1921 Truce Report Murdoch & Gallipoli Wiki-Leaks & Labour Nick Folley Pat Walsh Labour Comment

page 13 page 16 back page IRISH POLITICAL REVIEW August 2011 Vol.26, No.8 ISSN 0790-7672 and Northern Star incorporating Workers' Weekly Vol.25 No.8 ISSN 954-5891

Summer Manoeuvres EU Issues— PRESIDENCY fiscal union? The function of the Presidency in the state is to represent the past in the life of society. It is an institution without either legislative or executive powers. Creating the future is The Irish Times editorialised on the the business of the Dáil. But the future is a modification of the past—except when some Euro crisis on 16th June: catastrophic general upheaval brings about a kind of Year Zero in which the past has no "The tectonic plates of international relevance. And the Dáil at present seems to be adrift in the present with little sense of finance began to shift four years ago this the past, and therefore little sense of a viable future line of development. A Presidency summer. The world has since been living with repeated tremors, the consequences which made a point of representing the past would therefore play a particularly useful of the earthquake of Lehman Brothers' part as ballast that would keep the public mind on an even keel. collapse in 2008 and near-constant fear The big event in the life of the next Presidency will be the centenary of the 1916 of further, possibly even more damaging Insurrection. A Fine Gael Minister has expressed the hope that it will not be a militaristic upheaval. Poorly designed structures built commemoration. The state has in recent years been wallowing in the celebration of atop fault lines of finance have been British militarism. The British war of destruction on Germany and Turkey has been affected most severely. None is bigger or presented as Our War. But the war that was actually our war must not be celebrated more at risk than the euro." because it was a war against Britain. And yet it is only by entering the realms of fantasy This is the grandiose style of hyped-up that one can think that an independent Irish state would have come into being and been analogy that is usually an excuse for acknowledged by Britain if it had not been established by the use of force that Britain was thinking. And it goes on: unable to crush. Britain was not going to give up anything to mere votes. "As Europe's debt crisis deepens, with Presidential nominations are not closed as we go to print. Of the possible candidates, tremors running through the Italian and Iberian peninsulas, unscrambling the egg three stand out as being distinctive in some way: David Norris, Michael D. Higgins and of currency union is not an option. The Robert Ballagh. Two are Protestants, one is homosexual, and all three are strongly notes and coins in pockets, from Helsinki interested in the Arts. Norris is a colonial Protestant of the Ascendancy kind and Ballagh to Palermo, Bratislava to Tralee, can't be is what used to be called a Dissenter in Ascendancy times. While well-meaning, Higgins replaced overnight with legacy is inclined towards globalist ideology—for example he described as genocide the currencies." Myanmar/Burmese refusal to give the United States the free run of the country to deal A solution is then suggested, or rather with the consequences of the typhoon a couple of years ago. But he has one substantial just slipped in: national achievement to his name—the creation of TG Ceathair. That is a big plus in his "...completing the euro project by creat- favour. ing a fiscal union appears to be the only continued on page 2 continued on page 6

UN Membership at the UN in the Autumn by being recog- of their territory. However, it will permit nised as a "non-member state". This the State of Palestine to apply for member- For Palestine requires a simple majority in the UN ship of a variety of international bodies, General Assembly and cannot be blocked In September, Palestinians intend to including the International Criminal Court by the US. apply for UN membership for a Palestinian (ICC) with the possibility of serious State in the 1967 borders, that is, in Gaza As far back as 1974, the Palestine Liber- consequences for Israel. Remember, for and the West Bank, including East Jerusa- ation Organisation (PLO) acquired example, that under the Rome Statute of lem, the Palestinian territories that Israel observer rights at the UN. At present, the ICC, colonising occupied territory is a has occupied by force since 1967. Palestinians have a permanent mission at war crime. It is expected that the US will veto the the UN with observer rights, but as a PALESTINIAN STATE DECLARED IN 1988 membership application in the Security liberation movement, not as a state. Being In November 1988, the PLO declared Council and the application will fail. recognised as a "non-member state" will the establishment of a Palestinian state in However, Palestinians are confident that not materially alter these rights. the 1967 borders. With this declaration, they will succeed in enhancing their status Nor will it alter one whit Israel’s control continued on page 8 showed that Ó Cuív has solid support all around the country. C O N T E N T S That Irish Times poll showed David Page Norris to be the front runner, though not Summer Manoeuvres. Editorial 1 having achieved the required nominations despite the strong support of the Sir Anth- EU Issues. Jack Lane 1 ony O'Reilly press. The talk then was that UN Membership For Palestine. David Morrison 1 it would be a blow to democracy if Norris Readers' Letters: Worse To Come? Eamon Dyas; failed to win sufficient nominations to get Gerard Murphy, "Ethnic Cleansing" And A "Disappeared" Jew. onto the ballot paper. Manus O'Riordan 3,21 Norris, while being a Zionist, was an Stranger Than Fiction. Conor Lynch 5 advocate of Palestinian rights and critical Gilmore Supports Palestine State. Report 9 of 'settler' encroachments on the West Poems. Wilson John Haire. The Madness Of Imperium; Bank. He was the sort of candidate who The Day The Dream Died 9,28 could expect to get Second Preferences Sinn Fein Still 'Owns' West Belfast. Seán McGouran 10 from many quarters—more so than Gay Mitchell, an old-style Fine Gael politician Editorial Digest (Respecting Traditions; The Twelfth; Loyalists; Missing Flag; with no particular broad appeal. It was at Orange Order; Feud?' Royal Black Preceptory; Belfast Lord Mayor; Moyle; this point that Israel intervened, making The Coward Kenny; McGill Summer School; Low-Paid Hit) 11 public an indiscreet letter Norris had writ- The Truce Of 1921. Nick Folley (Report of Pádraig Óg Ó Ruairc talk) 13 ten to the Israeli Supreme Court. This Shorts from the Long Fellow (Labour Court & JLCs; Enda Kenny; Protecting The character reference was on behalf of his Bond Holders; The War On Drugs; Comparative Statistics) 15 former partner, an Israeli Jewish dissident Murdoch And Gallipoli. Pat Walsh 16 who had a relationship with an under-age Totalitarianism And Garret The Good. Desmond Fennell 19 Palestinian boy aged 15. (It might be said Es Ahora. Julianne Herlihy (Child Abuse, State And Church; Orwell And that an Arab who has had to cope with the Johann Hari) 24 State of Israel is certain to be much more Biteback: The War And The Emergency, Philip O'Connor; mature than a Western child of that age. Israel Unresolved, David Morrison; The age of consent in Israel is 16. 'Statut- John-Paul And The Brits, Seán McGouran 26 ory' in that context usually means consen- sual. Nevertheless, statutory rape did take Does It Stack Up? Michael Stack (Cloyne Report And The Catholic Church; place.) With this revelation, Norris's sup- USUK; Somalia) 27 port fell away, even though he had not made a secret of his views on these matters. Labour Comment, edited by Pat Maloney: WikiLeaks And Labour The elimination of Norris as a serious contender for the nomination has done a (back page) favour to Fine Gael. Israel has an obvious A communication has been received from Jeff Dudgeon. It will appear next month. interest in helping Fine Gael, especially as there is an active Zionist group in the Coalition —the first ever in an Irish Government. Ballagh seems to be the one who could, Gael nomination for the Presidency after without embarrassment, represent the past fighting off a strong challenge from Pat Public discussion of Norris's indiscret- of the state amidst the flux of the present. Cox—who was admitted to the party to ion has brought forward the suggestion Norris, to judge by things he has said pursue his declared aim of winning its that public representatives should be requ- ired to register their interventions in the over the years, sees the formation of the backing for his candidature. Bizarrely— affairs of other States. Surely it would be state as a great mistake. That is more in view of what he did to wreck the Commission as much, or more, to the point for the relevant to the election than his remarks —Cox is regarded as an expert on Europe. reverse to take place? The Wikileaks about the prevalence of pederasty amongst Getting the Fine Gael nomination is of revelations have confirmed that, not only the founders of democracy in ancient consequence, because the party hopes to senior Irish politicians and Ministers were Greece. It would certainty be useful if he win the Presidency for the first time ever. reporting to, and receiving advice from, got a nomination, provided that he stood the American Ambassador, but also top It is a measure of the demoralisation of civil servants (see Labour Comment, back as a candidate of the Reform Society Fianna Fail that it is not fielding a candi- publicly advocating a return to what rem- page). Archive research has revealed that date. The Party has chosen the winning the British Ambassador is also the long- ains of the Empire, openly supported by Presidential candidate ever since the Office the British Ambassador—who appears to term confidante and adviser of the Irish was established. Éamon Ó Cuív has been Establishment. If there is to be a register be operating quite openly in Irish politics mentioned as a contender even though he of official foreign contacts, it would be to now. has not put himself forward. It would the point to have such encounters in the Norris has been going around the coun- have been surprising if he had done so, public domain. try meeting the people for the first time given that he is the Party's best chance of ever. He has had to wait on culchies out re-connecting with its roots, should he Meanwhile, the system that DeV put there amidst the bogs. It would be interest- become leader. Though not standing, the in place—which required candidates for the Presidency to achieve solid support in ing to know if, on his first venture out of Irish Times treated him as a contender in a poll it conducted and found that he had society in order to obtain a nomination— the West British enclave in Dublin, he has least support amongst the long list of has proved its worth. The President is got to like the people, or whether they have candidates. Surely the explanation for elected directly by popular vote, by propor- made him feel an alien more than ever. that is that he was not standing, rather than tional representation, but candidates are a lack of popularity? The Fianna Fail nominated by members of the Oireachtas Gay Mitchell managed to get the Fine leadership election a few months ago and local Councils. 2 CENTENARY Regarding the centenary, it is of some LETTERS TO THE EDITOR · LETTERS TO THE EDITOR· LETTERS TO THE EDITOR· importance to know what 1916 was. It was an act of war, undertaken by a Govern- ment against a foreign enemy. That is, it Worse To Come? was an act of the Irish Republican Brother- Interesting interview with Terry Smith—a barrow-boy type financial buisinessman hood. The IRB was the Government of who is Chief Executive of Tullett Prebon, the broking firm—on BBC Radio 4 this the Republic. Of course it was the self- morning, 29th July. He discussed the recent Eurozone 'solution' and says that it only proclaimed Government of the self- "kicks the problem down the road". More interestingly he went on to discuss the situation proclaimed Republic. What else could it for the British economy and says that everyone in Britain is living in a fantasy land if they have been? Britain ruled Ireland by right think that they are safe from the levels of required austerity that has not really been felt of conquest and made it clear that it did not yet. Everyone is going to be significantly poorer in future and people have no idea what regard Ireland as having any democratic is in store for them. The public sector has to shrink dramatically and even under the right to secede from the conquest. It present Government the public debt has been growing month on month since it came into power. The public sector needs to be radically reduced far beyond current plans. A large policed Ireland intensively, nipping inde- percentage of the mortgage-paying public is only paying interest-only repayments pendent developments in the bud, making leaving them worse off and making no real inroads into the economy's private debt. On the Independence movement of necessity a private note, he said that he himself invests in equities in large companies which supply a conspiracy whose first piece of practical people's everyday needs (which I presume means utility companies and oil and gas), business was military. gold, and currencies in safe countries like Norway which has huge financial reserves and The Rising was an act of a Government, is well run. and its leaders held positions in that He's obviously been schooled in the monetarist college and seems to be coming Government—which is more than can be straight out of the Tea-party philosophy but it'll be interesting to see just how that said for the desultory rebellion in Libya particular philosophy begins to take on a British persona in the months to come. The which has just been recognised as the monetarist school has dominated economics in the USUK for so long that there can't be legitimate democratic Government by a working economist out there who knows anything else. As they struggle to seek answers, the most obvious one is the current Tea-party perspective which has the benefit France, the USA and Britain. And the of talking in language which monetarists understand, as opposed to the language of IRB fought a week-long battle in Dublin Keynes. while the new 'legitimate democratic' Another factor which invariably influences the perspective of these people is the army Government of Libya has yet to set foot in of Business School graduates dominating large companies. In Britain the number of new Tripoli. Business Schools and Colleges/Universities offering degrees in things like Business Open democratic development in Studies and Business Management has exploded since Thatcher and the foundation that Ireland was made possible as a direct their courses rest upon is the monetarist mantra. These people dominate business and the consequence of the 1916 Insurrection and economy in Britain and set the terms under which discussion takes place. As they cannot an indirect consequence of 'Our War' on deny that the financial crisis was caused by free-market activities, and as they cannot Germany and Turkey. Britain did not find comprehend categories of thought outside their received wisdom, they will be pushed to it easy to get back into the routine of the extreme limits of the monetarist philosophy to seek an explanation and solution. This is what seems to be happening in the US—an extreme monetarist position coupled with wholesale oppression in Ireland after a political populism that more or less squeezes out the pragmatic options that enabled the winning its Great War under the slogan of monetarists to operate in the real world up to now. "democracy and the rights of small Eamon Dyas nations" and with many of its Irish recruits coming back from the trenches and taking seriously the slogan that had recruited and preserve a base from which to fight The Republic declared in January 1919 another day. This divided the body politic. them. In 1918 an elected Government was based on a democratic election Collins began to form a new Army, sup- replaced the conspiratorial Government. mandate. The Free State was founded on plied by Britain. He tried to maintain a military action. But Britain was no more respectful of the modus vivendi with the Old IRA that had democracy than of the conspiracy, so there fought Britain for the Republic in 1919- An election had been held a month had to be another war. It is curious there- 21, and he used it for subversive military before the Free State was founded in war. fore that a Minister of the state which operations in Northern Ireland—which is It is sometimes suggested that this election would not exist without these military to say, for making war on Britain in the authorised the war that founded the Free events should object to a military dimen- North, because Northern Ireland was never State. But whatever it was that was elected sion to the commemoration. And that it anything but a segment of the British in June 1922 had not met when the war should be a Fine Gael Minister. state. But Britain's object was to break up was launched in July. If that Dáil had been the Republican movement that had defied allowed to meet before the event, it would it for three years. Collins found himself UNDEMOCRATIC MILITARISM not have authorised making war on the In 1921-2 Britain, having failed to increasingly beholden to Whitehall, and increasingly ordered about by it. In July republicans. The Government which whittle away the Republic by low-intensity 1922, while he was actively collaborating waged that war was not the Government police and military operations, threatened with the Old IRA in the North, he was that won the election: it could not have to launch a thorough war of conquest of suddenly ordered to make war on it on the been, as the Dáil did not meet to vote it the kind it had carried through against the flimsiest of excuses, or else Britain would into Office. It was the 'Government of Boer Republics twenty years earlier, unless begin the reconquest. That is what we call Southern Ireland', an institution operating the Republic was set aside and a Govern- the Civil War. under British authority, which started the ment under the Crown put in its place. war. A group led by Michael Collins agreed The Free State was established in this Elections in a system of representative to set up a new Government under British war. Its establishment was a militaristic government are not self-interpreting authority and to ward off the re-conquest event. events. 