.

In between times, in 1966, a reorganised UVF killed Protestant Matilda Gould when they petrol-bombed a Catholic-owned pub next to her home near the Shankill Road.

Two Catholic men, John Patrick Scullion and Peter Ward, were shot dead by Gusty Spence’s UVF squad. One of the UVF gang, Hugh McClean,

BY PEADAR WHELAN

DIVIS STREET RIOTS

1951 Establishes his own Free Presbyterian Church 1956 Forms Ulster Protestant Action as he becomes active in unionist politics 1964 Insists the RUC remove Irish national flag from Divis Street HQ of republican election candidate Billy McMillan, leading to ‘Divis Street riots’ 1965 Throws snowballs at Taoiseach Seán Lemass’s car on visit to Belfast in protest at visit and Stormont Prime Minister Terence O’Neill’s ‘liberalism’ 1967 Civil Rights Association formed

1968 Paisleyite mobs confront civil rights demonstrators on Coalisland to Dungannon march and force ban on October 5 march in Derry 1970 Elected as MP for North Antrim 1974 Joins with UDA and UVF as part of the Ulster Workers’ Council (UWC) strike to bring down powersharing Sunningdale Executive

is alleged to have told RUC detectives investigating the killings: “I am terribly sorry about this. I am sorry I ever heard of that man Paisley or decided to follow him.” (McClean later denied making these remarks.)

What is clear is that many loyalists maintained that Paisley’s sectarian bile influenced their decisions to join unionist death squads and carry out the sectarian killings of Catholics.

Likewise, many commentators blame Paisley’s ‘blood and thunder’ rhetoric for much of loyalism’s excesses. Susan McKay, writing in The Irish Times, said: “There can be no doubt whatsoever that certain words he spoke sent men out to kill.”

Notwithstanding Paisley’s provocative influence, those loyalists who joined the UVF and UDA to ‘defend the Union’ and stalked nationalist areas of the North, killing people simply because they were Catholics, must take responsibility for their own actions.

If commentators really want to look for the real puppet-masters behind the unionist death squads, they need look no further than the British state, its security agencies and its agents.

UNIONIST SUPREMACIST WORLDVIEW Paisley’s brand of religiopolitical thought epitomises what unionist politics are all about – a moral superiority that sees them as British, as being part of a civilising nation that brought superior values of democracy, justice and fair play to the savages and backward peoples of the world.

It is that supremacist worldview that would give Paisley his platform for describing Catholics as vermin (shades of Goebbels?), from where he ridiculed the Catholic Church and infamously branded the Pope as the Antichrist.

In the 1980s it would see ‘The Doc’ or the ‘Big Man’, as he was affectionately dubbed, brandishing a sledgehammer under the DUP’s “Smash Sinn Féin” election slogan. For many, this allusion to UVF/UDA gunmen smashing their way into houses on sectarian murder missions was a deliberate taunt.

And that ongoing association with unionist killer gangs (publicly seen during the 1974 loyalist Ulster Workers’ Council strike, aimed at wrecking the 1973 Sunningdale Agreement) and Paisley’s leading roles in the paramilitary Third Force and Ulster Resistance movements were hallmarks of Paisleyism.

His firebrand religiopolitical preaching appealed to many in the Protestant community, especially the working class, and has its roots in the very DNA of the Six Counties – a state created by gerrymandering in the interests of “the Protestant people”.

Civil rights activist and human rights lawyer Michael Farrell, in his seminal work, Northern Ireland: The Orange State, writes that “as unemployment grew in the late 1950s he [Paisley] built up an organisation called Ulster Protestant Action (UPA) whose aim was to ‘to keep Protestant and loyal workers in employment in times of depression, in preference to their fellow Catholic workers’.

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5 Protesting the building of ‘republican ghetto’ Poleglass

5 Paisley leading the Ulster Workers’ Council strike

5 Ivan Foster, Peter Robinson, Ian Paisley and Jim Allister stage an ‘early morning raid’ protest at the GPO in 1984

1977 A second strike led by Paisley, this time without unionist paramilitary muscle, fails 1979 Elected to European Parliament 1981 Paisley attempts to create a Protestant loyalist volunteer militia called the (Ulster) Third Force 1985 Signing of the Anglo-Irish Agreement sees Paisley prominent in massive unionst demonstrations amidst street violence by loyalists

1986 Paisley forms Ulster Resistance, importing weapons shared with the UVF and UDA 1994 IRA cessation of military operations 1995 Hand in hand with David Trimble, takes part in triumphalist walk after Orange parade allowed through the nationalist Garvaghy Road

5 Unionists Conor Cruise O'Brien, Ian Paisley and Robert McCartney In June 1959, a mob attacked a Catholicowned fish and chip shop on the Shankill Road after Paisley addressed a 1,500-strong Ulster Protestant Action rally.

According to Farrell: “In 1961, Ulster Protestant Action was giving out leaflets at factories and in the shipyard condemning the allocation of Corporation houses to Catholics.”

Setting worker against worker in this sectarian ‘hierarchy of labour’ created the conditions for the demonisation of working-class nationalists as the struggle for civil rights came on to the streets in 1960s.

It was in the late 1950s that Paisley’s strategy to attack and undermine any unionist leader who might be willing to compromise with nationalists has its genesis.

Ulster Protestant Action took control of the Shankill Unionist Association and installed their own man, Desmond Boal, who won the Stormont by-election in June 1960.

1998 Refuses to take part in negotiations for Good Friday Agreement 2005 IRA formally orders an end to the armed campaign 2006 St Andrew’s Agreement sees DUP agree to form Executive with Sinn Féin 2007 Paisley becomes First Minister, Martin McGuinness deputy First Minister 2008 Paisley steps down as First Minister and leader of the DUP; Peter Robinson takes over

5 Ian Paisley reviews his ‘troops’ in one of many threats of unionist power down the years

5 Paisley accused Peter Robinson and Nigel Dodds of forcing him out as DUP leader and First Minister Following on from this, Paisley targeted then Stormont Prime Minster Terence O’Neill over his invite in 1965 to then Taoiseach Seán Lemass to come to Belfast.

As Paisley was fast fostering his credentials as the leader of the opposition to O’Neill’s ‘liberal agenda’, another shadowy figure was emerging in the loyalist background.

William McGrath, who knew Paisley since 1949 and wrote in Paisley’s Protestant Telegraph newspaper, was now becoming active in the ‘O’Neill Must Go’ campaign spearheaded by Paisley.

McGrath, the founder of the sinister Tara loyalist paramilitary organisation, would become synonymous with the sexual abuse of minors in the Kincora Boys’ Home, where he was housemaster.

Abusers are alleged to have included senior members of the British military, security and political establishment in the North.

(According to Chris Moore in his book about McGrath, The Kincora Scandal, McGrath attempted to justify the 1966 killings of Ward and Scullion by saying they were communists.)

Terence O’Neill eventually resigned only for Paisley to attack his successor, James Chichester-Clark.

LEADER OF UNIONISM As the conflict in the North intensified so did Paisley’s drive to get to the top rung of the unionist ladder.

By coupling his fundamentalist politics and Old Testament religion through his Free Presbyterian Church, founded in 1951, he saw off every leader of the unionist party.

In 1971, he established his own party, the Democratic Unionist Party, with Desmond Boal and other members of the Protestant Unionist Party.

Down the decades, the DUP battled with the established Ulster Unionist Party and eventually overtook its rival.

When the DUP trumped the Ulster Unionist Party in the 2005 Westminster general election, UUP leader David Trimble resigned. Paisley characterised Trimble’s party during the election as “roll-over unionists”.

In 2008, a year after he became First Minister of the North’s Executive with Martin McGuinness as deputy First Minister, Paisley stood down, handing over the post and that of DUP leader to Peter Robinson. Paisley accused his once loyal lieutenant Robinson and DUP MP Nigel Dodds of forcing him out.

That Paisley ended up embittered at his treatment by his own people, in his party and his church, for being too friendly with Martin McGuinness is ironic.

The negative, bigoted ideology that he exploited to get to the top ended his political and church life.

Ian Paisley was a demagogue AND he was a peacemaker – was he also an egotist willing to exploit anyone or anything to get where he wanted?

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EU hears survivors’ tales of horror from Ireland’s ‘mother and baby homes’

BY MARK MOLONEY IN BRUSSELS THERE were emotional scenes in the European Parliament when survivors of Ireland’s ‘mother and baby homes’ were hosted in Brussels by Sinn Féin to give first-hand accounts of the trauma they went through and have lived with for decades since.

Survivors had the chance to tell their harrowing ordeals to a hearing and to meet with MEPs, representatives of the European Commission and Amnesty International in the hope that the European Union will help them in pressuring the Irish Government to treating their demands for justice as a priority.

