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THE ROAD TO SINN FÉIN GOVERNMENT STARTS HERE

Leading the Opposition to the Chaotic Coalition IRELAND 1920 iAn ntaurtmioonil

Remembering Bobby Storey

For 50 YEARS anphoblacht has been the voice of

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March 2018 Márta

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‘WE HAVE BIG IDEAS’

August | September 2018 Lúnasa | Meán Fómhair

WHAT NEXT FOR RIGHTS AND EQUALITY?

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One year on...

An Phoblacht looks at the life and legacy of Martin McGuinness

THE STORY IN PICTURES

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Louise O’Reilly on the need for a grassroots campaign to win the referendum - 9

We remember Joe Reilly

Sinn Féin MEP Martina Anderson on Palestine

REMEMBERING THE 1981 HUNGER STRIKES

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WE CAN HAVE A BETTER, FAIRER, UNITED IRELAND Covid-19 emergency has strengthened demand for change THE

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THE ROAD TO SINN FÉIN GOVERNMENT STARTS HERE

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UIMHIR EISIÚNA 3 - 2020 - ISSUE NUMBER 3

Those who entrusted us with their votes have a clear expectation of Sinn Féin. They want us to robustly and vigorously take on this government

Leading the Opposition to the Chaotic Coalition ion IRELAND 1920 inA nat turmoil

Remembering Bobby Storey

AN PHOBLACHT Editor: Robbie Smyth An Phoblacht is published

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 www.anphoblacht.com PRODUCTION: MARK DAWSON, RUAIRÍ DOYLE, OISÍN Mac CANN, MÍCHEÁL Mac DONNCHA

CONTRIBUTORS

Mary Lou McDonald Michelle O’Neill Ethel Buckley Órlaithí Flynn Mairéad Farrell Ciarán Quinn Bill Mitchell Louisa Connors Róisín Nic Liam Daithi Doolan Mícheál Mac Donncha Gerry Kelly Cárthach Ó Faoláin Jim McVeigh Luke Callinan

Oisín McCann Sinéad Ní Bhroin

SINN FÉIN PRESIDENT MARY LOU McDONALD

An opposition for the people

3

Championing the change so many people want

7

The people want to see the Executive and Assembly delivering

13

Making workplace democracy relevant

15

Tackling the mental health crisis

18

Little Apples will grow again

21

Allow the people have their say

23

Capitalism on life support

26

Díchoilímis ár n-intinn

30

Have black lives ever mattered

32

Irish republican voices against racism

36

Bobby Storey: A life of struggle

40

Cinneadh ár gCine

52

Ireland 1920: A nation in turmoil

54

Postcards from the New Republic

65

Mary Lou McDonald outlines how Sinn Féin would be the most effective opposition in the history of the state.

16 Sinn Féin spokespersons outline the keys issues for the next Dáil session Michelle O’Neill calls on all parties to the Good Friday Agreement to ensure its full implementation.

SIPTU Vice President Ethel Buckley on how unions and their allies must connect with workers.

MLA Órlaithí Flynn makes the case for action on how we think, react, and invest in the mental health of our nation.

Mairéad Farrell on that tax case and how Sinn Féin is ready to build an alternative economic model.

Ciarán Quinn unpicks the double speak on Irish unity in the Programme for Government.

Economists Bill Mitchell and Louisa Connors offer a thought provoking controversial take on the coming challenges facing the EU. Athghabháil féiniúlachta agus teanga á plé ag Róisín Nic Liam san alt seo. Cuirfidh muid Banbha ar bhóthar a leasa arís.

The framing and imprisonment of Mumia Abu-Jamal, discussed by Daithi Doolan.

Opposition to racism goes back to the foundation of Republicanism in Ireland, writes Mícheál Mac Donncha We carry a funeral report and obituary and Gerry Kelly writes on “the most courageous person I have ever known”.

Meath na Gaeltachta idir láimhe ag Cárthach Ó Faoláin agus an forbairt fréamhaithe pobail atá a dhíth le go mbeidh na ceantair in ard a réime arís.

Jim McVeigh writes on the Belfast Pogroms. Luke Callinan remembers the killing of Sinn Féin councillor Mícheál Breathnach. Oisín McCann looks back at Dublin’s Bloody Sunday.

We also tell the story of Cork republican Mick Fitzgerald who died on hunger strike.

Domestic violence awareness campaigning is always needed, writes Sinéad Ní Bhroin

anphoblacht  UIMHIR EISIÚNA 3 - 2020 - ISSUE NUMBER 3

1

EDITORIAL

anphoblacht EAGARFHOCAL

THE GOLDEN CIRCLE HASN’T GONE AWAY!

H

ow should we describe the Fine Gael, Fianna Fáil, and Green Party government? Its first weeks have seen it derailed with U-turns and controversies over Pandemic Unemployment Payments, salary

increases for ministers, acceptable uses of government cars, internal dissent over ministerial appointments, a Green Party leader asleep in a parliamentary debate, and, on the last day of the Dáil sitting, a minister voting against the government they are part of. Oh, and there has already been one minister sacked.

ROBBIE SMYTH editor@anphoblacht.com

At best, we could say this is a government dazzled by the enormity of the challenge it faces and scrambling to get even the basic decisions right. More truthfully, it is an ‘omnishambles’. This term borne out of a BBC political comedy is an all too accurate description of the new coalition government.

At best, we could say this is a government dazzled by the enormity of the challenge it faces and scrambling to get even the basic decisions right. More truthfully, it is an ‘omnishambles’

For Irish citizens, this is not comedy. It is people’s lives at stake. The goodwill and support demonstrated during the lockdown is being allowed drain away.

One simple example that links the old government with the new is the treatment of meat factory workers. Last year, justified farm gate protests at these plants put a spotlight on an industry where the core producers, farmers, and the primary workers in the plants were caught in a scenario, where their rights, their livelihoods were dependant on the whims of the meat plant owners.

The dire consequences of the arrival of COVID-19 at these plants had been signalled by the workers, their union representatives, and a range of opposition political parties, led by Sinn Féin.

It was Sinn Féin TDs Matt Carthy and Brian Stanley who highlighted the fact that there had been no unannounced HSA visits to these plants. It was their union, SIPTU, who have led the way in exposing the working conditions in these plants where 9 out 10 meat plant workers do not have sick pay entitlements.

This is the reality of the 26 Counties that Fine Gael, Fianna Fáil, and the Greens are claiming to govern. Mícheál Martin had asserted in June that the new coalition agreement was a “moment of opportunity and hope”. We have seen that when it comes to ‘opportunity and hope’, it is once again opportunity for an elite of financiers, developers, and select large businesses.

Just like in the meat plant protests in 2019, the banking bailouts of 2008, and the subsequent failures of NAMA to protect us from the emergence of international vulture funds buying the Ireland of tomorrow at fire sale prices, we are, in 2020, back in the same cycle of vested interests coming first when government makes decisions. The golden circle hasn’t gone away! •

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ISSUE NUMBER 3 – 2020 - UIMHIR EISIÚNA 3  anphoblacht

AN OPPOSITION FOR THE PEOPLE

BY MARY LOU McDONALD

A little over four weeks ago, I said that Sinn Féin would be the most effective opposition in the history of the state. An opposition for the people.

This was not a slogan. It was a statement of our intention to champion the demand for real change that defined the General Election in February.

I spoke those words also in recognition of the fact those who entrusted us with their votes have a clear expectation of Sinn Féin. They want us to robustly and vigorously take on this government. They know the Coalition is a marriage of convenience, cobbled together to deny change and to exclude from power

anphoblacht  UIMHIR EISIÚNA 3 - 2020 - ISSUE NUMBER 3

the voices of a large and ever-growing section of the Irish people who believe that a fair and equal Ireland is possible.

They certainly want much better than what is contained in the vague, unambitious, and ultimately hollow Programme for Government agreed by Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael, and the Green Party.

After a decade lost to disastrous austerity, cuts, and bad economic policy, workers and families need the work of the 33rd Dáil to be shaped and guided by the issues that really matter - housing, healthcare, childcare, a fair recovery, Irish Unity, and climate action.

3

Many people are relying on us to be energetic and robust in holding Micheál Martin’s government to account and to be keenly focused on practical solutions

I was also issuing a clarion call to our new team of TDs and Senators to hit the ground running. We have in the Oireachtas a wonderfully talented group of political representatives, rooted in republican activism, with the plans and policies to change the lives of ordinary people for the better. They know many people are relying on us to be energetic and robust in holding Micheál Martin’s government to account and to be keenly focused on practical solutions that will make a big difference to our society.

That is how we have proceeded in our work as the lead party of opposition. Sinn Féin has brought forward realistic and workable proposals to fast-track the delivery of affordable housing, a comprehensive strategy to support SMEs, protect jobs and get people back to work and we have proposed a plan to reform

the childcare sector in a way which is fairer for parents, staff, and providers.

We have kept faith with what people told us at the doors during the election. We have stood up for ordinary people at every opportunity presented to us.

We have been relentless in the pursuit of fairness.

Whether it has been taking on the banks for profiteering from the pandemic, championing the Debenhams workers as they continue their fight for justice or challenging the State on its continued mistreatment of the women affected by the Cervical Check Scandal, from day one we have challenged this government and held it to account.

This energy has been matched by our dynamic team in the Assembly. Sinn Féin Ministers and MLAs have led the way in championing public health measures that

People can’t be blamed for thinking - Fianna Fail, here we go again - mired in scandal, pandering to vested interests, and looking after themselves first

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ISSUE NUMBER 3 – 2020 - UIMHIR EISIÚNA 3  anphoblacht

• Debenhams workers continue their fight for justice

protect communities during the COVID-19. They have also been to the fore in arguing for the strengthening of protections for our island as Brexit looms.

In contrast to the clear, solution-focused and all-island work of Sinn Féin, the first few weeks of this Fianna Fáil led government have been chaotic, incoherent and utterly shambolic. The mixed and conflicting messaging from the Taoiseach and Tánaiste regarding foreign travel during COVID-19 led to huge confusion and undermined public confidence in the government’s ability to handle the public health emergency.

Likewise, the last-minute approach of the Minister for Education in providing a plan for the reopening of schools in September has created significant stress and anxiety for students and parents. Meanwhile, the Barry Cowen controversy saw the Taoiseach being less than fulsome with truth under questioning in the Dáil and led to the dismissal of the Minister of Agriculture after only 17 days in office.

To understand whose side the government is on, you only have to look at how they have stripped renters of vital protections and how they cynically singledout people availing of the Pandemic Unemployment Payment for awful treatment. In the very same week, the government moved to extend a €16,000 pay hike for a third ‘super junior’ Minister and announced a “pay-cut” that was actually a pay increase in real terms.

It is beyond me how they can justify such extravagance, especially at a time when so many people are hurting.

This all reads as a catalogue of incompetence and the same self -serving politics that did so much damage in the recent past. People can’t be blamed for thinking - Fianna Fail, here we go again - mired in scandal, pandering to vested interests and looking after themselves first.

The government’s dearth of ambition and its refusal to turn away from the failed policies of the past also shaped the July Stimulus Package. It is both clumsy and miserly, especially when compared to what has been delivered in other countries to drive economic recovery from the COVID-19 crisis. What should have been a life buoy for workers and businesses in a time of great anphoblacht  UIMHIR EISIÚNA 3 - 2020 - ISSUE NUMBER 3

economic turbulence amounted to an anchor of debt and disappointment. Add it to the list of failures.

On the floor of the Dáil, the Taoiseach repeatedly claims that he is all about constructive politics. Yet, his government has already voted against Eoin Ó Broin’s constructive proposals to tackle the housing crisis while failing to come forward with their own plan.

His government rejected constructive measures from Kathleen Funchion that would significantly cut childcare fees for hard-pressed parents and improve pay for childcare, preferring instead to continue the

• EOIN Ó BROIN – government has already voted against his proposals to tackle the housing crisis while failing to come forward with their own plan 5

Future’ should have considered ‘More of the Same’ as a more suitable title for their shallow agenda.

This government has been formed legitimately.

Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael, and the Green Party found the numbers to put it together. However, the three men who lead this coalition cannot seriously believe what people voted is the haphazard, out-of-touch behaviour that they have displayed since the end of June. If there were still people who were reluctant to believe that this government is all about blocking change, then surely they believe it now The parties that have passed power between them for a century have clubbed together to try to keep government firmly focused on the needs of those at the top. However, they will no longer have everything their own way. Those days are over. The tide of history is with those who want the progressive, republican alternative championed

by Sinn Féin. Leading an opposition for the people provides us with a great platform to build this alternative.

The pandemic has taught us that change is not only ideal, it is essential. Clearly, those of us who desire change, those who believe that a better, fairer Ireland can be achieved will have to be more united than ever.

We will have to be more determined than ever. We will have to work harder than ever. A fresh start for workers, for families, for communities, and for our country must be our overriding ambition. This is the goal Sinn Féin will continue to work toward in the time ahead. • Mary Lou McDonald is Sinn Féin President and a TD for Dublin Central • KATHLEEN FUNCHION – measures to cut childcare fees for hard-pressed parents rejected by Government

same negligent and sloppy approach that has left countless families without a childcare arrangement as our economy reopened.

The coalition also blocked a constructive motion from Claire Kerrane that would have seen maternity leave and pay extended by three months for women whose leave has been affected by the COVID-19 pandemic.

It is already plain to see that Micheál Martin, Leo Varadkar, and Eamon Ryan are prepared to dismiss solutions that will make a big difference in the lives of workers and families solely because they come from Sinn Féin.

This is certainly the perspective that the Taoiseach has brought to the issue of Irish Unity.

While Sinn Féin has been positive and practical in our contributions, it is unfortunate that the Taoiseach has adopted a certain partisan approach to the issue.

A referendum on Irish unity is an imperative and an all-island approach is required for the development of the economy and to protect health services, particularly in the context of a future shaped by the pandemic and by Brexit. This is just common sense.

The direction of travel is set. The Shared Island Unit cannot be window dressing. It must have as its focus the need to plan for change and for unity.

Sadly, the contempt for change and a new Ireland and indeed the vindictiveness that fuelled the exclusion of Sinn Féin from government talks has been fully on show in the new Dáil. This chaotic coalition has sought to deny change as they endeavour to preserve the status quo at all costs. The parties who agreed a Programme for Government entitled ‘Our Shared 6

• CLAIRE KERRANE – the new coalition blocked her motion on maternity leave for women whose leave has been affected by the COVID-19 pandemic.

ISSUE NUMBER 3 – 2020 - UIMHIR EISIÚNA 3  anphoblacht

CHAMPIONING THE CHANGE SO MANY PEOPLE WANT

LEINSTER HOUSE SPOKESPERSONS IN THEIR OWN WORDS In the weeks since the formation of the new coalition, Sinn Féin in Leinster House have focussed on issues such as housing, health, return of schools, childcare, workers’ rights, ensuring fair play from the banking and insurance sector, and the need for a just economic recovery.

The scale of the Sinn Féin opposition campaigning

anphoblacht  UIMHIR EISIÚNA 3 - 2020 - ISSUE NUMBER 3

is a wide canvas and covers nearly every aspect of Irish society. Party president Mary Lou McDonald has promised that the party will “hold the government to account, bring forward solutions, and continue championing the change that so many people want”.

We asked some of the new Sinn Féin spokespersons about their priorities in the coming weeks and months. •

7

CLAIRE KERRANE SOCIAL PROTECTION

ROSCOMMON–GALWAY

Social Protection is the bedrock of any society. Its sole purpose is to support people when they need it most and everyone will need it at some stage in their lives. The attitude to those who rely on social welfare supports is something that the establishment have yet to get right. We have seen this most recently with the Pandemic Unemployment Payment and the checks at airports and ports.

We have to remember that those who rely on social welfare are our carers, persons with a disability, those who are out sick from work, people who have lost their jobs, older people on a state pension. The way we treat these people is important.

The fallout from COVID-19 and the impact it has had on household income will remain a major challenge in the months ahead. We need to make sure that those who have suffered as a direct result of the pandemic are supported as they rebuild their lives and we rebuild as a society. This includes mothers whose maternity leave was robbed from them by COVID-19 and whose difficulties in returning to work have been ignored by this Government.

In my previous role as Advisor on Social Protection, I worked on a number of key areas that I hope to progress as Spokesperson. They are putting an end to 65 year olds at retirement being forced onto a jobseekers payment; reforming the child maintenance system

for lone parents; removing the barriers for carers to better support them; ending the JobPath scheme which puts money in the pockets of private companies; protecting not-for-profit community based job activation schemes at a time when we will need them most; and finally, implementing the Labour Court recommendation to provide an Occupational Pension to Community Employment Supervisors and Assistant Supervisors. •

DAVID CULLINANE HEALTH

WATERFORD

On August 10th, I launched Sinn Féin’s plan ‘Protecting Ireland’s Health,’ which set out the major issues facing the acute hospital sector and measures to protect capacity in the health service.

This called for a €1.9bn package that would expand capacity to redeploy beds, guarantee safe work for healthcare, and expand the rollout of the Winter Flu vaccine to protect hospital capacity.

In the coming Dáil term, I will be prioritising measures to protect capacity, ensure safe working environments for healthcare workers, advancing capital healthcare projects across the state, working with Colm Gildernew MLA

on a 32-county approach to healthcare, and guaranteeing the resumption of healthcare services.

Clearing the backlog of waiting lists, from acute care to home care, is a major concern.

These are likely to rise in the months ahead if sufficient investment in the health service is not secured. I will be highlighting the decades-long underfunding of the health service and the lack of progress towards a single tier health system and how it relates to the failures in the health service today. I will also be bringing forward common sense solutions and showing that a fresh start in health is possible. •

DENISE MITCHELL

LOCAL GOVERNMENT REFORM DUBLIN BAY NORTH

Local Government has long been in need of real reform, making it truly democratic, representative of and responsive to communities, something that has always been advocated

by Sinn Féin. I intend to take up that challenge. In the shorter term we are pressing the Coalition government to ensure that local Council services and jobs are protected during the Covid 19 crisis.

I will be working with Sinn Féin Councillors across the country. Housing must continue to be the priority for Local Government and I will be working closely with our Housing spokesperson Eoin Ó Broin in the drive for well-planned social and affordable housing, building communities as well as homes. From my experience as first a councillor and now a TD in Dublin Bay North I know the huge human impact of the housing crisis and the solutions that can and will help to transform people’s lives. • 8

ISSUE NUMBER 3 – 2020 - UIMHIR EISIÚNA 3  anphoblacht

DONNCHADH Ó LAOGHAIRE EDUCATION

CORK SOUTH CENTRAL

The focus of everyone involved in education needs to be delivering a safe and full return to schools. I will be keeping the pressure on the Minister for Education and working with all stakeholders to achieve that. I will continue to seek clarity for parents, students, teachers, and school staff on hygiene and safety protocols, on school transport, and to make sure there are plans in place for those who, due to medical vulnerabilities, possibly cannot return in September and will have to continue with remote learning.

I will continue to highlight the need for additional special classes and ASD units across the State, and to ensure that special education teachers aren’t being pulled from pillar to post in order to cover absences and remote learning and can instead focus on providing special education to our most vulnerable children.

The cost to parents of going back to school in September is far too great and we will be launching proposals to reduce these costs.

We also need clarity for incoming sixth years on what Leaving Certificate 2021 will look like and how these students will be supported through their final year in school.

There is no doubt that many children have lost out since school buildings closed in March; they need particular attention to help them make up lost ground. A full, safe return to school is crucially important. We are at risk of losing an entire generation from education if we don’t get this right. •

KATHLEEN FUNCHION CHILDREN, DISABILITIES, INTEGRATION AND EQUALITY

CARLOW KILKENNY

I have been a strong advocate for the childcare sector for many years and have highlighted repeatedly the inadequate financing of the childcare sector. This was brought into stark focus like never before during the public health emergency.

The systemic and chronic underfunding experienced in childcare was brought to the fore with the ill-conceived and ultimately doomed healthcare workers childcare scheme.

In July, I brought my childcare Private Member’s Bill before the Dáil. Despite the Government parties voting my motion down, I will continue during the length of

this Dáil to raise the concerns of the sector.

This consists of three main objectives: a fair day’s pay for a fair days’ work; lower fees for parents; and sustainable funding for providers. Government policy in the childcare sector has lacked vision and purpose for many years now. This lack of interest has meant inadequately funding providers to enable their businesses to stay open and remain viable.

This failure in funding has led to parents in Ireland being burdened with some of the highest fees in the EU. Many of the 30,000 workers in the sector do not even earn the living wage, despite being highly qualified. •

LOUISE O’REILLY ENTERPRISE, TRADE, AND EMPLOYMENT

FINGAL

The Enterprise, Trade, and Employment portfolio will be at the forefront of the response to COVID-19 for workers and business. I will be focusing on the need for the Government to invest in SMEs and microbusiness to rescue jobs and protect our communities.

However, the economic recovery from COVID-19 cannot be built on the back of low pay and precarious work, through the exploitation of workers. Therefore, delivering on workers’ rights will be equally important to me.

COVID-19 has exposed the inequality and instability in our economic model for workers and businesses. SMEs, microbusinesses, and small family businesses have struggled throughout, while billion-dollar corporations saw their profits grow and grow. anphoblacht  UIMHIR EISIÚNA 3 - 2020 - ISSUE NUMBER 3

The period so far has highlighted how the Government will go to European Courts to protect billion-dollar companies, while at home, it fails to meet the needs of SMEs and the self-employed.

COVID-19 has also highlighted how our economic model fails workers. The period has emphasised the importance of frontline workers, but it also highlighted how badly they are treated and how little they are paid for providing essential services.

We must build back better from the coronavirus crisis. Sinn Féin believes that the central plank of the economic recovery from the COVID crisis must be a real commitment to our microbusiness, our SME sector, and our family businesses, as well as a steadfast commitment to workers’ rights embedded in legislation and the creation of decent jobs with decent pay and conditions. • 9

LYNN BOYLAN CLIMATE JUSTICE

SENATOR

The appointment of a spokesperson on climate justice is the first time that a political party in Ireland has had such a role and it is a huge honour for me to be asked to do it.

Now more than ever, it is vital that climate action measures are viewed through a social justice lens. Climate action should improve people’s lives, not make the inequalities in our society worse.

The Programme for Government promises to bring forward a new Climate Bill within its first 100 days. This Bill will set out how the Government intends to meet its climate obligations, our role as lead opposition is to ensure that those measures are fair. I want to ensure that we have good and affordable public transport across the country; that fuel poverty will be addressed; that family farmers have their incomes supported; and that a Just Transition protects workers and their communities as they make the transition away from carbon intensive industries. •

MARTIN KENNY JUSTICE

SLIGO-LEITRIM

The Justice portfolio is wide-ranging and every aspect of it affects people in real ways.

One of our priorities is that citizens feel protected going about their lives and that the Gardaí are fully accountable, but also resourced to protect and serve people, rural and urban.

Community policing with renewed and more effective juvenile diversion programmes must be part of this. Some of our priorities are to monitor the new Stardust inquest and that this Government puts pressure on the British Government to release their files regarding the Dublin-Monaghan bombings.

We also await with great interest the review of the Offences Against the State Act, which has long outlived its status as “emergency” legislation and should be repealed, while law to deal with organised crime must be enacted.

Myself and the rest of the Sinn Féin Oireachtas Justice team; Pa Daly, a newly elected TD from Kerry, and Senator Niall Ó Donnghaile are committed to being effective in holding the Government to account on all matters to do with policing, courts, prisons, crime prevention, immigration, and equality. • 10

MARK WARD MENTAL HEALTH DUBLIN MID-WEST

Mental health doesn’t finish at a certain time in the evening. We need to develop 24/7 crisis intervention services and rehabilitation and recovery teams in the community.