3 Britain had interfered directly in the possibility of the minority party governing in the 1930s, and then the Fascist order in election campaign. Collins and De Valera with the majority party locked out. That Europe was broken by the war of the agreed a programme to put to the electorate. prospect was warded off when the Speaker British Empire on Germany, which in its That did not suit the British purpose in admitted Fianna Fail Deputies without initial phase was very much a war on imposing the Treaty. So Collins was taking any Oath at all. That was in 1927, Germany rather than on Fascism. ordered summarily to Whitehall and the when the two parties were equal. After the Fascist era ended, Fine Gael's Election Pact was vetoed. He returned on The Free State Party survived a Vote of origins as a Fascist movement became an the eve of the election and ended the Confidence with the help of the Irish embarrassment to it. But, with the intelli- Pact—sort of—so that what was to be Times Editor, who kept John Jinks, an gentsia being predominantly Fine Gael, voted on was far from clear. And then, Independent who supported Fianna Fail, this was easily dealt with. It was written before the elected representatives could away from the Dáil for the critical vote. out of history—just as the Official Repub- meet, he was given the ultimatum to make Cumann na nGaedheal then governed for lican war in the North a generation later war on the Republicans—or else. the next four-and-a-half years with a was written out of history by the present stringent 'law-and-order' policy directed allies of Fine Gael. It was argued by the DEMOCRACY against the Communist Party and the IRA, Politics Professor at University College The Free State won the war with British which it declared were the reality behind Dublin that Fine Gael could not really arms. De Valera delivered his resounding Fianna Fail. have been Fascist because it did not address to the defeated Republicans—the Fianna Fail won the 1932 Election and succeed in establishing a Fascist regime, Legion of the Rearguard—and Republican formed a Government with Labour sup- and the real Fascism was the camouflaged resurgence began. The Free State Party, port. It called another Election in 1933 Fascism of Fianna Fail. That is how we calling itself Cumann na nGaedheal, and won it outright. Cumann na nGaedheal deal with our history. rapidly lost its bearings—possibly because then merged with a small Redmondite of the loss of Collins in an absurd escapade party, supported by soft Unionists, to form CHURCH AND STATE —but possibly not. Collins showed him- a Fascist party called Fine Gael, to fight Fianna Fail sustained the Parliamentary self increasingly bewildered by the turn of Communism and defend the Treaty. It system throughout the Fascist era and events. formed the Blueshirts as a fighting organis- Fine Gael had to submit to it after 1945. As the Republican (Anti-Treaty) senti- ation to deal with the subversive Parli- And in order to return to office Fine Gael ment of the country asserted itself ever amentary system, as the Brownshirts were had to do a deal with Clann na Poblachta. more strongly during the 1920s, the Free doing in Germany just then. Then in That is one of the merits of the Parliament- State stuck ever more stubbornly by the 1936, when General Franco struck against ary system—or one of its defects—it Treaty, for which it had been manipulated the Spanish Republic (in what was a war generates opportunist alliances which into fighting a war in which it had done rather than a coup), it formed the Irish subvert principles. some dreadful things. Its loss of popular Christian Front to rally active support for The Treaty Party did two notable things support at the outset made it dependent on him. on its return to Office in 1948: it blew the authoritative support of the Catholic While these things were going on, away the last tenuous connection with the Hierarchy, leading to the abnormal Britain launched the Economic War Treaty by formally withdrawing from the relationship of Church and State. against Irish trade when Fianna Fail British Commonwealth and Empire, which (Abnormal, that is, for a Catholic country stopped the transfer of the 1903 land Fianna Fail had made a dead letter but left —the separation of Church and State purchase repayments to Whitehall. The in place; and it proclaimed the subordin- having been one of the great innovations main export market for agricultural pro- ation of the State to the Catholic Church in of Roman Catholic Europe. In Protestant- duce collapsed, and Ireland had as yet a medical matters. ism Church and State were one.) weak industrial sector. But Fianna Fail The relationship of Church and State Then the survivals of Redmondism kept winning elections, and it resisted for two centuries—which will, presum- gravitated towards the Treatyite Govern- pressure from the influential Christian ably, continue to exist—was determined ment and it was in no position to drive Front to recognise Franco's rebellion as 200 years ago in the great Veto Contro- them away. And of course the Unionists the legitimate Spanish Government— versy amongst Catholics. Henry Grattan, joined in, since the Treaty State was recognising it only when it became the de in the Westminster Parliament, proposed intended to be a British state. facto Government in 1939. Cumann na nGaedheal governed in a Catholic Emancipation Bill—a Bill to strictly Treatyite spirit from 1922 to 1932. The conflict over the Treaty arrange- admit Catholics to the Legislature. It In 1924 it suppressed the Republicans ment, which dominated politics in the included the proviso that the Government within its own ranks who regarded the 1920s, became a conflict between should exercise a right of veto on the Treatyite State as a "stepping-stone" to Parliamentary democracy and Fascism in selection of Bishops—a list of nominees independence. In 1925 it half-recognised the 1930s. The intelligentsia of the society should be submitted to it and it might Northern Ireland as whatever it was, tacitly was Fine Gael with a Redmondite tinge. strike out any it thought might exert undue acknowledging that the Boundary Com- The Protestant/Unionist social residue was political influence. The Irish Hierarchy mission, which had played a part in gaining not a factor in electoral politics, but it was had agreed this with Grattan, and the support for the Treaty, had been a swindle. by far the wealthiest social segment, and it Vatican saw it as just a normal arrangement ensured that the Irish Times continued to between Church and State. Indeed there The utter military defeat of the Anti- be published, despite its minuscule reader- were states where the Government chose Treatyites in 1923 marked the beginning ship, as a potential political influence who was to be Bishop. But a great cam- of an Anti-Treaty resurgence, which got biding its time. It was not militantly paign against the Veto erupted in the stronger at every election. The Govern- Fascist as Fine Gael was, but it was Dublin middle class, set off by Walter ment then used the Treaty Oath to keep supportive of Fascism. Cox's influential Irish Magazine. It raged Anti-Treatyites out of the Dáil, raising the Fianna Fail curbed Fascism in Ireland for many years with the older clergy and 4 the Jacobite laity supporting the Veto, and William Cosgrave before him. the new progressives of the middle class Cosgrave founded the post-Republic (led by O'Connell after initial hesitation) State with British arms and priests as opposing vehemently. The Anti-Vetoists Commissars. Stranger Than Fiction won. Twenty years after the dispute began The London Times comments: Peel brought in an unconditional Emancip- "The Church has dominated Irish life FOREIGN AMBASSADORS ation Bill. Catholics entered Parliament since independence in 1922. In a republic The Papal Nuncio (Vatican Ambas- and the Church remained free of entangle- where 92.6% of the population identified sador) to Ireland is Guiseppe Leanza. The ments with the Government. itself as Catholic at Partition, the Church Chairman of the Fine Gael Parliamentary The Government also attempted to could make or break governments. In a Party, Charlie Flanagan, has called for introduce State payment of the priests. poor, rural and pious country it ran most Leanza's immediate expulsion from the schools, hospitals, orphanages and other country following the report into child That too was defeated. social services. No politician dared to There were places where the Church, abuse in the Diocese of Cloyne. Flanagan challenge its authority. The Church accuses the Nuncio of colluding with Irish Protestant or Catholic, was an instrument inspired fear more than love…" (July citizens to break Irish law by organising of State authority. Ireland was not one of 26). cover-ups of abuse scandals, which would them. The oppressive Church, from which Which Government did the Church be enough to make him an unfit person to the Irish Times is now celebrating our be an Ambassador—indeed had he not make or break? It certainly helped to liberation, never had a shred of State had diplomatic immunity it would be authority attached to it. We had no Catholic make the Treatyite regime of the 1920s. enough to have him thrown in jail. Ecclesiastical Court, though we once had But then the party of the excommunicated But Leanza did much more than that. a Protestant one. took over, gave refuge to the unorthodox, He organised and promoted the breaking and Miriam Lord cannot find a juicy Fianna of the law. He, and not one of the local That oppressive Church had no State Fail quotation to go along with Fine Gael Catholic clergy, was the prime mover in support. Its only support was the people it and Labour. the whole affair. It is an indictment of the Taoiseach Enda Kenny and the Foreign oppressed. And that oppression consists In the early 1920s Cosgrave, making Minister Eamon Gilmore that it was neither almost entirely of false memory imagined of them who proposed the major (or indeed after the event. It is not what was experien- war on the Republican substance of the Independence movement, gave an array any other) step against Leanza. They left ced. It is what some people began to feel it to Charlie Flanagan. Doubtless our of public institutions over to the Church to in retrospect that they should have experi- 'leaders' will now watch the polls and look enced. But if any substantial number of run, and that could not easily be undone at the tea leaves before doing anything. people had experienced the status of the ten years later. But expel the Ambassador? Unlikely. Church as oppressive and rejected it that Judge Patwell, in Munster, was reported Ireland has developed the habit of cower- would have been an end of it, because its in the Corkman a couple of months ago as ing before foreign diplomats over the last status depended entirely on them. The throwing out a case brought against a forty years. It began with the then British only power of the Church was the power priest thirty years after the alleged event. Ambassador, Sir Andrew Gilchrist (1967- 70). He began a more or less open cam- of the public opinion that supported it. The plaintiff pleaded that the case could not have been brought earlier, because of paign to undermine the Irish State. First "Enda Kenny, with steely eloquence, through his strengthening of British control has ended decades of government obeis- the terrible power of the Church. Without going into the question of whether the of the Irish Times and then his blatant ance to Rome", says Irish Times columnist intimidation of the Lynch Government, Church ever had such power, Patwell did Miriam Lord. And she asks: with close assistance from his Fine Gael not let the case go to trial because the lackey, Liam Cosgrave—resulting, among "Was this really a Taoiseach saying Church certainly did not have much power this on the floor of Dáil Eireann? In a other things in the arrest of his opponents country where taoiseach John A Costello at all for the last ten or fifteen years. It was in the Irish Government, Neil Blaney and once declared: 'I, as a Catholic, obey my protested against this that the awesome Charles Haughey, and the subsequent church authorities and will continue to power of the Church left a disabling notorious Arms Trials. Since his intimid- do so in spite of The Irish Times or psychological condition in the individual ation was entirely successful, and Lynch anything else…' When Noel Browne, which long outlasted its actual influence, bowed to his every whim, there was hardly having resigned from Costello's cabinet… and that the individual was only released likely to be any comeback against him! after the rejection of his Mother and from its spell when the Church was in Child Scheme publicly said 'I, as a Catho- The Origin Of Irish Catholic-Nationalism, lic, accept unequivocally and unreserved- public disgrace and contempt was being Selections From Walter Cox's Irish ly the views of the hierarchy on this heaped on it from all sides. Magazine: 1807-1815. Introduced and matter'. And the late Brendan Corish… Edited by Brendan Clifford. 136pp. Illus. once famously said 'I am, of course, a There are obligations on citizenship. Index. 1992. €12, £9. Catholic first, an Irishman second'…" The Veto Controversy by Brendan Clifford. Citizenship cannot exist if those obliga- An account of the fierce dispute among Irish (30.7.11). tions are not met. Individuals in a demo- Catholics, between 1808 and 1829, as to cracy cannot be compelled to act the part whether the appointment of Irish Bishops by Could she find no statement from a of citizens. If they failed to do so in parts the Pope should be subject to a degree of Government influence, as was generally the Fianna Fail leader saying that kind of of the country, the adaptation of the law to case elsewhere. Includes Thomas Moore's thing? the failure by making itself patriarchal, Letter To The Roman Catholics Of Dublin The power that Enda Kenny has con- pastoral institution is certainly not the (1810) and extracts from polemical writers demned is not that of the microscopic on either side: J.B. Clinch, Dr. Dromgoole, way to encourage people to live up to the Bp. Milner, Denys Scully, Rev. Charles foreign state in Rome which intervened obligations of citizenship. That belongs O’Conor etc. 203pp. 1985. €20, £15. unwarrantably in our affairs. It is the to a different kind of civilisation. And it Fianna Fáil, The Irish Press And The Decline inheritance of the founders and leaders of seems to us that it is this failure that is at Of The Free State, by Brendan Clifford. Index. 172pp. 2007. €12, £9. his own party: John A. Costello, and the heart of the abuse scandals. 