The group had also hoped to discuss the issue with a spokesperson for the Irish Government Permanent Representative to the EU but, incredibly, they refused to meet them.

A furious Niall Meehan of the Bethany Home Survivors group said the Irish Permanent Representative was “abdicating their responsibility by not being here. It’s their job in the EU to represent the interests of Irish citizens and the Irish state.”

Personal stories told to the hearing in September outlined illegal adoption practices including forced separation of mothers from children, vaccine trials on children without consent, and forced labour in terrible conditions.

Joan McDermott, from Cork, was admitted to Bessborough House in 1967 when she became pregnant.

“The nuns there treated us like you wouldn’t treat a dog,” she says. “I never agreed to put my son up for adoption, I was never informed about it or given a choice. At seven-and-ahalf-weeks my son was taken from me. When I was discharged I was sent to Britain and told never to come back.”

A qualified nurse and social worker, Joan later married and had two children. When they were old enough she told them about their older brother. In 2000, she returned to Ireland. Speaking to An Phoblacht on her way to a meeting with Amnesty International at the European Parliament, Joan says the redress board “shut every door in my face”. She makes a special mention of Sinn Féin TD Sandra McLellan for her help in Joan’s struggle to get access to her files. Joan’s persistence in pursuing information and some good luck (her file fell from a folder when they were being moved and the social worker recognised her name) meant that she finally met her son last May. She had initially been told it would be eight years before she got access to her file. She was also led to believe her son was sent to America, like other children who were sold for thousands of dollars on an “adoption market”.

He hadn’t. He was living in the Irish midlands.

“There are other women who have no right or access to their records. Those women will

die and their children will likely never know their parents – that has to change,” she tells me.

Rita Tisdall worked and lived at a mother and baby home in Temple Hill, Blackrock, Dublin, in 1972, when she was 15. She was so appalled at how babies were treated there that she fled the country. She now lives in Denmark.

“We were not allowed to have physical contact with the babies,” she says, explaining the procedure for feeding babies. “They were between a few days old and two years. When they cried we weren’t allowed to rock their

5 Edel Byrne and her sister Ena fight back the tears as they tell their stories

Personal stories told to the hearing outlined illegal adoption practices including forced separation of mothers from children, vaccine trials on children without consent, and forced labour in terrible conditions beds. When they’d been at the baby home for about a month they stopped crying.”

During the night she says there was one girl assigned to looking after about 15 children.

“One thing that will always stick with me is an incident at night. A girl had swung one of the babies around and dislocated or broke the baby’s arm. I don’t know what happened to that baby; the baby disappeared.”

She also recalls seeing babies with knuckle marks on their face and other bruises on them.

“When I was 17 I became pregnant myself. I

5 Rita Tisdall fled Ireland while Joan McDermott's son was taken from her and put up for adoption wasn’t married so I left Ireland. The reason was because I had experienced what happens at Temple Hill so at least I could save my baby from that.”

Marguerite Zumo tells the hearing how her mother in Seán Ross Abbey in Tipperary was forced to give birth to her in a toilet “so she wouldn’t soil the sheets and to save on laundry costs”.

Her mother was sent away from Seán Ross

one month after she was born. It’s claimed Marguerite was then adopted but she was about six months old. Where she was for those other five months is a mystery. She was told she may have been kept in a ‘holding centre’: “I met my mother briefly, two years ago, in a church in County Meath, for 20 minutes. She actually went into hospital shortly afterwards and died five months later. So I never got

‘I never agreed to put my son up for adoption. My son was taken from me.

When I was discharged I was sent to Britain and told never to come back’ JOAN McDERMOTT

5 Survivors put pressure on Fine Gael MEPs such as Brian Hayes, who attended the hearing for a short time, to make adoption rights a priority

another chance to meet her. In that 20 minutes she told me how hard it was for her.”

Holding up a letter from the Catholic Rescue and Protection Agency, she says: “I have a vaccine mark on my back, on my left hip, which this piece of paper says is BCG [tuberculosis vaccine].”

“They said it was given in my back to preserve the beauty of my arm. My doctor doesn’t know what it is but it is certainly not BCG. It was given right beside my sciatic nerve. I

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5 Michelle Gildernew MP, Dr Seán Lucey and Susan Lohan at the hearing

5 Sinn Féin MEPs with the delegation at the European Parliament

5 The delegation met with MEPs, representatives of the European Commission and Amnesty International

5 Martina Anderson MEP hosted the delegation in Brussels

had to wear special shoes growing up from three until at least my First Communion.”

She wonders whether this injection had anything to do with her need to wear specialised footwear.

“I want my medical records to know what exactly I was injected with. I was told I would have to go on a waiting list. That was two months ago and they haven’t even bothered to send me the form. I’m now 53 years of age and they’re still treating me like a non-person.”

The problem with obtaining information on adoptions is exacerbated by the Border. Often children from the South were adopted by families in the North or vice-versa.

Andrew Yates was adopted from Westbank

report in the USA revealed to Edel that her brother Desmond had died tragically. Her voice cracks and she and her sister Ena, who sits beside her, try to hold back the tears as they recall how they met for the first time at a hotel in Monaghan. They grew up an hour apart from each other: “We look like sisters but we never played together, we never shared birthdays, we were not at one another’s weddings, she had never seen my children. There were deliberate barriers put in place to prevent us reuniting.”

By the time the three of them were finally together, it was during their first visit to the grave of their brother.

“Adopted people don’t want compassion.

This story of separating siblings seems to be endemic in both Catholic and Protestant homes.

Edel Byrne of the Adoption Rights Alliance, adopted from Bessborough House, only found out last year at the age of 42 that she had a brother and sister. Within minutes of being given their names she had located them. All three siblings had been searching for each other without success and had registered with the Adoption Preference Contact Register.

They should have been put in contact with each other when they appeared on the register as they are all adults who had consented to being contacted by their siblings.

Unfortunately, a Los Angeles Times news

‘I want my medical records to know what exactly I was injected with’ MARGUERITE ZUMO orphanage to a couple in the North after they had come to the conclusion that he was being neglected. His adoptive father first met him when he spotted him walking along a road barefoot and looking very malnourished. At the time, Andrew was one of a number of Protestant children boarded out to Northern farmers as child workers. Westbank orphanage was paid £150 for each of these child labourers. When Andrew was adopted he didn’t know that he had a brother in the same orphanage. Both of their names had been changed to conceal the fact they were siblings.

5 The delegation wants the EU to put pressure on the Irish Government

We want truth, knowledge and our information. Without our histories we are trapped in strangers’ bodies.”

Susan Lohan of Adoption Rights Alliance says the siblings issue lays bare the lie that all

Andrew didn’t know that he had a brother in the same orphanage. Both of their names had been changed to conceal the fact they were siblings the human rights abuses pertaining to adoption in Ireland are a historical matter. She also accuses the Irish Government of leading adopted people who are searching for their relatives on a “merry dance”.

The broad feeling from those at the conference is a frustration that anybody should have to go to Europe to put pressure on the Irish Government to do the right thing.

Martina Anderson MEP accuses the Government of trying to sweep this shameful part of Ireland’s history under the carpet: “As with every scandal in Ireland, this one began with a denial, then a delay, then a lie, followed by a cover-up and eventually, if forced, the Irish Government will throw some pennies from the table at it in the hope that it will go away again.”

Martina pledged to continue working on behalf of survivors and that the issue will not go away until they get the justice they deserve.

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A nationality which may embrace Protestant, Catholic and Dissenter – Milesian and Cromwellian – the Irishman of a hundred generations, and the stranger who is within our gates

MÍCHEÁL Mac DONNCHA

Thomas Davis – 200th anniversary of his birth THOMAS DAVIS was one of the most significant Irish nationalists of the 19th century. His writings helped to shape Irish nationalism itself and they exercised a key influence on the cultural and political revival of the early 20th century.

Born in Mallow, County Cork, in 1814, Davis’s family background was Church of Ireland Protestant and his father was a surgeon in the British Army. When Davis was four years old, his father died and the family moved to Baggot Street, Dublin.

It was there that he lived the remaining 23 years of his life.

Educated in Morgan’s School, Davis said later he “learned to know, and knowing, to love my countrymen”. He also spent much time with relatives in Tipperary, a county that inspired his

Thomas Davis

Davis’s family background was Church of Ireland Protestant and his father was a surgeon in the British Army songs and informed his political views.

Davis began as a supporter of the British Liberal Party but in Trinity College, where he studied arts and law, his Irish nationalism developed.

He entered Trinity in 1831 on the same day as a young Presbyterian from Newry, John Mitchel, who was also to become a hugely influential Irish nationalist.

In 1840, Davis gave an address to the Trinity College Historical Society in which he urged the privileged, English-oriented students of what was then the only university in Ireland to study the history and literature of Ireland. His point was summed up in his phrase “Gentlemen, you have a country.” While this fell on many deaf ears it was heard by some who would go on to play leading roles in the Young Ireland movement.