For too long, Mental Health has been the Cinderella of the health service. The lack of political will from successive Governments has seen services decimated. I attended the recent COVID Committee on mental health where Mr John Farrelly, the CEO of the Mental Health Commission, detailed how the state’s mental health services are out of date and not fit for purpose.

The COVID-19 pandemic has and will present challenges for mental health. Reports from organisations such as Samaritans, Alone, Jigsaw, and Spun-out have seen an upsurge in the amount of people looking for mental health supports.

The key issues that I will be highlighting in the coming months are:  Waiting lists to access mental health care  The overreliance on acute care for adults  A no wrong door policy when it comes to dual diagnosis  The practice of admitting children to adult psychiatric units  Governments dependence on NGOs to provide services that the Government should be providing  Lack of specialist mental health services  Non regulation of mental health facilities  Highlight the gaps for staffing on the frontline workers  Costings of Sharing the Vision  Putting pressure on the Government to reinstate a National Director for Mental Health  Parity of Esteem Bill 2020 so that mental health is on an equal platform to physical health. •

PA DALY EQUALITY INCLUSION & LAW REFORM KERRY

I’ve been fortunate enough to have the opportunity to raise a number of issues already in Dáil Eireann, including the plight of seasonal workers and funding for SMEs. I have also worked on issues related to family law and spent convictions.

The scandalous treatment of residents in Direct Provision, including in Cahersiveen, is high on my priorities as well, and I’m looking forward to getting stuck into all of these areas and more when the Dáil resumes. • ISSUE NUMBER 3 – 2020 - UIMHIR EISIÚNA 3  anphoblacht

PATRICIA RYAN OLDER PEOPLE KILDARE SOUTH

My priorities in this area will be the return of the pension age to 65, the provision of housing for older people, improved conditions in nursing homes, and ensuring that social benefits, such as the old age pension and free travel, are protected and enhanced. We also need to reverse cruel austerity cuts such as the removal of the Death Grant. I will also be focusing on the delivery of a hospice service for the Laois area in conjunction with my colleague, Brian Stanley TD. As a former shop steward, workers’ rights are a priority for me. I recently met with CE Supervisors about their 2008 Labour Court recommendation in relation to their pension rights. The recent Debenhams debacle shows we have a long way to go to ensure workers get the protection they deserve.

Mental Health is another area that is very important to me. COVID-19 has shown the importance of good mental health. There have been too many suicides and we need investment and a plan similar to the Road Safety Strategy to address the epidemic of suicide.

And finally, we also need to build public and affordable homes on public land with proper infrastructure constructed beforehand or at the same time. •

PAUL DONNELLY COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT

DUBLIN WEST

Since the February election, my constituency office has processed thousands of calls and emails on COVID-19 related matters; from PUP forms to help and support for the elderly and vulnerable to people seeking clarity on the mixed messages coming from the caretaker Government.

Now that we are exiting some of the COVID-19 restrictions, I have opened my constituency office in Mulhuddart to create a full-time resource for the constituents of Dublin West.

My office in Leinster House has been equally busy. I have raised local issues in the chamber and I was delighted to be asked by Mary Lou to be spokesperson on Community Development. My office is working hard to create links with all Community Development programmes across the state to hear the issues that affect them directly.

As we move forward, I will focus on ensuring a fair deal and equal rights for all citizens, continued emphasis on the environment and the call for a border poll. •

PAULINE TULLY DISABILITY AND CARERS CAVAN/MONAGHAN AND NORTH MEATH People with disabilities and carers have endured far greater hardship during the COVID-19 crisis than most in society. Day care and respite services have been closed since mid-March leading to burnout, affecting the wellbeing and mental health of both carers and people with disabilities.

My short-term priority will be pursuing the safe and timely reopening of all these services. Other issues that I intend to focus on include the ratification of the optional protocol of the UNCRPD, reform of the means test for Carers Allowance, and getting the Section 39 Organisations Bill signed in to law.

There are a lot of issue that need a focus within the constituency, one of which is the lack of social and affordable housing. People depending on Housing Assistance Payment (HAP) are acutely affected by this, as many landlords are refusing to take tenants on HAP leaving them with little to no options.

Public investment is needed in many parts of the constituency, especially in terms of roads and broadband. This is essential to better position the area to attract private investment and jobs. The northsouth interconnector needs to be delivered in line with the calls from local communities for it to be undergrounded. Finally, we have a strong tourism product in the constituency that I would like to see developed further. • anphoblacht  UIMHIR EISIÚNA 3 - 2020 - ISSUE NUMBER 3

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ROSE CONWAY-WALSH

FURTHER AND HIGHER EDUCATION, RESEARCH, INNOVATION, AND SCIENCE MAYO The short-term priority is ensuring that the return to 3rd level education in the wake of COVID-19 related closures is safe for students. There is also a need to ensure students have the necessary supports to allow them to return. Students have been particularly hard hit by the loss of part-time and seasonal employment and reduction in the Pandemic Unemployment Payment. Many families who could previously afford to support or partial support students in 3rd level education are no longer able and need financial support.

Sinn Féin want an immediate reduction of €500 in the cost of 3rd level fees, which are currently the highest in the EU and moving to the complete removal of fees over 5 years. PLC and apprenticeship fees should be abolished completely. Reform is needed in the SUSI grants to make in available to more students and families. We need to expand and improve mental health services available for students, and to increase the number and quality of apprenticeships. Apprenticeships and PhD students should not be expected to work full time for less than minimum wage. •

SORCHA CLARKE DEFENCE

LONGFORD WESTMEATH

This constituency was once home to three army barracks: Custume Barracks, Sean Connolly Barracks, and Columb Barracks. The closure of army barracks and the reduction of the army presence in this constituency is continuing to have negative consequences.

My aim within this role is to work with both serving and former members and their families to highlight their issues and concerns.

My priorities and plans include:  Health care for current & retired defence forces personnel  Better serving conditions for defence forces personnel.  Making connected, informed and useful representations.  Adequate health, welfare and living conditions of serving defence force families.

I am looking forward to working with all stakeholders to make a career in the Defence Forces a viable option. •

THOMAS GOULD ADDICTION RECOVERY AND WELL BEING

CORK NORTH CENTRAL

I am determined to be a strong republican voice for people who are so often not heard. In terms of developing my own portfolio, I will be engaging with community groups to try to reduce the harm of drug and alcohol addictions and make our communities safer.

I have also been appointed as a member of the Housing Committee. This is so important as the current housing crisis is destroying people’s lives and I will be putting pressure on the Government to build mixed tenure houses and give families and ordinary people homes.

Coming from the north side of Cork city, I am determined to end the neglect of this area. We need the infrastructure, services, and supports that have long since been promised, but never delivered. I will be pushing the Government to commit to building the Northern Ring Road and putting a hospital on Cork’s north side.

I will also be pushing for road safety measures to ensure that children can play safely in their own neighbourhoods and people can cycle or walk to work if they want. • 12

ISSUE NUMBER 3 – 2020 - UIMHIR EISIÚNA 3  anphoblacht

Throughout the coronavirus pandemic, ministers from north and south have been working together, recognising the protection we have as an island

MICHELLE O’NEILL

THE PEOPLE WANT TO SEE THE EXECUTIVE AND ASSEMBLY DELIVERING With the establishment of the new Executive, a key part of the Good Friday Agreement and the political institutions it created was restored. The people made it clear to us that they wanted to see the Assembly and Executive up and running and delivering for them.

A key part of the Good Friday Agreement is its all-Ireland dimensions and the all-Ireland structures it created. The meeting of the North South Ministerial Council in early August, the first such meeting in three years, means that all the political institutions of the Good Friday Agreement are in place and functional.

Throughout the coronavirus pandemic, ministers from North and South have been working together, recognising the protection we have as an island. That work continues as we balance easing restrictions, dealing with clusters and preparing for a possible second wave.

The North South Ministerial Council and the British Irish Council, both established under the Good Friday Agreement, are key to this all-Ireland cooperation.

There are still some, however, who have yet to fully embrace the letter and spirit of the Good Friday Agreement, more than two decades after its signing.

Some are still refusing to respect difference and embrace equality.

The ongoing mockery and disrespect shown towards the Irish language and identity by senior figures within the DUP, and the failure of that party’s leadership

to challenge such attitudes, shows how far some still have to travel.

That Agreement was endorsed by the majority of people across the island in referenda and successive elections and have since continued to show widespread support for the Agreement. It is long past the time that everyone, including those within political unionism who are still resistant, signed up to it and begin actively implementing it The British and Irish governments too, as co-guarantors of that Agreement, have a role to play in ensuring its full implementation.

As well as the Good Friday Agreement commitments, pledges made in other agreements must also be honoured.

Six years on from the Stormont House Agreement, which was agreed between the two governments and the main political parties, and the British government is still stalling and deliberately trying to frustrate its mechanisms on dealing with the past.

These were agreed and must be implemented in full. Families bereaved during the conflict have waited for up to 50 years for access to the truth about what happened to their loved ones. That is unacceptable. Agreements made must be implemented.

The same applies to the commitments made in the New Decade, New Approach document published by the British and Irish governments at the start of this year. It helped create the space to de-

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velop a new era of politics in the North and paved the way for the Executive and political institutions of the Good Friday Agreement to be re-established on the basis of genuine power sharing.

Both the British and Irish governments made many commitments in that document, including financial commitments and pledges on equality, that must now be implemented and resourced.

We made it clear there would be no return to the status quo at Stormont and the new Executive has shown that to be the case. In particular, the decision to establish a graduate entry medical school at Magee was a prime example of that.

As well as addressing the absolute need for more doctors west of the Bann, it also had wider resonance, tackling the legacy of neglect and regional inequality.

However, there is still much more work to do. When the Assembly returns after the summer recess, as well as continuing to deal with the ongoing impact of the coronavirus pandemic and the rebuilding of our economy, there will be major outstanding issues to resolve.

The commitment to delivering and enacting legislation to protect the rights of Irish language speakers is a priority. This legislation is key to demonstrating that this is an Executive for all and that there is a new era of politics in the North.

It threatens no one and will only serve to enrich our society. Those who think otherwise have bigger issues they need to address around respect for identity 13

and equality. Leadership will be key in all of this.

We will also be facing the looming prospect of a Brexit that the people of the North did not want and the Assembly does not support. The catastrophic economic impacts of Brexit are plain for all to see, just as they were ahead of the referendum.

The business community in the North have been crying out for information and answers on what post-Brexit trading arrangements will look like and, to date, all they have got from the British government and their Brexit supporting allies has been more confusion.

Unique protections have been secured for the North in the Irish Protocol and Withdrawal Agreement which protect our economy, avoid any hardening of the border on the island of Ireland, and protect the Good Friday Agreement.

These must be maintained whatever happens.

The shortsightedness of the British government in not asking for an extension to the Brexit process as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic was yet another example of the disdain and disregard with which it treats the North.

And it also reinforces the need for both the North South Ministerial Council and the British Irish Council to step up their work to protect our economy, our rights, and our peace agreements. Brexit has also led many people to look at their future and to imagine new realities. The

People who previously may not have been supportive of reunification are now looking at it as a way back into the EU and a way to create a better and more representative island for everyone. debate around Irish unity, which was already underway and gathering pace, has been accelerated by Brexit.

People who previously may not have been supportive of reunification are now looking at it as a way back into the EU and a way to create a better and more representative island for everyone.

With the British government recklessly pursuing its disastrous Brexit policy without any thought of its impact on the North and with the new right-wing alliance of Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael in the South, people are looking for a better way.

We have entered a decade of opportunity where the new Ireland, a united Ireland, is within our grasp. The Good Friday Agreement, voted for by people North and South, contains provision for a referendum on Irish unity, North and South.

Such a referendum offers a clear and democratic pathway to Irish unity. It also provides space for a reasoned, mature and inclusive debate on what a new Ireland would look like. And no one has anything to fear for that discussion.

Our aspiration for Irish unity is legitimate. So are the views of those currently opposed to unity. That is why we need the debate and discussion around it and why we need the Irish government in particular to get involved.

Claiming that the time is not right or waiting around until Britain loses interest in the North simply does not make sense and is an insult to our legitimately held views.

Referendums will not be won by platitudes and warm words. It will require action from the Irish government and that will require political will which has been lacking to date.

As a first step, we need to see this Irish government step up to the plate, in line with its responsibilities, and actively begin preparing for unity.

It can do this by establishing a Joint Oireachtas Committee on unity, by bringing forward a white paper on the issue, and by convening a citizen’s assembly inclusive of the entire island to discuss reunification.

It is within our grasp and it is achievable. We now have to go out and secure the referendum and win it. • Michelle O‘Neill is Sinn Féin Vice President and an MLA for Mid Ulster

• The COVID-19 pandemic and Brexit looming reinforces the need for both the North South Ministerial Council and the British-Irish Council to step up their work to protect our economy, our rights and our peace agreements 14

ISSUE NUMBER 3 – 2020 - UIMHIR EISIÚNA 3  anphoblacht

Making workplace democracy relevant As the fourth industrial revolution defines this era trade unions, civil society and political forces need to find a way to create a common and cooperative narrative

BY ETHEL BUCKLEY There is nothing more offensive in our industrial relations system than to see workers being forced to withdraw their labour, lose pay and march up and down outside their workplace in the rain to get what workers in other European countries have as a legal right – namely, to bargain their wages and working conditions collectively with their employer. In this regard, the Republic of Ireland is an outlier. This antiquated industrial relations system is the environment in which we are forced to operate as trade unionists.

When arguing for a modern fit-forpurpose industrial relations system, one robust enough to confront the inevitable challenges posed by the automation and new ways of working coming down the tracks of the Fourth Industrial Revolution, the top priority for trade unionists must be collective bargaining as a right – a labour, civil and human right.

While the right to collective bargaining has been a core trade union movement demand for some time, it is not gaining traction in political and public discourse.

For the counter-argument inevitably goes that collective bargaining between unionised workers and their employers reduces ‘competitiveness’, leads to inefficient business practices, and makes industrial relations ‘inflexible’. And that’s not to even mention the legal arguments around how the

Constitution doesn’t provide for collective bargaining as a right.

Trade unionists and those on the left have to challenge these arguments head on and clearly articulate our vision for fairness at work and justice in society.

A Superior Economic and Social Model

What trade unionists and progressive political and civil society allies need to do is show that democracy in the workplace, and collective bargaining in particular, is an indispensable component of a superior economic and social model and the bedrock of modern industrial relations.

Rather than impeding economic growth,

There is nothing in the Programme for Government to suggest that the main parties in the Republic’s new coalition have any appetite for extending workplace democracy

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collective bargaining is a contributor to growth. At this level there is a considerable body of evidence to show that collective bargaining has been shown to be a major contributor to– or, at least, not an inhibitor of –better economic, social and political outcomes.

Union members earn higher wages than non-union comparators. Studies show the link between unionisation and lower levels of income inequality as unions lower differentials by lifting the wages of the lower paid. By negotiating pay rates based on objective criteria, collective bargaining reduces the gender pay gap between women and men and shrinks ethnic, racial and migrant wage gaps.

Researchers at the University of Limerick’s Department of Work & Employment Studies have shown that members of trade unions are more likely to participate in political and other civic activities than non-union members.

This is most likely down to participation in workplace democracy activities like electing shop stewards and participating in general meetings to mandate their representatives on negotiating demands and engaging in debates and ballots on the outcomes of collective bargaining.

While trade unionists understandably look to the benefits of collective bargaining to employees, there are clear benefits for 15

employers. Numerous studies show that collective bargaining produces better outcomes – namely, higher firm productivity.

While space does not allow a description of each of these studies, the following from the OECD shows the extent to which institutional attitudes towards collective bargaining have changed: “Collective bargaining can improve the quality of the employment relationship between workers and firms. It can be a useful tool for self-regulation between workers and employers and bring more stable labour … leading to a more efficient allocation of resources, greater motivation and ultimately productivity.”

The World Economic Forum shows that countries with high levels of collective bargaining are also global leaders in business competitiveness. For instance, the Netherlands, Sweden and Denmark which have high levels of collective bargaining coverage at 80 to 90 percent (this refers to the proportion of the workforce that is covered by a negotiated collective agreement) are in the top 10 most competitive countries in the world. Ireland, which has a collective bargaining coverage rate of less than a third, trails in 24th place.

If collective bargaining has so much benefit, why is it not more universally promoted? Why are employer organisations and their allies so opposed? Let’s remember that owners are not opposed to collective bargaining 16

in principle. After all, employers bargain collectively though their own representative bodies - unions of employers, if you will and shareholders bargain collectively with workers through management.

So while business owners bargain collectively, they refuse to allow employees to do so. Why? Is it because management is wedded to out-of-date industrial practices? Is it because they want to protect their ‘status’?

Is it because they want to suppress wages and, so drive up profits? Most likely, all these reasons come into play – to the detriment of firm performance, economic growth, workers’ livelihoods and socio-economic outcomes.

Another argument that is regularly posed against collective bargaining is that it would somehow scare off foreign direct investment thereby reducing our ability to attract multinationals. This, too, is a false and misleading claim. SIPTU members bargain collectively in many multi-nationals, for example in workplaces that both research and develop as well as produce pharmaceuticals, medical devices and electronics.

When one looks at Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) throughout the EU we find that countries with high levels of collective bargaining coverage also attract FDI. In Ireland, multi-national employment makes up 22 percent of all employment in the private sector. In Sweden and Denmark, multi-national employment makes up 22

and 20 percent respectively while in The Netherlands, the figure is 18 percent.

Collective bargaining rights in these countries are clearly not an impediment to attracting FDI (nor are their higher corporate tax rates).

Next Steps

Describing a situation and outlining an alternative, even when you can demonstrate the benefits, does not necessarily produce a winning strategy. We can draw up political wish lists for workers North and South involving legislating for a worker-friendly industrial relations infrastructure and enhanced workers’ rights, wage increases (including the Living Wage), improved inwork benefits and an end to precariousness – but that doesn’t give us a road-map for how we get there from where we are at present.

We need to develop one, and develop it in the specific conditions in which we find ourselves on this island.

There is nothing in the Programme for Government to suggest that the main parties in the Republic’s new coalition have any appetite for extending workplace democracy.

Rather than just criticising them for not doing things that we know that are unlikely to, we should focus instead on what we can achieve, what results-rich tactics we can employ. We should start planning now for a better, future political environment.

ISSUE NUMBER 3 – 2020 - UIMHIR EISIÚNA 3  anphoblacht

Trade unions and our allies must find a way to connect with the overwhelming majority of workers who are not members, to make unions relevant and to demonstrate the benefits of collective action The first and immediate challenge for the labour movement is to make unionisation relevant and attractive to workers. The harsh reality is that currently most people won’t know what we are talking about when we say ‘collective bargaining’ and fewer still will see a value in campaigning for it. This is all the more the case for the people who need it the most – the low-paid, precarious workers, women, young people, travellers and migrants.

Turning this around will require more than just a re-branding. Trade unions and our allies must find a way to connect with the overwhelming majority of workers who are not members, to make unions relevant and to demonstrate the benefits of collective action.

Second, however hostile the current legal-

political environment is to trade unionism and there is no doubt that the Constitution and its interpretation is a major challenge in the Republic, it is not a barrier to organising.

Nothing can take the place of the hard, dogged, long-term out- on-the-ground work of convincing workers about the benefits of getting organised and supporting them to unionise their workplaces.

A challenge for unions both in Ireland and internationally is a decline in union density particularly among young workers. However, in recent years there has been a marked change in attitude among young people towards trade unions.

We see that ourselves in SIPTU among young childcare workers who are unionising in their thousands so that they can organise their industry for better pay and conditions and improvements in the quality of care and education for children and parents. This sort of largescale organising work is critical for unions as a stronger trade union movement, measured in terms of membership density, has a greater chance of influencing the public debate.

Third, we need to challenge the nearmonopoly that business interests have in the public debate. We need to confront the race-to-the-bottom slant that many put on competitiveness and efficiency with a

high-road alternative showing that it is this emphasis on investment, innovation, R&D combined with modern industrial relations practices and stakeholder equality that is the pathway to sustainable economic and social prosperity.

Finally, trade unions, civil society and political forces need to find a way to create a common and cooperative narrative.

Transforming the legal-political environment in order to facilitate workplace democracy requires a transformative government.

This is not, in the first instance, about ‘selecting sides’. Rather, it is about creating alliances with a broad range of forces that cut across party and organisational divides to effect progressive change. This change will be easier (though not inevitable) if we are successful in making workplace democracy relevant to workers, in organising an ever growing number of workers into unions and challenging the business interests in the public debate.

This is quite a task. But no one said it was going to be easy. We can, however, increase our chances of success by working together.

Indeed, that is the only way we will succeed. • Ethel Buckley is SIPTU Deputy General Secretary for Organising and Membership Development

• Trade unions must connect workers to demonstrate the benefits of collective action anphoblacht  UIMHIR EISIÚNA 3 - 2020 - ISSUE NUMBER 3

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THE

TACKLING MENTAL HEALTH CRISIS

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ISSUE NUMBER 3 – 2020 - UIMHIR EISIÚNA 3  anphoblacht

In the Six Counties, we face unparalleled mental health challenges with some of the highest reported rates of post-traumatic stress disorder in the world

BY ÓRLAITHÍ FLYNN The World Health Organisation has stated that COVID-19 could cause a global mental health crisis and indeed, as a result of necessary restrictions being put in place, there has been an upsurge in people looking to avail of mental health supports.

The longer this crisis goes on, the bigger the demand will be on services.

We need to prepare and plan now to deal with the psychological aftermath and additional mental health needs as we emerge from COVID-19.

2020 began with a political focus on the unprecedented crisis in mental health. One of the first acts of the restored Executive in the Six Counties was to form a mental well-being and resilience working group.

In the Six Counties, we face unparalleled mental health challenges with some of the highest reported rates of posttraumatic stress disorder in the world and clear challenges presented by transgenerational trauma in our youth population.

COVID-19 has only added to the mental health challenges

our society faces, and indeed will compound them as we understand how multiple traumatic events create particular mental health needs.

As we gradually ease out of the restrictions, it is vital that adequate support is in place for services and for those seeking help but, until a vaccine is found, it means co-existing with the virus and a radical change to our daily lives.

The additional areas of need are likely to include families recently bereaved from COVID-19 and non COVID-19 deaths; survivors of COVID-19; long-term sick; unemployed; struggling business owners; children and young people who have missed months of education and social interaction; older people who were already vulnerable to loneliness and social isolation; essential workers; and, last but not least, our health and social care staff who have experienced trauma on the frontline.

The mental health action plan in the North, which was published in May, includes a commitment to produce a ten year strategy including a comprehensive funding plan for mental health. We must now see the development of this strategy, the

• COVID-19 has only added to the mental health challenges our society faces

anphoblacht  UIMHIR EISIÚNA 3 - 2020 - ISSUE NUMBER 3

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The North-South Ministerial Council response to COVID-19 must include planning for an all-island approach to mental health

development of a targeted COVID-19 mental health response, as well as the full implementation of the Suicide Prevention Strategy. Similarly, the North-South Ministerial Council response to COVID-19 must include planning for an all-island approach to mental health. Any policy will be incomplete without it.

Just as we all have physical health, we all have mental health and subsequently just as we all experience poor physical health or injury throughout our lifetime, it is inevitable that we will all experience periods of poor mental health.