5 On December 1st 1972 the British Army actions—they would not have regarded their than by the head of the Church in Ireland, bombed Dublin. Jack Lynch was still activities as sins—but the confession box that quivering wreck of indecision and denial, Taoiseach and did nothing. Indeed such can also be somewhere some people may Cardinal Brady. was the cover-up, that this particular bomb- choose as a safe place to talk about things. So far the scandals have been confined to ing is barely remembered—especially with There is much confusion among non– the South. Now Deputy First Minister, and the horror that was to come. Supervising Catholics as to what confession is. The practising Catholic, Martin Mc Guinness, is Britain's activities in Dublin at the time Justice Minister can be forgiven for not leading demands for the Church to be exam- was Ambassador John Peck. He wasn't understanding the matter—he is Jewish. ined in the North as well—and in spite of even disturbed. Another bomb was set off Protestants don't understand it, nor do many opposition from some Church leaders. Mc in Dublin on 20th January 1973—again nominal Catholics. There is a belief that Guinness will get his way, as usual. In the on Peck's watch. Lynch did nothing. when someone does something bad— South many Catholics have simply wandered commits a sin—he goes to confession, tells off into nothingness or smart aleckry. On 17th May 1974 came the 'big one'. the priest, gets absolution and is told to say This is not the case in the North where the A mixed bag of regular British Army and some prayers. That is the end of the matter. Church is very relevant indeed. This could Ulster Defence Regiment, flying under A line is drawn. This is not the case. mean more rigorous investigations and well the UVF flag of convenience, set off bombs God grants absolution and the priest is a as a spirited defence of what is good in the in Dublin and Monaghan killing 34 people. conduit. In the confession box the priest has Church. Perhaps by the time of the This was to pre-empt a Fine Gael rebellion to make judgements. Is the penitent making Eucharistic Congress in a year's time, Ulster organised by Garrett Fitzgerald against a clean breast of things? Above all, is he could be leading a movement against the proposed further draconian legislation. It determined never to repeat his actions or lethargy, the permissiveness and the smug- succeeded. Involved this time, especially indeed, more often, his thoughts, for thoughts ness that have pervaded the Church in many in getting the bombers safely back North are an awful lot more common than actions? parts of the world since Vatican 2. were British agents in the Gardai in If the priest is not satisfied he will not grant Conor Lynch Monaghan and Dublin—including the then absolution. But the matter does not end head of the Special Branch, Supt. Garvey. there. The penitent, in the nature of things a Though the bombing was convenient convinced Catholic, otherwise he wouldn't EU Issues for the Taoiseach, Liam Cosgrave, he may be there, must now live up to his promises. or may not have been in on the initial The priest is out of it. continued conspiracy. He was certainly involved in Absolution remains conditional. If the real alternative to preventing it joining the cover up. penitent does not continue with his determ- failed monetary unions in the dustbin of The response from the Irish (West ination to improve, there is no absolution. history." This is probably a greater 'cure' than all the British) ruling elite was terrible. At first Fiscal union is one of those solutions Cosgrave refused to have the tricolour therapy groups put together. It is different to the Lutheran position where there has to be that are now appearing on EUophile wish flown at half-mast in Dublin and Mona- a determination to live a good life according lists. Political union, a United States of ghan, but eventually relented. Speeches to Lutheran principles. Some at least of the Europe, a Federal Europe: these are other effectively excusing the bombings were Lutheran Churches have communion and favourites. And of course if it was a matter made by Cosgrave; Justice Minister Paddy confession. Communion differs from the of wishing solutions all our problems Cooney; Attorney General Declan Costel- Catholic sacrament in being in both kinds, would be solved, immediately. The Irish lo; Conor Cruise O'Brien; Labour Party bread and wine. The Lutheran doctrine on Times editorial makes no effort to spell Minister Jim Tully; and Opposition Leader salvation is "justification by faith alone". out anything about how such a momentous Jack Lynch. The only politician of note to All true believers are saved. It couldn't be proposal might be put into practice. roundly condemn the bombings and send more different to the Calvinist position where his condolences was Unionist Leader your saving is pre–determined, for guess It would mean a Minister of Finance for Brian Faulkner in the North. All this took who!, and you can do more or less as you Europe. What EU institution would he/ place on the watch of Ambassador Sir like—hence the good conscience in running she be appointed by? The Commission, Arthur Galsworthy (1973-6). slaves, massacring peoples, etc. Good works the Council, the Parliament? Such a thing don't enter into it for Lutherans or Calvinists More recently we had the incident of is not allowed for by any of these institu- people carrying out criminal acts, includ- Confession is not the prevention of child abuse, as we have seen. Confession itself tions. Even the omniscient Lisbon Treaty ing murder, on behalf of the Israeli Govern- in its foresight does not cater for one, and ment, using stolen Irish (and other) pass- has been abused—sometimes to avoid giving scandal—more often to protect the senior where would non-Euro members stand, ports. Nothing was done against the Israeli e.g., the UK. So it is not possible within Ambassador, Zion Evrony. The only con- figures and the institutions of the Church. Confession is not a perfect solution, but it is the existing framework. But then the tact between the Irish and the Israelis on present framework is getting more redund- the matter took place in Brussels—not in one of the best about. Prevention is surely better than punishment. Meanwhile, there is ant by the day. Dublin or Tel Aviv. At least the British nothing to stop the arrest of people who The only alternative would be an inter- and the Australians expelled some diplo- abuse both children and the sacrament of governmental Minister for Finance. Inter- mats. So Leanza is probably safe enough— confession. We will not hold our breath governmental rules OK nowadays! And unless the Vatican pulls him out waiting for the first Bishop to be hauled on such a basis, as it is all to do with through the gates of Mountjoy. sovereign Governments taking decisions, THE CHURCH CRISIS it is inevitably a matter of deciding which One of the knee jerk reactions to the The Catholic Church is, to say the least, Cloyne Report is Justice Minister Alan in disarray. It needn't be so. But Bishops country he/she will come from. There are Shatter's proposal that priests have to report Clifford of Cashel and Martin of Dublin an increasing number of countries that any suspicion of child abuse obtained in the seem to be the only ones keeping their need not bother applying for the job. There confessional. That would really mean the heads. Defending the Church in no way is surely only one with the right CV and end of confession as a sacrament—even if means defending the awful rogues within it. the necessary clout to ensure proper setting the rule applied only to child abuse, which of But it does mean coming clean about these and collection of taxes—Germany. course it wouldn't. One of the greatest rogues, however many there are, while doing scandals in the recent war in the North was the best possible for an institution that serves This is the most sensitive area of all for the discovery that the British had been putting so many people. The tendency, however, is any Government—the setting and collect- bugs in in confession boxes in West Belfast. to throw out the baby with the bathwater. ion of taxes for its electorate. People con- Not that IRA men would be confessing their This tendency is nowhere better represented sent to be taxed at present because they 6 have faith in their State and consider that The Government is not obliged to hold a knew, and remember, a world before the it is deserving of their taxes. The collecting referendum on changes to the Lisbon EU and the Euro. It's a great pity that the and paying of taxes is basic evidence of a Treaty paving the way for a new bailout latter do not have such memories as it considered political commitment and of mechanism in 2013, two legal experts would help get matters into perspective the confidence that exists in the institutions have said. about how the current state of the EU has of the State. People will not want to pay "Former attorney general Paul Galla- come about. taxes for something that does not exist, gher…, and senior UCD law lecturer never mind not having confidence and Gavin Barrett, told a joint meeting of the One of these dyed-in-the wool sceptics commitment to it. Bar Council and the European Union- is Andrew Alexander of the Daily Mail People will not pay for a pig in a poke. funded Institute of International and Euro- and he recently commented: "One should But that is what is being suggested that pean Affairs that the amendment to the not laugh over financial crises. All the Lisbon Treaty does not require a national they do. Doing it for 'Europe' will not same, the confusion about Greece and the vote. The complex changes, due to be euro will cause some chuckles, even from suffice because that has become a piece of passed in the Dail next year, aim to remove rhetoric in the absence of a definable an existing clause banning bailouts" (Irish the most solemn of bankers" (6 July, 2011). political structure that has created mass Independent 30 June, 2011). He goes on to suggest a way forward: and enthusiastic commitment for its politi- "Some EU governments fear the break- cal aims and objectives. The sentiment Arguing legalistically, the experts up of the euro would threaten the union must be created before anything else insisted it was all perfectly OK to the itself. And then where would we be, ask works. But Europeans are being asked to satisfaction of the meeting they were the faint hearts. The word is EFTA. Say addressing. There seemed to be no concern it slowly: it is a pleasant word. It takes us accept that the object of the political project back to the time when Britain established is the proper collecting of taxes. That is whatever about the political absurdity of what they were saying and where it left the this free trade zone including Switzerland, putting the cart before the horse, but the Portugal and a few European peripherals EUophiles can conceive of no other EU and 'Europe' as a meaningful entity. for the purpose of removing tariffs and political purpose for their project, apart The EU is bypassed from playing any part restrictions. Its aims were not political from the rhetoric and that cuts no ice when in securing the Euro, the most important like the EU. The European Free Trade it comes to the nitty gritty of paying your issue in the EU. The Euro, therefore, is not Association still exists. It was cut back in size when we decided to apply for taxes. dependent, or indeed related to the EU in any way! Not many people know that! membership of the Common Market, as Yes, everything was rosy in this it was then called. Why not a movement to explain the benefits of EFTA, as they Find The Lady! 'Europe', and Paul Gallagher almost went were once on offer?" The EU is becoming a paradise for into ecstasy about how Europe since 1945 lawyers and a graveyard for commonsense. had become nothing less than the "high- This is just poking fun at the EU and of The Lisbon Treaty has to be revisited point of world civilisation, since Homo course we would not expect a full history because 'bailouts' break the Treaty and a Sapiens appeared on earth over 200,000 of EFTA from him. But I doubt if any of permanent financial rescue mechanism is years ago". It was hard to credit a grown our EUophiles could or would give any needed. The current 'bail-out' can be held man, indeed an erudite man, lapsing into history of it either, or see any point in to be legal in terms of EU law by claiming such a rhapsody to try to keep his spirits up doing so. Apart from anything else they it's coping with a natural catastrophe and and those of his listeners. He did protest would be betraying their age if they showed is exceptional. But that will not do in the too much. they knew too much about it. That's a pity because there is a very a salutary lesson long-term, as the problems it is dealing A clear conclusion is that Anthony for the European project in the history of with are going to be permanent. As Ger- Coughlan should not bother his head about EFTA. many is the major paymaster, and its Courts this development. The Crotty Judgement Far from being "not political" it was the will most likely not allow the country to requiring constitutional change to be put very opposite. It was set up to counter and fund the permanent bailout—being illegal to referendum and all that is beside the prevent the EEC from developing. It —there is a problem. point. We have moved on, away from the gathered all possible non-members and So change the Treaty, make it legal and EU, and these speakers seemed to see no future members into a free trade arrange- close that avenue. But such a drastic change problem at all with this. It's legally OK ment to counter the protectionist EEC and is surely a change that necessitates a and what else matters? Anthony Coughlan sought to stop it in its tracks. However referendum in Ireland and maybe else- has won his point. The EU is being by- Ireland did not join, though encouraged to where. No, comes the reply, as the change passed by its Member States when the do so. It then knew all the pros and cons of is not going to involve the EU—it will be chips are down. The Union has faded. free trade which it certainly does not know the individual Governments making inter- Now it's a collection of States or a Union now. Then, it had not lost its critical Governmental agreements among them- or whatever you're having yourself. Anth- faculties—though it had no objection selves. On this argument, with the EU ony can rest easy. The EU is discrediting whatever to joining European organisa- machinery not being called into play, there itself faster and better than he could ever tions. It had had a belly full of free trade is no need for Treaty amendment. On this have dreamed of. view, the EU does not exist as far as this historically and knew what this new body bailout is concerned. was up to. Those were the days! It's like the three card trick—'find the Back to the future? lady'—now you see her now you don't. British Eurosceptics are enjoying the The protectionist EEC thrived and the Two legal eagles explained this recently: current problems of the Euro, as is to be free trade EFTA declined. Then Britain expected. They are very sorry for the state "Legal experts say Lisbon can change decided it had backed a loser and joined without a referendum. of Greece (smirk, smirk) but they can say the EEC. But it did not abandon EFTA in Former attorney general Paul Gallagher 'we told you so'. Some of them have longer spirit. Rather, it set about making the EEC and senior UCD law lecturer Gavin Barrett. memories than the EUophiles, as they an EFTA and it has succeeded! That's 7 called political determination and sticking First, the state submits an application (1946-2002). Today, there is only one to your instincts. Harold Macmillan used to the Secretary-General in a letter formally "non-member state"—The Holy See. an analogy to encourage British member- accepting a member's obligations under Currently, Palestinians have a perman- ship of the EEC to the effect that Britain the UN Charter. ent mission with observer rights at the would be to Europe what Greece was to Second, the Security Council considers UN, but as a liberation movement. Becom- ancient Rome—the brain to direct the the application. Any recommendation for ing a "non--member state" recognised by brawn. For Macmillan it was no doubt admission must receive the affirmative the UN means that Palestinians will con- what we would call a bit of plamás to votes of 9 of the 15 members of the Council, tinue to have observer status but now as a make the British feel good about entry. He provided that none of its five veto-wielding state, with a territory—Gaza and the West could hardly have imagined how success- permanent members—China, France, Bank, including East Jerusalem— ful they