In 1841, Davis joined the Repeal Association led by Daniel O’Connell, campaigning for Repeal of the Union with Britain and legislative independence for Ireland. While he recognised

O’Connell as the leader of the Irish people, Davis sought a deeper form of national revival, cultural and economic as well as political. Two other likeminded journalists were John Blake Dillon and Charles Gavan Duffy.

In the spring of 1842, Davis, Dillon and Duffy agreed to establish a weekly paper to champion the nationalist cause. They made their decision after a walk in the Phoenix Park, described

by Duffy: “Sitting under a noble elm in the park, facing Kilmainham, we debated the project, and agreed on the general plan.”

The first issue of The Nation newspaper appeared on 15 October 1842. Twelve thousand copies were sold on the first day.

Sales increased in the months ahead as the paper became the main organ of the Repeal movement and its rousing prose and verse stirred nationalist feeling throughout Ireland.

Davis set out the nonsectarian basis of the The Nation in its “Prospectus”: “A nationality which may embrace Protestant, Catholic and Dissenter – Milesian and Cromwellian – the Irishman of a hundred generations, and the stranger who is within our gates. Not a nationality which would prelude civil war but which would establish internal union and external independence; a nationality which would be recognised by the

5 Thomas Davis, Charles Gavan Duffy and John Blake Dillon discuss founding 'The Nation' newspaper under a tree in the Phoenix Park, Dublin

world, and sanctified by wisdom, virtue and prudence.”

John Mitchel later (in The Last Conquest of Ireland) credited Davis with winning much Protestant support for the cause: “Whatever was done, throughout the whole movement, to win Protestant support, was the work of Davis. His genius, his perfect unselfishness, his accomplishments, his cordial manner, his high and chivalrous character, and the dash and impetus of his writings, soon brought around him a gifted circle of young Irishmen of all religions and none, who afterwards received the nickname ‘Young Ireland’.”

While Davis and Young Ireland supported O’Connell they were independent of him. They were suspicious of his relationship with the British political parties, his focus on Westminster and his overblown rheto-

Charles Gavan Duffy

emembering R

A people without a language of its own is only half a nation

ric. When O’Connell proposed the convening of a ‘Council of 300’ to act as a kind of Irish parliament, along the lines followed later by Sinn Féin, the Young Irelanders enthusiastically supported the call but were bitterly disappointed when O’Connell backed down. This was even more the case in 1843 when ‘The Liberator’ caved in and cancelled what was to be the largest of his ‘monster meetings’ at Clontarf after the British Government banned it.

Through all this period Davis wrote prolifically for The Nation. He urged the development of all aspects of Irish life and a spirit of self-reliance which, again, prefigured Sinn Féin. Unlike O’Connell, who urged the Irish people to drop the Irish language, Davis championed it: “To impose another language on such a people is to send their history adrift among the accidents of translation – ’tis to tear their identity from all places . . . A people without a language of its own is only half a nation. A nation should guard its language more than its territories – ’tis a surer barrier, and more important frontier, than fortress or river . . . To lose your native tongue, and to learn that of an alien, is the worst badge of conquest – it is the chain on the soul.”

Davis was acutely aware of the economic ruin that resulted from the conquest of Ireland by England and

the

Past John Blake Dillon

the mass poverty caused by the rackrenting landlord system. He pointed to the Scandinavian system of ownership of land by the people in their own farms and called for the abolition of landlordism: “Those whom the people trust must cease to trifle with romantic schemes, and apply themselves, body and spirit, to the work of emancipating the peasantry. While the people remain feudal serfs they will be trampled beggars.

Free the peasantry from the aristocracy.

All else is vanity and vexation of spirit.”

Davis did not live to the see the most catastrophic result of the landlordism he condemned – the Great Hunger which struck Ireland within months of his death. He died on 15 September 1845, just before his 31st birthday. The best remembered of his writings are his songs such as A Nation Once Again, The West’s Asleep and Tone’s Grave (In Bodenstown Churchyard). However, all his writings deserve to be remembered.

• Thomas Davis was born on 14 October 1814, 200 years ago this month.

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EOIN Ó MURCHÚ

Noonan sásta leis féin ach seachain an cur i gcéill Labour Government

5 Labour Shadow Secretary of State Ivan Lewis, Guardian writer and commentator Seamus Milne, and Sinn Féin’s Michelle Gildernew MP and Senator Kathryn Reilly

will hold Finucane inquiry

BY PEADAR WHELAN IF the British Labour Party is returned to power at next year’s Westminster general election it will honour the pledge by former Prime Minister Tony Blair to hold an inquiry into the 1989 killing of human rights lawyer Pat Finucane, Shadow Secretary of State for the North, Ivan Lewis MP, has promised.

Tory Prime Minister David Cameron has reneged on a British Government commitment under Tony Blair in 2001.

Speaking on the panel at a packed Sinn Féin fringe meeting at the British Labour Party conference in Manchester on Sunday 21 September, Ivan Lewis was pressed by Fermanagh/South Tyrone MP Michelle Gildernew on the British Government’s pledge under Tony Blair at the Weston Park talks in 2001.

Ivan Lewis said that this was a “non-negotiable commitment” and would be honoured in the event of a Labour victory next year.

Belfast solicitor Pat Finucane was shot dead by an Ulster Defence Association death squad in February 1989.

Michael Noonan

BHÍ an tAire Airgeadais, Michael Noonan, an tsásta leis fein nuair a d’éirigh leis tacaíocht a fháil ó airí airgeadais limistéir an Euro dá phlean le cuid den iasacht tarrthála ón IMF a íoc ar ais tré airgead a fháil ar iasacht ar na margaí ar rátaí níos fabharaí.

Ach ba spéisiuil gur luaidh sé, le cur i bhféidhm orainn gur plean dairíre a bhí ann, go bhfuil dáta curtha isteach i ndialann pharlaimint na Gearmáine le plé a dhéanmh faoin bplean.

Spéisiúil, toisc nach bhfuil aon dáta socraithe go bpléifeadh Dáil Éireann an scéal céanna.

Léiriú eile atá ann, ar ndóigh, go bhfuil rialtas is institiúidí na Gearmáine i gceannas orainne in Éirinn, díreach mar a bhí na Sasanaigh blianta ó shoin.

Seo toradh de muid a bheith páirteach san Aontas Eorpach agus, níos bunúsaigh, sa gcoras Euro.

Tá difir mhor cinnte idir ráiteasaí deasa ó lucht rialaithe na hEorpa agus gníomhú dá réir: is cuimhin linn an “gamechanger” a d’fhógair Enda Kenny is Éamon Gilmore cúpla bliain ó shoin ach a d’fhág an chluiche gan athrú ina dhiaidh.

Rud ar bith a laghdódh an t-ualach aisíoctha atá orainn, tá fáilte le cur roimhe. Ach ná déantar dearmad nach cóir go mbeadh aon chuid den ualach seo orainn ar an gcéad dul síos, mar ní linn na fiacha seo de cheart.

Agus is cóir a thabhairt faoi ndear nach bhfuil Banc Cheannas na hEorpa chómh tógtha céanna le plean Noonan, agus Mario Draghi ag tabhairt foláireamh go bhfuil sé fós

Both the dead man’s family and Sinn Féin believed that the British state had a hand in the assassination and called for an international, independent inquiry.

When David Cameron came to power at the head of a Conservative/Liberal Democrat coalition in 2010, despite initially sticking to the Weston Park commitments, the Tory leader reneged on an inquiry.

Ivan Lewis said that this was a ‘non-negotiable commitment’ and would be honoured in the event of a Labour victory next year Instead he informed the Finucane family during a meeting in Downing Street in October 2011 that he instructed senior QC Sir Desmond de Silva to review the papers in the case.

The family rejected this and described de Silva’s findings, published in December 2012, as a “whitewash”.

Mario Draghi ag fanacht ar scéim na hÉireann le bannaí a chruthú (ar airgead eile ar iasacht) mar íocaíocht dona bondholders.

Céard tá i gceist mar sin i ndea-chaint Noonan?

Cur i gcéill, mo lean, mar is cuid den straitéis rialtais a rá linn go bhfuil deire ag teacht le déine (ach ní anois go díreach ach go luath) mar go bhfuil fás in ann anois don gheilleagar.

Idir an dá linn, tá táillí uisce ar an mbealach, tá na muirir tigh le n-íoc, tá tuilleadh giorraithe le bheith sna seirbhísí sláinte, leapacha breise dhá ndúnadh agus obráideachaí dhá gcur ar ceal.

Agus maidir le fostaíocht bhreise sa ngeilleagar, céard is fiú sin má tá na tuarastail íslithe chómh mór sin agus brabúis glanta le dul as smacht?