The stigma surrounding poor mental health and suicide in Ireland has undoubtedly lessened over the years, but we still have a much longer way to go before we can confidently say that we have broken the taboo around poor mental health and suicide. And that responsibility is on each of us as individuals, as families, as neighbours, as friends, as work colleagues, and as a society as a whole to recognise that a battle with mental health is as important and as fragile as any battle with physical health.

In my role as Sinn Féin Mental Health Spokesperson and Chairperson of the Assembly All Party Group on Suicide Prevention, I have had the honour and the pleasure of meeting with so many brave and courageous people from across this island who have suffered terribly as a result of poor mental health.

I have met with families whose lives have been torn apart and turned upside down as they grieve for a loved one whose life was sadly taken too soon. I have met with men and women the length and breadth of the country whose mental stamina has

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been pushed to the absolute limits as a result of mesh implants and injury.

I have met and listened to those struggling with addictions, who suffer with a dual diagnosis of mental ill health, but who feel let down that current services are unable to deal with their needs. And I have listened in awe to the many wonderful groups and organisations who spend every working day trying their very best to help people when they need that help most.

What is clear to me in my experiences of working on this extremely complex and difficult issue is that dedicated regional and all-island plans are needed as a matter of urgency. And I look forward to working with my colleague and mental health spokesperson in the South, Mark Ward TD, on how we can help shape and progress these plans.

Resourced, clear pathways must be developed to deal with the mental health systems already under strain on this island as well as an expected mental ill health surge in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Mental Health services across the island were already under considerable pressure before COVID-19 and the onus is now on us all, as politicians, as communities, and as a society, to improve on how we think, on how we react, and on how we invest in the mental health of our nation. • Órlaithí Flynn is a Sinn Féin MLA for West Belfast and is the party Assembly spokesperson for Mental Health and Suicide Prevention

ISSUE NUMBER 3 – 2020 - UIMHIR EISIÚNA 3  anphoblacht

MAIRÉAD FARRELL

The Irish Government spent over €8.4 million of taxpayers’ money on legal and consultancy fees to successfully oppose receiving this windfall from the world’s first trillion-dollar company

LITTLE APPLES WILL GROW AGAIN There was a collective sigh of relief from the Government when on 15th July the EU’s General Court ruled against the EU Commission in their case against Ireland/Apple.

The Court found that the 0.005% corporate tax rate that Apple had availed of here did not constitute illegal state aid.

Thus, Ireland would not be receiving the €14.3 billion that has been sitting in an escrow account. Finance Minister Paschal Donohoe described the ruling as a vindication which would “lead many to reassess their view of our corporation tax regime”.

The Irish Government spent over €8.4 million of taxpayers’ money on legal and consultancy fees to successfully oppose receiving this windfall from the world’s first trillion-dollar company. Some ‘victory’!

And as regards this ruling’s potential for a reassessment of our corporate tax regime, take the words of one prominent member of the EU Parliament who was quoted in Bloomberg as saying; “This is a really black day for tax justice and tax efficiency”. So, I wouldn’t be so sure that this ruling is going to repair our reputation.

What the case was about The Commission’s case of illegal state aid arose because of two tax rulings Revenue had given to Apple in 1991 and 2007– so called ‘sweetheart deals’ - which allowed two Irish incorporated subsidiaries to pay little to no tax on approximately €104 billion in profits. It is important to remember that the reason the Commission initiated the case was because of a US Senate sub-committee

ies were not taxable in Ireland or anywhere else in the world; hence, this tax avoidance scheme often being referred to as ‘stateless income’. It was about whether in allowing Apple to pay a corporate tax rate of 0.005% constituted an act of illegal state aid.

What the case was not about

inquiry into Apple Ireland. This first drew attention to the fact that Apple earned about 60% of its global profits here, whilst paying virtually no tax.

As the Senate sub-committee pointed out, key subsidiaries of Apple had ‘no declared tax residency anywhere in the world’. In response to a sub-committee question regarding where one of its Irish subsidiaries was managed and controlled, Apple replied that it ‘has not made a determination’ but that it ‘has determined that Apple Operations Ireland [AOI] is not managed and controlled in Ireland’.

Wednesday’s ruling does not contest the fact that Revenue facilitated these arrangements that ensured the certain subsidiar-

anphoblacht  UIMHIR EISIÚNA 3 - 2020 - ISSUE NUMBER 3

In 2016, then Finance Minister Noonan described the Commission’s ruling as an attack on our 12.5% corporate tax rate and a threat to our sovereign taxing rights, a line many of those in Fianna Fáil/Fine Gael have largely held to. This case was not about the right of small states to set their own corporate tax rates and attempts to frame it as such are a smokescreen. This was about a specific deal for a specific firm.

Nor was the case really about our tax driven approach to attracting the kind of real FDI that creates actual jobs. Less than a year ago, an IMF study found that around 60% of Ireland’s FDI is what they refer to as ‘phantom FDI’, which amounts to profit shifting by multinationals that is designed to minimise their tax liabilities rather than financing productive activity. This gets nearer to the heart of the Commission’s case.

Corporate Tax avoidance: victimless crime or race to the bottom?

For some people, this case may seem obscure and unimportant. So what, they might think, if we facilitated a large multinational avoiding tax due elsewhere?

Who cares so long as they create jobs? The

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• Present and former Finance Ministers Paschal Donohoe and Minister Michael Noonan

problem is that, for decades, other countries have been following the old neoliberal line that low corporate tax rates equal economic success, with major tax subsidies to wealthy multinationals becoming the norm.

As the academic literature shows, average corporation tax rates around the world have been falling for the last number of decades.

Unfortunately, the cost of running nation states hasn’t necessarily been falling. So, how do we bridge this shortfall? Well, invariably it falls on ordinary people to compensate through increases in the likes of income tax, consumption taxes, stealth taxes, and a whole host of other new taxes like carbon tax, water tax, etc.

Appealing the ruling and the road ahead This case can, and I believe it will be, appealed by the Commission to the Court

of Justice (ECJ). Margrethe Vestager, the European Commissioner for Competition, in a statement said: “The Commission stands fully behind the objective that all companies should pay their fair share of tax” and that it “will continue to look at aggressive tax planning measures.”

Whether it’s successful is another matter.

However, it is worth noting that previous appeals have been successful. For instance, in 2016, the ECJ overturned a General Court ruling regarding selective tax treatment inolving Spanish bank Santander; so, this ruling is not the final word.

Nevertheless, the real threat to the Irish State is unlikely to be from illegal state aid cases, but from an obscure and hitherto unused element of the Lisbon Treaty - Article 116. This article allows the Commission to make corporate tax changes at the European level without unanimous agreement of the

member states. So, the State would not be able to link up with the other EU corporate tax haven jurisdictions like Luxembourg and the Netherlands to block such changes.

The State needs to build an alternative economic model, because the current one based around low taxes and low wages is fast running out of steam. We in Sinn Féin are ready to bring this about. We are prepared to build an entrepreneurial state that not only funds public services properly and allows for collective bargaining, but seeks to develop a high value-added indigenous sector, based on good wages and good employment conditions. • Mairéad Farrell is a Sinn Féin TD for Galway West and party spokesperson for Public Expenditure and Reform.

• Margrethe Vestager, the European Commissioner for Competition 22

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• Proclaiming the “Republican Party” credentials at Arbour Hill

ALLOW THE PEOPLE TO HAVE THEIR SAY

Micheál Martin in his quest to be Taoiseach has set aside pre-election promises and pre-conditions under the guise of the “National Interest”. All except two. He continued to refuse to talk to Sinn Féin and he continued to oppose an Irish unity referendum. Both these actions are about retaining power and opposing fundamental change.

In a recent interview, the Taoiseach doubled down on this claiming that a “unity referendum” would be “divisive”.

The Programme for Government makes no mention of planning for Irish unity and when Sinn Féin President Mary Lou McDonald raised the question, the Taoiseach squirmed for five minutes to avoid even uttering the words, “United Ireland”.

We live in Orwellian times with “Unity is Divisive”, “Partition in the National Interest” and a Taoiseach who dare not use the words, “United Ireland”.

So, what is going on with the Fianna Fáil leader, the Taoiseach who proclaims his credentials annually as the leader of the “Republican Party” at Arbour Hill and Bodentown. We have a clear and achievable pathway to unity and Fianna Fáil moving in the opposite direction.

The answer is in the question. Unity is now clearly achievable. It is real and achievable in a relatively short timescale. A new and united Ireland is doable. That is a fundamental challenge to the 26-County establishment and to Fianna Fáil.

Since entering the Dáil in 1927, Fianna Fáil have claimed to oppose Partition, but in 93 years have failed to come up

with a strategy to overcome it. They prospered in the Dáil and grew in power and influence in the South.

This counter-revolution worked for generations of Fianna Fáil leaders who believed that being Taoiseach was their entitlement.

De Valera’s rhetoric on the North gave way to building the 26-County state to the point of executing and imprisoning republicans.

Fianna Fáil under Seán Lemass went further. Speaking in the Oxford Union in 1959, Lemass led out the new strategy to ending Partition. It would be a policy of “good neighbourliness”.

He said that the reunification strategy would be to, “build goodwill and to strive for concerted action in particular fields where early practical advantages can be obtained, hoping to process step by step to a new situation in which a reappraisal of the whole problem can be undertaken, unhampered by prejudice”.

This was at best a naive understanding of political unionism and at worst a cover for accepting the sectarian single party state of the Six Counties that was held together by coercive legislation and official discrimination against Irish citizens.

Ten years later, the Orange state would collapse under the demand for basic civil rights and popular resistance, while the Fianna Fáil Government of Jack Lynch stood idly by.

The “Good Neighbourliness” policy of Lemass was more about consolidating power in the 26 Counties than a workable strategy to end Partition. It is premised on the concept that

BY CIARAN QUINN

anphoblacht  UIMHIR EISIÚNA 3 - 2020 - ISSUE NUMBER 3

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to fail for those reasons. Yet, a version of it remains the policy of Micheál Martin. Where Lemass outlined it as strategy with the end point of reunification, the current Taoiseach cannot even bring himself to mention Irish unity.

Micheál Martin is no Seán Lemass and this is no longer 1959, when partition had existed for 37 years.

In 1998, the Good Friday Agreement was signed and endorsed by the vast majority of people, North and South.

The Agreement is not a settlement. It remains a mechanism to resolve political differences based on democratic and peaceful means. The agreement is organised on the basis of first principles and then their outworking in terms of institutions and rights.

Those first principles, the underpinning of the agreement are the fundamental values of equality, peace and democracy. The consent to future constitutional change is measured in a referendum, the straightforward democratic process of allowing people to have their say and abiding by the result. A process in which the votes of all are equal and no group has a veto.

The pathway to unity has been agreed by the people of Ireland. There is a constitutional imperative on an Irish Government outlined in Bunreacht na hÉireann, where it states: “It is the firm will of the Irish nation, in harmony and friendship, to unite all the people who share the territory of the island of Ireland, in all the diversity of their identities and traditions, recognising that a united Ireland shall be brought about only by peaceful means with the consent of a majority of the people, democratically expressed, in both jurisdictions in the island”.

Micheál Martin has rejected a unity referendum. He puts himself and the office of Taoiseach at odds with the Good Friday Agreement and article three of Bunreacht na hÉireann.

This Irish Government has translated the “the firm will of the people” in the constitution to a different proposition in

We have a clear and achievable pathway to unity and Fianna Fáil moving in the opposite direction.

• Seán Lemass

political unionism underwritten by Britain would eventually see the error of its ways and consent to Irish Unity. And, in this scenario, it is only the consent of political unionism that mattered.

The rights and consent of Irish nationalists living in the North did not feature. The Lemass strategy was always bound

• Éamon de Valera’s rhetoric on the north gave way to building the 26-County state to the point of executing and imprisoning republicans 24

ISSUE NUMBER 3 – 2020 - UIMHIR EISIÚNA 3  anphoblacht

• Micheál Martin continues to refuse to talk to Sinn Féin and he continues to oppose an Irish unity referendum – these actions are about retaining power and opposing fundamental change

the Programme for Government. Here the coalition states: “We are committed to working with all communities and traditions on the island to build consensus around a shared future. This consensus will be underpinned by the Good Friday Agreement and by the absolute respect for the principle of consent.”

The proposal continues stating that the new Government will: Establish a Unit within the Department of An Taoiseach to work towards a consensus on a shared island. This unit will examine the political, social, economic, and cultural considerations underpinning a future in which all traditions are mutually respected.”

Deliberately missing is any reference to Irish unity. The Programme for Government commitment is deliberately vague and confuses consensus with consent. Consensus implies a veto. If unionism says no to unity, then there is no consensus. The Good Friday Agreement is clear there can be no veto and consent will be measured in unity referendums, North and South. A position that this Taoiseach rejects.

The setting up of a working group with a vague term of reference gives the impression of doing something while doing nothing. It appears to be that the Taoiseach is seeking

De Valera’s rhetoric on the North gave way to building the 26-County state to the point of executing and imprisoning republicans.

anphoblacht  UIMHIR EISIÚNA 3 - 2020 - ISSUE NUMBER 3

to rewrite the Good Friday Agreement and to stall progress on Irish Unity.

No doubt the United Irelanders within Fianna Fáil must be looking on with bewilderment at a Fianna Fáil Taoiseach so entrenched in protecting his position that he opposes the agreed mechanism to unity.

Even more confusing is that Irish unity is popular with voters across the political spectrum in the south as all recent polls have demonstrated.

As we get closer to securing unity, the pillars of the 26 County establishment are getting more rabid in their opposition; promoting strategies that failed 60 years ago and undermining the fundamental principles of the Good Friday Agreement. All under the watch once again of a Fianna Fáil Taoiseach.

This is about protecting almost 100 years of privilege and power. However, change is coming. The unity debate is on.

The pathway is clear to secure and win a unity referendum.

Good neighbourliness will not on its own resolve the constitutional issue. It is time for an Irish Government to plan for unity, to promote unity and to allow the people to have their say.

Maybe Micheál Martin would be better focusing on another section of that speech by Seán Lemass where he asks himself the rhetorical question, “why not leave things as they are”. His response to himself, “nothing is ever settled until it is settled right”. • Ciarán Quinn is Sinn Féin’s North America Representative

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Capitalism on Life Support

The Corona Virus pandemic brought the global economy to a standstill. BILL MITCHELL and LOUISA CONNORS offer an alternative assessment of the policy mistakes and ideological dead ends that got us here, as well as the challenges that await the EU as the prospect of another economic crisis grows.

GOVERNMENTS IN AN IDEOLOGICAL BIND Governments all around the world are now caught in an ideological bind of their own making. This is no more apparent than among the Member States of the Economic and Monetary Union.

For several decades now, governments have courted the prognostications of mainstream economists who preached the religious message of austerity. Like all snake-oil evangelists, their purpose was to enrich a few and undermine the fortunes of the many.

For years, orthodox economists have told their political masters that fiscal deficits are dangerous and likely to trigger accelerating inflation.

They have claimed that government borrowing would drive up interest and undermine productive investment opportunities by private firms and would also enslave future generations with onerous tax obligations as they would be forced to ‘pay the debt back’.

Supranational organisations like the International Monetary Fund (IMF) have promoted the preposterous notion of ‘growth friendly austerity’, misleading many into believing that if their governments reduced spending, growth would follow.

Claims of austerity-led growth have been presented under the guise of an elaborate chicanery called ‘Ricardian Equivalence’, which holds that a smaller government deficit leads people to think their future taxes will be lower and so reduces their inclination to save. The ensuing private spending frenzy, so it is suggested, offsets cuts in public spending.

What all of this really represents, however, is the abandonment of the cardinal rule of macroeconomics - that spending equals output equals income and drives employment.

Why would people increase spending just as their jobs disappear? Why would firms invest in new productive capital if sales are drying up?

In actual fact, interest rates around the world have continued to fall and now governments are borrowing at negative interest rates over long horizons, despite holding much larger debt piles.

Mainstream economists shroud their absurd claims in long equations and complex technical terms like ‘optimal micro

26

founded principles’ or ‘infinitely lived maximising agents’. At the core of these claims is a rotten set of interrelated lies; a set of propositions that bear no application to how real-world economic institutions work.

The application of orthodox economic models to real world crisis has very poor predictive outcomes. In fact, the mainstream response to these crises – austerity – has created economic stagnation and imposed untold hardship on millions of people.

CAPITALISM ON LIFE SUPPORT Austerity, and so-called ‘trickle down’ economics, has actually redistributed national income away from workers, towards profits and higher income earners, producing increased inequality and poverty.

Many nations around the world entered the pandemic in various states of bad shape. The degradation of public infrastructure, and institutions has been decades in the making, and the Global Financial Crisis – created in part by orthodox economic prescriptions that reduced government regulation and oversight – exacerbated the fault lines in world economies.

The dissonance we see now, given the long-held ideological views of ‘small government’ and ‘free markets’ is massive.

Governments are being forced to dramatically alter course with respect to fiscal and monetary policy.

It is now obvious that Capitalism is on life support and the public sector and fiscal policy is the only thing keeping it from death’s door.

Governments, with the neoliberalism infestation firmly embedded in their DNA, are now shifting uncomfortably, as they are forced to abandon their ‘sound finance’ precepts as millions of jobs disappear and the degraded health systems become the last line of defence against the deadly virus.

While politicians initially talked about a V-shaped episode, a brief hibernation followed by a robust return to ‘normality’, it is now obvious as second waves hit, that much larger fiscal support will have to be provided for the decade or more ahead to nurse our economies through this disaster.

In other words, everything these governments have been

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The mainstream response to these crises – austerity – has created economic stagnation and imposed untold hardship on millions of people telling us up until now has been turned on its head.

The interesting thing is that progressive political parties have also been left in no-person’s land. Their embrace of the neoliberal mantras fed to them by the mainstream economists only served to alienate their core constituents. As a consequence of their dallying with the neoliberal devil, many traditional progressive parties are now unelectable.

How this tension within government plays out will determine our futures.

EUROZONE - DOOMED FROM THE START

• Brexit will clearly damage the European economy despite all the posturing to the contrary by Michel Barnier and his cohort in Europe, and the Remainers in Britain anphoblacht  UIMHIR EISIÚNA 3 - 2020 - ISSUE NUMBER 3

Nowhere better exemplifies this tension than the Eurozone, which is the most advanced expression of neoliberalism that we have.

The politicians of the 1980s, aided and abetted by mainstream economics, created a monstrosity in the form of the currency union.

All prior studies of potential economic and monetary integration in Europe – the 1970 Werner Report and the 1977 MacDougall Report – concluded that the only viable architecture for a common currency would require a substantial ‘federal’ fiscal capacity, legitimised politically, by a properly constituted federal parliament.

MacDougall intimated that there would be little prospect of such an architecture being agreed upon, given the historical and cultural differences within Europe, particularly expressed by the long-standing Franco-German rivalry.

However, as neoliberalism emerged in the 1970s and became dominant in the 1980s, the agenda changed, and Jacques Delors – full of monetarist zeal – was able to push through a proposal that completely disregarded all the wisdom that had gone before him that had worked against a common currency.

When the European nations sanctioned the Maastricht Treaty, the fortunes for Europe turned for the worst. They agreed on a dysfunctional architecture that no working federal system, such as Australia, the US, and Canada, had ever contemplated.

And because they left the fiscal capacity at the Member State level, the historical enmities and suspicions, particularly the

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north-south divisions, then led them to introduce unworkable fiscal rules that put that capacity in a straitjacket and left the nations exposed to global economic fluctuations.

Further, the currency issuer, the European Central Bank (ECB), was also constrained by Treaty restrictions on government bail outs.

The 2008 Global Financial Crisis (GFC) demonstrated that the system was unworkable.

While the European Commission enforced – for the most part – their fiscal rules, the ECB embarked on a strategy of ‘funding’ Member States’ deficits (except Greece) through the back door using the cover of quantitative easing and alleged liquidity operations.

This was a charade. The ECB was actually buying government debt in multiples more than was necessary to manage the liquidity needs of the money markets. Everyone knew they were keeping the government bond spreads low so that Member State governments could remain solvent.

The bond investors knew they could safely buy the bonds that were being issued by governments facing adverse economic circumstances and off-load them to the ECB in the secondary market at a tidy profit.

Thus, Italy avoided insolvency in 2012, as did other Member State governments subsequently.

However, these arrangements violated the terms of the Treaties; agreements reached through a series of nods and winks kept the system afloat.

Even though the European Court of Justice declared the ECB’s bond buying not to be in violation of the Treaties, the reality was that the only way the common currency survived the GFC was through the unlawful conduct of its main monetary institution.

And the elites looked the other way rather than face the reality that would see the system collapse.

ENTER THE PANDEMIC This tension is now being pushed to further extremes.

Europe has several challenges all of which go to the heart of the existence of its institutional arrangements: 1. The pandemic.

2. Brexit.

3. Poland (and Hungary).

The re-election of President Andrzej Duda in Poland directly

• Jacques Delors pushed through a proposal that worked against a common currency

challenges the authority of the European Commission and it remains to be seen how that plays out. The Commission has already been seriously compromised by human rights abuses in the east of its ‘realm’ and has looked the other way. How long it can do that as the new government in Poland ups the ante?

Brexit will clearly damage the European economy despite all the posturing to the contrary by Michel Barnier and his cohort in Europe, and the Remainers in Britain.

The departure of Britain favours that nation and leaves a huge hole in the European economy. Barnier’s bluff has not worked and more and more people are working that out. We will see how that pans out in the coming years.

However, it is the pandemic that threatens the architecture of Europe the most.

This time, the European Commission has been forced to relax the fiscal rules to allow Member States to salvage something from the devastation the virus has wrought. So, for a time, the

• When will they start demanding a renewed bout of fiscal austerity?

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• Polish President Andrzej Duda's re-election challenges the authority of the European Commission

tyranny of the Excessive Deficit Mechanism is being held in abeyance and the way is clear for Member States to spend up.

The evidence from the March-quarter national accounts shows that while the declines in GDP “were the sharpest declines observed since time series started in 1995” only the build-up of inventories contributed to growth.

In other words, in a period where the private sectors of the Member States were in melt down as a result of the lockdowns and it was obvious that GDP would take a huge hit, the sector that could have stepped in to the breach – I rephrase – should have stepped in to support employment and incomes – was absent.

So, even though the fiscal rules have been relaxed, governments appear to be reluctant to increase their spending, so hard-wired is the austerity mentality.

However, the scale of the downturn will cause fiscal deficits to rise well beyond the thresholds allowed for under the Stability and Growth Pact.

Which raises the question: How long will the European Commission wait before they start reasserting the neoliberal line and push Member States into austerity consolidation under the aegis of the Excessive Deficit Mechanism?

And then we have the ECB, which has been buying large quantities of government bonds for years under its various Public Asset Purchasing Programs, and, let’s say it as it is, funding the Member State deficits and keeping them solvent.

As a result of the pandemic, it introduced an additional bond buying program - the Pandemic Emergency Purchase Programme (PEPP) – which has seen it purchase billions and violate proportionality expressed in the capital keys (the nations’ individual contribution to ECB capital).

We are not criticising the ECB for doing that. They know there is no choice. Either fund the deficits or allow nations to go broke and see the disintegration of the common currency.

The point is that the scale of this crisis is so large that the fiscal rules cannot be reimposed and the ECB cannot taper its PEPP or other purchasing programs for the foreseeable future – a decade or more.

And these initiatives are not delivering prosperity. Their function is to stop insolvency. That is the priority of the European monetary system - to defend the interests of capital at the obvious expense of workers.

The Eurozone architecture can never deliver sustainable and

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widespread prosperity. It can keep nations solvent, but that is all. And it has to either disregard or defy the legal structure of the arrangements to achieve that.