would have been. The EU now Russia, UK and the US—have voted recognised by the UN. defers to Britain on all crucial matters but against the application. the favour is not returned—and why should Third, if the Council recommends "OCCUPIED" OR "DISPUTED" TERRITORY it? admission, the recommendation is present- In resolution after resolution, the UN Remembering EFTA shows how the ed to the General Assembly for consider- Security Council and General Assembly EU today has betrayed its heritage and ation. Two-thirds of the members present have declared the West Bank, including now, in fundamentals, has become almost and voting must vote for admission for the East Jerusalem, to be "occupied" territory, indistinguishable from what was specific- application to succeed. within the meaning of the Fourth Geneva ally set up to destroy it. Convention. So has the International Jack Lane THE EXPECTED SCENARIO Court of Justice when in July 2004 it ruled The following scenario is expected to Israel’s construction of a wall in the West unfold at the UN in the Autumn:- Bank to be "contrary to international law". UN Membership (1) Palestinians will formally apply for UN This is important since Article 49(6) of membership for a state in the 1967 borders. the Convention bans the colonisation of For Palestine (2) The application will be considered by the occupied territory, saying that the occupy- continued Security Council, which will probably ing power "shall not deport or transfer Palestinians accepted the objective of a establish a committee to do so. This process parts of its own civilian population into state on just 22% of Mandate Palestine, may take weeks. the territory it occupies". with Israel continuing to exist in the other (3) Meanwhile, Palestinians will propose a However, Israel has never accepted 78%. Since then, the way has been open resolution in the General Assembly asking that the West Bank is "occupied" territory, for a "two-state solution". But, it has not members to support the recognition of a from which it might be expected to with- been achieved because Israel has refused Palestinian state in the 1967 borders. The draw completely some day. Instead, it to withdraw from the territory meant for purpose of this is to demonstrate the claims that it is "disputed" territory to strength of international feeling on the the Palestinian state. which it has as much right as Palestinians. issue and put pressure on Security Council In response to this declaration in 1988, Hence, the Fourth Geneva Convention members to vote for UN membership for doesn't apply and therefore colonisation is close to a hundred states in the world Palestine. recognised a Palestinian state and granted OK. Hence also, its refusal to accept the (4) If 9 or more members of the Security it full diplomatic relations. This number 1967 border—the Green Line—as the Council vote to recommend to the General baseline for negotiations with Palestinians has increased to around 120 in recent Assembly that Palestine be granted UN months as a consequence of a worldwide about a final border between Israel and an membership, then the US will have to cast eventual Palestinian state. campaign for recognition. its veto in order to block it. It is not UN recognition of a Palestinian state, Other states, including Ireland, while expected that France or the UK will veto it. not going as far as recognition, established China and Russia are expected to vote for albeit a "non-member state", in the 1967 some form of diplomatic relations with it. it. borders would be a powerful statement from the world that Gaza and all of the In January 2011, Ireland upgraded Pales- (5) Assuming the Security Council doesn't West Bank, including East Jerusalem, is tinian representation in Dublin to that of a recommend UN membership for Pales- Mission. tine, Palestinians intend to apply to be a the territory of a Palestinian state and not Palestinians are now seeking the ulti- "non--member state" recognised by the "disputed" territory, as Israel would have mate form of international recognition for UN. This requires a simple majority in the it. It follows that the transfer of any part their state, that is, UN membership. General Assembly, which will be easily of that territory to Israel can only come Writing in the New York Times on 17th achieved. about if Palestinians consent. The Green May 2011, PLO Chairman, Mahmoud Line has to be the baseline in any Abbas, made the following appeal: RIGHTS OF A "NON-MEMBER STATE"? negotiations with Israel about territory. "We call on all friendly, peace-loving In the words of the UN website, "non- Of course, Israel will continue to occupy nations to join us in realizing our national member states" have "a standing invitation the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, aspirations by recognizing the State of to participate as observer in the sessions but now it will be the territory of a UN Palestine on the 1967 border and by sup- and the work of the General Assembly" recognised state, if Palestinian plans are porting its admission to the United and "to maintain a permanent observer realised. Nations." mission at [UN] Headquarters". MEMBERSHIP OF INTERNATIONAL BODIES HOW TO APPLY FOR UN MEMBERSHIP A considerable number of states that UN membership is granted by the Gene- have since become full members of the Being a "non-member state" will allow ral Assembly upon the recommendation UN were first "non-member states". These Palestine to apply for membership of a of the Security Council. The procedure is include West Germany (1952-1973), wide variety of international bodies, inc- as follows:- South Korea (1949-1991) and Switzerland luding the International Court of Justice 8 (ICJ) and the International Criminal Court hand, it says that a UN vote would be ment activity (including natural growth of (ICC). If Palestine becomes a party to the meaningless, while on the other hand it settlements)". ICC, then it would have jurisdiction over has mounted an extensive diplomatic cam- paign to persuade States not to support the US ISOLATED AGAIN? the occupied territories and Israeli actions A meeting of the Quartet (US, EU, in these territories would be subject for initiative. With most States, it has accepted that abstention is the best that can be Russia and the UN) on 12th July 2011, the first time to international legal scrutiny. hoped for. which was supposed to agree a framework The ICC will have jurisdiction over the It is difficult for Israel to argue that the for renewed negotiations, produced no- occupied territories, albeit for offences UN should have no part to play in the thing. According to Ha'aretz, the frame- committed after Palestine becomes a party creation of a Palestinian state, since the work proposed by the US was one where to it. Remember, for example, that Article UN General Assembly was crucial to the territorial discussions would begin from 8.2(b)(viii) of the Rome Statute of the ICC creation of the Israeli state. The Declar- the 1967 borders and include mutually defines ation of the Establishment of the State of agreed territorial exchanges, and that Israel "the transfer, directly or indirectly, by Israel says as much: would get recognition as the "national home of the Jewish people". There was no the Occupying Power of parts of its own "On the 29th November, 1947, the civilian population into the territory it United Nations General Assembly passed mention of freezing settlement building. occupies" a resolution [181] calling for the estab- It is difficult to believe that the US adminis- as a war crime. Israelis active in the lishment of a Jewish State in Eretz-Israel; tration thought that this would be accept- the General Assembly required the able to Palestinians. In any event, the EU settlement building programme could in and Russia refused to put their names to it future be found guilty of war crimes. inhabitants of Eretz-Israel to take such steps as were necessary on their part for and no statement was forthcoming from (In January 2009, after Israel’s military the implementation of that resolution. the Quartet. assault on Gaza, when over 1,400 Palestin- This recognition by the United Nations This is indicative of a developing rift ians were killed, the Palestinian Authority of the right of the Jewish people to estab- between the US and the EU over Israel/ attempted to get the ICC to accept lish their State is irrevocable." Palestine. Back in February, the US was jurisdiction over the occupied territories. It can be guaranteed that an element of on its own in opposing a resolution in the It made a formal declaration to the ICC, the Palestinian case at the UN this Autumn Security Council calling upon Israel to under Article 12(3) of the Rome Statute, will be that Resolution 181 also provided cease all settlement activities in the Pales- stating that "the Government of Palestine for the establishment of an Arab state in tinian territory. All EU states voted for the hereby recognizes the jurisdiction of the 44% of mandate Palestine and that all resolution. Palestinians are asking for now is the It's unlikely that the US will be isolated Court for the purposes of identifying, to the same extent in the Autumn on UN prosecuting and judging the authors and recognition of a state on 22%. It is difficult for Israel (and the US) to combat that membership for Palestine. Will there be a accomplices of acts committed in the common EU position on this? Probably, territory of Palestine". The ICC has yet to argument. It may be a coincidence that the Israeli not. However, apart from Germany, very determine whether or not it is permissible Deputy Foreign Minister, Danny Ayalon, few EU states have publicly opposed the under the Rome Statute to accept jurisdic- has just released a YouTube video that Palestinian UN initiative. Most have tion. The decision hinges on whether dismisses the 1947 partition settlement as reserved their position and the likelihood Palestine is a state, within the meaning of having "no current legal standing" and is that a majority of EU states, including Article 12(3).) relies entirely on the Balfour Declaration, Ireland, will support it. and its incorporation into the British David Morrison ISRAEL'S RESPONSE mandate by the League of Nations, as the 24 July 2011 Israel's response to the Palestinian initi- source of Israel's legitimacy in Palestine. THE MADNESS OF IMPERIUM ative has been contradictory. On the one AMBASSADOR ZAKH SPEAKS Depleted uranium-tipped shells, In a letter to the Irish Times on 14th missiles, bunker-busting bombs, Gilmore Supports Palestine State July 2011, Ruth Zakh, the Israeli Deputy punches through armour like butter, fells The Minister for Foreign Affairs, Eamonn Ambassador, accused Palestinians of air defences with aplomb, Gilmore, made the following statement in the "violating its agreements with Israel and fit for purpose, Dail: the entire framework for Mideast peace at the moment. "The continuing Israeli military occup- by seeking premature recognition of a (excluding habeas corpus) ation of the Palestinian territories is at the Palestinian state in the UN". She claimed The moment served, the price of procurement, heart of the unresolved Arab-Israeli conflict. that such a step would breach the interim The issues which have been critical for uranium dust to breathe, Israel for most of its history—the existence agreement from 1995, aka the Oslo II indestructible, old as the earth itself, of the state of Israel and its right to live in Agreement, Article XXXI (7) of which it lives 4.4 billion years, peace and security—have for many years states: the lungs, through the bloodstream it weaves, been accepted in principle by most Arab "Neither side shall initiate or take any to sink into the water table. and Palestinian opinion. It is the continuing step that will change the status of the Universal outrage meets the veto, occupation, and the creation and growth of West Bank and the Gaza Strip pending UK, US, France, against Babel. illegal settlements on the occupied lands, the outcome of the permanent status The beloved weapon of NATO. negotiations." which are now the major obstacles to peace. Too many Iraqi new-born deformed, "I consider it an urgent priority objective, This is a bit rich coming from a rep- both for Ireland and the EU, to help achieve after the winds blew to delirium the end of the occupation and the establish- resentative of a state that has, in the interim, and the earth glowed as a firefly swarm. ment of a sovereign Palestinian state, living nearly doubled the number of Jewish They strive to create a Herculaneum. in peace alongside Israel. This has been the settlers on the West Bank, including East Now Libya plays host consistent view of Irish Governments since Jerusalem, added considerably to the to the screech of heavy metal 1980. It is long overdue, and it remains my settlement infrastructure and built a mass- that turns humanity into ghosts, view that there should be a state of Palestine, ive wall, 700 km long. This settlement animals, insects, the delicate flower petal. and very soon." construction is, of course, in violation of Wilson John Haire http://debates.oireachtas.ie/dail/2011/07/13/00011.asp the Road Map, which Israel signed up to 13th April, 2011 in 2003 and agreed to "freeze all settle- 9 Socialist alternative". His flyer was Election Retrospect "Printed and published" by Election agent, John McAnulty of Socialist Democracy Sinn Fein Still 'Owns' West Belfast (the former Peoples' Democracy). There was a by-election for the West to the Assembly and to Local Government The Greens got their MLA re-elected, Belfast (Westminster) seat on Thursday, (most parties, thriftily used the same mater- and three Councillors. Their flyers urged 9th June 2011. It was due to the fact that ial for both), the SDLP in west Belfast economic development, better education Gerry Adams was standing for a seat in used the "Strong Leadership" slogan. It is and a reduction in class sizes, protecting 'another jurisdiction'. Much was made of possible that Alex Attwood sees himself the NHS, and other good things. It wasn't his having to apply for various 'offices of as a credible leader of the Party. There much different from the handouts of the profit under the Crown'. Apparently these may not be much to lead relatively shortly. obviously 'left' parties, quite why they were brought out of some dusty closet just His brother Tim stood for Belfast City can't sink their differences is difficult to to embarrass Adams. (You wonder what Council but didn't succeed. The SDLP understand. Sinn Féin has made it implicit- the denizens of Downing Street and played up attacks on some canvassers. It ly clear that Irish unification needs the Westminster think happened at RUC was hooliganism or more 'extreme' Repub- consent of a credible majority in Northern 'Interrogation Centres' if they think this licans, not the Shinners. Ireland. And they are the only party that sort of Gilbertian nonsense is going to Éirigí stood in West Belfast and did not is likely to bring about a united Ireland. discommode Sinn Féin.) do very well. It was a respectable vote but The 1917 Russian Revolution can Paul Maskey stood for the Westminster they are not going to unseat Sinn Féin for hardly be the object of any but historical seat. He already sits in Stormont—nobody a while (SF cultivates the seat: it does not controversy these days. The multitude of accused him of 'double jobbing as he is take it for granted, publishing two journals Republican, and Socialist groupscules are extremely unlikely to go to Westminster. for the area. The SDLP claims Andersons- allowing the legacy of Ireland's 1916 to be Except, possibly, as the Tyrone-Australian town News is 'a Sinn Féin paper', but it relentlessly rubbished and are doing comedian Jimeoin put it, "to take a shite gives everybody who can produce a nothing about it. They can't really plead and use the photocopier". There was a quotation their chance. Alex Attwood poverty or ignorance. They have head- tiny hope expressed that Sinn Féin might quoted Andersonstown News in his by- quarters, regular publications, and sub- slip in the election, given Adams's personal election flyer. stantial international ramifications, from standing. The turnout was very low The 'Left' did not do well in the May which they can access money and plant to (37.5%) but SF's share was still 70.6%. elections. The Workers' Party (the "of publish material. The Workers' Party had Gerry Adams's share was 71.1% in 2010. Ireland" somewhat downplayed in the two regular publications, the CPI (Com- Alex Attwood, SDLP, came a bad second, North) put up four candidates. They all munist Party of Ireland) still does. Where and the others weren't really in it. Never- got