5 Michelle Gildernew MP is interviewed by the BBC’s Stephen Walker at the British Labour Party conference

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COLOMBIAN TRADE UNIONIST AND HUMAN RIGHTS DEFENDER MARTHA DIAZ

They do things differently there

BY PEADAR WHELAN “THE PAST is a foreign country, they do things differently there,” is the opening line of L. P. Hartley’s novel The Go-Between.

The sentence kept coming back to me as I thought about the interview I’d carried out with Colombian trade unionist and human rights activist Martha Diaz.

Martha was in Belfast as a guest of the Irish Congress of Trades Unions to highlight the imprisonment of trade union leader Huber Ballesteros, who was arrested in August 2013. He has actively defended the rights of Colombia’s peasant farmers and promoted increased equality in the South American state. At the time of his arrest he was involved in organising strikes and protest action across the country. His arrest is a clear and unashamed attempt by Colombian authorities to punish him for his activism in defence of workers, peasant farmers and for social justice. He is being held in la Picota Prison in Bogotá.

Martha Diaz, leader of a Colombian public sector union, took time out to meet senior Sinn

Martha lives her life under armed guard and travels in armoured vehicles. In 2010, her daughter was kidnapped and threatened

Féin politicians Jennifer McCann MLA and Paul Maskey MP as well as talk to An Phoblacht.

As she recounted how her activism has lead to her living a life under the constant threat of assassination from right-wing death squads, it occurred to me that not only is the past a foreign country but the present is also dismissed as a foreign country where they do things differently.

Martha lives her life under armed guard and travels in armoured vehicles. In 2010, her daughter was kidnapped and threatened.

She became a trade union representative in her home town of Santander. She exposed corruption in the local government system and became a target of the right-wing paramilitary groups linked to the Colombian Government and right-wing oligarchy The Western mainstream media, whose terms of reference are set by their governments and defined by their ‘national interests’, present conflicts in countries such as Colombia as struggles between democratic forces and those opposing democracy.

These conflicts are about democracy.

The West, however, happens to be on the side of those powerful elites who operate death

5 The Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) have been fighting a war with the Colombian Government since 1964 squads, deny workers and peasants the right to a living wage, and create poverty as they use natural resources in their own selfish interests.

The United States has militarily and politically supported dictatorships in Latin America and South America in the guise of a ‘war against communism’ or now the ‘war on drugs’.

People such as Martha Diaz, the real democrats, are threatened when they stand up for the rights of the people and social justice; the socalled Western democracies ignore the reality.

Martha explained to An Phoblacht how the efforts being made by those in civil society, under the banner of “The Patriotic March”, are pushing the government of President Juan Manuel Santos to engage fully in a peace process that will see an end to armed conflict in the country.

The present peace talks involving the Santos government and the left-wing rebel FARC (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia) opened in Havana, Cuba in 2012.

“Civil society wants the peace process to succeed,” Martha says, “but the government wants to break it.

“The present government, led by President Santos, say they want the peace process to succeed and are willing to talk to the FARC guerrillas. This move is presented as positive and a split from the extreme right represented by former President Alvaro Uribe. Santos has been more intelligent than Uribe in terms of projecting an international image but he has only changed the style in which things are done.”

The Colombian activist emphasises that human rights violations continue on a daily basis.

“More than 50 Patriotic March activists have

More than 52 Patriotic March activists have been killed in the past two years

5 Paul Maskey MP, Martha Diaz and Jennifer McCann MLA

been killed in the past two years.

“So the reality on the ground hasn’t changed much.”

The objectives of the Patriotic March are for social justice as well as political and economic reform, Martha says, “but still our demands are still being met by repression”.

US Professor James Petras (Binghamton University, New York) says: “The Santos regime is playing a clever complex political game: appearing to be flexible in peace negotiations with the FARC leaders in

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‘Civil society wants the peace process to succeed but the government wants to break it’ Havana while continuing repression at home against popular civil society movements who seek reforms in their communities and maintaining a full military offensive against the guerrillas in the field.”

In recent years, Sinn Féin elected representatives have visited Colombia as the party seeks to promote the peace process there and support the Patriotic March’s demands for a social jus-

tice. MPs Paul Maskey and Conor Murphy have both visited Colombia and have met with people representing all sides of the conflict.

The interest shown by the party took on a new dimension when, in March of this year, Martin McGuinness flew to Bogotá.

The Sinn Féin figure and joint First Minister was invited by Santos in order to support the current peace process between the Colombian

Government and the FARC but the North’s leading statesman met with all strands of opinion.

The London-based Justice For Colombia solidarity group facilitated meetings for McGuinness with opposition leaders and human rights organisations. They were keen to learn about the Good Friday Agreement process and to also share their concerns about the lack of a ceasefire and ongoing human rights abuses against opposition and civil society activists.

“It was important that Martin McGuinness met with opposition parties, trades unionists, representatives of human rights organisations and others from civil society to hear directly from them,” Martha Diaz says.

She insists it was important for him to hear the demands of these groups who are asking for a bilateral ceasefire involving the Colombian Army and FARC as previous unilateral initiatives from the guerrillas were met with military attacks.

“Also, international support is crucial to efforts to protect civil society and safeguarding leftwing politicians who are being persecuted for standing up for the rights of the people”.

Underpinning the political, social and economic injustices of Colombian society is the powerful oligarchy.

“The majority of Colombian land is owned by 3% of the population, the powerful oligarchs.

They have no regard for the indigenous peoples and so we have five million people displaced internally as a result of their land policies.

“They care little for the people or the environment.”

According to United Nations research, Colombia has the third-highest level of inequality in the world.

When he visited Colombia earlier this year, Sinn Féin MP Conor Murphy witnessed at firsthand the oppression suffered by the Colombian peasants when he travelled to Puerto VegaTeteye.

Said Conor: “This area has seen strike action by peasants and oil workers in recent years over the Government policies of fumigation of crops and the displacement of families to facilitate oil exploration.

“There have also been mobilisations against the environmental damage being inflicted on the area and for better pay and conditions for the oil workers. The response of the military, confirmed by human rights reports, has been to murder peasant leaders, including four in May this year.

MPs Paul Maskey and Conor Murphy have both visited Colombia and have met with people representing all sides of the conflict; in March of this year, Martin McGuinness flew to Bogotá “I heard testimony from their families in relation to those and other killings. They all told a similar story of army units surrounding their homes, removing all mobile phones from family members, and then sons or fathers being taken away and later found murdered.”

According to Martha Diaz, 36 people were shot and wounded during a recent military incursion mounted in the area to break the mobilisations against the oil companies.

If this is the democracy the West avows, Martha Diaz’s Colombia is indeed another country where they do things differently.

The Patriotic March THE formation of the Patriotic March social and political movement was declared after a process lasting over two years in which civil society groups from across Colombia came together to analyse the most pertinent issues affecting their communities.

In the final weeks of April 2012, the predominantly grassroots-led initiative announced its formation as a political platform and mobilised an 80,000-strong rally in the streets of the Colombian capital, Bogotá.

The roots of the movement can be traced back to July 2010 when, in the midst of official celebrations of Colombia’s bicentenary, a series of rural

and agricultural organisations met to reflect on the actual state of their Colombia.

They concluded that they enjoyed neither economic nor political independence, and that what was needed was a ‘second and definitive’ independence.

A series of open discussions was organised which saw people from some of the poorest and most conflict-affected regions of the country come to Bogotá to express their views on a range of themes. These included national sovereignty, social and economic rights, employment, agrarian issues, the armed conflict, and the building of peace with social justice.

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BY EOIN Ó MURCHÚ IRISH PEOPLE, particular those of a nationalist persuasion (that is the majority of us), tend naturally to look favourably on the struggles of other small nations for independence, be it Scotland, Catalonia or wherever.

And when the Ukrainian crisis burst upon the scene it was a natural response to assume that the anti-Russian forces in that country were the same as ourselves in our fight against British rule and colonial domination.

But things aren’t so simple, and the patterns of our history do not sit easily at all in Ukraine.

First of all, all the East Slavic peoples (Russians, Ukrainians, Belarussians) are closely related linguistically, culturally and historically. Indeed, Russian civilisation was born in what is now Ukraine, with Kiev Rus the first Russian state.

Mongol invasions in the 13th century (at that period some 20,000 people were taken into slavery annually) forced the Russians north into the forest lands near Moscow, Nizhny Novgorod and other city states.

It was only with the weakening of Mongol power that Russians (or East Slavic-speaking people) began

Ukraine itself never was an independent state until 1991 to infiltrate back into the border country, which is the most usually accepted meaning of Ukraine.

These areas, to the east and south of modern Ukraine, were called New Russia at that period.

Further west, other East Slavic speakers lived under Polish and then Austro-Hungarian rule.