It is a system that survives because the key institutions break the law!

The tension now is that this sort of law-breaking, life-support will have to endure for years. How long can the patience of the neoliberal elites endure?

When will they start demanding a renewed bout of fiscal austerity? How long will they let government debt levels rise?

How long will the ECB continue to buy unlimited quantities of debt from government and the corporate sector?

These sorts of questions, in general, are providing tension for all governments. but they are especially relevant for Europe because it went further than most into the neoliberal gutter.

It is clear we are amidst a paradigm shift in macroeconomic thinking as Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) exposes the fallacies of the mainstream approach. As that shift continues to gather pace, the prospect of a return to neoliberal policies becomes less likely.

And that means the architecture of the Eurozone becomes unjustifiable and nations will see the benefits of breaking free and achieving a greater degree of self-reliance without the fear of flying squads of mindless European Commission technocrats descending on their treasuries bullying them into cutting spending that helps the most disadvantaged.

We will be wiser of its causes in due course, but the evidence is mounting that our disregard for the natural environment that we plunder for material gain will be a prominent explanation. • William Mitchell is Professor of Economics and Director, Centre of Full Employment and Equity, University of Newcastle. He is also Docent Professor in Global Political Economy, University of Helsinki. He is a co-founder of Modern Monetary Theory.

Louisa Connors is a senior research fellow in the Centre of Full Employment and Equity, University of Newcastle. She has a PhD in cognitive linguistics and researches issues relating to framing, language and ideology.

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Díchoilínímis ár nIntinn LE RÓISÍN NIC LIAM Is amhlaidh gur próiseas foréigneach, fíochmhar, fuilteach é an coilíneachas. Gan dabht tá seanchur amach againne mar Ghaeil air. Deineadh íospartaigh dínn fén gcóras tíorántachta céanna, rud a d’fhág sinn cromtha ar leathghlúin ar feadh na gcianta, leathmharbh ag cosa an tSasanaigh, ach ar tinneall chun troda is chun saoirse riamh is choíche.

Níos measa ná aon tionchar fisiciúil, b’fhéidir, ná an éifeacht a bhí ag an gcoilíneachas ar ár n-intinn is ar ár síce. Cuireadh síolta fhoréigean an chórais chéanna in aigní agus i gcroíthe na nGael, rud a d’fhág go raibh agus go bhfuil áit chónaithe ag tancanna agus ag saighdiúirí Sasanacha inár n-inchinn i gcónaí.

Cuireadh an dubh ina gheal orainn go síceolaíoch maidir lenár dtábhacht mar Ghaeil, maidir le tábhacht ár gcultúir is tábhacht ár dteangain, agus dar fia go bhfuil an galar céanna fós ar mhórchuid na hÉireann inniu. Níl ort ach súil sall is súil abhus a chaitheamh go bhfeicfí rian an choilíneachais fós inniu agus ambriathar gur radharc tuathalach salach é an fhéachaint chéanna!

Tá dreach falsa ar ár logainmneacha Galldaithe, tá ár sloinnte scríte lena gcur in oiriúint do chluas an Bhéarlóra, tá dealbh den bPrionsa Albert go fiú ag seasamh go maorga ag Tigh Laighean: Tá scoileanna don nGael is scoileanna don nGall, mar aon le dúthaigh Ghaeltachta agus dúthaigh Ghalltachta. Shleamhnaigh péist nimhneach an Bhéarla trís na ceithre hairdibh inár n-intinn is inár mbéalta, agus thug straiméad go fearastúil dár dteangain dhúchais fhéin, agus féach anois go bhfuil an teanga iasachta chéanna in uachtar in Éirinn inniu.

Teanga an fhoréigin is ea an Béarla, a thálann agus a threisíonn droch-chuimhní an choilíneachais na haon lá beo. Ar m’fhallaing go bhfuil a úsáid mar phríomhtheanga labhartha na dúiche seo chomh holc céanna lenár ndromanna a bheith le balla agus beaignit an tsaighdiúra á bagairt ag scriosúnach Sasanach ar an scornach againn.

Chomh fada in Éirinn is a bheidh an ghoimh chéanna so sa bhéal againn, beidh greim an duine bháite ag an nuachoilíneachas ar ár dtopagrafaíocht chultúrtha is ar ár síce i gcónaí. Bíodh ár bport mar mheathlóirí seinnte againn mar sin, agus tugaimis fénár n-intinn a dhíchoilíniú.

Deir an fealsúnaí polaitíochta Frantz Fanon ná fuil i

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gceist leis an díchoilíniú ach go dtagann ‘speiceas’ amháin in áit ‘speiceas’ eile. Próiseas mall righin is ea é, gan dabht, ach níl an dara suí sa bhuaile againn ach tabhairt fé má theastaíonn uainn an ruaig a chur ar na saighdiúirí Sasanacha a mhaireann inár n-intinn. Bímis cinnte de ná fuil a sárú d’uirlise i gcath an dhíchoilínithe ná teanga na Gaelainne.

Tá sé bunaithe agus seanbhunaithe anois sa teangeolaíocht go mbíonn tionchar nach beag ag teangacha ar ár dtuiscintí saoil. Más fíor go múnlaíonn siad ár bpróisis is ár bpatrúin smaointeoireachta, ár gcórais chreidimh mar aon lenár dtuiscintí ar idé-eolaíochtaí éagsúla, cén tuiscint saoil a mhúnlaíonn teanga an iarrialtóra Shasanaigh orainn, mar sin? Má úsáidimid an

Eochair dár n-oidhreacht is ea an Ghaelainn, a thugann cumhacht dúinn filleadh inár nGaeil athuai Béarla mar ár dteanga laethúil i sochaí iarchoilíneach, an bhfuil aon ghlór ag na Gaeil in aon chor, le ceart? An féidir linn labhairt mar gheall ar ár stair is ár dtaithí in aon chor más i dteanga an choilínithe atá sé? An uirlis mhaith agus dhlisteanach a dhóthain é an Béarla chun cruatan is anró ár n-eispéiris a chur i bhfriotal?

Maíonn an saineolaí ar an díchoilíneachas, Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o, gur tobar eolais iad ár dteangacha, agus go gcaomhnaíonn siad ár gcuimhní is ár dtaithí saoil ag dul siar sa stair. Mar sin, eochair dár n-oidhreacht is ea an Ghaelainn, a thugann cumhacht dúinn filleadh inár nGaeil athuair, daoine anamúla ná raibh smáil an ionróra iasachtaigh orthu go fóill. Tugann sí deis dár n-intinn filleadh ar a dtuiscintí saoil féin, na tuiscintí a mhair roimh theacht na nGall, tréimhse ama sarar deineadh dídhaonnú orainn, sarar cuireadh ina luí orainn gur ainmhithe barbartha brúidiúla tútacha sinn, sarar céasadh is sarar réabadh sinn. Bainfidh an Ghaelainn an srian dár dteangacha istigh sa bhéal againn, agus ligfidh sí dúinn

ISSUE NUMBER 3 – 2020 - UIMHIR EISIÚNA 3  anphoblacht

labhairt ónár gcroíthe amach is ónar n-anamacha athuair.

Ná labhraímis an Ghaelainn amháin, áfaigh scríobhaimis sa teanga chéanna chomh maith. Más Éire aontaithe atá uainn (agus is í, go deimhin), ní mór dúinn bunachar litríochta nú-aimseartha agus Gaelach a bheith againn, leis. Deirtear gur treise peann ná claíomh, mar sin scríobhaimis ar ár lándícheall. Cuirimis peann le pár i dteanga ár sinsir, ní hamháin le dul ag taiscéalaíocht i gcuimhní ár gcuid staire, ach chun tuiscintí saoil úra a mhunlú leis. Cumaimis dánta as Gaelainn chun cur amach a fháilt ar mheabhar na nGael, chun iniúchadh a dhéanamh ar ár síce athshaoraithe. Scríobhaimis úrscéalta ina shamhlaítear an saghas saoil a bheidh uainn in Éirinn agus í athaontaithe. Cumaimis drámaí a léireoidh gur linn ar fad an Ghaelainn; aontachtaithe agus poblachtánaigh, iad siúd atá óg agus aosta, saibhir agus daibhir. Ná bíodh aon teora leis na féidearthachtaí a bhainfidh leis an nualitríocht so. Úsáidimis mar uirlis í agus sinn ag samhlú an tsaoil romhainn amach mar Nua-Ghaeil dhíchoilínithe.

Tiontaímis an léirscrios a dhein na Gaill ar ár samhlaíocht, agus tugaimis droim láimhe do litríocht an Anglaisféir

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mar ábhar inspioráide amach anso - níl slí di in Éirinn a thuilleadh. Cruthaímis litríocht a labhróidh le hanamnacha Fhódla agus a bhainfidh an smúit is an brón den gcroí is Gaelaí dá bhfuil ann.

Mar fhocal scoir, ba é ár laoch Bobby Sands a dúirt go bhfuil ról ar leith le himirt ag na haon duine, agus ná fuil ann do ról atá róbheag nó rómhór. Ní faobhar chun catha atá mar dhualgas ar ár nglúinse, ach díchoilíniú intinne.

Caithimis dínn na speabhraídí codlata atá orainn agus ná crapaimis ár dteangacha a thuilleadh, mar sin. Tugaimis an t-eiteach dearg do labhairt an Bhéarla, slánaímis teangain na Gaelainne, díchoilínimis ár n-intinní, agus beidh Banbha ar bhóthar a leasa aríst. Tógaimis suas ár gcroíthe is ná buailfimis ár gcinn fúinn a thuilleadh, a chomrádaithe, óir tá Éire saor agus Éire Gaelach romhainn amach. • Ball nua i Sinn Féin is ea í Róisín Nic Liam, céim aici i dTeangacha Domhanda i gColáiste na hOllscoile Chorcaigh.

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HAVE BLACK LIVES EVER MATTERED? THE FRAMING OF

MUMIA ABU-JAMAL

BY DAITHÍ DOOLAN

Mumia Abu-Jamal is the most recognised political prisoner in the US today. Politicians, trade unions, musicians, authors, and activists have added their voices to the campaign demanding that he is immediately released from prison.

In December 1981, Mumia Abu Jamal was shot and beaten unconscious by Philadelphia police. He awoke to find himself handcuffed to a hospital bed, accused of killing police officer Denis Faulkner.

In 1982, he was convicted and sentenced to death in a trial that Amnesty International has denounced as failing to meet even the minimum standards of judicial fairness. And so began a worldwide campaign to have the sentence overturned and Mumia released from prison.

Since then, the Abu-Jamal trial proceedings have come under scrutiny and today his case is one of the most contested legal cases in modern American history. With the passing of years, more and more evidence has come to light that confirms this man’s innocence. So why does the US keep Mumia Abu-Jamal incarcerated? The answer is buried in the very foundations of the USA.

WHO IS MUMIA ABU-JAMAL?

Mumia Abu-Jamal, born Wesley Cook, is a 66 year old political activist from Philadelphia. He has spent nearly 40 years of his life in prison; 20 of which was on death row.

Much of that in solitary confinement was a punishment for his writings as an author and journalist.

Like many of his generation, Mumia grew up believing the old order of racism and second-class citizenship for Black Americans must be challenged. At the young age of 14, he was, as he said himself, ‘kicked into the Black Panther Party’ after suffering a beating from ‘white racists’ and a policeman for trying to disrupt a 1968 rally for Independent candidate George Wallace, former governor of Alabama, who was running on a racist platform.

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Since his mistrial and conviction in 1982, Mumia has gone on to be a strong voice for those living on the margins. Despite the hardships of prison life, solitary confinement, and ill health, Mumia has gone on to become an award winning journalist and author of nine books.

FROM SLAVERY TO PRISON LABOUR

To really understand who Mumia is and why the authorities are trying to silence him, we must go back to the very foundation of the New World.

The US nation was built by Europeans who brutally dominated and enslaved the indigenous people of America.

So savage was the violence that, within 100 years, up to 80 million Native Americans were killed by war, mass slaughter, slavery or disease brought by the European settlers to which the natives had no resistance.

Following this genocide, the Spanish began to import slaves from Africa in 1502 to replace the Native Americans.

By 1650, slavery was the norm. For the next 200 years, Black people were condemned to a life of toil, brutal punishment, rape and abuse.

Africans were viewed as no more than livestock; there to serve plantation owners and to boost the profits of the white elite. Between 1619 and the early 1800’s, 12.5 million Africans were transported across the Atlantic to sugarcane plantations, tobacco farms, and cotton farms.

Following the American Civil War and the adoption of the 13th amendment to the US Constitution, slavery was outlawed.

The 13th amendment to the United States Constitution provides that “Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.”

For Black Americans, the sting in the tale were the words, ‘except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted.’ This is clearly a sop to those land owners who needed slavery in order to maintain their profits. It allowed industrialists have access to free labour once a person was imprisoned. The larger the prison population, the greater the access to free labour. While the US represents 4.4% of the world’s population, it houses 25% of the world’s prison population.

According to OECD, the US now has the largest prison population in the world. People of colour are hugely over represented with 56% of the inmates being Black or Hispanic.

A wide range of US based companies took up the opportunity given in the 13th amendment and used prison labour as slave labour. These household names include McDonald’s, IBM, Wal-Mart, Starbucks, Nike, and many more.

Mumia was born in a country which denied him basic rights simply because of his colour. Despite the introduction of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, life for a Black American in Philadelphia was always going to be difficult. So, Mumia did what people do the world over; organised with others and demanded his civil rights.

A CAMPAIGNING JOURNALIST

• Between 1619 and the early 1800’s, 12.5 million Africans were transported across the Atlantic to sugarcane plantations, tobacco farms, and cotton farms anphoblacht  UIMHIR EISIÚNA 3 - 2020 - ISSUE NUMBER 3

By 1975, Abu-Jamal was working in radio news casting, employed at Philadelphia’s NPR radio station WHAT. He went on to host a weekly feature program. From 1979 to 1981, he worked at another NPR affiliate, WHYY. The management asked him to resign; he was becoming too political.

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As a radio journalist, Abu-Jamal was renowned for identifying with and covering MOVE, a Philadelphia-based Black liberation organisation formed in 1972. He reported on the 1979–80 trial of The Move 9, who were convicted of the murder of police officer James Ramp. During this time, he was elected president of the Philadelphia Association of Black Journalists.

In a 2018 article about MOVE, Ed Pilkington of The Guardian described the group as “a strange fusion of Black power and flower power. The group that formed in the early 1970s melded the revolutionary ideology of the Black Panthers with the nature- and animalloving communalism of 1960s hippies. You might characterise them as black liberationists-cumeco warriors.”

ARREST & FRAME UP

In 1981, Abu-Jamal was working as a taxicab driver in Philadelphia two nights a week to supplement his income as a part time journalist with WDAS. On December 9th, Mumia’s life would change forever.

While out working, Mumia noticed his younger brother, William Cook, involved in an altercation with Police Officer Daniel Faulkner after being pulled over by the police.

Faulkner had struck Cook a number of times with his torch.

Jamal approached the old VW vehicle. After the incident, Jamal lay seriously wounded, having been shot, meanwhile Faulkner was dead, having been shot to death.

Police Inspector Alfonzo Giordano arrived at the scene.

The frame up of Mumia Abu-Jamal had started in earnest.

TRIAL, CONVICTION & CAMPAIGN

In May 1981, the largest federal investigation uncovered Giordano and numerous high ranking Philadelphia police officers involved in Mumia’s arrest had been involved in corruption and extortion for years. The then Deputy Police Commissioner James Martin was acknowledged as the ringleader of the police department’s widespread extortion machine. It was Martin who was in charge of Officer Faulkner’s investigation.

In 1982, Abu-Jamal was tried and convicted for the murder of Police Officer Daniel Faulkner. Since then, the Abu-Jamal trial proceedings have come under scrutiny and today, his case is one of the most contested legal cases in modern American history.

The trial judge Albert F. Salmo had preceded over 31 cases that resulted in the death penalty. The die was cast.

The judgment was based on fraudulent court proceedings, including an incompetent lawyer who neglected evidence showing Abu-Jamal’s innocence, a nearly all-white jury, self-serving witnesses, and a biased judge, which show that Abu-Jamal is an innocent man who should never have been in jail.

In their report, ‘A life in the balance - the case of Mumia Abu-Jamal’, Amnesty International conducts a full analysis of the trial of Mumia Abu-Jamal including the background

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• Mumia joined the Black Panthers after suffering a beating from ‘white racists’

and atmosphere prevailing in the city of Philadelphia in 1982 and the possible political influences that may have prevented him from receiving an impartial and fair hearing.

Amnesty International objected to the introduction by the prosecution at the time of his sentencing of statements from when he was an activist as a youth. It also protested the politicisation of the trial, noting that there was documented recent history in Philadelphia of police abuse and corruption, including fabricated evidence and use of excessive force.

Amnesty International concluded “that the proceedings used to convict and sentence Mumia Abu-Jamal to death were in violation of minimum international standards that govern fair trial procedures and the use of the death penalty”.

Human Rights Watch, “noted serious concerns about the fairness of his trial, particularly the heavy reliance during the sentencing phase on information regarding his political beliefs and associations.”

In 1999, the Congressional Black Caucus expressed concern that this

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case was a “serious miscarriage of justice,” and support for him has come from the European Parliament, the African National Congress, and 25 cities, including Paris, Montreal, and Palermo, have made Mumia an honorary citizen.

Years of campaigning resulted in Judge Yohn overturning Mumia’s death sentence. Unfortunately, the judgement upheld the conviction of murder. Abu-Jamal was sentenced to life in prison without parole.

The campaign to free Mumi Abu-Jamal continues today.

The recent Black Lives Matter has energised the demand for his immediate release. BLM has lifted the stone and exposed the sheer depth of racism that exists in modern America. It has challenged not just the rotten apples but the engrained, systematic racism upon which the US has been built.

In their attempt to bury this ugly truth, the authorities also attempted to bury and silence Mumia’s voice. They have failed.

PRISON WRITINGS

“The fact that I write at all reveals the utter failure of their intimidation tactic, as does the fact that you read.” Mumia Abu-Jamal A former Black Panther, MOVE supporter, political prisoner, and now renowned author of 9 books. AbuJamal’s books and writings continue to challenge the racism that exists in the American prison system and wider society. Three of his books are on prison life, one on the Black Panthers, and one on the history of Black religion in America.

His writing has won widespread acclaim. “[Mumia’s] writings are a wake-up call. He is a voice from our prophetic tradition, speaking to us here, now, lovingly, urgently.”— Cornel West “He allows us to reflect upon the fact that transformational possibilities often emerge where we least expect them.”— Angela Y. Davis In 1995, Abu-Jamal was punished with solitary confinement for engaging in journalism, contrary to prison regulations. Subsequent to the airing of the 1996 documentary ‘Mumia Abu-Jamal, A Case of Reasonable Doubt’, which included footage from visitation interviews conducted with him, the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections banned outsiders from using any recording equipment in state prisons. The state was doing all in its power to silence Mumia, but he was defiant.

In litigation before the US Court of Appeals in 1998, Mumia successfully established his right to continue writing as a journalist. The battle with prison authorities continued.

When, for a brief time in August 1999, Mumia began delivering his radio commentaries live on a weekday radio news show, prison staff severed the connecting wires of his telephone during one broadcast. He was later allowed to resume his broadcasts and hundreds of his broadcasts have been aired on radio.

His current book couldn’t be more topical. Published in July 2017, it is entitled ‘Have Black Lives Ever Mattered?’ In this book, Mumia gives voice to the many people of colour who have been killed by the police in the United States. It examines the history of policing in the US, with its origins

in white slave patrols in the South. The book provides a radical Black perspective on how racist violence is tearing American society apart, while offering solutions to how this can be turned around.

Meanwhile, Mumia Abu-Jamal remains imprisoned in a cruel attempt to silence him. So far, the authorities have failed to do that. It is time Mumia was freed. • Daithí Doolan is a Sinn Féin’s Dublin City Councillor for Ballyfermot-Drimnagh.

You can get more information about the ongoing campaign to free Mumia Abu-Jamal by visiting: www.freemumia.com anphoblacht  UIMHIR EISIÚNA 3 - 2020 - ISSUE NUMBER 3

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Mary Ann McCracken

Jemmy Hope

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Roger Casement

IRISH REPUBLICAN VOICES AGAINST RACISM

John Boyle O'Reilly

Opposition to racism goes back to the foundation of Republicanism in Ireland with the United Irish movement of the late 18th century

Edward Fitzgerald

James Connolly

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Bobby Sands

BY MÍCHEÁL Mac DONNCHA The police murder of George Floyd and the resurgence of the Black Lives Matter movement in the United States has shone a spotlight once again on the scourge of racism. In Ireland people who have been at the receiving end of racist attacks and racist attitudes have been speaking out.

On the right-wing fringes of politics racist groups and individuals have also been active, especially on social media. Like such groups elsewhere, they often use pseudo-patriotism to cloak their bigotry and try to hijack symbols such as the Tricolour and the Irish Republic banner which they have carried at rallies.

There is an attempt by some to create a type of ethno-nationalism here, something that has nothing to do with Irish Republicanism which, on the contrary, has been historically and is today inclusive, democratic and egalitarian.

In fact, opposition to racism goes back to the foundation of Republicanism in Ireland with the United Irish movement of the late 18th century. The whole basis of that movement was inclusivity, recognizing that the British Empire used religion and ethnicity to divide and conquer the people of Ireland, pitting Protestants of English and Scottish descent against Catholics of the Gaelic tradition. United Irish leader Wolfe Tone appealed for a definition of Irishness beyond religious labels.

And that vision went beyond Ireland. In

the 1780s and ‘90s the town of Belfast was growing and prospering and among a section of the elite there was an effort to establish the slave trade there. The Atlantic slave trade was bringing enormous profits to the cities of Liverpool and Bristol. English merchants were sending ships to Africa where slaves were taken, sold at huge profit in America and the ships returned to England with goods such as cotton and sugar again to be sold at huge profit.

In 1786 the richest man in Belfast, and president of the chamber of commerce, Waddell Cunningham, proposed the establishment of a slave ship company in the city.

A meeting of would-be slave traders was assembled but the opposition was led by Thomas McCabe, a Presbyterian businessman who stormed into the meeting and publicly tore up the plan.

The project went no further. McCabe went on to be one of the co-founders of the United Irishmen in Belfast in 1791, together with his brother William Putnam McCabe and others including Henry Joy McCracken.

Henry Joy was executed after the United Irish Rising but his sister Mary Ann McCracken lived long after 1798 and campaigned against slavery, calling on people in Belfast to refuse to buy goods tainted with the blood of slaves.

A United Irish leader who had a direct and very unusual encounter with slavery

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was Edward Fitzgerald. As a youth he was a British Army officer in the American Revolutionary war and when wounded and left for dead on the battlefield he was rescued by a runaway slave, Tony Small. Small accepted Fitzgerald’s offer of a job as his servant, ensuring his departure from America and his freedom. They became close friends and Fitzgerald’s biographer Stella Tillyard says Small embodied and brought to life Fitzgerald’s “commitment to freedom and equality for all men.”

A veteran of 1798 and of Robert Emmet’s Rising of 1803 was Jemmy Hope the weaver from Templepatrick, Co. Antrim. He settled in Dublin’s Liberties and maintained his lifelong republican radicalism. In a poem entitled ‘Jefferson’s Daughter’ he condemned slavery in the United States: When the incense that glows before Liberty’s shrine Is unmixed with the blood of the galled and oppressed, Oh, then, and then only the boast may be thine That the star-spangled banner is stainless and blest.