very small votes. The numbers aren't is their defence of Ireland's political theless, Gerry Carroll of the SWP (alias, diminishing—but they aren't growing legacy? People Before Profit) who got a healthy either. The PUP (Progressive Unionist 1,751 votes. Worked on that could get Party) got one (Belfast) Councillor, the Traditional Unionist Voice also got him into the City Council. veteran Hughie Smyth. Brian Ervine three Councillors. Jim Allister, the leader, Mr. Carroll probably shaves. The (David's brother), a schoolteacher and became an MLA for North Antrim (the Alliance candidate, Aaron McIntyre, rather good writer, stood for the Assembly, seats are multi-member based on the judging from his election material, prob- in East Belfast, as did Dawn Purvis (now Westminster constituencies). TUV did not ably doesn't yet. He is a second year an Independent), who has had a Bliarite do as well in the local / Assembly Elections archaeology student. His flyer reads 'make over'. She left the PUP, and, like as it clearly hoped. It is anti-SF. Sinn Féin "Alliance has continued to grow, increas- Brian Ervine, failed to get a Stormont wants to abolish the "11+". TUV supports ing significantly our representation at seat. She supported Naomi Long in it, and grammar schools, but does not give council, Assembly and Executive level…" Belfast, East in the UK General Election. any real reason why. It describes Northern But Alliance is not really a force in the (Something worth remembering next time Ireland's education system as 'Ruaned'. land. It amounts to the couth Unionist Alliance waxes indignant about Loyalist TUV is worried about the Irish language Party. The flyer boasts of Naomi Long's skullduggery. Mr Ford, the Party leader and road signs. "Christian Have Rights taking of the East Belfast seat, but that was was "appalled" at recent UVF mis- Too" the party is worried about funding something of a fluke. Attwood's publicity behaviour in Ballyclare.) "lesbian, gay and bisexual campaigns", showed a (rather expensive) chair, with they "undermine free expression of core slogan, "West Belfast needs a strong The Socialist Party ('Militant' as was) Christian values", they don't explain how. leader… …not an empty seat". It didn't put up four Assembly candidates, they TUV wants to "Raze the Maze" (they are convince too many people. had endorsements on their flyers. Mostly good at catchy slogans). They want "ugly Neither the Democratic nor the Ulster, from the Republic's SP, and a local worker. prison buildings" destroyed and not made Unionists seem to have spent too much One was from "Cllr Dave Nellist, ex- into a "Shrine". They oppose 'wasting' money on the election. Just as well, they Labour MP Coventry". They should have money on, for example, the GAA. (In his got humiliated, coming behind Gerry thought twice about that. Not because 2010 UK General Election material Carroll. Aaron McIntyre was at the bottom Dave Nellist is not a decent public rep- Allister boasted of accessing money for of the poll, though he turned up in the resentative, but because it underlines the 'the Orange sector'). constituency and remarked (to Andersons- fact that, within the UK, the SP / Militant This is all nostalgic nonsense, pining town News) how polite people were. hasn't done very well since being purged for the days when 'Stormont' was 'Stor- from the Labour Party. Brian Phelan mont' and the Taigs stayed in their ghastly In the rather confusing elections in May stood in West Belfast, as "An Independent hovels (© Terence O'Neill). 10 One candidate was so exasperated that Republican tradition. He hates it. He is she left for a real political party. UKIP determined to destroy it. (the UK Independence Party) now has a The Orange tradition is another matter. Councillor in Northern Ireland. Editorial Digest The Orange Order was formed in the 1790s as a militia serving the aristocratic Irish Other comedy candidates included the Respecting traditions. Almost every Parliament in Dublin. Its purpose was to BNP (British National Party). Its flyer Monday in the Irish News, columnist Roy terrorise reformist opposition to that Parlia- had the face of a female Aryan we'an Garland urges readers to "respect each ment. Effectively Presbyterian opposition dissolved into the Union Jack. It solicits others' traditions" without ever spelling —Catholics, at least in the North, hardly appeared on the radar at that point. A good our vote "Because we'll stop immigra- out what these traditions are. The Republican tradition is the struggle day's work was considered to be rounding tion" (the term 'bog-wog' has never crossed to set up an independent state, 32-County up some Dissenting clergymen and hanging any English fascists' lips—honest) and it or even 26-County—depending on circum- them. insists "No mosques!". However, the stances. In the 26 Counties this was largely Initially the Orangemen opposed the building of mosques in the Wee Black achieved following the Fianna Fail election Act of Union as they regarded the English, North is not a pressing problem. (A pity victory in 1932 and took the form of being and Pitt in particular, to be altogether too really, most custom-built mosques in GB able to implement an independent foreign liberal for their taste. Then they decided to are genuinely elegant and enhance their policy. This began with Ireland insisting be pro-Unionist as the best way of keeping surroundings.) The BNP wants to take the on League of Nations sanctions against down the rising power of the "papists". UK out of 'Europe'. This is a nostalgic recalcitrant members such as Italy and its They have since seen it as their main aim in "fog in the Channel; Europe cut off" trope. attack on Abyssinia. A genuine neutrality life to make the "croppies lie down". That's the Orange tradition. Respect that?! Not many voted for the BNP, probably on in the Spanish Civil War (unlike the fake neutrality of Britain) and its refusal to the grounds that we have enough eejits of The Twelfth. This year a few more recent recognise the Franco rebellion despite a lot 'traditions' came back into play—most our own. of internal pressure. Having secured the notably the tradition of throwing things at Treaty Ports back from Britain in 1938, the police in Ardoyne and Broadway in Raymond McCord (whose son was Ireland was able to make good its neutral Belfast. murdered by the UVF) stood as a genuine position in World War Two. After the War Police behaviour was remarkable. The Independent on a ticket not dissimilar to it supported Indian independence— Orange parade past Ardoyne in the morning something the Indians are still grateful for. the Left groups and the Greens. He passed, as it usually does, without incident. On entering the UN, it tried, when such campaigns against drug-pushing (a Trouble normally occurs with the return seemed possible, to make that institution Loyalist paramilitary monopoly), and for parade, a totally provocative affair, in the work, and sent several battalions to the more help to prevent youth suicide. He evening. But this year there was no trouble Congo. Then the US assassinated Congo- did not get elected. and the Orangemen went on their merry lese President Lumumba and almost way. That is the point at which the police certainly had UN Secretary, Dag Hammar- The Ulster, and the Democratic, should have climbed into the landrovers skjold, killed. It wasn't quite the end of the Unionists had bit of a 'sham fight'. The and gone home. They didn't. They hung UN but certainly the beginning of the end. UUP pretended that it could do something around and hassled people and rioting broke Later Irish soldiers protected the people of different from the DUP. It knows quite out. Even then it was all over by 2 am. South Lebanon from Israeli Aggression Each year there is a confrontation on well that, if it got a majority and tried to do (at a high cost in dead and wounded)— Broadway, probably organised by Repub- to SF what it did to the SDLP, SF would something which helped make this writer lican Sinn Fein. It is almost like two sides regard such a matter as a relatively minor very welcome in that part of the world at turning up for a football match. What impediment. It is whispered that Martin the time of the (failed) Israeli aggression in would happen, as is perfectly possible, if McGuinness likes the clubby Stormont 2006. the potential rioters turned off the Falls Incidentally, the Irish have always been atmosphere, and might pine for it. But Road and there were no policemen on to the forefront in supporting Palestinian Sinn Féin is a democratic party and Martin Broadway? Oh dear! A few pints and an rights in the region. Later Charles Haughey, would have to do what he was told. early night. But, of course, the police were as President of the EU, defied Britain, and there right enough. The UUP Leader, Tom Elliott, added to facilitated German unification—a fact the nation's gaiety by denouncing Sinn acknowledged by Chancellor Helmut Kohl. The Loyalist activities were what caught Féiners at the count as "scum" for waving That, at least in part, is one tradition. the eye most this year. The UVF and the This Irish tradition is not respected by UDA organised as series of attacks on the "flag of a foreign county", which they Garland. Garland is part of a group, the Catholics. (Imagine the holy fuss there hadn't been doing—at that point. The Orange-led Reform Movement, whose sole would be if there was even a hint that the DUP said that sort of language wasn't purpose is to destroy any shred of Irish IRA was organising trouble—as opposed appropriate any more. (It's been independence and bring the Southern State to trying to dampen it down!) Hundreds of subcontracted-out to TUV.) The DUP's back under the control of the British. They Loyalists attacked the Short Strand in East handout (an A4 fold-over) has the big make no secret of this. Part of Garland's Belfast for no reason anyone has been able headline, "Only One Unionist Party Can "moderate" stance on the Orange Order to explain. There was certainly no provo- Win", but few were under the impression and what's left of the Unionist Party is to cation from this vulnerable Catholic en- that the UUP would make an impact. The stop them disgracing themselves in the clave. It may be said that the people of the DUP picked a nit (SF's education policies), eyes of the world, the better to gain Short Strand put up a strong defence. but pointed out the party was doing the influence in the South. Loyalist groups also organised attacks This was very much the theme of a on police in Ballyclare, Carrickfergus, best it can in a situation where Unionists speech by the new head of the Orange Rathcoole, Coleraine, Derry, Portadown, no longer have the whip hand. It worked, Order, Edward Stevenson, to Southern and many other places. Ballyclare, a pre- they got a very large endorsement from Orangemen in Donegal recently. Steven- dominantly Protestant town, was the most the electorate. son is now part of the Garland party, or peculiar. Loyalists, as is their wont, put up Seán McGouran conspiracy! Garland doesn't respect the some flags, two quite near a Catholic 11 church—though the priest didn't seem both- the Royal Black Institution. Enlightenment are Anglo or Irish. Since becoming Ambas- ered. The police took them all down. The there came none. Until, that is, I made the sador in September 2009 King has hardly Loyalists put up more. And so it went on acquaintance of a former RUC man—now stopped attending and speaking at events until the rioting started. Then the police something of an amateur historian. Two around the country. He even turned up at apologised for pulling down the flags in features of the Black, he pointed out, were counts in the recent General Election. He the first place much to the annoyance of the that they did not drink alcohol and, more seems even more determined to involve editorial writer on the Irish News, and of importantly, they were all Freemasons. himself in the internal politics than his Justice Minister, Alliance leader David He was aware of the intimate connection predecessor, David Reddaway. Reddaway Ford, who thought pulling down flags was between the Freemasons and the United publicly associated himself with the Orange a great idea). What were the police thinking Irishmen. Reform Movement which wants Ireland at about? In the course of discussion we decided least back in the Commonwealth. Before A loyalist mob attacked members of the that the Black was set up in opposition to coming to Ireland his specialities were largely Catholic Crumlin Star soccer club the terrorists of the Orange Order. On their "defence" and security—particularly regard- as they returned from a day out at the races own website the Black say they were form- ing the EU and its various Member States. in Dundalk—a day out to avoid the Ardoyne ed in 1797, two years after the Orange The keynote address, the John Hume troubles. They were not wearing any foot- Order. They then claim that they have Lecture, was given by Enda Kenny. He ball regalia to identify themselves—but "scant" records until the 1850s, which is addressed the Viceroy, Richard Bruton, were identified anyway. The mob were very convenient—though it does seem that the head of AIB, economist Colm Mc armed with knives, bottles and golf clubs. they were Dissenting Protestants, the same Carthy, James Reilly, Brigid Laffan, and Several supporters received serious wounds. as the United Irish. The 1850s also saw the other undesirables; as well as a few decent One had three broken bones and another Great Revival in the North when the Protest- people from the unions, Sinn Fein and was stabbed. And people wonder why ant lines began to merge by way of splinter- others. His main theme was that he himself there is trouble in Ardoyne each year! ing rather than actual merger. was a rather wonderful person with Missing flag. A couple of days before the Niall O'Donnghaile, Sinn Féin's Short fearsome negotiating skills. There is no twelfth a man hid himself overnight in Strand Councillor, has been elected Belfast's evidence that anything the Kenny did or Belfast City Hall, stole the Butcher's Apron youngest ever Lord Mayor at the age of 25, said anything that eased Ireland's debt. that normally flies over the building and after the Unionist stitch-up on voting was The situation in Greece and the possible, broke the flag pole so that it couldn't be overturned—see last month's Digest. His or probable, problems for other countries, replaced. (Another flag was later erected Deputy is the DUP's Ruth Patterson. She ref- were what made the Euro countries act in on a side pole.) UUP Alderman, Jim used to even look at him at the time and has a united fashion. As well as that the US, Rodgers, declared himself "disgusted". failed to have anything to do with him ever and probably Britain, are putting pressure "It's deplorable and sickening", he said. since. Some 'traditions' just go on and on. on the Euro. No, it's not. Jim. It's very funny, and you Moyle District Council has decided to twin Kenny also played up his intemperate need to take some sense of humour itself with Gaza. Moyle is centred on the outburst against the Vatican. No mention medicine! Now the Unionists are going town of Ballycastle in North-East Antrim either of the Irish State's responsibilities or mad because there is a rumour that the and includes Bushmills, Glenariffe, those of its predecessor governor of Alliance Party may support a Sinn Fein/ Cushendun, Cushendall, Ballintoy, Armoy Ireland—Britain. Kenny is the longest SDLP motion to either add the Tricolour to and Waterfoot. The make up of the Council serving member of Leinster House. There the mix or have no national flag there at all. is: Independent 4; Sinn Fein 3; UUP 3; were plenty of chances to have a go at the The Orange Order is still refusing to have SDLP 2; DUP 2; TUV 1. Catholic Church down the years. But that talks about anything with anyone—especially The Coward Kenny. Taoiseach, Enda would not have been opportune! the Parades Commission or Sinn Fein. Kenny, refused to attend the Connacht This is an odd use of a Summer School Martin McGuinness has said that if they Senior Football Final between Mayo and named after McGill. Patrick McGill, a won't talk to him as Sinn Fein, will they Roscommon on 17th July. It is not some- native of Glenties, who worked as a they talk to him as Deputy First Minister thing that Kenny, a former Mayo player, labourer building railways in Glasgow—a alongside the First Minister, Peter Robin- ever misses if he can at all help it. Kenny common destination for emigrants from son? No Way. And anyway Peter Robinson skipped this one as there was to be a protest not Donegal. He wrote about the experiences has never