Indeed, modern western Ukraine (Galicia) was never part of the Tsarist Russian empire, and their language is more distinct from standard Russian than the language spoken in the east.

And Ukraine itself never was an independent state until 1991.

Equally, it is clear from current politics that there are at least two Ukraines.

In the south and east, are people who feel themselves closely aligned with Russians and whose language is either standard Russian or a Ukrainised version of it quite intelligible to Russians. These people voted consistently for people like the deposed President Yanukovich and the pro-Russian Party of the Regions.

In the west, the language is more distinctly different, and the people have tended to look westward. In fact, Galicia, which only became part of the Soviet Union with the collapse of Poland after the Nazi invasion, collaborated widely with the Nazis when they invaded the

WHAT IS REALLY GOING ON IN UKRAINE?

USSR itself. And even today western Ukraine openly commemorates and glorifies the Ukrainian SS units that the Nazis used to slaughter Jews in Ukraine.

In between, there is Kiev, which has cultural affinities to both areas.

Ukraine can only survive as a state if both communities feel secure within it, but the fascist gangs who were so prominent in the overthrow of Yanukovich do not inspire any confidence in the east.

That problem can only be resolved by dialogue, not by the war which the Western-supported government has unleashed.

But the bigger context is the role of the United States in provoking a conflict with Russia just as that country is building closer economic relationships, especially with Germany.

Everyone knew that Russia would not accept NATO establishing itself right on its Ukrainian border, and the people of that border area in Ukraine have made it clear that they don’t accept it either.

But the US pushed this policy, not just to discommode the Russians but to create problems for any Russo-German rapprochement.

So, while the new Ukrainian President Poroshenko makes tenta-

It’s clear from current politics that there are at least two Ukraines tive moves to find a peaceful resolution of the problems, US-aligned politicians like Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk work to fan the flames of conflict and division.

Given this complex situation, where the easterners’ rights and security are very much under threat, it is a serious mistake to equate the situation in Ukraine with our own struggle for freedom.

And it is equally a mistake not to see that the broader picture is one where the United States is fighting to preserve the international role of the dollar as the currency of global exchange and to keep Europe dependent on the US. What passes for an Irish Government just dutifully toes the line, but already we can see that the retaliatory sanctions the Russians are introducing will have a very negative impact on us while Germany is given the space to further consider its options.

Leaving aside the moral desirability of reaching a non-violent conclusion (one perhaps, as the Russians propose, that will see a unified but federal Ukrainian state, trading both west and east and non-aligned with NATO), it is not in Ireland’s interests or the interests of democracy in Europe that our continent should be returned to Cold War tensions with their divisiveness and potential for war.

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Fund for laid-off workers to get revamp

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October / Deireadh Fómhair 2014 25

Liadh Ní Riada’s report, adopted by the European Parliament, sets out concrete proposals to improve the European Globalisation Adjustment Fund.

REACTING to a European Parliament’s overwhelming vote to back her proposed changes to the European Globalisation Adjustment Fund (EGF), Irish GUE/NGL MEP Liadh Ní Riada said she is seeking “a better system for helping those recently laid off to access employment, education, and retraining schemes across Europe”.

The EGF was set up in 2006 to support workers made redundant as a result of trade liberalisation.

Liadh Ní Riada’s report sets out concrete proposals to improve the fund.

“This is a step in the right direction as we’ve secured support for key provisions such as better co-ordination and expertise-sharing and enabling regions to apply directly for funding without having to depend on central Governments. However, we generally need to

This is funded by the European United Left/ Nordic Green Left (GUE/NGL)

Aontas Clé na hEorpa/Na Glasaigh Chlé Nordacha Crúpa Paliminta – Parlaimimt na h Eorpa

Another Europe is possible Liadh Ní Riada see increased and sustained investment in key areas such as education, training and research.”

Liadh Ní Riada particularly welcomed MEP backing for broadening the eligibility criteria for EGF assistance to include the self-employed and those under 25, for reducing the eligibility

GUE/NGL makes history with more women than men MEPs

The GUE/NGL now has 27 female and 25 male group members THE European United Left/Nordic Green Left has made European Parliamentary history with more women than men in its political group.

Already the election results in May not only increased the group’s representation in Parliament by 50% but it also gave it a historic 50/50 female/male representation.

After the decision by former Podemos MEP Carlos Jiménez Villarejo to step down and his replacement by Tania González Peñas, the number of GUE/NGL women MEPs rose to 27, with 25 men.

GUE/NGL President Gabi Zimmer said: “Gender equality is a key priority for the Left and our group will intensify its fight for even greater gender equality and improved women’s rights across Europe.”

The Peadar McElvanna & Peter Corrigan Sinn Féin cumainn, Armagh invite you to:

The

Peter Corrigan COMMEMORATIVE LECTURE

threshold of affected workers from 500 to 200 to allow workers laid off from smaller firms to access supports, and for a return to the previous level of financing of ¤500million.

MEPs will now take this position and enter talks with the member states on the reform of the EGF.

Solidarity with Palestinian MP Khalida Jarrar

GUE/NGL MEPs have shown their solidarity with Khalida Jarrar, a Palestinian parliamentarian who was issued with an Israeli expulsion order to leave her home in Palestinian-controlled Ramallah. The Israeli authorities told her she has to move to Jericho.

This is the first time the Israeli authorities have tried to deport someone from one part of a Palestinian-controlled area to another.

Khalida refused and is carrying out an ongoing protest at the Palestinian Legislative Council headquarters, where she is currently residing.

GUE/NGL MEPs met Khalida during their fact-finding visit to Palestine and Israel in September.

You can support Khalida Jarrar on Facebook:

Solidarity with Khalida

LIADH NÍ RIADA

LYNN BOYLAN

MATT MARTINA CARTHY ANDERSON are MEPs and members of the GUE/NGL Group in the European Parliament

‘A strategy for Irish freedom’ Thursday 23rd October 2014 7.30pm Harps Social Club, Armagh

GUEST SPEAKER:

MITCHEL McLAUGHLIN

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ROBERT ALLEN REPORTS FROM INIS OÍRR IN THE ARAN ISLANDS

www.anphoblacht.com

ISLAND

HERE’S WIND on the muchneeded rain.

Outside, the hollow breeze flaps like sheets to a bodhrán beat.

Inside, it is colder than it has been all weekend.

The abrupt change in the weather, from Provenćal warm to Galway chill, portends the end of summer, the gradual winding down of the long season, the return to school, the beginnings of uncertainty.

For now, the future is another place.

On Inis Oírr, the easterly Aran island, place and time remain constant.

The curach race has finally been run, two weeks later than planned, and the lads in their waking slumbers relive the crucial moments on the sun-splashed surf. The two nights of film premieres at Áras Éanna, the island’s art centre, have energised those with radical sensibilities, and plans of future action are being discussed.

The staff at Ruairí’s pub are oblivious to bigger things, knowing that in a couple of hours they will be drenching each other in buckets of ice and water for appropriate causes.

And down at the pier, the pony-trap drivers contemplate another day in the saddle, wondering whether the day-trippers who will arrive on the ferries from Doolin and Rossaveal will want a ride up past the beach, playground and campsite to the graveyard, the old fort and ring walls, and the sweep of the island round to the shipwreck, back along the warm tarmac between narrow fields surrounded by limestone walls, and timeless memory!

Island life is a cross-cultural diverse experience, for islanders, tourists, visitors and wanderers. Almost everyone finds what they expect to find. Simona from Kaunas finds Sandy from Finora, Maureen from Connemara finds Margaretta from Galway, Bríd from Inis Oírr finds Ben from In Between — and they revel in each other’s distinctiveness, finding solace in shared similarities, acutely aware of the relationships of knowledge and power that connect them.

Every moment of the day brings new and renewed connections, especially among those who are sensitive to the ever-changing challenges facing native speakers, who are increasingly bilingual with the vernaculars of the two languages.

5 The stone walls of Inis Oírr looking towards the coast of County Clare On Inis Oírr, English and Irish do not exclude each other. They intersect. “Which language do you think in?” Bríd asks Ben. The answer is at first vague, then obvious.

The process of thinking continues with communication, when the dominant language takes over. It is how language is used that matters, they agree.

Bríd, who teaches the Irish language through Feicim, and Caomhán, the outgoing headmaster of the island’s secondary school, worry about the language. “It is being threatened here,” Bríd says.

“When a third of the population speak a dominant language, the native language is gone within a few years,” Caomhán says.

No one who really cares wants Inis Oírr to be another vanishing Gaeltacht.

5 Ruairí at his rain water tank

EADAR, a crewman on the Rossaveal ferry, is as worldly-wise as anyone on Inis Oírr. He has seen the gradual changes throughout his lifetime, the drystone wall building, field making and farming in the 1930s, the fishing boom in the 1940s, the migrations to America and England in the 1950s, the Irish language work that boosted incomes in the 1960s, modernity in the 1970s, the ferries from Doolin and Rossaveal in the 1980s . . .