Like other white Americans, Irish-Americans in the middle of the 19th century were deeply divided on the issue of slavery and the rift between slave states and free states. Many Irish fought in the Civil War, most on the Union side, but many also 37

with the Confederates. Racism was rife in the North as well as the South and many Irish were prominent in opposition to the war and in violent attacks on African Americans.

In the most extreme case John Mitchel, the Young Ireland leader who had escaped from the British penal colony in Australia, was a vocal supporter of slavery. But others such as the Fenian John Boyle O’Reilly had a wider view of freedom, in keeping with the earlier United Irish tradition. He took over as the editor of the ‘The Pilot’ newspaper in Boston in 1871 and in an early editorial he deplored the opposition to integration expressed by a reader of whom O’Reilly wrote: “There is nothing Irish about his principles...’The Pilot’ holds that the colored man stands on a perfect equality with the white man”.

In a speech to a meeting of African-Americans in Boston in 1885 John Boyle O’Reilly described the racist segregation that he saw in the South: “I was in Tennessee last spring and when I got out of the cars at Nashville I saw over the door ‘Colored people’s waiting room’.

I went into it and found a wretched poorly furnished room crowded with men, women and children...I saw things that made me feel that something was wrong with God or humanity in the South and I said going away, ‘If ever the colored question comes 38

“There is not among those who love justice and liberty any question of race, creed or color; every heart that beats for humanity beats with the oppressed” IRISH AMERICAN FENIAN JOHN BOYLE O’REILLY, 1885 up again as long as I live, I shall be counted in with the black men.’”

He concluded his speech: “There is not among those who love justice and liberty any question of race, creed or color; every heart that beats for humanity beats with the oppressed.”

As a socialist and an internationalist James Connolly saw workers of all races and nationalities as equals. In his time as a trade union and socialist organiser in the United States he worked among immigrants from all over the world. In his newspaper ‘The Harp’ (January 1908) he addressed Irish workers in the USA on the issue of race:

“All races are mixed more or less; a pure race does not exist...The modern Irish race is a composite blending – on the original Celtic stock have been grafted shoots from all the adventurous races of the continent.”

In the ‘Workers Republic’ (July 1900) he made his position crystal clear: “I rather like the intense desire to conserve the honour or freedom of a particular country, to which men have given the name ‘patriotism’. I am also a believer in the brotherhood of all men in the international solidarity of labour, and the identity of interests which everywhere link together the oppressed of the earth...”

Irish patriot Roger Casement exposed the enslavement by the rubber trade of millions of Africans and South American native peoples. He wrote in 1904: “The more we love our land and wish to help her people the more keenly we feel we cannot turn a deaf ear to suffering and injustice in any part of the world”. On the nation he wrote: “And remember that a Nation is a very complex thing – it never does consist, it never has consisted of men of one blood or of one single race. It is like a river which rises far off in the hills and has many sources, many converging streams before it becomes one great stream.”

Two republicans who died 100 years ago also wrote words relevant to the struggle

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against racism. In ‘Principles of Freedom’ Terence MacSwiney, Cork Lord Mayor and hunger strike martyr, wrote: “If Ireland is to be regenerated we must have internal unity; if the world is to be regenerated, we must have world–wide unity – not of government, but of brotherhood. To this great end every individual has a duty and that the end may not be missed we must continually turn for the correction of our philosophy to reflecting on the common origin of the human race, on the beauty of the world that is the heritage of all, our common hopes and fears, and in the greatest sense the mutual interests of the peoples of the earth.”

Terence MacSwiney and Kevin Barry died within days of each other in 1920. In an essay Kevin Barry wrote about racial prejudice: “It usually masks a much worse thing - oppression or tyranny. It is also divided into two classes, namely that of the white man against his coloured brother, for brother he is whether black, red, or yellow, and that of

Terence MacSwiney

The anti-racist Civil Rights movement in the USA inspired our own Civil Rights movement the white man against his fellow-white man of a different nation. The two combined form the origin of very many of the world’s greatest wars and slaughter.”

Throughout the 20th century the development of Irish Republicanism ran parallel with anti-colonial struggles across the world. The anti-racist Civil Rights movement in the USA inspired our own Civil Rights movement, and liberation movements in Africa, Asia and Latin America, uniting people of all races, inspired the Irish freedom fighters of the 1970s and 1980s. To conclude this short historical survey of Irish voices against racism, the voice of Bobby Sands in his prison poem ‘The Rhythm of Time’: It is found in every light of hope, It knows no bounds nor space, It has risen in red and black and white It is there in every race.

It lights the dark of this prison cell It thunders forth its might, It is the undauntable thought my friend That thought that says ‘I’m right’!’ •

Kevin Barry anphoblacht  UIMHIR EISIÚNA 3 - 2020 - ISSUE NUMBER 3

Mícheál Mac Donncha is a Sinn Féin councillor in Dublin for the Donaghmede area

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BOBBY STOREY

a life of struggle is a life well lived 40

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REPUBLICANS ACROSS IRELAND reacted with shock and sadness at the death on June 21st, after a long illness, of leading republican activist Bobby Storey.

Widely known and hugely respected within republicanism and in his native Belfast, Bobby Storey was a key figure among a group of republican leaders who, over recent decades, formed the most cohesive and effective collective republican leadership that Ireland has seen.

Noted for his organisational and leadership skills, Bobby spent many years of his life imprisoned by the British who saw him as a potent threat to their rule in Ireland.

During a lifetime of struggle, he was interned at the age of 17; arrested, but later acquitted in connection with a plan to free fellow republican Brian Keenan from jail in England; sentenced to 18 years in prison in 1981; and was a key organiser of the mass breakout of republican prisoners from the H-Blocks of Long Kesh in 1983.

In recent years, he had served as chair of Belfast Sinn Féin and later as chair of the party’s Six County Cúige.

The young Bobby Storey Born in Coventry, England on 11 April 1956 to parents Robert (Bobby) Storey and Mary (Peggy) Rafferty who were both from Belfast, his brother Seamus was also born in England. The family moved back to Belfast in 1959 where Bobby’s sister Geraldine and brother Brian were born.

Speaking to An Phoblacht in 2008, Bobby said: “I have two brothers and one sister: Seamus, who escaped from Crumlin Road Jail in 1971; Brian, who has Down Syndrome; and Geraldine. Our whole household revolved around Brian. He was born in 1970 and he was a beautiful development.”

Bobby’s father sold fish door to door and later fruit and veg. The Storeys were eventually running two shops before Bobby senior started a small building contracting firm.

Fifty years ago, three hugely significant events had a profound effect on the then 14-year-old Bobby Storey.

The first was the Battle of St Matthews, which saw the IRA defend the small nationalist enclave of Short Strand from being burned to the ground by unionist mobs.

The second was the introduction by Stormont of the draconian Criminal Justice Bill, which involved a mandatory six-month prison sentence for rioting, which was widespread in the Six Counties.

Within six months, over 100 people, mostly young nationalists, were imprisoned under mandatory sentencing.

The third and final event was the Falls Curfew in 1970, during which 3,500 British soldiers attacked the Falls area, killed four civilians, shrouded the area in CS gas, and arrested and brutalised hundreds.

These events and his own direct experience on the streets of Belfast politicised Bobby Storey. His father was involved in the defence of nationalist areas and Bobby’s brother Seamus soon joined the IRA. Their home was raided in 1971 and pistols and a rifle found.

Bobby said of this: “Daddy and Seamus were arrested and taken to Girdwood Barracks and brutalised. Girdwood was

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a well-known torture centre… My brother took full responsibility for the weapons and was charged... he refused to recognise the court.

“My father denied knowledge of the guns and was beaten and brutalised. At one point, he was made to run along a track jumping hurdles as he was struck with a bamboo style rod. He reflected later that this was as much to humiliate him as hurt him.

“The effect of all of this on me was immense. I was outraged at my father’s treatment. He was a quiet, dignified man who had little to say about any of this nor the thugs who carried it out.

“I was similarly very proud of my brother Seamus who had the courage to do what he did as a republican and the strength of his convictions when captured. This further impacted on me months later in 1971 when nine IRA prisoners escaped from Crumlin Road Prison which was 300 yards from my home, among them my brother Seamus.

“Meanwhile in my own life, I was rioting against the RUC, the Brits, and against loyalists who were attacking our homes because we lived on the last Catholic street on the interface.”

Joining the IRA Commenting in an interview ten years ago on the momentous events which took place in the North at this time and reflecting on how they influenced his decision to eventually join the IRA, Bobby said: “There was an instinctive anti-British culture and politics in our house but, although there was a history of republicanism on my mother Peggy’s side, the main influences were the conditions around me, particularly the attack on McGurk’s bar when 15 people were killed.

“Some of those killed were known to our family. Then, there was the massacre on Bloody Sunday when 14 people were killed… The fact that British Paratroopers could gun down innocent protestors had a massive impact on me and, from that point on, I was attempting to join the IRA… I was attracted to republican resistance, especially the IRA and the fight they were bringing to the Brits not only in pursuit of a United Ireland but also in defence of nationalists and republicans.”

Evicted from their Oldpark home by loyalists, the Storey family moved to Manor Street, another interface area in North Belfast, but were again forced out by loyalists. In 1972, they moved to the Riverdale estate in the west of the city.

In July that year, the British sent 30,000 troops into nationalist areas to take down the barricades in Operation Motorman. By this stage, Bobby was in the IRA. He said: “I was involved in the Andersonstown area when the British Army came in during Operation Motorman…

The armed struggle in the early ‘70s was flat out. We were all part of that. I was absolutely in the thick of it.

We engaged the British Army on the streets. They came into our areas and took over our local GAA clubs and schools and turned them into British Army bases. It was a heavily militarised situation.”

Bobby described his experiences: “I would be just walking up the street and the Brits would jump out and beat the f*** out of me and leave me in the middle of the street. I wasn’t on the run because I

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• Bobby Storey organising, July 2010

was too young to be interned and I was also over six foot, so I took a lot of flak from the Brits.

“My experience was no different from many other people’s experience… The more beatings they gave me, the more my resolve developed. The British presence was a cancer and had to be removed. These were the things that brought me to be a republican activist.”

One of these beatings took place after an early morning raid in which he was dragged from his home and spread eagled against a wall over a hot radiator: “I was beaten and interrogated for four hours about the whereabouts of my brother who was still an on-therun escapee. I refused.

“They played a ‘game’ with me. I was punched every time I gave them a negative reply to a question. When finished, they cuffed me again, put a hood over my head and drove me into the loyalist Highfield estate where they released me.

“They took the hood and handcuffs off and drove around the area shouting ‘He’s an IRA man’. I had to run to avoid loyalist youths who ran after me.”

On another occasion, Bobby was severely beaten and threatened by British soldiers and an RUC officer in the grounds of St Agnes’ Church as he returned home one night. He remembered: “I was attacked by both of them and thumped and kicked … I was struck with a rifle barrel.

“One of the soldiers got into such a frenzy aiming a kick at me that he kicked the RUC man who told him, ‘I don’t mind you kicking him, but don’t kick me’.

“It was then that another soldier cocked his rifle and screamed that he was going to shoot me. I thought he was going to pull the trigger, but two of the others grabbed him and, while one held onto him, the other took the rifle from him.”

Prison The day before his 17th birthday, Bobby was arrested.

The day after his 17th birthday, on which he could be

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legally interned, he was served with an internment order: “I was held in the Cages for two years in Long Kesh. There was great comradeship in the Kesh and internment gave me the opportunity to look into Irish history, politics, the history of the IRA, and of Sinn Féin… It was also my first experience of prison struggle and one of the most obvious manifestations of that was when we burned down the Cages in October 1974. That was one of my happiest prison struggle memories.”

In a small autograph book of former political prisoners collected by Pól Wilson, Bobby’s entry reads: ‘Bobby Storey interned: 1973-75 Remand: 76-77 Remand: 77-77 Remand: 78-79 Remand:79-81 Sentenced: 81-94 Remand: 96-98 A life of struggle is a life well lived.’

In an interview in 2009, Bobby recalled these events saying: “I was very active. The British Government had a determination to keep me off the streets. They used internment and, when they weren’t able to use internment again, they would fabricate evidence.

“They actually pretended that I said things under interrogation which I never said. By the time of the Hunger Strike, I had done maybe seven years in jail with no convictions – all on remand. Internment by remand.”

Bobby was arrested again in August 1977 during a controversial visit to the North by the English Queen as part of her Jubilee Year celebrations. It was also the anniversary of internment.

Bobby and a comrade were so badly beaten that they were hospitalised for four days and then taken to an interrogation centre where they were beaten again for another two days. They were then charged with attacks

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• Bobby Storey with John Maguire UNITE union convenor, November 2006

• Sinn Féin Women’s Conference, July 2006 - Sue Ramsey, Lily Hall, Jennifer McCann, Eibhlin Glenholmes, Bobby Storey, Bairbre de Brun, Sinead Moore, Jackie Currie, Tish Holland, Teresa Clark and Caral Ní Chuilin anphoblacht  UIMHIR EISIÚNA 3 - 2020 - ISSUE NUMBER 3

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on British soldiers. The British Regiment involved left the North four months later.

Bobby recalled: “The night before them leaving, every window in my comrade’s home was broken. Simultaneously, a gunman fired at my parent’s home, narrowly missing my sister Geraldine. When my father ran out, there were soldiers in the garden. They denied firing into the house, but no one believed them. My comrade and I were released a few weeks later.”

In 1979, Bobby was arrested and charged in relation to an abortive attempt to free leading republican Brian Keenan from Brixton Prison in London.

He spent almost two years in prison in England before being acquitted by a jury and released in early April 1981. He was excluded under the Prevention of Terrorism Act from entering England again.

The Hunger Strike When Bobby returned to Belfast, the 1981 Hunger Strike was a month old. He described the Hunger Strikers as “iconic figures, but when it was required of them, they stepped into the breach”.

Bobby played a central role in organising the funerals of his two close friends and comrades, Hunger Strikers Joe McDonnell and Kieran Doherty.

The British Army launched an operation to catch the IRA firing party at Joe McDonnell’s funeral and attacked mourners. Paddy Adams, a friend of Bobby Storey, was shot and seriously wounded Describing this episode, Bobby said: “The British Government and the establishment were infuriated by the global media attention on the deaths of the first four hunger strikers.

“They were very concerned by the fact that the funerals showed mass support for the prisoners, as could be seen in the 100,000 who turned out for Bobby Sands’ funeral… After the firing party carried out the volley of shots, the Brits smashed their way into the house in St Agnes where they were. Some were arrested and others escaped. The Brits and RUC then attacked the funeral. They ran down St Agnes’s firing plastic bullets at people on the Andersonstown Road while scores of people lay on the ground.”

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The day after the last hunger striker Mickey Devine died, Bobby Storey was captured following a gun attack on British soldiers. A British soldier was shot and wounded. Bobby later explained: “I was in a car with two comrades and we were rammed by an RUC divisional mobile support unit. We drove off and they fired after the car. We were chased through Andersonstown and we avoided being rammed by a British army vehicle. However, we were eventually cornered and arrested with two rifles.”

Bobby was sentenced to 18 years in prison. Just over two years later, he was a key figure in the largest mass prison escape in British penal history.

The Great Escape On the day of the Great Escape from the H-Blocks in 1983, Bobby’s job was to coordinate the escape. He said: “The biggest contribution to making the day so successful was the comradeship. People who don’t know much about the escape might think of it as a wham bam and run, attack and climb over the wall or ram the gate type of action. But, in actual fact, it was a very complicated operation.

“We embarked on a deliberate strategy of relaxing the H-Blocks and relaxing the wings by having a more practical working relationship with the screws.

“That defused the tensions. It suited us because from a security point of view that gave us more psychological control and more territorial control within the wings and blocks.

“It also created a less alert climate amongst staff, because they weren’t fearful of us attacking them, and so they naturally relaxed. Some of them actually stopped carrying their batons, and grills, which were normally locked, would be left open. It created the perfect conditions for us to carry out the escape.

“The obstacles we had to face on the day were so substantial that I don’t think any of us thought about actually escaping to freedom.

“We had to take over the block and manoeuvre through the jail and we had to get the guns in previously.

Many people had roles which involved them staying behind.

“I was captured within an hour of the escape and I

ISSUE NUMBER 3 – 2020 - UIMHIR EISIÚNA 3  anphoblacht

• Gerry Aadams and Bobby Storey at vigil to remember victims of plastic bullets, April 2008

• Bobby speaking at John Dempsey commemoration, John was a member of Na Fianna Éireann who was killed in action on 8 July 1981

• Bobby Storey at the Hunger Strikers memorial at the Roddy McCorley Social Club in West Belfast anphoblacht  UIMHIR EISIÚNA 3 - 2020 - ISSUE NUMBER 3

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was brought to a punishment block and severely beaten, but I was enthused. My morale was sky high. You could not annoy me; being captured could not undermine the euphoria I was feeling.

“I was lying naked and battered, but, for me, the most dominant thought that I had was if the escape was a success, it would absolutely devastate the British Government. I wanted to ruin Margaret Thatcher’s life…

I wanted the British government damaged.”

Speaking some years later, Bobby said: “It was a great achievement for the IRA. It showed the degree to which comrades could work together, not just those who escaped but those who formed the back-up inside the jail, prisoners who weren’t going to escape.

There was the teamwork of people outside the jail; the drivers, the safe houses. Even getting captured didn’t dampen the event.”

Life after Prison Bobby was released in 1994 and returned to the republican struggle, although now in a different mode.

He travelled widely explaining republican strategy to comrades and the wider republican family.

It was during a mid-1990s prison pre-release scheme that he met and fell in love with Theresa who was known to Bobby through family and comrades.

In 1996, Bobby was arrested again, charged, spent two years on remand and was eventually released in 1998.

He was 44 years old and had spent more than 20 years in prison.

Bobby first became Chair of Belfast Sinn Féin and then of the Six County Cúige, a period in which the party grew significantly in electoral strength and representation.

He believed in the need to reach out to unionists in the course of seeking to build a new, 32-County republic.

He said: “Working with unionists as equals we can bring them further, even to the point of persuading unionism or a section of unionism to accept a shared future within the concept of a United Ireland.

“Any developments that have occurred over recent years are within the context of our strategic developments.

“Sinn Féin’s primary objective is a United Ireland. The Good Friday and subsequent Agreements are platforms, staging posts, on the road to Irish Unity. We are committed to a United Ireland. Politics is about making the impossible possible.”

Bobby’s illness shocked his many friends and comrades. In recent months, it became hugely debilitating, but he never gave in and never stopped working.

Just before Christmas 2019, he attended the opening of An Fhuiseog, the republican book and craft shop on Belfast’s Falls Road. Bobby and Sinead Walsh were the driving force behind its redesign.

Bobby’s funeral in Belfast, watched online by a quarter of a million people across the country and further afield, saw a demonstration of solidarity with his grieving family.

The people of West Belfast and republicans across Ireland paid their respects to a leader whose life, though often hard and involving much suffering and sacrifice, was one of deep commitment to his community, his

46

• Declan Kearney, Bobby Storey and Seán Hughes in Janurary 2014

• With Danny Morrison at the launch of Danny’s book, ‘Rebel Columns’ in August 2004

country, and the cause of freedom and social justice. In Bobby’s own words; a life of struggle is truly a life well lived.

An Phoblacht extends sympathy to Bobby’s partner Teresa, their children and grandchildren, his brothers Seamus and Brian, sister Geraldine, and their many friends and comrades across Ireland.

I measc laochra na hÉireann go raibh sé. •

ISSUE NUMBER 3 – 2020 - UIMHIR EISIÚNA 3  anphoblacht

• Martin McGuinness, Mary Lou McDonald, Bobby Storey, Gerry Adams and Jennifer McCann facing the press in 2015

• Bobby and Seán Murray of the Springfield Residents Bobby Storey supporting the local community in 2006

anphoblacht  UIMHIR EISIÚNA 3 - 2020 - ISSUE NUMBER 3

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GERRY KELLY REMEMBERS BOBBY STOREY

• Escapees Gerry Kelly, Harry Murray, Bobby Storey and Joe Simpson with Martina Anderson, November 2013

I FIRST MET BOBBY while both of us were waiting for our family visits in the H Blocks of Long Kesh Prison Camp in 1982. I am 6ft tall, but I well remember his giant stature making me feel much smaller. He had hands like shovels, but his handshake was firm and friendly.

His reputation preceded him, as they say, and he certainly made a memorable first impression on me, speaking to me as if I was an old friend and comrade. There were a lot of

dant, not just to his immediate family, but to many, many more.

Of course, his actual best friend and anam cara was his partner, Teresa, whom he loved above all else. She in turn shared him with the struggle for a United Ireland with all its hardships and long periods of separation, when he was in various jails and the worry and harassment of the British State Forces when he was not in jail. She went through it all with

oned in the Long Kesh Interment Camp as he turned 17 years of age. He gained respect and influence from the start of his activism precisely because he acted. Bobby led from the front with sometimes reckless courage on the streets of his native Belfast; first in the cauldron of North Belfast, and then in West Belfast, after his family was burnt out of their home by sectarian bigots.

Bobby learned fast and had a sharp and

prisoners in the waiting room and I noticed that all of them greeted him with familiarity and warmth. I soon found out that he made a great first impression on nearly everyone he met.

It was the start of a close friendship which was to span almost 40 years and my only regret is that I didn’t know him longer, that we all couldn’t have had some more years with him.

Another friend of ours summed up his character much better that I could when he said that people didn’t just like him, they fell in love with him, be they man, woman or child. He had the capacity to make you feel like he was your best friend. He was father, son, brother, granda, cousin, nephew, confi-

him, whether she was there being arrested or searched or harassed beside him or away from him.

Bobby chose to fight for and with his community from an early age and was first impris-

incisive mind. He had a great eye for detail, a lawyer’s eye, and would spend many hours helping other comrades to prepare their defences in court well in advance of their barristers reading the legal depositions. He honed his abilities and used them operationally when fighting the much more powerfully armed state forces. In whatever he set his mind to, he gave it his full attention and energy.

He drew volunteers to him and inspired them not just with his courage, but with his thoroughness in planning. It was perhaps best seen in the planning and execution of the Mass Escape from the H Blocks in 1983.

He was meticulous before and during the operation, but when things started to go off plan at the front gate of the prison, when con-

‘One of the most courageous people I have ever known’

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Bobby led from the front with sometimes reckless courage on the streets of his native Belfast

ISSUE NUMBER 3 – 2020 - UIMHIR EISIÚNA 3  anphoblacht

• The Great Escape, 25th Anniversary, ‘The Untold Story Behind the Escape’, Whiterock, Belfast, June 2008

fronted with scores of warders coming on and off duty, he improvised and adapted to the quickly changing situation. He asked the three comrades holding the Security Hut containing dozens of arrested warders to hold fast. They knew he was essentially asking them to eschew their chance at freedom so that the bulk of the 38 political prisoners could continue their escape. Those he asked did not hesitate in standing their ground so that their comrades could continue their escapade.

In or out of conflict situations, you will meet people of courage and determination.

Bobby Storey was one of the most courageous people I have ever known While most of the media wrote about their view of his activity as an IRA Volunteer, he was also a voice for change. Bobby used his huge talent, ability, and influence in pushing forward with the Sinn Féin negotiations strategy and peace process. He made the difficult transition from an offensive military approach to one of negotiating peace with opponents and enemies. To him, it was all part of the same

• Roddy McCorley Social Club 2008 Easter Commemoration

struggle for a United Ireland of equals. He had a huge reservoir of energy all his life, until his illness gradually took its toll. That too, he fought with quiet determination.