been an Orangeman. Still, the only over the closure of facilities at Roscom- of Irish labourers in Scotland. Especially Orangemen managed to get the Drumcree mon hospital, but also over Kenny's blatant his collection of poems Gleanings From A march over with this year without any lying about the matter. Even Eamon Gil- Navvy's Scrapbook, and the novels trouble. more, standing in for Kenny in Leinster House Children Of The Dead End, and The Rat made a crack about the Connacht final. Pit. One wonders what this Socialist Loyalist Feud? More rioting took place in During the general election campaign, would have made of many of those partici- Portadown on 17th July. Again this involv- Kenny stated that the hospital was safe if pating in the Summer School, now in its ed exclusively Loyalists. A pattern is now Fine Gael got into power. He went further 30th year. Hopefully we can give a more beginning to emerge and it seems to involve and urged people to organise themselves detailed account of the Summer School in a turf war between the UVF and the UDA. to defend the hospital. Later he claimed the next issue of the Irish Political Review. So far they have not directly attacked each that he had done none of this. But tapes of The Southern Government is playing other. But each side is determined to show his words were produced and he has waffled games with its Enterprise Minister, Richard its supporters and other Loyalists that it is about the matter ever since. For those Bruton's, plans to pay for the debts run up 'the main man'. In the Sunday papers that interested, Mayo beat Roscommon by 13 in banking and building by hitting the paragon of peace, Johnny Adair, launched points to 11. lowest paid. One minute his leader, Enda a fierce attack on the UVF and in particular Kenny, supports him, the next he says it's its public execution of Red Hand Com- The McGill Annual Summer School was all just a proposal by Bruton (who tried to mando, Bobby Moffat, on the Shankill opened in Glenties, Co. Donegal, on 24th have Kenny dismissed as Fine Gael leader Road last May—an event which caused July, by the Viceroy—sorry, British last year). In the end Bruton will probably the resignation of the UVF's political leader, Ambassador, Julian King. In his remarks get his way (he is supported by the real Dawn Purvis –its only MLA at the time.. he made fuss about the recent visit to financial rulers, in Europe). Opposition Royal Black Preceptory. A matter which Ireland by the Queen of England, and how from the Labour Party coalition partner is puzzled this writer for many years was the good that was for Anglo–Irish relations. probably all froth. difference between the Orange Order and Presumably that depends on whether you Conor Lynch 12 Report on talk given by Pádraig Óg Ó Ruairc at the River Lee Hotel, Cork year could only be achieved by doubling on the 90th anniversary of the July 1921 Truce the number of troops to around 180,000 in the opinion of British military strategists. Apart from the strain this would put on The Truce of 1921 Britain's resources, British public opinion was very much against this kind of Friday the 8th of July was the 90th class whose deaths would have created intervention here. The previously hawkish anniversary of the Truce of 1921 which more waves back in the UK than mere British military were beginning to realize preceded the final round of talks that led to rank and file soldiers. To add to these they would need to conduct some form of the signing of the Anglo-Irish Treaty later events, the Liverpool IRA carried out negotiation with 'the Shinners'. that year. While most people know that large-scale arson on factories, warehouses the Truce came into effect on Monday and docks bringing the war to the UK It was in this maelstrom of political and 11th July at noon, it had actually been mainland and convincing an alarmed Brit- military activity that the Truce was finally agreed several days before. The time lag ish opinion that the war might spread to set for 11th July 1921. With the country in was to ensure that the various combatants the UK and they could no longer afford to such a state of turmoil, it was not surprising all over the country received the news in ignore it. that news of the Truce, actually agreed on time before hostilities actually ceased. Further talks occurred in December Friday 8th July, did not reach some com- It was a major milestone in our history, which again came to nothing as Lloyd batant parties for hours or even days. particularly the War of Independence. George kept shifting position and in Pádraig gave examples of units of Black With so much interest in this period still essence wanted to wind the war down & Tans in Galway not learning of the evident, one may wonder why the only quietly with no official notice, which was Truce until that Sunday, while Tom Barry event held to mark this anniversary was a unacceptable to the Irish delegation. For found out about it by reading the newspaper talk given by Pádraig Óg Ó'Ruairc, author much the same reason, talks in January on Saturday 9th. The enactment of the of Blood On The Banner and other titles, 1921 also failed. The British had made a Truce was set for the 11th July precisely on behalf of the Irish Volunteers Com- number of demands—such as that the because it was feared that news would not memorative Organisation. IRA hand over their weapons, there be no reach all parties in time, perhaps resulting Pádraig opened the talk by noting that amnesty for major leaders like Dan Breen, in numerous unwitting breaches of its a number of commentators in recent years Tom Barry and Michael Collins, Ireland terms. Adding confusion were two con- have claimed that the IRA, aware of the would not be allowed to have an Army or flicting orders—one issued by Richard impending Truce, did everything it could Navy and, while Ireland would have finan- Mulcahy requesting the IRA to wind down to 'increase the body count' as it were, in cial independence, it was expected to use operations as the Truce approached while the final days of the Tan War, quoting it to contribute to Britain's debts from another issued by the 1st Eastern Division Kevin Myers, Peter Hart and Gerrard World War One. Obviously the Irish deleg- asked the IRA to step up its attacks. It may Murphy among others by way of example. ation found these conditions unacceptable. be this latter order that has given some Such seems to imply an IRA as more of a historians and commentators the view that bloodthirsty gang than a politically or So various Truce talks had been under- the IRA attempted to 'increase the body ideologically driven Army of the new way for almost a year before the July count' in the final days before the Truce Irish state created out of the result of the Truce was eventually agreed on. The situ- came into effect. 1918 General Election and subsequent 1st ation for the IRA across the country was Firstly this order would have to be Dail. Pádraig argued that the facts do not very varied in the period leading up to the taken in context with that by Mulcahy bear this view out. Truce. A number of hoped-for imports of ordering a winding down of operations. IRA arms failed, for example, the 400- Secondly, Pádraig demonstrated that the To begin with, Truce negotiations in plus Thompson submachine guns that were facts on the ground do not bear out the some form or another had been conducted impounded in New York and the break up 'bloodthirsty IRA' view. He began by since as far back as September 1920. The of the Glasgow Branch of the IRA, which noting the number of RIC men killed by sum effect of these early Truce talks only had been smuggling weapons to Ireland, the IRA over the Truce weekend (5) was served to convince the British Military by the British authorities. The Dublin IRA actually less than that killed the previous Command that the 'Shinners' and IRA had suffered a serious setback in May weekend (7) and suggested thus that in the must be on their last legs, in short as a sign 1921 when it lost over 80 men and a large normal course of events these RIC men of weakness or desperation. The British number of arms on an ill-advised attack would have been ambushed and killed believed they would have the rebellion on the Customs House. For the remainder anyway—in other words, their deaths did crushed in a matter of months or less. of the period up to the Truce, it struggled not buck the overall pattern for the time However, events were to prove they had to mount ambushes or carry out its other and the impending Truce did not contribute made the mistake of underestimating their activities and numerous operations were to them. enemy. cancelled. In Cork and Mayo the IRA Pádraig noted that many IRA operations Firstly, in a single day Michael Collins' were relatively strong and well-armed by over the course of the weekend were either squad assassinated the crème-de-la-crème comparison. Equally for the British, the aborted or cancelled. The Dublin IRA had of the British spies in what was to be Irish war was a minor one compared to the planned several attacks and ambushes known as Bloody Sunday, while at Kil- other wars in which it was simultaneously despite their depleted condition, the one at michael Tom Barry's Flying Column involved around the globe—fighting for Crumlin was to involve both mines and demonstrated to the British that the IRA White Russia against the Bolsheviks, some of the few Thompson submachine had real military capability (prior to that fighting the Turks in Asia Minor and so guns that had found their way to Ireland. the Tan War had been viewed as a series on. Its military was already stretched and These were cancelled by order of Eamon of assassinations). Furthermore, the Auxi- a decisive military victory in Ireland, which deValera, perhaps mindful of the fact the liaries killed at Kilmichael were officer was already costing some £20 million a Truce was imminent. The Barna Ambush, 13 had it gone ahead, would have been one of David Cummins (Protestant), Eric the Truce—hardly the actions of an IRA the largest operations of the war, where Steadman (no known religion), Maj. G.B. bent on killing as many people as possible. Cork and Limerick IRA brigades joined O'Connor (Protestant and ex-British sold- forces to ambush a large British patrol. It ier), John Poynton (Catholic) and John Following the talk Pádraig took some was to have involved the use of some 18 Begley (Catholic). Some were found shot questions from members of the audience. mines (Crossbarry had only used three) with the label "Spies and Informers— One concerned the burning of 'the Big and 120 men. In the event a small patrol Beware" attached to their bodies, a practice Houses', with one speaker suggesting that, just prior to the Truce was allowed to pass I was surprised to learn, that had not in at least three cases he knew of (though unhindered. When the large patrol did originated with the IRA but with the British no specifics were forthcoming), the occup- arrive, the IRA did not attack it as the Army as far back at least as World War ants had no known connection with the Truce had just come into effect. IRA One. British regime: "they weren't involved in attacks on RIC Barracks across the coun- Looking into the details of their cases, anything", as he put it. Pádraig obviously try mostly consisted of sniping (rather we learned that Steadman had already could not answer this question fully than bombing or burning, which would been captured and tried as a spy but escaped without at least knowing which houses have been required to force the occupants and returned to the area from where he were in question, but suggested that, as to evacuate), or attacks on empty barracks. was captured. Likewise, John Poynton well as burning the houses of collaborators, This seems to indicate an IRA 'letting off had been warned to leave the area by the some houses may have been burned steam' rather than any serious attempt to IRA, as he was known to socialize with because the IRA felt they were about to be kill as many people as possible, as the the RIC (which was understood to imply turned into RIC / Black & Tan outposts attacks would have been carried out passing tidbits of information to them) which would then be used to command differently had that been the case. and had been seen regularly leaving his the surrounding area. I know from reading British forces were not inactive over house under curfew to join RIC patrols Tom Barry's Guerilla Days that this was the weekend and killed a number of people; (which both suggested he had special precisely Barry's stated motivation for for example in Cork, Denis Spriggs shot protection in order to flout the curfew and going back to burn Burgatia House. Origin- by the Staffordshire Regiment at Kilgobnet was perhaps acting as a 'spotter' for the ally the owner had been accused by the and John Foley shot in Coachford. The RIC). He threw caution to the wind, IRA of being an informer but, after an Buffs Regiment booby-trapped a trenched ignored the exile order and was shot in aborted attack by the British on the IRA road and when IRA commander Frank consequence. John Begley, a Catholic, forces within the house, Barry returned Fahey had his men retrench it, the mine was a known associate of William Shiels later that night to burn the house otherwise exploded, killing several of them. But the (also Catholic) and was presumed to be it would have been fortified against them, bulk of the deaths over the Truce weekend supporting him in his activities. Shiels having been attacked once. occurred as a result of loyalist rioting in had infiltrated the Mallow and Kanturk Belfast, which started after the IRA there IRA with disastrous consequences for Another speaker who gave neither his shot RIC constable Conlon. A total of 19 both. Begley was tracked up Patrick St by own name nor that of his grandfather, had people were killed in the riots, a number of Sean O'Connell and members of Cork's it "on authority" from the same anonymous the deaths sectarian. G-Coy IRA before being abducted shortly grandfather that Frank Busteed did not So—apart from the Belfast rioting— before the Truce came into effect. He was shoot Mrs. Lindsey and that someone else the death toll for the Truce weekend was shot the day after, breaching its terms. had, though he declined to say who. Pád- not out of place with what had been Pádraig noted that Hart suggested that the raig, not knowing the identity of any of the occurring up to the time. Had there been a final example, Maj. G.B. O'Connor was participants in this anecdote, was of course real attempt by the IRA to 'up the ante' shot simply because he fitted the descrip- in no position to comment on the veracity before the Truce came into effect, we tion of 'an Outsider'—a criteria Hart or otherwise of these claims, though I would expect to see many more deaths ascribes to IRA motives for shooting have no doubt they came as a surprise to than actually occurred. people. In Hart's order of things, being 'an the descendant of Frank Busteed who was Outsider' means something like simply in the audience, a few seats away from the The other main issue commentators being different to what the IRA regarded speaker in question! such as Myers, Murphy & Hart rely on to as 'normal', though Hart does not define One interesting point was raised from paint a picture of an increased ferocity in what the IRA regarded as 'normal', simply this discussion however, which was why the IRA over the Truce weekend is the we come to it by a process of elimination— the Dripsey IRA had not shot Fr. Shinnick, shooting of spies and informers. It has it was not whatever the IRA's victims who was probably as culpable as Mrs. also been suggested these spies were all, were! Pádraig noted that Hart fails to give Lindsey in betraying the ambush to the or nearly all Protestant, suggesting the any evidence for this 'Outsider' status other British authorities. Pádraig replied that, as IRA was sectarian. Pádraig noted that than his opinion, and the fact that O'Connor far as he was aware, the IRA had a general Maria Vilianius refers to "11 spies" shot was a Justice of the Peace. Hart also fails policy of trying not to shoot clergy of both over the Truce weekend, whereas in fact to explain why, out of 26 JPs in Cork, only denominations (RC or COI) or women, the Collins' Papers, from which this figure two were shot while several others were though Mrs.Lindsey was an obvious comes, show that this was the number of captured and released. In his memoirs, exception. The two clergymen, who may spies shot for the two weeks of July up to IRA member Connie Neenan suggested have fallen foul of them were Rev. Lord the Truce, with five of these eleven shot the operation to kill