“The infrastructure grew and grew and grew. Now you’d have to say tourism is the only employment. Fishing is only a pastime; one or two lads might make money from the lobsters. There’s no money in cattle.

“I get annoyed the way the island is run,” he says belligerently.

“The way I look at it, the island has built itself up for tourism, whether we like it or not.

I don’t like mass tourism at all. It has been proved to be bad for every area it is in. It brings out the worst in human nature; there is too much money and greed.

“You’d like to ask why they come here,” he says ironically of the day-trippers, wondering what would happen if the quality of the beach was impaired and Sandy, the bottle-nosed dolphin, wasn’t there to attract them.

He believes that cultural tourism based on sustainable activity would be more suited than mass tourism to the needs of every single person on the island.

“A big problem here, the heather will take over the fields,” he says obliquely, not alone in believing that something must be done about the land that was made with sand and seaweed, sweat and tears, and an eye into the future.

ULTI-TASKING is normal on Inis Oírr. Paddy manages the co-op and occasionally skippers a ferry.

Without the tourists he insists he would be out of a job. A native of Clare and an islander for over 40 years, he feels privileged to be part of Inis Oírr society.

5 Paddy Crowe manages the co-op

“I tell tourists this is the most beautiful island. I think it is paradise. There is an aura about Inis Oírr; people you meet, they find it

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5 It is estimated that 180,000 people visit Inis Oírr every year

5 Simona from Kaunas meets Sandy the dolphin, a resident of the seas around Inis Oírr magical,” he says, understanding their empathy with its uniqueness.

“I remember the first day I stood on the beach and I felt the silence. People do feel at peace when they come here. You can get away and think. For such a small place it gives people space.”

Liam, who runs O’Brien Line with his father Bill out of Doolin Pier, and Joe, who runs the rival Doolin2Aran Ferries, estimate that around 180,000 visit Inis Oírr every year.

Irish tourists stay an average two weeks, taking houses, and come for weekends, usually for events in Áras Éanna. The day-trippers and over-nighters are generally foreigners who rarely stay more than one night.

These make up the majority of tourists to the island. When the sky is blue they lounge on the beach; when the sky is grey they ride a bike, take a pony trap or find their way into the magical heart of Inis Oírr.

DANNY, in Áras Éanna, is pragmatic about the island’s cultural centre, the only purpose-built arts centre in the Gaeltacht.

“We are glad to be surviving,” he says, knowing that without the Irish tourists in the summer months they might struggle. Áras Éanna is known colloquially as “The Factory” (because of its past as a weaving setup), but to the core group of islanders who frequent its events it is a cultural nirvana.

“For a lot of people it is their night out,” he says of the 70 or so local savants who support the centre. “A lot of nightlife here is pub-oriented, and not everyone wants to stay in the pub all night.”

During the 2014 season, Áras Éanna featured singer-songwriter Seán Tyrrell, acoustic three-some Farriers, puppeteer Pat Bracken, impressionist Oliver Callan, Steve Blount and Janet Moran in Fishamble, Peter Sheridan in Break A Leg (about his life in theatre in the 1960s and 1970s) and Margaretta D’Arcy’s films, among many others.

The Áras Éanna artists-in-residence programme, which attracted visual artists in the

5 Opposition to salmon farming

5 Fionnan, who runs a craft shop, says tourism is extremely important to the island

noughties and song-writers in recent years, is now geared towards stone sculptors in an attempt to celebrate landscape life and reestablish old traditions.

Caitlín, who works in Cleas Teo in the opposite block, knows how important stonework is to the island’s image. “Our walls would be a little bit like Connemara ones if they were built with boulders eroded from the sea,” she explains. “It’s sharp limestone here that has been cleared from the field. The walls were always being knocked down and you learned from a young age how to work with stone.

“The children here, I really notice from the age of 3 or 4 their sense of space of exactly what would fit, like making jigsaws. Just one look and they would know. Their spatial development was really very good, their instinct for it, but I think it is going now.”

THE PEOPLE of Inis Oírr certainly have a very strong sense of place but it is their sensitive sense of identity that is under threat. Fionnan, who runs a craft shop with his parents, sees that threat for what it is — potential loss of jobs from conflicting development.

“We are talking about hundreds of jobs that are integral to the island,” he says forcefully.

5 Day-trippers arrive on ferries from Doolin and Rossaveal

going to have a devastating effect on the young.”

THE PIER embraces comings and goings. The movement of day-trippers, returners and weekenders gives the island an ephemeral quality that is more positive than negative.

5 A new pier under construction at Doolin “We cannot exist without those jobs. The peace of mind you get when you know the summer is there, that a big number of tourists are coming, bringing in revenue, that’s extremely comforting and important to the well-being of the island.

“If that is threatened that is a big, big danger, especially to the younger population. Without the knowledge that you are going to be guaranteed jobs for a good part of the year, that is

Leave-takings are an altogether different experience.

The population of Inis Oírr has remained stable at just under 300 for more than a century, despite the migrations of the 1950s.

There 18 pupils in the primary school, 31 pupils (12 on transition scholarships from the mainland) in the secondary school, and a constant influx of Irish-language students, young and old.

Those who love island life (especially during the months between March and October when there is good craic) expect to stay.

Why should they go? “Instead of having to go to other countries and meet people of other cultures,” says Caitlín sanguinely, “we get them to come here and put the expenses on their shoulders, not ours, and we get a sense of their cultures.”

This cultural exchange, albeit on a localised level with the people of Connemara and Clare until the 1960s, has always taken place. “When I listen to my father, who is 97, the same thing was happening in their time. They would have gone out to Connemara to sell fish and the turf was being brought in.

“When the men in the boats, the bádóireacht, came into the pubs and had one pint before they went back out, they would describe their area and the people. My father and people from here could describe in detail what that place was like from the way the bádóireacht described it to them.

“And they only needed to go to a place once to have that sense of it. Our people have always been doing that.”

There’s a remembering rain on the wandering wind but it doesn’t deter the day-trippers.

They don’t have a care in the world as they step with unbelievable lightness onto the pier at Inis Oírr.

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BOOK REVIEWS BY MICHAEL MANNION 1814

1952

1927 The GPO: 200 Years of History

By Stephen Ferguson Mercier Press IT’S INTERESTING to note that the word “postal” has completely different connotations on opposite sides of the Atlantic. In the USA, “going postal” now refers to outpourings of rage and violence in a spontaneous release of long-suppressed aggression. It is a manifestation of repressed passion and fury. In Ireland and Britain, on the other hand, the study of all things postal is seen as a refuge for those wishing to escape the strenuous rigours of more exhilarating pastimes such as train spotting or collecting matchbox labels.

Stephen Ferguson’s new book on the 200-year history of the GPO, and by extension the entire Irish

postal service, combines the passion of the American view without the homicidal killing sprees, with the mundane blandness of the European viewpoint. He infuses the book with an enthusiasm and encyclopaedic knowledge that ensures it never strays into the vast expanse of

mind-numbing tedium that would be the normal lot of a history of the provision of postal services. You would definitely want him on your pub quiz team but you might think twice before inviting him to your party. You find yourself actually enthused by the book. The author’s obvious glee at finding passing references to past postal practices in obscure, rarely-read novels is so manifest that it comes across as charming rather than slightly odd.

From a republican point of view, the GPO is obviously the iconic symbol of Irish rebellion. The history, the building, the ideals and events are all fused into this threeletter acronym. It is not merely a building of historic significance. It is in itself the physical embodiment of the spirit of 1916 which inspired generations. This book is not an examination of the GPO’s role in Easter Week. The entire chapter on the Rising takes up only 36 pages out of a 216-page book, and a large

5 Crowds pass as the Tricolour is raised over the GPO on Easter Monday 1917 part of that concerns the reaction of Post Office staff, the exploits of the Post Office Engineering Department and their struggle to maintain a service whilst under siege. There are countless other volumes which consider the political and historical narratives. This book is a history of the building, not the symbol.

This is an incredibly lavish little gem, printed on the finest quality paper, and stuffed with photographs on every page. It is without doubt a quirky little volume which transcends its niche market and presents a surprisingly interesting read for the general reader (although it probably would help if you do wear an anorak).

Hitler’s Irish Voices: The story of German radio’s wartime Irish service

By David O’Donoghue Somerville Press WHEN ONE considers German propaganda broadcasts of the Second World War, the first name one thinks of (apart from Propaganda Minister Goebbels) is Lord Haw Haw, better known as William Joyce.