He could easily have been elected as a political representative, but he believed that his wide-ranging influence and organisational skill set was of better use on the ground. He became Chairperson of Sinn Féin in Belfast and later Chairperson of Sinn Féin in the Six

anphoblacht  UIMHIR EISIÚNA 3 - 2020 - ISSUE NUMBER 3

Counties. He travelled to all parts of Ireland to speak to activists and to listen to their views.

If you are lucky enough to live a long life, you will have some life-long friends; you will meet people you respect in your family and also perhaps in public life or quiet helpful neighbours or heroes that you look up to. In or out of conflict situations, you will meet people of courage and determination. Bobby Storey was one of the most courageous people I have ever known. He was dedicated, intelligent, thoughtful, a workaholic, a comedian and raconteur.

What marks him out in an ordinary sense though was that people always wanted to be in his company. He was always entertaining and always lifted people’s spirits. He was never boring; even when you heard the same story he had told before, he had some embroidery of detail to add to the last time he told it. He continually made fun of himself and knew the power of humour. His lighthearted spirit was contagious and his humour was medicine to anyone feeling down.

To try to give the measure of Bobby Storey in a few paragraphs is an impossible task. He definitely crammed much more than one lifetime into his 64 years.

There are some, those who did not know Bobby, who have a different view of him. They have had their weeks of diatribe. I don’t claim objectivity when speaking of my friend, but there are hundreds I could name who loved him and are missing him as I do.

Slán ár gcara mór. • Gerry Kelly is a Sinn Féin MLA for North Belfast and party spokesperson on Policing 49

An Irish revolutionary is laid to rest REPUBLICANS FROM ACROSS IRELAND and the people of West Belfast came out to pay their respects as Bobby Storey was laid to rest. Bobby’s remains were removed from his home to St Agnes Church, where the funeral service was conducted by Fr Gary Donegan.

Several hundred republican stewards, dressed in black and white, lined the funeral route in Andersonstown and along the Falls Road, which was marked by black flags all along the way.

The people applauded as the hearse, containing Bobby’s Tricolourdraped coffin and preceded by two pipers and flanked by a republican guard of honour, passed by. The cortège included many of the Sinn Féin leadership, including Party President Mary Lou McDonald TD. At Milltown Cemetery, ceremonies were chaired by Sinn Féin TD Pearse Doherty. Sinn Féin Vice President, Michelle O’Neill MLA, read the poem, ‘The Road Not Taken’, by Robert Frost. Gráinne Holland sang ‘Roisín Dubh’.

The main oration was delivered by Bobby’s friend and former Sinn Féin President Gerry Adams. During the course of his address, he said: “I have known many sound people, but Bobby was one of a kind. He was always positive. He was a great motivator. He would make you think you could fly a plane, a comrade once told me. And when you talked to him, whatever the issue, you always came away knowing that he would move heaven and earth to do what needed to be done to help. And he would do it with a smile.

“I don’t know anyone who knew him who didn’t like him. Except for MI5, MI6, the old RUC, the British Army, and prison governors. How could you not like him? He was smart, well read, funny, caring, always ready to listen, always willing to help, always prepared to give freely of his time and his great positive energy.”

Adams detailed Bobby’s young life and the events 50 years ago that shaped his outlook and politicisation.

Turning to current political developments, Adams said: “This weekend saw the election of Micheál Martin as Taoiseach as part 50

• Gerry Adams delivered the main oration

of the manoeuvre by Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil, aided and abetted by the Greens, to maintain the status quo and to prevent Mary Lou McDonald from becoming Taoiseach. They are entitled to do that, but their refusal to talk to the Sinn Féin leadership is a sad little undemocratic throwback to the way the unionist leaders used to behave.

“Denying Sinn Féin voters their right to be included in talks shows how far the Dublin establishment is prepared to go to minimise and delay the ongoing process of change across this island, including the movement towards Irish Unity. So, let me say loud and clear. They will fail. Just as Unionists failed in their exclusion policies.

“Change is coming. Not least because of the work of change makers like Bob Mór.

“In order to justify their policy of exclusion, An Taoiseach and Leo Varadkar say they cannot talk to us because Sinn Féin is controlled by ‘shadowy figures’ like Bob. ISSUE NUMBER 3 – 2020 - UIMHIR EISIÚNA 3  anphoblacht

“They also name Ted, Padraic, Marty. Sinn Féin is controlled by no one. We are an open, democratic national movement with our elected leadership, led by two fine women and other national leaders, and countless regional and local leaders.

“We are proud and glad that Bob and other former IRA volunteers are part of what we are.

“We are also proud of Bob and the others when they were IRA Volunteers.

“They and their support base and republican Ireland defeated the British Army. They brought us and their political masters to the negotiating table.

“Leo Varadkar has Michael Collins. Micheál Martin has De Valera. We have Bobby Storey.

“Bobby has done more for Irish freedom, peace, and unity on this island than either Leo Varadkar or Micheál Martin.

“Big Bobby’s death is a huge political blow for republicans, but it is also a very personal loss for all of us who knew him.

“There have been many tears shed since the news of his death. There is a void in our lives.

“Bobby would not want that. He would want us to mind each other.

He would want us to continue our struggle and to win that struggle. And that, my friends and comrades, is what we will do.

anphoblacht  UIMHIR EISIÚNA 3 - 2020 - ISSUE NUMBER 3

“On behalf of Colette and myself and our family, I extend my sincerest and deepest sympathies and solidarity to Teresa, their children and grandchildren, and the wider Storey and Pickering family.

“We will all miss his wisdom, his analysis, and his craic in the time ahead. He brought out the best in all of us.

“Because of him, we can go forward with optimism as more and more people on this island realise that England rules us only in English

Bobby has done more for Irish freedom, peace, and unity on this island than either Leo Varadkar or Micheál Martin interests and that the time is coming when we will end English rule and replace it with governance by the people of this island, for the people of this island.

“That’s what Bobby believed. He knew we don’t need Boris Johnson or his cronies. Or any of the other mediocre amadáns who are arrogant enough to think they can rule us. Bob was right. As Ian Paisley said to Martin McGuinness one time: ‘We don’t need Englishmen to rule us’.” •

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LE CÁRTHACH Ó FAOLÁIN Is minic a chloistear faoina bhfuil le cailliúint againn muna gcaitear leis an mbith mar is ceart. Is in iarsmalanna breátha geala a bheidh aon rian dá raibh linn tráth. Is minic a rith sé liom a mhinice agus a d’airigh mé an focal ‘bhíodh’ i gcomhráití agus mé óg. ‘Bhíodh’ seo siúd agus uile á dhéanamh ansin. “Bhíodh Gaeltacht ansin tráth” arsa mo mháthair agus sinn i ngaireacht do Bhaile Mhic Óda i gContae Chorcaí, nó trí Shliabh gCua mar a raibh cónaí ar mo shinsear. Conas a cailleadh a leithéid ó bunaíodh an stát? Nach ndeirtear linn go bhfuil gach rialtas tiomanta agus cromtha ar an gcaomhnú? Bíonn gach cosaint ar phár agus bíonn beart tur éigin de réir baothbhriathar ar mhaithe leis na daoine beaga suaracha a shásamh. Bíonn, a fhad is nach bhfuil an beart ina chonstaic ar phinginí suaracha ná ag éileamh gnímh. Is fada go mbainfidh gluaiseacht na Gaeltachta mullach an tsléibhe amach, agus rúm á choimeád don gcainteoir dúchais in aice le falcóg mhór an tseitheadóra san iarsmalann.

Tá tuiscint ann ó laethanta Chumann Buan-Choimeádta na Gaeilge ar thábhacht na Gaeltachta mar cheárta, inneoin agus beatha na teanga beo, mar aon leis na dána dúchasacha ina mbolg ag freastal ar an tine úd. Tá sí á hadhaint go tréan, agus in aineoinn

bunú na gcoláistí samhraidh, ba rabhchán iad ar an mbaol a bhí ann go gcaillfí an teanga leis na glúinte sin.

Léiríonn daonáireamh 1901 go raibh teaghlaigh Ghaelacha ag casadh ar an mBéarla. Cuireadh ‘Irish and English’ nó ‘Irish’ le formhór de bhaill clainne os cionn 16 bliana d’aois ach Béarla amháin a bhí luaite le glúinte a bhí níos óige. Faoin mbliain 1922, bheadh iarsmaí den teanga fós sna ceantracha seo acusan a raibh meánaois slánaithe acu ach go háirithe, agus ag an dream óg a raibh cúis acu gan cumas cainte na teanga acu a chlárú. Ní hé go raibh an nuarialtas dall air seo, mar gur beartaíodh go mbaileodh Wilhelm Doegen, Gearmánach le trealamh taifeadta, ábhar cainte ó chainteoirí dúchais i seacht gcontae déag ó thuaidh agus ó dheas idir 1928 agus 1931. Ní beag an t-éacht é sin. Bhí bá faoi leith á léiriú ag an stát leis an ‘aisling a cumadh’ ach pé maith a bhí sna beartais ar son na teanga, agus cé go bhfuil tábhacht faoi leith le seasamh na teangan i mBunreacht na hÉireann, is don gcaomhnú ábhair amháin a bhronnfainn aon ghradam. Ach más maol marbhintinniúil an cur síos seo, is maith mar a thuigimid nach ionann iarsma agus teanga pobail agus le bheith gonta faoi, níorbh leor an obair seo ina haonar.

r á h d a e n Cin na mbacanna atá ag plúchadh na teanga, níl aisling na Gaeltachta cloíte go fóill. Ach mo chás! Mo chaoi! Mo cheasna! Ní haon chúis lúcháire an scéal, mar nach bhfuil sí á taibhsiú féin ná é.

Bheadh dul amú ar aoinne a d’áiteodh gur bunaíodh an Saorstát le meon frith-Ghaeilge. Ach bíodh is go bhfuil na scórtha insintí ar scéal a bhunaithe, glacaimis leis go raibh crann taca ag an teanga ar phár nach raibh aici leis na cianta roimhe sin. Dá fheabhas gach iarracht an stáit i leith na teanga ar nós An Gúm a bhunú, stádas oifigiúil a bhronnadh ar an teanga, cáipéisí dlí a aistriú agus a fhoilsiú go dátheangach, is beag a rinneadh chun na Gaeltachtaí ba leochailí a bhí ann a chaomhnú, ná d’aon Ghaeltacht i ndáiríre. Bhí an teanga beo ach i mbaol ó thús an chéid seo caite i gceantracha ar fud na tíre. Bhí formhór d’iarthar Phort Láirge agus roinnt de dheisceart Thiobraid Árann ina nGaeltachtaí. B’amhlaidh an scéal in Iarthar Chorcaí le roinnt Gaeilge san oirthear. Bhí an teanga láidir i gContae an Chláir agus in achar mór de Chiarraí. Is beag ceantar i gConnachta nach raibh rian den teanga ann. Bhí rian di i nDoire Cholmcille agus i nGleannta Aontroime agus i gcontaetha eile i lár na tíre chomh maith.

Cé go raibh tacaíocht ann don teanga ó lucht acadúil uasalaicmeach (Aontachtóirí agus Poblachtánaigh ina measc) le bunú dála Conradh na Gaeilge, an CLG agus mar aon le

As na ceantracha a cuireadh san áireamh i gCoimisiún na Gaeltachta i 1926, ó acraí breátha laistigh de chúig chontae déag, níl ach cúig chontae (ní bheadh Co. na Mí san áireamh dar ndóigh) le haon Ghaeltacht nó breac-Ghaeltacht iontu anois. Is fúinne atá sé anois leas a bhaint as an saibhreas a cruinníodh agus geallúint dúinn féin nárbh í sin an fómhar deireanach a bheidh le baint i nGaeltachtaí na tíre. Muna raibh an fhírinne shearbh ná bánú na gceantar ag cur fonn caomhnaithe ar an nuarialtas, léirigh Gluaiseacht Chearta Sibhialta na Gaeltachta go raibh an fhaillí a bhí á déanamh ar chosmhuintir na Gaeltachta glan i gcoinne pé fís a bhí á mhaíomh.

Níorbh beag fadhbanna geilleagair an tsaorstáit dar ndóigh agus nílim dall ar cheist na himirce ná ar bhánú na tuaithe, ach cé nach raibh aon ghníomh faoi leith a d’fháisc gach guta as na hiarGhaeltachtaí, is deacair a rá gur rinneadh aon iarracht faoi leith an teanga a chaomhnú agus is i mo thuairim gur deacair gan aon chuid den mhilleán a chur ar ghníomhaíocht gallda eacnamaíochta a d’fháisc go leor le focal ina smig acu thar sáile.

Do léirigh scata stuama cumas mhuintir na Gaeltachta sna 70idí, agus níor éalaíodar ón ngleo a tharraing siad orthu féin. Bhí pobal amháin i gCois Fharraige in iúl saol na Gaeilge a chreathadh ón bhfiaradh agus ón liathadh aigne a bhí ag teacht de thoradh an easnaimh tacaíochta agus físe atá fós ag croí na faidhbe. Ón nGluaiseacht úd, thángthas ar bheartas a raibh

Sibhse gur meas libh an Ghaeltacht, sibhse gur meas libh an Ghaeilge, cruinnigí timpeall an chrainn!

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ISSUE NUMBER 3 – 2020 - UIMHIR EISIÚNA 3  anphoblacht

mar aidhm aige údarás áitiúil ar comhchéim agus cumhachtaí breise le comhairlí contae a bhunú, mar aon le bunú RTÉ RnaG. Ba mhór an cúnamh a bhí san údarás go dtí le gairid. Ní bheadh aon tréaniarracht uaimse mná agus fir na gluaiseachta sin a mholadh go lá Philib a’ chleite maith a dhóthain, ach má tá rud le rá, ba imníoch an tromluí a bheadh againn dá n-uireasa.

Dar ndóigh tá mé tar éis sean-scéal a chló, agus an t-eolas seo ar bharr a gcinn ag go leor. Ní ag seanmóireacht atá mé ná ag cearáil faoi theip gach rialtas sa deisceart. Níl saoi gan locht agus is lochtaí arís mise as tabhairt faoi cheist in alt beag faoi shrian, a cheapfar. Pé maith a bhí leis an gcúpla pingin a bhí le fáil do chainteoirí Gaeilge, bhí go leor dallamullóg i gceist ansin leis an bpobal a cheansú, agus ní féidir a rá go raibh borradh ar chainteoirí laethúla in aon áit seachas i mo Ghaeltacht féin sa Rinn Ua gCuanach, áit nach bhfuil eiseamlárach a dhóthain go fóill mar shlat tomhais do Ghaeltachtaí eile.

Baineadh an toghchán ó Údarás na Gaeltachta agus tá an fhadhb á hardú arís agus arís eile le Teachtaí Dála Gaeltachta, agus ní féidir a rá go bhfuil aon pháirtí tar éis éisteacht leis an iarratas seo, seachas siollaí binne roimh an toghchán dar ndóigh. Is léir na fadhbanna

an teanga eile agus a leanann den gclabhsúr. Ní fháiltím roimh aon mhasla a chaitear ar na Gaeltachtaí, ach tá dualgas orainn a léiriú nach bhfuilimid buíoch d’ionsaí dá leithéid ar ár ndúthaigh. Ná glac le ‘Speak English!’ agus tú i gceantar Gaeltachta, is cuma tábhacht na turasóireachta i rith an tsamhraidh. Ná glac le logainm a bheith as Béarla ar do litir cánach. Muna bhfuil an teanga agus an cultúr láidir, níl cos le seasamh againn uirthi.

Ag deireadh na dála, má tá feabhas le teacht, ná bímís ag fuireach ar an ngníomh rialtais. Is maith a léiríonn na líonraí teanga i gCarn Tóchair agus in Inis srl gur fearr ar fad gluaiseacht pobail, mar aon le tacaíochtaí stáit agus pleanáil teanga. Níl beartas rialtais amháin ar féidir a luadh le haon ‘bhua’ do na ceantracha seo againne. Is fúinne atá an

gCine

tithíochta agus suímh, ceisteanna imirce agus oibre sna Gaeltachtaí.

Is léir an bochtanas agus an easpa infheistíochta. Tá Comharchumann Ráth Chairn i bponc anois, cé go raibh cúrsaí faoi smacht agus go seoigh ansin. Tá údarás pleanála gan chiall lánsásta Ráth Tó a dhéanamh de Ráth Chairn agus an dánaíocht acu a léiriú ar thuarascáil gur ceantar Gaeltachta cuíosach lag atá sa ‘phaiste talún’ acu.

Tá sé le tuiscint ón méid atá feicthe againn nach é freagra iomlán na ceiste an tAire Gaeltachta eolgaiseach le Gaedhealainn Bhlasta Bhriatharach a thabharfaidh gach pingin dúinn le monarchana agus tithíocht a thógaint agus gan puinn cumhachta acu diúltú dúinn a bheith againn. Níl tuiscint ach againn féin ar a bhfuil le déanamh. Ní thiocfaidh réiteach, ná aon mhaith (dar liom) le haon iarratas go n-aithneofaí gur grúpa eitneach nua iad muintir na Gaeltachta, cé go molaim agus go spreagaim a ndíograis.

Is léir, agus ní maith le haoinne againn é a chloisint, go bhfuil go leor de mhuintir na Gaeltachta ag tréigean na teanga. Má tá cúis ghearáin againn mar phobal Gaeltachta, ní féidir linn a bheith dall ar na méirligh a bhfuil an teanga acu ach a roghnaíonn casadh ar

anphoblacht  UIMHIR EISIÚNA 3 - 2020 - ISSUE NUMBER 3

cinneadh nó an nglacaimis leis an tuar go mbeidh an Béarla ina theanga labhartha sna Gaeltachtaí faoi cheann cúig bliana bheaga?

Is í mo thuairim gur ag snámh in aghaidh easa atá gach iarracht ina bhfuil ár nguaillí maolaithe againn mar gheall ar shean-chleasaíocht na polaitíochta.

Caithimis dínn an t-ualach agus tógaimis comhar ar son ceann scríbe faoi leith.

Is fúinne atá sé a bheith ar an stiúir, gan géilleadh don tsruth ná a bheith bodhartha ag gleo na caise. Tá na laethanta a caitheadh ag síormhíniú go caoithiúil choíche curtha dínn, gan mórán sásaimh, agus déanaimis beart dár ndeoin féin. I mbriathra blasta Joe Steve Uí Neachtain: “Sibhse gur meas libh an Ghaeltacht, sibhse gur meas libh an Ghaeilge, cruinnigí timpeall an chrainn!” • Is céimí le Dlí agus Gaeilge ó Choláiste na hOllscoile, Corcaigh é Cárthach Ó Faoláin. Rugadh agus tógadh sa Rinn, i nGaeltacht na nDéise é. Ní ball d’aon pháirtí polaitíochta faoi leith é.

53

The Ireland of 1920 was a country at war, in the grip of a revolutionary epoch that would define the politics of the island for much of the next century. The War of Independence was intensifying, while, electorally, Sinn Féin followed up on their stunning performance at the 1918 elections with more gains in the local elections across Ireland in January and June.

1920 also saw the creation of British Auxiliary Units 54

within the RIC, whose rampage of destruction and murder was one more episode in the blight of the British colonial record in Ireland. On top of all this was the unleashing of sectarian violence against Catholics with pogroms against nationalist communities across what is now Northern Ireland.

To mark this centenary, An Phoblacht has singled out four distinct stories of turmoil and revolution from this ISSUE NUMBER 3 – 2020 - UIMHIR EISIÚNA 3  anphoblacht

IRELAND

1920 a tion

A n l i o m r u t n i

Denis

Murphy Denis Barry Joseph Denis Barry Barry Denis Whitty Murphy Barry JosephMurphy Denis Joseph Joseph Barry Murphy Denis

Joseph Whitty Murphy Whitty Joseph Joseph Terence Joseph MacSwiney Murphy 1923 Whitty 1923November 1923 20th Joseph October 20th 25th Joseph Fitzgerald Whitty November MacSwiney MacSwiney 1923 Joseph Michael Terence Whitty November Terence 1923 1923 20th MacSwiney Joseph August October November Ashe 2ndOctober 25th20th 20th1923 Fitzgerald 1923 Terence MacSwiney 25th Fitzgerald Thomas 1923 November Michael Terence 20th October MacSwiney 1920 Michael 1923 1923 Fitzgerald 1923 October August October Terence 25th Ashe 2nd 25th August 25th Fitzgerald Michael 1923 Ashe 2nd Thomas 1923 October Michael Thomas 25th August Fitzgerald 1920 1920 2nd 1923 1920 October October August Michael 17th Ashe Ashe 25th 2nd October 1923 25th 1920 August 1917 2nd October 1920 25th1920 1920 September Thomas Ashe ThomasThomas October October 25th 17th 25th October (died) 1920 17th 1920 1917 25th October October 1920 1917 17th September 25th September 17th October (died) 1920 1917 (died) 25th October September 1917 25th17th September 191725th(died) (died) 25th September(died)

Nove

STAILC OCRAIS ANOCRAIS OCRAIS OCRAIS STAILC AN STAILC AN OCRAIS STAILC AN STAILC ANOCRAIS AN STAILC

Strikes Strikes Strikes Hunger Strikes Strikes Hunger Hunger Strikes Ireland's Hunger Hunger Ireland's Hunger Ireland's Ireland's Ireland's Ireland's na hÉireann saoirse sonhÉireann na hÉireann na ar hÉireann bás nasaoirse hÉireann saoirse siad son son arna hÉireann saoirse arbás Fuair na saoirse son bás ar siad siad saoirse ar son bás son básFuair Fuair siad ar siad bás Fuair Fuair Fuair siad

literally hundreds of episodes that frame this important period in the history of republican struggle.

JIM McVEIGH writes about the Belfast Pogroms that began in July 1920.

LUKE CALLINAN remembers the killing of Sinn Féin councillor Mícheál Breathnach in October 1920.

OISÍN McCANN looks back at the events surrounding Bloody Sunday at Croke Park in November 1920.

We also publish a chapter from IRELAND’S HUNGER FOR JUSTICE, which tells the stories of the 22 Republican Hunger Strikers from Thomas Ashe in 1917 to Michael Devine in 1981.