Black and Tan wannabe, informer and devout fascist and Nazi, Joyce’s Irish connections are well-known but he was still primarily associated with broadcasts to Britain. Hardly anyone will remember that there was also a dedicated propaganda service broadcasting mainly in Irish but also with some English-language programming aimed solely at Irish listeners.

The Irish-language service was established by two German academics, Adolph Mahr and Ludwig Mulhausen, both of whom had lived and studied extensively in Ireland.

Both were fluent Irish speakers.

Adolph Mahr is still regarded as “the Father of Irish Archaeology” and had been appointed by de Valera as Director of the National

Museum of Ireland in 1934. He left Dublin on a leave of absence from his museum post in 1939, ostensibly intending to return to his post at a future date but he was never to return. He was, in effect, the de facto head of all German broadcasts to neutral Ireland from 1941 to 1945.

The investment of such propaganda resources to a neutral country is unusual and shows the importance the German authorities placed on Irish neutrality and, specifically, the denial of the use of the Treaty Ports to the Royal Navy for Atlantic convoy operations.

The second main objective of the operation is much less straightforward.

Adolph Mahr There was a deep antipathy in Berlin to President Roosevelt and it was decided to do all possible to prevent his re-election for a fourth term. The reasoning was that an alternative candidate would be more amenable to German peace overtures and likely to be less hawkish both in the prosecution of the war and in any subsequent peace settlement.

To help achieve this, it was pro-

‘Lord Haw Haw’ – William Joyce posed that major ethnic minorities in the USA (such as the Irish, Italians and Polish) would be targeted by encouraging their families in their homelands to persuade the emigrants to abandon Roosevelt.

The broadcasts themselves were a mix of news, analysis, historical reviews of the Tan War listing what it called “British terrorism in Ireland” and “Black and Tan atrocities”. This was interspersed with

traditional and folk music programmes.

This book is a forensic analysis of the events and characters associated with these Irish broadcasts. A staggering amount of research has been incorporated into a most readable volume chronicling the lives of an extraordinary cast of characters in one of the forgotten but fascinating operations of the Second World War.

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October / Deireadh Fómhair 2014 29

I nDíl Chuimhne

All notices and obituaries should be sent to notices@anphoblacht.com by Friday 17 October 2014

1 October 1977: Seán Ó CONAILL, Sinn Féin (Parkhurst Prison) 1 October 1996: Pat McGEOWN, Sinn Féin 2 October 1971: Volunteer Terence McDERMOTT, Belfast Brigade, 1st Battalion 2 October 1978: Volunteer Pat HARKIN, Derry Brigade 6 October 1972: Volunteer Daniel McAREAVEY, Belfast Brigade, 2nd Battalion 9 October 1976: Noel JENKINSON, Sinn Féin (Leicester Prison) 9 October 1990: Volunteer Dessie GREW, Martin McCAUGHEY, Tyrone Brigade

10 October 1972: Volunteer John DONAGHY, Volunteer Patrick MAGUIRE, Volunteer Joseph McKINNEY, Belfast Brigade, 2nd Battalion 16 October 1972: Volunteer Hugh HERON, Volunteer John Patrick MULLAN, Tyrone Brigade 16 October 1976: Volunteer Paul MARLOWE, Belfast Brigade, 2nd Battalion; Volunteer Frank FITZSIMMONS, Volunteer Joseph SURGENOR, Belfast Brigade, 3rd Battalion 16 October 1992: Sheena CAMPBELL, Sinn Féin 18 October 1974: Volunteer Michael

Buíochas The Volunteer Charlie McGlade Sinn Féin Cumann, Drimnagh, would like to thank all who participated and supported our commemoration on Saturday 13 September. Special thanks to the Colour Party, the Rising Phoenix RFB, Cllr Críona Ní Dhálaigh, Cllr Greg Kelly, Jim Monaghan, Padraig O’Gibhne, Gypsy Lacey and the Marble Arch Pub.

LIFE SPRINGS FROM DEATH AND FROM THE GRAVES OF PATRIOT MEN AND WOMEN SPRING LIVING NATIONS – PÁDRAIG PEARSE HUGHES, Newry Brigade 23 October 1971: Volunteer Dorothy MAGUIRE, Volunteer Maura MEEHAN, Cumann na mBan, Belfast 23 October 1979: Volunteer Martin McKENNA, Belfast Brigade, 3rd

» Notices All notices should be sent to: notices@anphoblacht.com at least 14 days in advance of publication date. There is no charge for I nDíl Chuimhne, Comhbhrón etc. » Imeachtaí There is a charge of €10 for inserts printed in our Imeachtaí/Events column.

You can also get a small or large box advert.

Contact: sales@anphoblacht.com for details.

VOLUNTEER CHARLIE McGLADE COMMEMORATION 2014

Battalion 23 October 1993: Volunteer Thomas BEGLEY, Belfast Brigade, 3rd Battalion 24 October 1971: Volunteer Martin FORSYTHE, Belfast Brigade, 1st Battalion 25 October 1982: Peter CORRIGAN, Sinn Féin 26 October 1990: Tommy CASEY, Sinn Féin 27 October 1970: Volunteer Peter BLAKE, Volunteer Tom McGOLDRICK, Belfast Brigade, 2nd Battalion 28 October 1976: Máire DRUMM, Sinn Féin

28 October 1987: Volunteer Paddy DEERY, Volunteer Eddie McSHEFFREY, Derry Brigade 30 October 1974: Volunteer Michael MEENAN, Derry Brigade 31 October 1975: Volunteer Seamus McCUSKER, Belfast Brigade, 3rd Battalion.

Always remembered by the Republican Movement.

CLARKE, Michael; PARKER, Ann. In proud and loving memory of Volunteers Ann Parker and Michael Clarke, killed in action, 11 August 1972. Always remembered by Eilish McGettigan.

Imeachtaí » ANNUAL VOLUNTEER BRIAN KEENAN MOUNTAIN CHALLENGE AND LECTURE Saturday 27th September, This year there are optional walks with the first walk starting at 12noon at Newry Flagstaff and the second from the Long Woman’s Grave at 2pm. Both walks finish at the Four Seasons Carlingford with Ceol and Craic. Anyone wishing to participate can park their cars there as transport to the start points is available. Entry fee is £10/€10. Information about the Brian Keenan Mountain Challenge and Lecture available from Jane Martin telephone 087 141 2768 or email: janemartin55@gmail.com

SLÓGADH SHINN FÉIN 2014 4ú Deireadh Fómhair , Cultúrlann Uí Chanáin, Mórshráid Sheamais (Gt James Street), Doire. Clár: 11.00 Gaolta Laochra 1916 (1916 relatives). 13.30 Turas staire ar Thaobh an Bhogaidh (Bogside historical tour). 15.00 Pleananna Gaeilge na gCeann-Eagras Gaeilge/ An Ciste Infheistíochta Gaeilge (Plans of the lead organisations for Irish/CIG) Conradh na Gaeilge, Cumann na bhFiann, Glór na nGael, Gaelscoileanna Teo, An tOireachtas, Gael-Linn. 18.00 Tráth na gCeist le John Boy (quiz with John Boy). Beidh seastán eolais ag LÍOFA ann fosta (LÍOFA will have an information stand)

THE annual Volunteer Charlie McGlade Commemoration was in Drimnagh, south-west Dublin, on Saturday 13 September.

Organisers refute a report in the Sunday World that abuse was directed by participants at a particular household on the route or that gardaí were called to an event that has passed without incident over the past decade.

The commemoration stopped at Charlie’s family home on Mourne Road, where the colour party lowered its flags in respect to this remarkable republican before going

BY IAN McBRIDE to Errigal Field for the main oration.

The Roll of Honour was read by Jim Monaghan, followed by the lowering of the flags and a minute’s silence. A wreath was laid on behalf of the Volunteer Charlie McGlade Sinn Féin Cumann by Pádraig O’Gibhne.

A history of Cumann na mBan was given by Dublin City Councillor Críona Ní Dhálaigh and the importance of women’s contribution

throughout republican history and their role in Sinn Féin today.

In the main address, local newlyelected Ballyfermot/Drimnagh Sinn Féin Councillor Greg Kelly spoke of Charlie’s life and dedication to the republican struggle and how Sinn Féin must continue that fight for freedom and equality.

Greg also extended solidarity greetings to the locked-out Greyhound workers and the people of Gaza and Palestine.

The Rising Phoenix Republican Flute Band closed the commemoration with Amhrán na bhFiann.

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BETWEEN THE POSTS

30 October / Deireadh Fómhair 2014

THE

www.anphoblacht.com

BY CIARÁN KEARNEY

SKIRTING AROUND THE ISSUE

Donal Óg Cusack

Derval O’Rourke

“Camogie needs to be appreciated for what it is and not constantly held up to the light of what men are doing.”