Here, we have selected the chapter on Cork republican Mick Fitzgerald who died on hunger strike in October 1920. •

Joseph Whitty

O’Sullivan Terence MacSwiney Fitzgerald Andrew Michael

Thomas Ashe

2nd August 1923

25th October 1920

1920 1923 November October 17th 22nd

(died) 25th September 1917

AN STAILC OCRAIS

IRELAND’S

17th 1923 April 194019th 1917November 1940 September 19th April19th 25th April 194020th (died)19th 25th October 1923

(died) 25th September 1917

Seán MacNeela Terence MacSwiney

November 22nd 1920 1923 October 17th

1920April 1940 25th October19th

Joseph Whitty 2nd August 1923

AN STAILC OCRAIS

Fuair siad bás ar son saoirse na

Andrew O’Sullivan 22nd November 1923

Seán MacNeela 19th April 1940

Seán MacNeela 19th April 1940

Michael Gaughan 3rd June 1974

hÉireann

(died) 25th September 1917

Tony D’Arcy

3rd June 1974

Bobby Sands 5th May 1981

5th May 1981

Raymond McCreesh 21st May 1981

Thomas AsheAshe Thomas

21st May 1981

THOMAS ASHE

1917

April 1940 1917 19th 1920 17th October 1917October September September 25th 1920 25th 25th 1923 1917 (died) October (died) 25th November September 22nd 25th1920 (died) October 17th 1920 17th October

8th July 1981

Martin Hurson 13th July 1981

1st August 1981

Joseph Whitty 2nd August 1923

AN STAILC OCRAIS

21st May 1981

2nd August

‘I may die but the Republic of 1916 will never die. Onward to that Republic and the liberation of our people’

criminal. Even though I do die, I die in a good cause’

BOBBY SANDS

McElwee Devine

‘They have branded me as a criminal. Even though I do die, I die in a good cause’

DevineM

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19811981 2nd August 21st May

1st August 1981

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Bobby SandsSands Bobby May 1981 5th 1981 5th May

McCreesh Raymond McCreesh Raymond May 1981 21st 1981 21st May

Joe McDonnell Joe McDonnell July 1981 1981 8th July8th

20th August 1981 13th July 1981

Gaughan Raymond McCreesh Gaughan Michael Michael Gaughan Sands Michael Bobby 1981

Joe McDonnell Thomas McElwee

Michael Devine 20th August 1981

5th May 1981

April 1940 19th1940 1940April April19th 3rd June 19th1974

BOBBY SANDS Kieran Doherty and the first Raymond McCreesh Patsy 1916 leader1981 Lynch Kevin 8th July 1981 the H-Blocks Hunger Strike, 1981 Leader of August 1981 May 21st8th

Kieran Doherty

‘I may die but the Republic of 1916 will never die. Onward to that Republic and the liberation of our people’

BOBBY SANDS McElwee Thomas Patsy O’Hara Kieran 1981 Doherty Strike, Hughes Hunger Lynch THOMAS ASHE Martin Hurson Francis Kevin of the H-Blocks Leader 1981 1981 August 8thMay 21st strike, 1917 Michael Devine 2nd August 1981 McDonnell BOBBY SANDS McElwee O’Hara and the first republican to die on hunger Thomas 12th May 1981 leader Patsy 1st August 1981 1916Joe Raymond DohertyMcCreesh 13th July 1981 Hughes 1981 Strike,Kieran Francis 20th August 1981 Lynch Kevin the H-Blocks Hunger Leader ofSands Bobby 1981 19818th July 1981 8th August 21st May 1981 21st May McCaughey McCaughey Sands Francis Hughes Seán SeánBobby 2nd August 1981 McCaughey Frank SeánStagg 12th May 1981 1981 1st August May 1981 Michael Gaughan 5th McCaughey McCaughey Seán Seán 1946 May May 11th 19811946 12th May 1981 May 197611th 1946 5th 11th May 3rd June 1974 12th February May 1946 11th Bobby Sands 1946 MacNeela MacNeela 11th May Seán Seán Gaughan MacNeela Seán Michael

Hurson

Martin strike, 1917 die on hunger 13th July 1981

‘I may die but the Republic of 1916 will never die. Onward to that Republic and the liberation of our people’

Gaughan Michael Gaughan Michael

Kevin Lynch

1981May 198112th 12th May 12th

16th April 1940 25th October 1920

hÉireann

OCRAIS OCRAIS STAILC OCRAIS STAILC ANAN AN STAILC OCRAIS OCRAIS STAILC STAILC ANAN ‘They have branded me as a

‘I may die but the Republic of 1916 will never die. Onward to that Republic and liberation of our people’

‘I may die but the Republic of 1916 will never die. Onward to that Republic and the liberation of our people’

June 1974 3rd 1974 3rd June

Joe McDonnell

Fuair siad bás ar son saoirse na

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13th July 1981

1946 May1981 11thMay 12th

Ireland's Hunger Str

1981 Leader of the H-Blocks Hunger Strike, 1981 1981 8th August 20th August 1981 May 20th 1981 August 1981 198121st 1981 20th August 1981 August August 2nd 8th 1981 20th August die on hunger strike, 1917 May 1981 8th 12th 1981 August 20th August 1981 1981 8th 1981 1981 August8th August 1st 2nd August 1916 leader and the first republican to August 2nd 1981 1976 1981 August 8th February August 12th 1981 2nd 1981 July 1981 1981 August August 13th 1st 2nd August 1981 1981 19811st 2nd August August 1981 1981 July 8th July 1981 13th 1st 1st August Leader of the H-Blocks Hunger Strike, 1981 1981 1981 13th 1st JulyAugust 13th 1981 1981 July JulyMay 8th 13th21st July 1981 21st 8th1981 1981 JulyMay 13th1981 die on hunger strike, 1917 May 8th July 1981 12th July1981 rcy D’Arcy Frank 1981 8th D’AGaughan May1981 5thJuly Tony ArcyTony 8th 1916 leader and the first republican to Michael Tony D’ 12th February 1976 Seán McCaughey 3rd June 1974 D’Arcy Seán MacNeela D’Arcy TonyTony 1940 April April 1974194012th February 1976 16th June 3rd 1940 April16th 16th1946 May 19th April 1940 11th April 1940 16th1940 Michael Gaughan O’Sullivan O’Sullivan 16th April Andrew Andrew O’Sullivan Andrew MacNeela Seán O’Sullivan Andrew O’Sullivan 1923 19233rd June 1974 Andrew 22nd November 22nd November 1923 November 1940 April 19th22nd 1923 1923 22nd November 22nd November

21st May 1981

THOMAS ASHE Martin Hurson McDonnell die on hunger strike, 1917

Joe and the first republican to 1916 leader 8th July 1981

Fuair siad bás ar son sa

Stagg Frank Hughes Francis HughesFra Francis Hughes Hughes Seán McCaughey HughesFrancisFrancis Francis 1 19761981 12th May 1981 12th FebruaryMay

Arcy MacSwiney Terence O’SullivanTony D’ AndrewFitzgerald Barry Michael

AN STAILC OCRAIS

Frank of theO’Hara Patsy BOBBY SANDS Leader 1981 Strike, 1981 Patsy Strike, Hunger Hunger THOMAS ASHE H-Blocks 1981 THOMAS ASHE of theO’Hara Strike, 1917 of the Leader 1981H-Blocks Hunger strike, Leader Strike, ASHE ASHE H-Blocks McCaughey theHunger die on of hunger toH-Blocks Seán 1981 May 1981 THOMASTHOMAS Leader 21st1981 Strike, republican of the Hunger 1981May 1917 Leader 1976 and THOMAS ASHE Hughes strike, 1917 H-Blocks leader 1981May12th of the strike, hunger 1916 onfirst 12th Leader diethe hunger McCreesh to 21st May 21st die on 1917 to first republican strike, Raymond May 1981 republican 1917 the 21stFebruary on hunger and strike, dieleader tofirst hunger 1916 on the leader 1917 republican McCreesh Francis to dieand 1916 first strike, Sands the McCreesh and hunger republican on Raymond Stagg Bobby first leader diethe to Raymond 11th May 1946 and Frank McCreesh leader1916 republican Gaughan McCreesh Raymond and the first 1916 MichaelMcCreesh 1916 leader Raymond 21st May 1981 Raymond Seán McCaughey 1981 May 1981 1981 21st May May 1981 12th May 1976 21st 1981 1974 12th February 1981May5th June 1981 Seán McCaughey 3rd May Barry 21st May 21st Barry Denis MacNeela 21st SeánDenis Barry D’Arcy 11th May 1946 TonyDenis Murphy Murphy O’Sullivan Joseph Joseph Murphy Andrew Joseph Barry Whitty Whitty Denis Joseph Barry Joseph Whitty Denis 1923 Joseph 1940 192311th May 1946 November Murphy 20thApril MacSwiney 20th November MacSwiney 1923 19th 1940 Joseph April Murphy Terence November Terence 16th20th 1923 MacSwiney Joseph 1923 1923 October Whitty Terence 25th October 25th Fitzgerald November Fitzgerald 1923 Joseph 22nd Whitty Michael Michael 1923 25th October Fitzgerald Joseph MacNeela 1923 November August Seán 1923 August 20th1923 Ashe 2nd Michael MacSwiney Ashe 2nd 1923 November Thomas Terence Thomas 20th MacSwiney August Ashe 2nd 1923 O’Sullivan 1920 Terence October Thomas October Andrew October 25th1920 1923 25th Fitzgerald 25th1920 October 25th Michael Fitzgerald October 25th1923 1920 19202nd Michael August October 1923 17th October 17th1920

April 1940 19th1940 19th April

Raymond McCreesh

16th April 1940

Joseph MurphyThomas Ashe Denis

1923 22nd October 1920 17th November November 1923 1917 (died) 25th September20th 25th October 1923

2nd August 1923

25th October 1920

O’Hara Michael the Thomas Patsy Michael Devine Devine Doherty Michael McElwee McElwee Kieran Hughes Michael Thomas Devine Thomas Francis McElwee Michael Lynch Doherty Thomas McElwee THOMAS ASHE Doherty KevinThomas Kieran Kieran McElwee Stagg son Doherty son Thomas Frank saoirse ar Hurson ar Lynch Kieran Doherty Lynch Kevin son bás Martin bás hÉireann Kevin Kieran ar Doherty na siad Lynch siad hÉireann bás Kieran Kevin Hurson Lynch naJoe Fuair McDonnell Hurson Fuair siad SANDS Kevin saoirse Joe Martin BOBBY Martin Lynch son Fuair saoirse O’Hara Hurson Kevin ar Patsy Martin son Hurson McCreesh McDonnell bás arBobby Joe Martin McDonnell Raymond Hurson siad bás Hughes McDonnell siad Joe Martin Fuair Francis Sands Joe McDonnell THOMAS ASHE Fuair McDonnell Stagg Joe Michael Gaughan Frank Stagg

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JoeandMcDonnell the first republican to 1916 leader 8th July 1981

Joseph Whitty

Terence MacSwiney

AN STAILC O

19th April 1940

5th May 1981

‘They have branded me as a criminal. Even though I do die, I die in a good cause’

1946 May 11th 5th May 1981 5th May 1981 May 5th

25th October 1920

Ireland's Hung

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Seán MacNeela

‘They have branded me as a criminal. Even though I do die, I die in a good cause’

Bobby Sands

1940 April 19th 1981 5th May

November 1920 1923 22nd October 17th

Fra

Terence MacSwiney

Barry Fitzgerald Denis Michael

1923October 1920 20th November17th 1923 25th September 1917 (died) 25th October

hÉireann Fuair siad bás ar son saoirse naTony D’Arcy

Frank Gaughan Sands Bobby Sands Sands Michael Bobby Stagg Bobby McCaughey Sands SeánBobby Bobby Sands MacNeela Seán Sands Bobby 1976 5th May 1981 February 12th5th 3rd June 1974 1981 May 1981

O’Sullivan Andrew Fitzgerald Michael

Frank Stagg McCaughey Frank Stagg Seán Stagg Frank Stagg

Arcy

Tony D’ Stagg Frank Frank 12th 1976 1946 MayFebruary 12th February 1976 11th1976 12th February 12th 1976 April 1940 16th 1976 12th February February 12th

Thomas Ashe Joseph Murphy

Ireland's Hunger Strikes

‘They have branded me as a criminal. Even though I do die, I die in a good cause’

Michael Gaughan

16th April 1940

Thomas Ashe

(died) 25th September 1917

Bobby Sands

1917 25th September (died)September (died) 25th

hÉireann

Denis Barry

20th November 1923

Joseph Whitty

Fitzgerald OCRAIS25th October 1920 2nd August 1923 STAILC ANMichael 17th October 1920 AN STAILC OCRAIS Terence MacSwiney

Thomas Ashe

Ireland's Hunger Strikes Strikes Hunger ar son saoirse na hÉireann Fuair siad bás Ireland's

22nd November 1923

3rd June 1974

1946May 194611th 11th May 11th

AN STAILC OCRAIS

Fuair siad bás ar son saoirse na

Michael 1946 May 1923 11th August 1974 2nd June 3rd June 1974 3rd 1940 19th 1940 April 1974April 1920 3rd June October 1974 25th June 3rd 22nd June 1974192316th 1920 3rdNovember October 17th 1923 20th November

Andrew O’Sullivan

Michael Gaughan

1923 November 20th May 1946 11th

HUNGER FOR JUSTICE

1923 September 1917 25th October (died) 25th

Ireland's Hunger Strikes

Seán M rcy Seán McCaughey D’A Tony McCaughey Seán Seán McCaughey Barry Seán McCaughey Denis McCaughey Seán 11th 16th April 1940 May 1946 11th May 1946

25th October 1923

2nd August 1923

Joseph Murphy Michael Gaughan McCaughey Whitty Seán Gaughan Joseph Gaughan MacNeela Michael rcy Seán AGaughan Michael D’ Gaughan Tony MacSwiney Michael Terence Andrew Michael Gaughan 25th October 1923 MichaelO’Sullivan 3rd June 1974 Denis BarryFitzgerald

Thomas Ashe Joseph Murphy

16th

hÉireann

Joseph Murphy

Joseph Whitty

Ireland's Hunger Strikes

hÉireann

Fuair siad bás ar son saoirse na

O’Sullivan Andrew Fitzgerald Michael

Fuair siad bás ar son saoirse na

hÉireann

Seán MacNeela D’Arcy MacSwiney Terence Tony O’Sullivan MacNeela Fitzgerald Andrew MacNeela Seán Michael Seán Barry MacNeela Seán Ashe Denis Thomas Seán MacNeela MacNeela 1920 April 1940 Joseph Murphy Seán 19th 1940 1923 1940October 1920 November April25th 194016th 22nd October 19th April April

Ireland's Hunger Strikes

Thomas Ashe

November 16th April 20th 1940 1940April October 25th 1940 1923 16th April16th April 16th

2nd August 1923

Ireland's Hunger Strikes

AN STAILC OCRAIS

Fuair siad bás ar son saoirse na

16th A

AN STAILC OCRAIS

25th 1923 1923 (died) November October 1923 22nd November 1923 November 192322nd25th 22nd 2nd August

25th October 1920

17th October 1920

Ireland's Hunger Strikes

1974 June 1974 June 3rd

THOMAS ASHE

1916 leader and the first republican to

die on hunger strike, 1917

21st May

‘They have branded me as a criminal. Even though cause’ goodLynch I die in aKevin

DevineHurson MichaelMartin I do die, 1981July 1981 20th August13th

THOMAS ASHE Hurson Martin1917 McDonnell Joe and SandsSands the first republican to die on hunger strike, Bobby Bobby 1916 leader Sands McCreesh RaymondBobby 13th July 1981 1981

20th August 1981

THOMAS ASHE die on hunger strike, 1917 BOBBY SANDS StaggPatsy O’Hara Stagg 1916 leader and the first republican to Frank Frank McCreesh Stagg Frank Hughes 1981 Raymond Francis Strike, Hunger Sands of the H-Blocks LeaderBobby Frank StaggStagg Frank 1976 February February 1981 1976 21st May 1981 12th May 21st 12th February 198112th 1976

1976 1976 12th February 12th February

5th May 1981

‘I may die but the Republic of 1916 will never die. Onward to that Republic and

people’ of ourMcElwee Kieran Doherty the liberationThomas

1st August 1981

‘They have branded me as a criminal. Even though die, I die in a good cause’

Michael Devine I do

8th August 1981

12th May

Michael Devine 20th August 1981

‘They have branded me as a criminal. Even though I do die, I die in a good cause’

THOMAS ASHEDevine Michael Martin Hurson Hughes Hughes McDonnell Joe Francis McElwee Francis BOBBY SANDS republican to die on hunger strike, 1917 Hughes O’Hara Thomas the first Patsy and Francis leader 1916 Doherty Kieran Raymond McCreesh 13th July 1981 Hughes 1981 Strike, Francis Lynch Hughes Hunger Kevin of 1981 Francis the H-Blocks July1981 May 1981 20th August 1981

2nd August 1981

The story of our 22 Hunger Striker martyrs 1981 May 1981 5th 5th May May 1981 5th1981 21st May

I

anphoblacht  UIMHIR EISIÚNA 3 - 2020 - ISSUE NUMBER 3

O’Sullivan Terence MacSwiney Fitzgerald Andrew Michael Barry DenisO’Sullivan Ashe O’Sullivan Andrew Thomas Andrew O’Sullivan Murphy Joseph Andrew O’Sullivan 25th October 1920 Andrew 1923 WhittyO’Sullivan 1920 Andrew 22nd November Joseph 1923 1923October 1923November 1917 20th November17th 22nd November September 22nd

Terence MacSwiney

Michael Fitzgerald

Thomas Ashe

(died) 25th September 1917

Tony

Barry D’ArcyTony D’Arcy Denis Tony Arcy Arcy D’ rcy Tony D’Tony Joseph D’AMurphy Tony 1923 April 1940 1940

Joseph Whitty

8th July

Leader 1st August 1981

August 1981 21st May 1981 2nd1981 May 12th 1981 12th May

May 8th 12th 12th August 1981 1981 May1981 May 12th 21st8th

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SANDSSANDS BOBBY BOBBY O’Hara O’Hara Patsy Hurson Patsy BOBBY SANDS Devine O’Hara Martin Patsy SANDS 1981 McElwee Strike, 1981 Michael Joe McDonnell ASHE BOBBY ASHE Hunger Hunger Thomas SANDS O’Hara 1981Strike, H-Blocks H-Blocks BOBBY Strike, of the the Patsy ASHETHOMAS ofLeader Hunger O’Hara Leader THOMASTHOMAS H-Blocks Patsy 1981 May 1981 May Kieran 21st Leader of the 1981 21st July 13th May 1981 1981 Doherty 1917 1917 21st 1981 Strike, strike, ASHE hunger Hunger 1981 Kevin onstrike, ontohunger die 1917 THOMAS Strike, die H-Blocks toLynch ASHEMcCreesh the ofstrike, Hunger 1981 republican 8th July 1981 20th August republican hunger Leader first THOMAS on H-Blocks August the die the the first 8th to and Leader of Hurson 1981 leader May leader republican 1916 21st Martin firstand McCreesh 1981 and the leader 21st May 19171916 Raymond 1916 Raymond strike, 2nd August 1981 McCreesh hunger 1917 McDonnell die on JoeRaymond strike, to die ontohunger August 1981 and the first republican

leader 1916and the first republican 1916 leader 13th July 1981 1981 May 1981 21st 21st May 1981 May 1981 21st 8th July

Kevin Lynch 1st August 1981

1st

Devine Devine Michael Michael Devine Michael McElwee McElwee Thomas Thomas McElwee Devine Thomas Doherty Doherty Michael Devine Kieran Kieran Doherty Michael 1981 1981 Kieran August McElwee 20th August Lynch 20th Lynch 1981 Kevin Thomas Kevin McElwee Thomas 1981 1981 20th August Kevin Lynch August 8th August Doherty Hurson Hurson 1981 Kieran Martin Doherty August8th 8th1981 Hurson 1981 Kieran 1981 August August Martin 20th August LynchMartin 1981 2nd20th 2nd August 1981 Joe McDonnell Lynch Joe McDonnell August 1981 KevinKevin 1981 1981 McDonnell August August Joe 8th August Hurson 1st8th 19812nd August 1981 Martin Hurson August1st Martin 1981August 1981 July 2nd 13th 19811st1981 13th July July 1981 1981 1981 1981 July 1st August 1981 13th 8th July8th August 1st 1981July 1981 July 8th 13th 1981 13th July

2nd August

55

‘I may die but the Re never die. Onward t the liberation o

BOBBY Lynch Kevin of the H-Block Leader 1st August 1981

Kieran Doherty 2nd August 1981

THE BELFAST POGROMS 1920 -22 POGROM – AN ORGANIZED MASSACRE OF A PARTICULAR ETHNIC GROUP

The word pogrom has its origins in Russia and is most closely associated with the pogroms against the Jews of Russia in the early part of the 20th Century and later the Nazi persecution of the Jews in Germany that proceeded their attempted genocide.

However, the origins of the word, pogroms have a long and frequent history here in Ireland, as long as the conquest itself. From the Plantation of Ulster, Cromwell’s ‘To Hell or Connaught’ or to the anti-Catholic pogroms that swept across County Armagh following the Battle of the Diamond in September 1795.

Following the battle, the Peep o’ Day Boys took the name of Orangemen and hence in the words of G. B Kenna, “Thus was Orangeism cradled in what we now call Pogrom”.

In the 19th and 20th centuries, Belfast would become the epicentre of these antiCatholic pogroms. In 1808, Belfast had a recorded population of just 25,000. By 1911, it had increased to 385,000, a staggering rate of growth. In 1784, the Catholics of Belfast numbered around 8% of the population. By 1911, that figure had risen to 24% and was continuing to grow.

During this period of industrialisation and economic growth, Belfast’s once radical Presbyterians became the stoutest defenders

56

BY JIM McVEIGH of the Union with Britain. Its capitalist class would build considerable wealth upon Britain’s vast empire of exploitation. A new Protestant working class emerged that came to rely upon the employment provided by this new capitalist class. The provision of skilled and well-paid

• Randolph Churchill

employment in places like the shipyards was used to consolidate the loyalty of many Belfast Protestants.

Many Protestants were taught by some within this new privileged class, the Orange Order and by religious demagogues such as the Rev Henry Cooke, Roaring Hugh Hannah, and latterly by the Rev Ian Paisley, to despise their Irish Catholic neighbours as a threat to their religious liberty and economic prosperity. Sectarianism and discrimination against Catholics thus became a foundation stone of industrial Belfast.

When Home Rule emerged as a Nationalist demand in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, sectarian sentiment was whipped up, not just by northern Unionists but by England’s Conservatives. Leading Tory and Unionist Lord Randolph Churchill (father of Winston) wrote at the time; “I decided some time ago that if GOM (‘Grand Old Man’ as Gladstone was known) went for Home Rule, the Orange Card would be the one to play. Please God it may turn out the ace of trumps and not the two”.

It was the ace of trumps that Churchill intended it to be. The Home Rule Bill was defeated and in the British general election of 1886, the Tories defeated Gladstone’s government.

Inevitably, the consequences of these cynical

ISSUE NUMBER 3 – 2020 - UIMHIR EISIÚNA 3  anphoblacht

political manoeuvres were vicious attacks upon Catholic enclaves in Belfast, the Half Bap, the Newlodge, Peters Hill, Sailor Town, Ballymacarett, Ardoyne, Clonard, the Falls. The worst of these pogroms occurred between July 1920 and the

As Connolly had predicted, partition unleashed a carnival of sectarian reaction across Belfast. The city’s Irish Catholic population was subjected to a veritable reign of terror founding of the new northern state in 1922.

As James Connolly had predicted, Partition unleashed a carnival of sectarian reaction across Belfast. The city’s Irish Catholic population was subjected to a veritable reign of terror by the RUC, the Specials, and loyalist mobs By the end of 1922, an uneasy peace had temporarily descended upon Belfast. However, according to the historian Jonathan Bardon; “The price in blood had been heavy: between July 1920 and July 1922 the death toll in the Six

• Rev Henry Cooke statue in Belfast

Counties was 557 – 303 Catholics, 172 Protestants and 82 members of the security forces. In Belfast, 236 people had been killed in the first months of 1922, more than the widespread troubles in

anphoblacht  UIMHIR EISIÚNA 3 - 2020 - ISSUE NUMBER 3

Germany in the same period. In Belfast there had been a vicious sectarian war at a time of political turmoil, and yet the statistics speak for themselves: Catholics formed only a quarter of the city’s population but had suffered 257 civilian deaths out of 416 in a two year period. Catholic relief organisations estimated that in Belfast between 8,700 and 11,000 Catholics had been driven out of their jobs, that 23,000 Catholics had been forced out of their homes, and that about 500 Catholic businesses had been destroyed.”