Former Irish international athlete Derval O’Rourke also hit out recently at the differential treatment of women in the media: “I think it [gender imbalance] is way more obvious in a sport like rugby.

This is the world we live in. We live in a world where women’s sports aren’t covered.”

Interestingly, O’Rourke’s own sport of athletics is one of few where competitions for women and men are held together. Athletics is a minority sport.

However, in sponsorship and funding, prize money, and sequencing of events, men and women are valued equally. Tennis is roughly the same but there aren’t too many other sports with in-built equality.

Imperceptibly, over the course of our lives, social norms and attitudes are shaped. Expectations are formed and behaviours shaped accordingly.

For example, when was the last time you walked into a public place, a hotel, pub or sports club and asked for the TV to be switched over to the women’s sport?

It is even less likely that you would walk into the same venue and find that women’s sport was already on the big screen – unless that it happens to be beach volleyball. The same can be said of the print media.

There are some signs of change.

Earlier this year, former Wimbledon champion Andy Murray appointed Amelie Mauresmo as his coach.

During the summer, US basketball

PICTURE BY KELVIN BOYES / PRESS EYE

PICTURE THE SCENE . . . A tsunami of colour: blue, gold, green, black, crimson, amber, maroon, and fifty shades of white.

Narrow streets, saturated with people. Like an army of ants, edging one another forward. Hungry eyes searching the throng for a friendly face or a ticket to spare. Frantic phone-calls as time ticks away. One, unspoken sense of urgency, impelling forward a mass mobilisation of 83,000 Gaels: the chance to see the All-Ireland Finals in Croke Park. Now imagine teams running out onto the pitch – and that “the Finals” in question were camogie and women’s Gaelic football.

This picture doesn’t fit.

A scramble for seats at the ultimate events in the women’s Gaelic games calendar is difficult to envisage because none of us have ever witnessed such a thing. It’s tremendous that Croke Park is the venue for these finals. Just ask the players. It means as much to take the pitch at GAA ‘Headquarters’ for any female player as anyone in men’s sports. Why then is the stadium not packed to the rafters?

Some spectators will say it’s because they don’t like these (women’s) sports. Maybe that’s fair enough. But don’t sportswomen deserve our support every bit as much as men? Don’t they train as hard, commit as much, and play as well in their own code?

Last year, at the Camogie All-Stars, the “poor and often patronising coverage of the game” was strongly criticised by Chairperson of the Gaelic Players Association Donal Óg Cusack:

5 Members of the Antrim girls’ Gaelic football teams with Minister of Sport Carál Ní Chuilín and host for the event, then Mayor of Belfast Mairtín Ó Muilleoir, at Belfast City Hall team San Antonio Spurs hired Becky Hammon as the first full-time paid coach in NBA history. In women’s Gaelic games, female referees have officiated at the All-Ireland Finals for the first time ever.

Sponsors are also starting to catch on.

Both hurling and camogie championships in 2014 were part of one sponsorship deal. The massive commercial package for Dublin GAA encompasses all codes, male and female. In the Ulster Championship this year, good judgement ensured that Armagh and Monaghan women played their Ulster Championship match in Clones, ahead of the men’s semi-final replay.

It’s not a matter of accommodating women in sport – we need to celebrate their success with the same vigour and esteem. That’s part of the reason why I’ve been mentoring girls Gaelic football in Antrim. Thankfully,

IN PICTURES

5 All-Ireland Senior Camogie champions Cork visit Our Lady's Children's Hospital in Crumlin

the teams have seen success, winning three out of the last four Ulster Finals they’ve reached. But more heartening than that is the enthusiasm and character the players exude. Many of them are from the most economically disadvantaged parts of Belfast and they’ve represented their county with the same pride and distinction as any boys’ team.

Probably the most successful sporting team in Ireland is the Cork women’s Gaelic football team.

They’ve now appeared in nine out of the last ten All-Ireland Finals. But many sport fans are more likely to know the names of all the players on a male English soccer team than any of the women’s champions from the Rebel County. And that’s where the change starts: in how we think and speak.

Yes, ‘the powers that be’ carry their responsibility for inequality in sport but that’s no excuse for the rest of us.

photos@anphoblacht.com

5 FAI chief John Delaney in west Belfast with the local Ireland Supporters’ Club, including Paul Maskey MP

5 Bray Sinn Féin Councillor John Brady on the 10km road run in Blessington for Laura Lynn House

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October / Deireadh Fómhair 2014 31

Taking the point – and the pint

Matt Treacy

IT IS IRONIC in the light of Tipperary’s heroic performance in the epic that was the drawn hurling final to recall that in the wake of their defeat by Limerick in June they were about as popular as a pangolin at a termite convention.

The reason for that was not so much the actual defeat (although Limerick are still considered by some Tipp aficionados to be maybe on the same par as Westmeath or Laois) as the fact that some of the Tipp players were spot-

ted on the June Bank Holiday Monday having a few jars together in Thurles.

Even though Tipperary’s next match, a first round qualifier which they won handsomely against Galway, was not for another month, the lads having a drink (presumably with the knowledge and approval of Eamon O’Shea) was cited as evidence of their “not giving a damn”. Some even constructed lurid tales of them having gone on the batter after training

matches leading up to the Limerick game.

They did not, of course.

Another irony is that not a small number of those who were criticising the players would feel it a great imposition if they were to be denied the time and space to have seven or eight pints before taking their place on the terraces or in the stand to watch and judge the same players who they would deny a momentary lapse in temperance during what to all intents and purposes is now a year-round slog of hard training combined with work or college.

The relationship between the GAA and alcohol, and indeed players and alcohol, is a complex one.

Former Uachtarán Mick Loftus boycotted All-Ireland hurling finals for 15 years because of the sponsorship by Guinness of the championship. He believed that it was wrong that an alcohol company should be associated with sport. Of course, the GAA is not unique in that regard. There is the Heineken Cup; Carling used to sponsor the English Premier League; and Brazil had to change its law on the sale of alcohol in stadiums because Budweiser is the “Official Beer of the World Cup”.

Loftus’s opposition to Guinness was also based on his knowledge of the level of perceived abuse by GAA players. In fairness, the GAA has been proactive on the issue and has banned the filling of trophies with spirituous liquids and is part of a joint programme with the Health Service Executive to highlight the

problem of alcohol and other substance abuse within the association.

Anyone who has played will know that drinking is an integral part of the culture of team sport. Few people go to play a match, have a shower and go home. Not all players drink, of course, and not all players who drink, drink to excess, but the pub or the club bar are central to the life of teams. Inflated egos are gently punctured and bruised ones assuaged in the comradely embrace of team-mates and a few gargles.

Some players, in common with many of the population, drink to the stage where drinking becomes a problem and interferes with their ability to play as well as they might. It would be invidious to name them but all counties have had promising and even outstanding hurlers and footballers whose stars have fallen because of their fondness for the drop.

We also know of former greats whose lives were cut short by their drinking, among them some of the very best.

Nicky Rackard of Wexford was one of those. Perhaps most tragically he had stopped drinking during Wexford’s glory years in the mid-1950s but took it up again after his retirement in 1957, an affliction that was lead to his early death at the age of 53 although he had stopped several years before. Not long before he died, Rackard became one of the first Irish public figures to talk openly about their struggles with alcohol.

And it is not only inter-county players who are beset by the demon. I played with and against chaps over the years who had had a few drinks before a match. I did myself on one occasion. Not for ‘Dutch courage’ but simply to try and recover some sort of bodily co-ordination! Hurling and vodka do not go well together was the conclusion of that experiment in the life sciences.

The relationship between players and alcohol is a complex one

5 Drinking is an integral part of the culture of team sport

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anphoblacht NEXT ISSUE OUT – Thursday 30th October 2014 32

STAND UP – FIGHT BACK

DAY OF ACTION

HUNDREDS of Sinn Féin activists took to the streets of cities, towns and villages across the North on Saturday 30 September as part of the Day of Action against Tory welfare cuts.

Those taking part handed out leaflets outlining Sinn Féin’s opposition to the Tory-led agenda and collected signatures for a petition against the cuts.

Thousands of names were added to the ‘Stop Tory Cuts’ petition as people queued up to add their support to the campaign.

Anti-welfare cuts billboards were erected at Free Derry Corner and at the former Andersonstown Barracks site in west Belfast.

Speaking in west Belfast, Paul Maskey MP said: “Growing numbers of people are realising the devastating impact Tory welfare cuts would have on all communities.

“The cuts proposed by a Westminster Cabinet of Tory millionaires would punish the poor, the unemployed, those on low incomes and people with disabilities.

“We in Sinn Féin are totally opposed to this attack on the most vulnerable in our society.

“The day of action was the latest in a series of Sinn Féin initiatives to oppose Tory welfare cuts and it gave people the opportunity to send a clear message that these proposed cuts are totally unacceptable.”