Following the terror of those months, the new Unionist regime set about gerrymandering the electoral map to exclude nationalists and Catholics from holding or exercising significant political power. The Special Powers Act was enacted and was used ruthlessly to suppress opposition to the regime. Discrimination against Catholics in employment and the provision of housing was promoted by the new leaders of northern Unionism. An enduring and elaborate system of religious apartheid was created.

Looking back now what is incredible is not that the population revolted against the regime in 1969, but that it took so long! • Jim McVeigh is a Sinn Féin member and trade union activist

57

The Killing of

Cllr. Mícheál Breathnach In the Spring of 1920, an initial phase of the republican campaign in Galway during the Tan War began with attacks on RIC Barracks in the north-east of the county at Castlehacket and Castlegrove under the leadership of Michael Moran, an inimitable IRA Commander from Tuam.

The more intense period of conflict, however, effectively began in September 1920 with the death of RIC Constable Edward Krumm at Galway Railway Station (now known as Ceannt Station) and was reinforced by new special powers passed in Westminster to declare public emergencies and curfews.

By Christmas of that year, 13 IRA Volunteers or Republican sympathisers in Galway City and County had been killed by British Crown forces.

One of the many brutal killings of this period was the shooting dead of Sinn Féin’s Galway Urban District Councillor Mícheál Breathnach on the night of 19th October, 1920.

Breathnach was born in to a large family at

58

BY LUKE CALLINAN Headford, Co. Galway, an area that produced many Republicans during this period and that would play a key role in the Tan War and subsequent Civil War. His parents Michael and Brigid had a shop in the town, but later

moved to Galway City where they ran a public house and shop on High Street, known today as the Old Malt House. Mícheál took over the shop from his father and married Agnes Cotter of the Cois Fharraige Gaeltacht in 1907, raising a large family at their home on High Street.

Mícheál was a known Republican and when he was asked to run as a local Sinn Féin candidate in late 1919 at the age of 39 he was more than happy to do so. He was successfully elected as a councillor for Galway’s East ward along with Sinn Féin activist and solicitor Louis O’Dea in late January 1920.

Less than nine months after being elected, at around 10pm on the night of Tuesday 19th October, five Black and Tans in civilian clothing with their faces partially covered and armed with revolvers, entered Mícheál’s premises on High Street, searched it, and threw out the five customers that were there.

17 year old shop assistant Martin

ISSUE NUMBER 3 – 2020 - UIMHIR EISIÚNA 3  anphoblacht

• (above) Mícheál Breathnach's family at his plaque on the Long Walk, Galway

was wearing Breathnach’s coat when he arrived back to the shop.

The following morning, as Martin King of Court House Lane, Galway City, walked to work along the river bank, he noticed something unusual in the water and, on further inspection, found it to be the body of Cllr.

Mícheál Breathnach. The shocking nature of his death meant that Mícheál’s funeral was one of the largest and most poignant in Galway city from this time, comparable to the major republican funeral that took place in Galway a

The Tans fired one shot into Mícheál Breathnach’s head at point blank range, killing him instantly, and dumping his body in to the river

• Wreath Laying ceremony: Mark Lohan, Cathal Ó Conchúir and Breathnach's grave

Meenaghan was ordered to knock off the lamps while the men pointed revolvers at him and Mícheál. When Mícheál asked if his assistant could get him a glass of rum, he was told by one of the men that it would be wasted on him as he would be dead within an hour.

Four of the men then marched Breathnach out of the shop and down the street, while one remained with Meenaghan. They marched 500

Mairéad Farrell TD at

metres down High Street, through the Spanish Arch, and along the now iconic Long Walk facing out on to the River Corrib and Galway Bay. The Tans fired one shot into Mícheál Breathnach’s head at point blank range, killing him instantly, and dumping his body in to the river before returning to the shop and threatening young Meenaghan not to mention a word of the night’s events. One of the Tans

anphoblacht  UIMHIR EISIÚNA 3 - 2020 - ISSUE NUMBER 3

month earlier, following the killing in action of Volunteers Seán Mulvoy and Séamus Quirke.

Many of Mícheál Breathnach’s sons were known republicans from the 1930s onward and their public house on High Street was frequented regularly by IRA Volunteers, including Tony D’Arcy of Mícheál’s native Headford, who would die on Hunger Strike in 1940 at the hands of a Fianna Fáil Government.

His son Fursa Breathnach was a former republican internee at Tintown prison camp in the Curragh, as well as a Clann na Poblachta Councillor in Galway and ITGWU official, while his grandson of the same name is today an active Republican, Sinn Féin activist, and former Ballinasloe Town Councillor. • Luke Callinan is a Galway based Sinn Féin activist 59

The darkest day

BY OISÍN MCCANN November 21st 1920 was one of the darkest days of the War of Independence. Ireland was in the midst of war between the IRA and the British Forces. Despite the Easter Rising being suppressed just four years earlier, the thirst for Irish sovereignty had grown exponentially. In that time, Sinn Féin won a landslide election in 1918, claiming 73 of the 105 seats available.

The following year saw the establishment of An Chéad Dáil Éireann, which would sit in Ireland’s Mansion House, the first sitting of a revolutionary Government that would claim Ireland as a sovereign, independent State.

The growing power of an ascendant independent Ireland was demonstrated in 1920 with Sinn Féin winning majorities on 24 of the 32 county councils in that year’s local elections.

David Fitzpatrick’s chapter in Nationalism and Popular Protest in Ireland tells how “republicans took control” of “72 of 127 urban author-

Today the GAA is home to over half a million members across the world, and continues to be a core part of Ireland’s cultural identity ities, and 338 of the 393 boards of guardians, rural district councils and county councils”.

As the War of Independence broke out and confrontations intensified, violence on the streets of Dublin continued to grow. By mid1920, 500 RIC Barracks had been abandoned, with 400 of these destroyed or burned across Ireland. The Irish Republic was an accepted state of mind for much of the public across the island.

In an effort to re-assert themselves in a losing battle, British Forces stepped up aggression by raiding villages and towns with great fury up and down the countryside, indiscriminately targeting women and children.

In March 1920, Sinn Féin Mayor of Cork Tomás Mac Curtain was shot dead in his home.

The inquest into his death found British Prime Minister David Lloyd George, a number of his subordinates, unnamed elements of the RIC and District Inspector Oswalt Swanzy guilty of wilful murder. On Sunday 22nd of August later that year, while leaving church, Swanzy was shot and killed in Lisburn by members of the Cork Brigade of the IRA. The War of Independence continued to rage on and Lloyd George had dispatched extra troops, Auxiliaries, and most critically more in60

• Victims and military outside Jervis Street Hospital, Dublin after Bloody Sunday 1920

• Tomás Mac Curtain

telligence agents to Ireland. Their objective was to conduct intelligence operations against the IRA with the aim of assassinating high-ranking members. This was done after Michael Collins’ own intelligence unit had effectively infiltrated and neutralised the Dublin Metropolitan Police’s own G-Division, through its own campaign of targeted warfare.

On the morning of November 21st 1920, Collins dispatched teams of IRA volunteers to assassinate British spies across Dublin City. In total, 14 British soldiers and suspected intelligence officers would be killed in that operation.

• British Prime Minister David Lloyd George

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Bloody Sunday 1920

• Croke Park in the aftermath of the shootings

• Harry Boland smiles directly at the camera while Michael Collins shakes hands with James Nowlan (ex-GAA president) at the Leinster Hurling Final 1921 between Dublin and Kilkenny

Later that afternoon, Tipperary were set to face Dublin in a challenge match in Croke Park. Tension filled the stadium as news of the morning’s successful operation spread across the grounds.

As crowds continued to spill into the stadium, Harry Colley, adjutant to the Dublin Bri-

gade, Seán Russell and Tom Kilcoyne made their way through the sea of spectators. Word had reached Kilcoyne from a DMP sergeant that a force of Auxiliaries and military vehicles were being mobilised for Croke Park. The message from the IRA was clear; the game should be called off in the interest of public safety. Un-

anphoblacht  UIMHIR EISIÚNA 3 - 2020 - ISSUE NUMBER 3

fortunately, time was not on their side.

The game wasn’t long underway when British soldiers, Black and Tans and members of the RIC made their way to the ground.

11-year-old William Robinson from Dublin turned around when he heard the noise of the vehicles approaching. The first shot ripped through his chest, knocking him out of the tree where he was perched to watch the game.

A second shot knocked 10-year-old Jerome O’Leary from a wall behind the goals where someone had placed him to get a better view of the match.

As gunfire tore through the stadium from centre-field, the crowd scattered, but 60 would be left injured, and 14 dead. Among those killed that day included Michael Hogan, who was playing right corner back for Tipperary.

In an effort to cover up the atrocities that occurred in Croke Park that day, British authorities tried to claim that a number of IRA gunmen were present at the match, and that the original intent of the officers on site that day was to speak to the crowd through a megaphone.

Later testimony from a Dublin Metropolitan Police officer stated clearly that the assorted British troops, Auxiliaries and RIC members began firing at the crowd as soon as they disembarked from their lorries.

The decision to target Croke Park specifically was not one made at a whim. It was a deliberate attempt to strike at the heart of Irish identity. A foreign regime attacking cultural hubs to beat the masses they are seeking to oppress is commonplace throughout history. To them, the GAA and the IRA were interlinked.

61

• The Dublin team that played in the challenge match against Tipperary in Croke Park

Headlines across the world rang of condemnation, further undermining Britain’s legitimacy in Ireland. Some commentators even drew comparison with the Amritsar Massacre in India, when in the previous year British Brigadier General Reginald Dyer ordered troops to fire mercilessly into a crowd of civilians, killing 379 people and wounding over a thousand more in the process.

From then on support, members and allies flowed to the IRA and the pursuit for Irish freedom from Britain grew stronger.

The Dublin Brigade of the IRA scaled up its campaign of guerrilla warfare against British Forces in the city. The two sides would continue to exchange blows until the truce called in July 1921.

Today the GAA is home to over half a mil-

lion members across the world, and continues to be a core part of Ireland’s cultural identity. Almost one hundred years on from Croke Park’s Bloody Sunday, and it is still seen as one of the darkest days of the War of Independence

JEROME O’LEARY

DANIEL CARROLL

Little Britain Street, Dublin.

LIST OF THOSE KILLED BY BRITISH FORCES ON BLOODY SUNDAY 1920

JOHN WILLIAM SCOTT

JAMES TEEHAN

Schoolboy (14)

Publican (26)

Tipperary.

Gardiner Place, Dublin.

TOM HOGAN

JANE BOYLE

JAMES BURKE

Mechanic (19)

Charge hand to a pork butcher (26)

Employed by Terenure Laundry (44)

MICHAEL HOGAN

TOM RYAN

PATRICK O’DOWD

Schoolboy (10)

Blessington Street, Dublin.

WILLIAM ROBINSON Schoolboy (11)

Fitzroy Avenue, Dublin.

Tankardstown, Limerick.

Farmer, Tipperary footballer, Irish Volunteer (24)

Grangemockler, Tipperary.

62

Lennox Street, Dublin.

Labourer (27)

Glenbrien, Wexford.

Oisín McCann is a Dublin based Sinn Féin activist

Bar manager of Kennedy’s of Drumcondra (30)

Templederry, Tipperary.

JAMES MATTHEWS Labourer (38)

North Cumberland Road, Dublin.

MICHAEL FEERY Unemployed (40)

Windy Arbour, Dublin.

Labourer (57)

Buckingham Street, Dublin.

ISSUE NUMBER 3 – 2020 - UIMHIR EISIÚNA 3  anphoblacht

The life and death of

Michael Fitzgerald

Born into the rural area of Ballyoran, roughly halfway between Castlelyons and Fermoy in County Cork, in December 1881, Michael ‘Mick’ Fitzgerald inherited an Ireland going through the upheavals of the land war.

Fermoy, the largest town in the vicinity of Ballyoran, was a garrison town with a large military presence. Many young men of the time would have sought out careers in the British

With the advent of the Tan War, Mick and many others found themselves thrust into the burgeoning guerrilla war which would soon engulf Ireland Army. At one stage in the 19th Century, nearly 40 percent of members of the British army were Irish. While there was a multiplicity of reasons for joining, many simply joined due to economic necessity.

Mick was educated in the local Christian Brothers School and went on to work in a local mill. He was secretary of the local branch of the Irish Transport and General Workers Union, a position which led him to develop broad sympathy with the views espoused by anphoblacht  UIMHIR EISIÚNA 3 - 2020 - ISSUE NUMBER 3

James Connolly and others who recognised the importance of the question of Labour in the overall national struggle.

Events in Ireland on the issue of Home Rule had reached a climax in the period between 1912 and 1914. The Anti-Home Rule Unionists had introduced the gun into Irish politics with the Larne Gunning running incident and the British Army and the Curragh mutiny had added fuel to the fire.

The National question was looming large and, by 1914, Mick, like many others, had realised the need for change in Ireland so he joined the Irish Volunteers. As a member of the Irish Republican Army, he played an important role in building the organisation in his local area. He soon rose to the rank of Battalion Commandant, 1st Battalion, Cork No.2 Brigade.

With the advent of the Tan War, Mick and many others found themselves thrust into the burgeoning guerrilla war which would soon engulf Ireland.

On Easter Sunday, April 20, 1919, Mick Fitzgerald led a small group of IRA volunteers in a daring raid. They captured Araglen RIC Barracks located on the border between Cork and Tipperary. Matt Flood recalled that five carbines had been secured and without a single shot being fired. Shortly after the raid, he 63

was arrested and sentenced to three months imprisonment at Cork Gaol.

Upon his release in August 1919, he returned immediately to active IRA duty. One of the operations he participated in involved holding up a party of British Army troops at the Wesleyan Church in Fermoy. This attack was important as it was the first deliberate attack on British military during the Tan War. Mick was arrested along with Terence MacSwiney and nine other volunteers on August 8th, 1920. Fitzgerald’s trial at the Cork Summer assizes had to be abandoned due to the non-attendance of jurors. As part of Dáil policy, an alternative and very successful system of National and local government was introduced, which included a courts and policing system. This resulted in many refusing to co-operate with the British judicial system.

Despite the absence of a conviction, Mick was detained at Cork gaol and along with ten other prisoners, who were being held indefinitely without trial, began a hunger strike on August 11th, 1920. Limited information exists in relation to the specific journey of

After the mass, British military in full uniform, including the wearing of steel helmets, invaded the church carrying fixed bayonets. The British soldiers walked over the seats to the altar rails Fitzgerald on his long gruelling sixty seven day fast. However, the documented experiences of other Republican strikers during 1920 offer some insight into the suffering he endured: ‘Tonight, my head aches. The hardest thing of all to bear is that there are no meals hours.

The Jail life hinges on the three meals, and now there is no division of the day, no beginning and no end- the head aches, the body is damp and weak, even sleep has gone……This is the darkest night yet. Death alone could find his way in here now – yes- he is there again tonight – I feel him coming towards me’.

The death of Mick Fitzgerald was the first death of a hunger striker in an Irish prison since Ashe, three years previously. When he died in Cork Jail at 9.45pm on October 17, 1920, he was aged just 38 years.

A New York times article from the following day reported: ‘STRIKER DIES IN CORK JAIL AFTER 68-DAY FAST; Michael Fitzgerald, Accused of Death of Soldier Sept. 17, 1919, Is First to Expire. ANOTHER IS NEAR THE END Prison Physicians, with Consent of the Nine Other Prisoners, Called in to Give Treatment.

MacSWINEY ‘FAIRLY WELL’ Pope Asks Congregation of the Holy Office to Decide Whether His Death Would Be Suicide’ Fitzgerald’s remains were taken by his comrades to the Church of Saints Peter and Paul in Cork’s city centre. Huge crowds turned out to witness the removal and the coffin being carried in relays by Volunteers of his own Battalion.

64

• 1920 Hunger Strikes: IRA Volunteers Maurice Crowe (Tipperary) and Michael Carolan (Belfast) recover in the Mater Hospital after the Mountjoy hunger strike had ended

Accounts of his church service on October 18th highlight a heavy-handed approach from the British. Attempts were made to undermine and threaten those who had come to pay their last tributes as family, friends, and Republican supporters. After the mass, British military in full uniform, including the wearing of steel helmets, invaded the church carrying fixed bayonets.

The British soldiers walked over the seats to the altar rails. An officer with a drawn revolver handed a notice to the priest warning that only a small number of people, fifty, would be allowed to take part in the rest of the funeral. A machine gun was mounted at the church gates.

Despite this intimidation, which also included armoured cars and lorries carrying heavily equipped British forces shadowing the cortege, thousands of people are reported to have taken part in the funeral.

His body was taken to St. Patrick’s Church, Fermoy where he lay in state overnight. On the following day, more crowds attending the funeral at Kilcrumper were threatened by the same type of intimidation as was displayed previously in Cork. A barbed wire entanglement was set up and machine guns were mounted on the bridge in the town centre. His comrades assembled again and, later that afternoon, paid a last tribute of three volleys to the first IRA volunteer to be buried at the Republican plot at Kilcrumper Cemetery in Fermoy.

General Liam Lynch had a particular friendship with and admiration for Michael Fitzgerald. When Lynch lay dying, after being shot by Free State forces in the Knockmealdown Mountains on April 10, 1923, his final request was to be buried with Michael Fitzgerald in Kilcrumper. That last wish of his was fulfilled and their graves have now become a place of National pilgrimage.

In recognition of the selfless and brave sacrifice Mick made for the cause of Irish freedom, Cork City Council named a road in Togher in his memory. At a commemoration in 2008, Pat Doherty MP spoke of ‘the duty that now falls to the present generation to continue their struggle until our ultimate aim of a free democratic 32-County Republic is achieved, the only way to pay homage to such great men to whom we owe so much’. • ISSUE NUMBER 3 – 2020 - UIMHIR EISIÚNA 3  anphoblacht

the New Republic’ The ‘Postcards from t, British designer, artis series is a hat tip to ’s cialist William Morris entrepreneur and So m series of articles fro News from Nowhere e Commonweal, the 1890 published in th t cialist League and se newspaper of the So ere Morris’s socialist, in a distant future wh r has been secured. Ou and romantic, utopia ir are Willa Ní Chuairteo story’s protagonists ur mpanied by their fo and Lucy Byrne acco o wh , Banba and Alroy children James, Afric d endure the equity an together enjoy and re’s New Republic. exigency of the futu family visit: To check in with the

POSTCARDS FROM A

BY SINÉAD NÍ BHROIN

NEW REPUBLIC

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mth  fb.me/Postcardsfro

Bang, bang, bang. Alroy shakes his sleeping Mammies. Bang, bang, bang. “Jesus Mary, what’s wrong son?” Lucy asks as she sits up with a start. Bang, bang, bang. “There’s someone banging at the backdoor Ma, they sound really upset.”

Lucy shakes Willa. “Wake up. There’s someone at the door and it sounds urgent.”

Pulling on dressing gowns, they run downstairs switching on all the lights as they go.

As they go into the kitchen Willa takes a wooden spoon out of a drawer and tells Lucy to stand back once she opens the backdoor.

Lucy tells her wife not to be so ridiculous, that it will be someone they know. Willa rolls her eyes and says, “For once in your life Lucy just do what I ask. We’ve your mother upstairs with the kids. Don’t be so reckless” Lucy sighs and looking at Willa nods her head silently counting to three and opens the door.

Before she has the door half open Jenny rushes in and then just stands in the middle of the kitchen, not sure what to do next. Willa gently puts her arm around Jenny and asks, “Will we get James?”. Jenny whimpers “yes”, and starts to sob into Willa’s shoulder.

Lucy goes upstairs. All four kids are in their Nana’s bedroom. Lucy closes the door behind her and sinks into one of the old crushed velvet armchairs in Eileen’s room that she brought from her house in Dublin.

“James love, its Jenny. She’s in a terrible state.” James jumps up and before he can get out the door Lucy pulls him back. “Listen love.

We don’t know what’s happened, so when you go downstairs just reassure Jenny’s that she’s safe. We need to find out what’s going on but don’t force it. She will tell us in her own time.”

Jenny is James’s best friend. Her Mam, Lizzie, died just a couple of days ago. Cancer.

Lizzie told no-one until it was too late refusing treatment following her diagnosis.

After a lifetime of bullying and abuse at the hands of her husband Lizzie embraced her diagnosis. Finally, a way out. Over the course of 25 years together John had beaten every

ounce of Lizzie’s self-esteem out of her.

After two still births Jenny’s arrival felt like a lifeline. A chance for John and Lizzie to start anew with their beautiful baby girl. John adored Jenny, so he would wait till she was asleep or out of the house to beat her Mum to within an inch of her life although never her face, or her arms.

Jenny didn’t fully understand what was going on at home until it was too late. John was an anomaly. Domestic violence had been mostly eradicated. Huge reforms of the justice system had been undertaken, coupled with

“Let’s get in trouble.

Good trouble.

Necessary trouble.

John Lewis kinda trouble” institutionalised education programmes in school and the workplace.

After Irish unity violent crime had steadily declined as equality and wellbeing improved but the scale of violence against women and girls in and outside their home remained high.

The turning point was the murder of a popular female member of the Oireachtas and the high-profile court case that followed. Day after day women walked out of work and girls

Women’s Aid National Freephone Helpline 24 hours a day, 7 days a week

1800 341 900

anphoblacht  UIMHIR EISIÚNA 3 - 2020 - ISSUE NUMBER 3

out of school converging on steps of the Dáil demanding action.

Since then violence in all its guises had diminished, and gender-based violence had become abhorrent within society. Yet still Jenny endured her abuse for over two decades. Days before she died, ensconced in a local hospice and her pain eased with heavy doses of morphine Lizzie finally told Jenny the truth about her Dad. Jenny had confronted her Dad. He showed no remorse, blaming Lizzie for everything.

He spoke about Jenny’s Mum in terms she couldn’t even comprehend. He called Lizzie a bitch, a woman that never stopped whining. If she had just done what he asked, made a bit of an effort with herself. He went on and on.

When he was done Jenny gathered some photos of her Mum, Lizzie’s favourite perfume and jewellery. She packed them along with her clothes and waited for her Dad to go to bed. After a couple of hours, she left her family home for the last time and walked across the village broken hearted to her best friend’s house.

James brought Jenny into the sitting room, sat her down beside him and hugged her tightly. Willa and Lucy looked on from outside the open door with tears streaming down their cheeks as they listened to Jenny tell James of the horrific abuse her Mum silently suffered for so many years.

Lucy and Willa bring in a pot of hot chocolate and a plate of homemade French madeleines. The four of them stay up a little longer while Eileen gets the spare room ready for the family’s new house mate. When everyone is finally tucked up in bed Lucy and Willa head up to the office. Ever the activists the government Minister and magazine editor start to chart out a bold domestic violence awareness campaign and new funding stream for supports and services. Lucy leans over, squeezes Willa’s hand and says, “Let’s get in trouble. Good trouble. Necessary trouble. John Lewis kinda trouble”.

65

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This year marks the Centenary of the death on hunger strike of the Sinn Féin Ardmhéara of Cork Terence MacSwiney.

In October 1920 he died in Brixton Prison in London and his two comrades Joseph Murphy and Michael Fitzgerald died in Cork Prison.

Terence MacSwiney was arrested by British crown forces at Cork City Hall in August 1920 and immediately began a hunger strike to demand his release.

He wrote that:

“Not all the armies of all the Empires of earth can crush the spirit of one true man” 60 years later in the H-Blocks of Long Kesh Bobby Sands said: “They have nothing in their entire imperial arsenal to break the spirit of one single Republican Political Prisoner of War who refuses to be broken.”

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