Maj. G.B. O'Connor (Bandon) and Dean Findley. Rev. Lord over the weekend of the Truce. While it was planned well in advance and therefore was not killed and Rev. Findley was struck does seem a larger number, once again was not mere opportunism based on an with a blunt object—his death may have Pádraig examined the evidence and impending Truce. been accidental. Both were Protestant. accounts as given by Murphy and Hart My own opinion here is that many of the and found not all was as they present it. He Overall, as many spies were released IRA were also devout Catholics—again, looked at five cases— unharmed as killed over the weekend of To page 15, column 1 14 ced the Communist Party activist John As the debt crisis deepened it became Swift described it as a revolutionary social clear that the policy of punitive interest change. Wages for the low paid had been rates for Ireland and Greece was counter- taken out of the realm of the market. productive. At a European Council meet- Shorts The basis for the High Court decision ing last March the EU conceded a reduction from appears to be that legislation has not in the interest rate for Greece of 1 per cent, adequately defined the powers of the but how could German and France concede the Long Fellow Labour Court and JLCs. This defect can a reduction in the interest rate for Ireland be remedied by legislation. But early without losing face? A form of words had LABOUR COURT AND JLCS indications suggest that the Labour Party to be devised to get German and France The decision of the High Court to is not prepared to defend this social struc- off the hook which Enda had placed them declare the Employment Regulation ture. Pat Rabbitte has said that the Labour on. Accordingly, Ireland was asked to Orders issued by the Labour Court and Party will not support any reforms that "constructively engage with tax harmon- Joint Labour Committees (JLC) un- reduce the wages of low-paid workers. isation" in the EU (see Daniel McConnell Constitutional has grave implications for But the structure itself is the only means article in the Sunday Independent, the future of industrial relations in this by which the long-term interests of the 10.7.11). In short, the Irish Government country. This legal decision should be low-paid can be protected. The dismantle- was being asked to make an intangible seen in the political context of Minister ment of this structure would be the final concession ("constructively engage") in Bruton trying to 'reform' the JLC structure. nail in the coffin of Social Partnership. order to obtain a tangible benefit (a At the last General Election Fianna Fáil It will be interesting to see if Fianna reduction in the interest rate). Unbeliev- was prepared to throw the IMF a con- Fáil defends our industrial relations infra- ably, Enda still thought he was fighting cession in the name of Labour market structure. The JLCs are the proud legacy the General Election and refused the offer. flexibility. It reduced the minimum wage of a de Valera Government of the 1940s So, while it is now welcome that we which affected about 50,000 employees and implemented by Sean Lemass as have obtained a 2 percentage point reduct- many of them transient or part timers such Minister for Industry and Commerce. If ion at the price of "constructively engag- as students. Fine Gael, on the other hand, Fianna Fáil cannot vigorously defend this ing" with tax harmonisation, the question was prepared to defend the minimum heritage, it might as well follow the advice arises as to why we didn't obtain a 1 wage. It now appears that this was a piece of Irish Independent columnist David percentage point reduction for the previous of cynical opportunism. Fine Gael's Quinn and become Ireland's Tory Party. 5 months. defence of the minimum wage was a cover to tamper with the substance of the ENDA KENNY PROTECTING THE BOND HOLDERS country's industrial relations structure, the There is no doubt that the recent agree- The European Central Bank as an Joint Labour Committees, which affect ment to reduce interest rates by about 2 institution probably deserves to be critic- 240,000 employees. percentage points and extend the terms of ised. It is unique in the world in not being The minimum wage legislation was the loan on the 22.5 billion EFSF com- accountable to a Government. However, introduced by Mary Harney about 10 years ponent of the IMF/EU bailout is welcome. its policy of protecting senior bond holders ago. The rate is ultimately in the gift of the However, it is difficult to know where is not necessarily flawed. In order for the Minister. What can be given can be taken Kenny obtains the figure of an 800 million economic system to function individuals away. There is no social structure under- per annum Euro saving. It appears that he and institutions must believe that their pinning the rate. The Labour Court and is assuming that the deal will also apply to money is safe in the bank. Senior Bond JLC system, on the other hand, is a structure the 22.5 billion EFSM component (which holders have the same legal status as that has been developed over more than includes the UK loan). Needless to see the deposit holders and therefore deposit half a century. At the time it was introdu- anti Fianna Fail bias of the media prevented holders cannot be insulated from a bond it from being critical of Kenny's claims. holder default. The deal has been at the price of Ireland In the United States bond holders and Truce Report committing to "constructively engage" deposit holders (with amounts over the concluded with tax harmonisation. insured level) are not protected against the we find Tom Barry referring to this in The Long Fellow is beginning to wonder collapse of a bank. However, the United at the negotiating skills of Enda Kenny. States does not have a savings culture. It is relation to the crisis Bishop Coughlan's He seems to be more interested in appear- in a position to borrow from the rest of the Excommunication Edict of 1920 threw ing to be tough than advancing the interests world (whether this is sustainable in the his own Flying Column. For such men, of the country. At the last General Election long run is a separate issue). The EU on killing a clergyman would have probably campaign he had a very public meeting the other hand has not the international been an insurmountable taboo, tantamount with Angela Merkel in order to establish financial clout of the US. Therefore capital to an attack on Christ Himself. Others, his credentials as a statesman. At the meet- must be raised by domestic savings. Burn- such as Frank Busteed, were of no strong ing he raised the issue of the 12.5% ing senior bondholders runs the risk of religious persuasion, or avowed atheists. Corporation Tax in order to confirm the undermining the capacity of European However, shooting clergy—especially incoming Government's opposition to banks to raise finance. This is not in the Catholic clergy may also have been change. Well done Enda! interests of the European economy. avoided due to the very adverse publicity But the problem with raising the issue it would create. Support for the IRA might is that the people you are raising it with THE WAR ON DRUGS have fallen dramatically had they shot a have to respond. The Germans, who have The recently released United Nations seen financial sector jobs transferred to 2010 report on drugs has been used by number of priests in 1920s Ireland. The the Irish Financial Services Centre in some commentators (e.g. James Downey, shooting of Canon Magner by the Black Dublin, are hardly going to express their Irish Independent, 13.6.11) to support the and Tans in Cork did nothing to improve wholehearted support for Kenny's in- policy of legalisation of drugs. The argu- their already low-standing in the transigent line. Germany and France were ment appears to be that, since the war on community. forced for domestic reasons to take a drugs has failed, Governments should raise Nick Folley position on this issue since the matter was the white flag and accept that there is noth- July 2011 raised. ing that can prevent recreational drug abuse. 15 However, the UN report does not trend in Irish consumption, particularly clusions from the survey. The Anglo Saxon support the thesis of rampant and escalat- cocaine, is upwards, while the UK shows countries have a relatively high rate of ing drug abuse. The picture is unclear. a stable pattern. drug consumption. Countries such as the Consumption of heroin has declined in The figures for Cannabis are: US Netherlands, which have a liberal approach Europe, although cocaine consumption (13.7%), Ireland (6.3%), Northern Ireland to drugs such as cannabis (but not other has increased. In the United States there (7.2%), England & Wales (6.6%), Scotland drugs), have a low rate of consumption. has been a decline in the consumption of (8.4%), Italy (14.6%), Spain (10.6%). On the other hand France and Germany, cocaine. Indeed the escalating violence Some countries, which hardly feature in which are not noted for their tolerant among Mexican drug gangs has been other categories, have high consumption approach to drugs, also have a low con- attributed to an intensification of compet- rates of cannabis such as France (8.6%) sumption rate. It is probably the case that ition as a result of a contraction of the US and the Czech Republic (15.2%). historical and cultural factors are more cocaine market. In the last decade there For the United States the figure for important determinants of drug use than has been a dramatic increase in 'legal Amphetamines is 1.5% compared to Ire- the various approaches to law enforcement. highs' or amphetamine and cannabis sub- land 0.4% Northern Ireland 0.8%, England However, no country has legalised the stitutes. However, since 2006 the problem & Wales 1.0% and Scotland 1.4%. sale of heroin or cocaine. Drug abuse has seems to have stabilised reflecting the For Ecstasy the figures are 1.4% for the been confined to a small minority. Perhaps legal response to this new phenomenon. United States, Ireland 1.2%, Northern this should not be taken for granted. It There has also been an increase in "poly" Ireland 1.5%, England and Wales 1.5% should not be assumed that legalising these or multiple drug use. and Scotland 2.5%. substances will not make the problem The percentage of the world's popul- It is difficult to draw firm policy con- worse. ation of between 15 to 64 years that have taken an illegal drug in the last year is less than 5% (cynics might conclude that the remaining 95% don't remember!). The percentage of "problem" drug users (regular or injecting) is about a half of 1%. Murdoch And Gallipoli These figures have remained remarkably stable over the last decade. While it is true I was watching the British Parliament correspond by any other route or by any other means than that officially sanction- that a tiny minority can cause havoc for interrogation of Rupert Murdoch and Son when, under pressure, he made an un- ed' and promising that for the duration of the rest of the population, it must also be the war he would not 'impart to anyone expected reference to Gallipoli. Of course, recognised that drug abuse is still confined military information of a confidential to that tiny minority. this is not of much interest to the media nature.... unless first submitted to the hordes who let it pass without comment, Chief Field Censor.' COMPARATIVE STATISTICS but it may be of interest to our readers. "Murdoch arrived on September 2, The abuse of opioids (opiates and opiate Rupert Murdoch said that one of the things made a brief visit to the Anzac bridgehead, substitutes such as methadone) is relatively that inspired him as a young man was his declined Hamilton's offer to provide him high in the United States. In the 15 to 64 father's determination to purchase a small with transport to go anywhere and see anything, and then returned to GHQ, on age group 5.9% of this population have newspaper in Australia in order to expose taken such substances in the last year for the island of Imbros, and sought accom- the disastrous conduct of the British at recreational use. The incidence of opiate modation at the press camp. The camp, in consumption (mainly heroin) is low (about Gallipoli. an olive grove just outside Hamilton's 0.57%). The problem in the United States Murdoch's father, Keith Murdoch, was headquarters, housed an interesting seems to be concentrated among prescrip- a young Australian newspaperman who collection of war correspondents, tion opioids. The figure for Ireland (i.e. was political correspondent for the Sydney including G. Ward Price of the Daily the Republic) for opioid abuse is 0.72%. Sun. His story is narrated in a book called Mail, Charles Bean, the official Australian war correspondent, and Ellis Ashmead- This is less than the UK. The UK figures The First Casualty (1975) by Phillip Bartlett of the Daily Telegraph, the most are broken down into three regions: Knightley: interesting and dominating personality England and Wales (0.82%); Scotland "What happened was this: Murdoch, at of them all. Ashmead-Bartlett had cover- (1.59%); and Northern Ireland (0.12%). the age of twenty-nine, was sent in August ed the Russo-Japanese War and was an Overall the UK figures are the highest in 1915 to London, to act as representative experienced and highly competent corres- Western Europe (in contrast to the German there for a group of Australian news- pondent. He appeared to have an un- figure of 0.22%). For Eastern Europe the papers. It was arranged that he should limited expense account and used a large figures for Russia, Ukraine and Estonia stop in Cairo, en route to London, and portion of it to purchase liquor from the were 1.64, 1.16 and 1.52). report on the postal arrangements for the navy. One of the sights of Imbros was the The United States also has quite high Australian troops. While in Cairo, regular line of Greek porters staggering cocaine abuse by international standards Murdoch, who was anxious to visit the up the hill to the press camp loaded with (2.4% of 15 to 64 age group have tried it battlefront, wrote for permission to do so supplies for Ashmead-Bartlett. He hated at least once in the last year). However, to General Sir Ian Hamilton, who was in the restraints GHQ imposed upon him, some of the Latin countries, which have a command of the mixed force that had especially that imposed by the censor, low consumption rate of heroin have high landed at Gallipoli in April to attack Captain William Maxwell, and had been consumption rates for cocaine. The figures Constantinople and knock Turkey out of fighting a losing battle, since the first the war. Hamilton was reluctant to allow for Spain and Italy are 2.6% and 2.2%. For landings, to try to tell the British public Murdoch to go. Everything had gone what was happening. Maxwell, on Ireland the figure is 1.7% which trails wrong at the front, and the British and the behind Northern Ireland (1.9%), England instructions from Hamilton, would allow Anzacs (Australian and New Zealand no criticism of the conduct of the opera- and Wales (2.5%) and Scotland (3.9%). Army Corps) were hemmed into a few The statistics indicate that Scotland has tion, no indication of set-backs or delays, terrible areas of beach and hillside that and no mention of casualty figures; the highest rate of consumption of illegal were permanently under shell-fire. So finally, he refused to give permission for drugs in the UK for all the main categories Hamilton took the course of getting Mur- any of Ashmead-Bartlett's messages to of illegal drugs. doch to sign the war correspondent's dec- be transmitted until Hamilton's own offic- While Ireland is behind the UK the laration undertaking 'not to attempt to ial cables had reached London. This meant 16 that, at a time when there was more awkward position when, three days dater, offensive. The splendid Colonial Corps interest in the fighting in France, Ashmead Lloyd George, who opposed the Gallipoli has been almost wiped out. Once again -Bartlett's Gallipoli dispatches, days late campaign, read the letter and immediately the 29th Division has suffered enormous and heavily censored, often failed to urged that Murdoch send a copy of it to losses and the new formations have lost appear in print." the British Prime Minister, Asquith. their bravest and best officers and men. "Over the months, Ashmead-Bartlett Murdoch could hardly have declined, but Neither do I think even with enormous had grown sour, hostile, and pessimistic… in a covering note he tried to tone down reinforcements, that any fresh offensive He was in the middle of one of his more the virulence of his criticism." from our present positions has the smallest despondent moods when Keith Murdoch "Asquith used the weapon Murdoch chance of success. Our only real justific- arrived and fell quickly under his influ- sent him in an inexcusable manner. With- ation for throwing away fresh lives and ence. Ashmead-Bartlett poured out to out waiting until Kitchener had studied fresh treasure in this unfortunate enterp- Murdoch's sympathetic ear all the frustrat- it, without checking its more outrageous rise is the prospect of the certain cooperat- ion he had accumulated over his difficult- allegations, and without even asking ion of Bulgaria. With her assistance we ies in filing stories, spun a gloomy descrip- Hamilton for his comments, he had it should undoubtedly pull through. But as tion of the way the campaign was being printed as a state paper and circulated to I know nothing of the attitude of Bulgaria conducted, and convinced Murdoch that the members of the Dardanelles Commit- or Greece or Italy I am only writing to a major disaster would occur during the tee, which was in charge of the campaign. give you a true picture of the state of the winter unless the British government and While the committee was still studying army and the problems with which we the British people could be told the truth. it, Ashmead-Bartlett arrived in London, are faced in the future if we are left to Murdoch must have realised that almost and he and Murdoch began lobbying fight the Turks alone…. In fact the season by accident he was in possession of against Hamilton, Ashmead-Bartlett will soon be too late for a fresh offensive information that would certainly rank as substantiating the substance of Murdoch's if another is contemplated. We have one of the great stories of the war. He letter with an article of his own in the therefore to prepare against the coming agreed with Ashmead-Bartlett that the Sunday edition of The Times. This made of the winter or to withdraw the army only way to get the story out would be to it clear that they had Northcliffe's backing, altogether. I am assuming it is considered break the rules and get an uncensored and when the Dardanelles Committee desirable to avoid the latter contingency dispatch back to Britain. Ashmead- met, on October 14, Hamilton's active at all costs for political reasons owing to Bartlett wrote [a letter to British Prime career was brought to an end and Kitchen- the confession of final failure it would Minister Asquith], and Murdoch set out er was deputed to break the news to him. entail and the moral effect it might have to take it to London." The evacuation of Gallipoli began on in India and Egypt… But I suppose we "He got as far as Marseilles, but there December 12, 1915. A Royal Commis- must stay here as long as there is the was detained by a British officer with an sion that began sitting in August 1916 smallest prospect of the Balkan alliance escort and warned that he would be kept (Murdoch and Ashmead-Bartlett both being revived and throwing in its lot with in custody until he handed over the letter. gave evidence) found that the campaign us even if they do not make a move until He had been betrayed to Hamilton by H. had been a mistake" (p100-3). next Spring". W. Nevinson, the correspondent for the "You may think I am too pessimistic Guardian… He had alerted the War Below are some extracts from the letter but my views are shared by the large Office, which arranged for Murdoch's to the Prime Minister that Murdoch carried majority of the army. The confidence of arrest, and had then withdrawn Ashmead- the troops can only be restored by an to London, before his detaining: Bartlett's accreditation and ordered him immediate change in the supreme com- back to London. Murdoch went on to "September 8th 1915 mand… If possible have the Colonial London and on September 23, 1915, sat Dear Mr. Asquith, troops taken off the Peninsula altogether down in a room in the office of the Aus- I hope you will excuse the liberty I am because they are miserably depressed tralian High Commissioner and dictated taking in writing to you but I have the since the last failure and with their active everything he could remember of Ashmead chance of sending this letter through by minds, and positions they occupy in civil -Bartlett's dispatch and what Ashmead- hand and I consider it absolutely necessary life, a dreary winter in the trenches will Bartlett had told him during their all- that you should know the true state of have a deplorable effect on what is left of night conversation. His account was in affairs out here. Our last great effort to this once magnificent body of men, the the form of a letter addressed to the achieve some definite success against the finest any Empire has ever produced. If Australian Prime Minister, Andrew Turks was the most ghastly and costly we are obliged to keep this army locked Fisher, but the presentation had strong fiasco in our history since the Battle of up in Gallipoli this winter large reserves journalistic overtones, with the data mar- Bannockburn… The failure of the 9th will be necessary to make good its losses shaled in a brisk and attractive way. It Corps was due not so much to the employ- in sickness. The cost of this campaign in was an amazing document, a mixture of ment of new and untried troops as to bad the east must be out of all proportion to error, fact, exaggeration, prejudice, and staff work. The generals had but a vague the results we are likely to obtain now, in the most sentimental patriotism, which idea of the nature of the ground in their time to have a decisive effect on the made highly damaging charges against front and no adequate steps were taken to general theatre of war. Our great asset the British general staff and Hamilton, keep the troops supplied with water… As against the Germans was always consider- many of them untrue. But the basis of the the result of all this fighting our casualties ed to be our superior financial strength. charges—that the Gallipoli expedition since August 6th now total nearly fifty In Gallipoli we are dissipating a large was in danger of disaster—was correct, thousand killed wounded and missing." portion of our fortune and have not yet and Murdoch's action, questionable "The army is in fact in a deplorable gained a single acre of ground of any though it may have been, had resounding condition. Its morale as a fighting force strategical value. Unless we can pull consequences." has suffered greatly and the officers and through with the aid of the Balkan League "These were obviously Ashmead- men are thoroughly dispirited. The in the near future this futile expenditure Bartlett's sentiments Murdoch was ex- muddles and mismanagement beat may ruin our prospects of bringing the pressing, since Murdoch's visit had been anything that has ever occurred in our war to a successful conclusion by grad- too brief for him to reach so dogmatic a Military History. The fundamental evil ually wearing down Germany's colossal conclusion. Murdoch would no doubt at the present moment is the absolute lack military power. have felt it necessary to check his accus- of confidence in all ranks in the Head- "I have taken the liberty of writing very ations much more thoroughly had he quarters staff. The confidence of the army fully because I have no means of knowing ever imagined he was writing more than will never be restored until a really strong how far the real truth of the situation is a private letter to his Prime Minister, and man is placed at its head…. At the present known in England and how much the so it must have placed him in a rather time the army is incapable of a further Military Authorities disclose. I thought 17 therefore that perhaps the opinions of an been represented to them as a renegade Roman Empire apply with equal force independent observer might be of value Christian, has led his armies into the to-day. Apart from its naval importance, to you at the present juncture. I am of lands of the Christian… The prestige of as the key to the Straits, Constantinople course breaking the censorship regula- Great Britain, in which they have an occupies a position of the highest tions by sending this letter through but I inherited belief, the more implicit because strategical significance, from the military have not the slightest hesitation in doing it has never before been challenged, is point of view alone. Its possession would so as I feel it is absolutely essential for now at stake. It suffices still to hold them mean to any of the existing nations of you to know the truth. I have been request- in check, though every baser instinct in South-east Europe a nucleus spot for the ed over and over again by officers of all them is stirred by the daily record of creation of an Empire that might well vie ranks to go home and personally disclose carnage and savagery…" in might and influence with the great the truth but it is difficult for me to leave "In these circumstances an attack is Empires that have already had their seat until the beginning of October… launched at the very heart of Turkey. The there. When Constantinople passes into The Rt. Hon. H.H. Asquith Holy War becomes for the Sultan a war the hands of the Allies the momentous 10 Downing Street." of self-preservation. The seat of the Turk- choice can no longer be deferred by the ish Empire is threatened; it seems about Balkan States. It will indeed be strange if, to pass away from his possession into the when the magnitude of their interests has There are two interesting aspects to hands of the all-conquering English. The been considered by them, they cannot set Gallipoli referred to in this letter carried heathen must still wait for the event, aside the differences that have paralyzed by Murdoch that are not mentioned by sullen and watchful. And this mighty them through the first months of the war. today's advocates of Remembrance. The issue, the prestige of the British flag in all In the great settlement that is before first relates to the view that a British the dark places of the world, is being Europe the question of paramount import- withdrawal (and defeat) should be avoided decided in the Straits of the Dardanelles. ance to them is the disposal of Constantin- "at all costs for political reasons owing to While Constantinople stands, the few ople. Only one way exists for any of them the confession of final failure it would white men who are holding hundreds of to claim a voice in the settlement of that entail and the moral effect it might have in thousands of coloured men in check, not question. Which of them will refuse to India and Egypt". in one place but in many, live in a deadly take that way when Constantinople shall A good summary of some of England's peril. Had Constantinople never been have fallen into the hands of the Allied objectives at Gallipoli is contained in the attacked, they might well have been car- Powers?" (p12). 1915 book The Dardanelles: Their Story ried away ere now in a flood of barbaric Perhaps the author did not realise that licence. When Constantinople falls, the and Their Significance in the Great War, Sir Edward Grey had at that moment By The Author of 'The Real Kaiser' (which floodgates will be securely fastened again, promised Istanbul to the Russians. Perhaps contains a review or recommendation from and the British prestige will stand higher The Times and Times Literary Supplement than ever, both in Africa and in the danger- he never imagined the Foreign Secretary on its title page.) In Chapter I, The Signifi- ous Far East. In view of these considera- would overturn British policy of a century cance of the Dardanelles, the unattributed tions, it is easily possible to regard the that "the Russians shall not have Constan- author explains the importance of the attempt on the Dardanelles as the main tinople." Or perhaps he was just a good point of the Allies' offensive…" Dardanelles/Gallipoli operation for the judge of things and understood that promis- "The Allies, on their part, display that British Empire—which not only included coherence of plan which has marked their es were made to be broken, when circum- the War against Germany and Turkey but conduct of the war since its very beginning stances change. also that of keeping the Moslem and lesser … In confident unison they are enduring Of course, due to unexpected Turkish races in general in their place, below the all, until the determining factor in the resistance, Britain got no further than the white man: struggle has been revealed. May not that shores of Gallipoli in 1915 and could not "It would seem, therefore, that the factor be declared when the Christian take and hold Constantinople as bait for forcing of the Dardanelles will drive God is once more worshipped under the the prospects of a new Byzantium. It had between Germany and what is left of dome of St. Sophia?...." (p10-19). Turkey a wedge of far greater extent than to wait until 1918 to do that and use the is represented by the mere strip of territory It is perhaps not politic to say today that Greeks as its catspaw after subverting that will fall into the possession of the a primary motivation of the Gallipoli oper- their neutrality and organising a coup Allies. The Turks will be cut off from ation was to maintain the white Anglo- against the Greek King. their supplies of weapons, ammunition, Saxon with 'the whip-hand' over the 'lesser A few weeks ago, after reading the and skilled advisers. There will be a rapid breeds'—be they Moslems or 'coloureds'. end of them as a fighting possibility, and column of Eoghan Harris in the Sunday a deadly menace to the whole of our The other aspect that is largely and Independent, I wrote a letter to point out a Eastern Empire will be removed. For the gross historical distortion that Harris indul- handily forgotten about Gallipoli relates ged in to sensationalise his pet argument: plot to rouse the fanaticism of the to the 'Balkan Alliance'. The letter carried 300,000,000 Mohammedans of the world by Murdoch, extrapolating the mind of "In his column of last Sunday ('Follow- into a religious war against Great Britain ing IRA's bloody track from the Bandon has still to be considered… the idea itself the British ruling class concerning an alter- Valley to south Armagh') Eoghan Harris is an insidious poison, that has been dilig- native to withdrawal and humiliating makes the statement that 'the exodus of ently scattered by German emissaries in defeat, notes: "I suppose we must stay 107,000 Irish Protestants in the period all the dark and uncivilized places of the here as long as there is the smallest pros- 1911 to 1926' was 'the largest movement earth. It has been sedulously fostered by pect of the Balkan alliance being revived of population in Europe before the Second such lies as Germany alone knows how and throwing in its lot with us even if they World War.' to disseminate. It would be impossible to do not make a move until next Spring". "One only has to look a couple of years exaggerate the danger it still holds for past 1911 to see that this statement is civilization. Savage and half savage tribes The same book, The Dardanelles: Their incorrect. During the Balkan Wars of in Africa and the East are watching the Story and Their Significance in the Great 1912-13, 410,000 Muslims and thousands issue with true homicidal interest. All War, cited above, also refers to this aspect of Jews were driven out of the Balkans by their latent savagery is stirred by the of the Gallipoli operation in relation to the the Christian forces of Serbia, Monte- return of an era of unchecked violence Balkan Alliance and the British capture of negro, Greece and Bulgaria. More than a and bloodshed. The Kaiser, who has Constantinople/Istanbul: million Muslims were also killed in this already figured in their eyes as the protect- "The reasons which caused its founder vast ethnic cleansing and genocide. The or of Mohammedanism, and has even to select the city as the new capital of the alliance that accomplished this was partly 18 facilitated by an Anglo-Irishman, James Bourchier, old Etonian and correspondent of the Times of London. Totalitarianism and Garret the Good "If Mr. Harris can be so ignorant of these events, or if he ignored them to simply press home his points, it throws In the Irish Political Review in July I twelve-year existence prevented it from into doubt the other, even less factual said that the liberal West (left liberal in developing its all-inclusive, supremacist elements, of his article." ethics, neo-liberal in economics) practises programme. In our own time in the West 'soft totalitarianism'. A reader has asked an Ameropean collection of states, headed Needless to say the letter never saw the me: what then is totalitarianism if it can be by the US, is guided—tacitly and informally Sunday Independent's Letters' Page—so both hard and soft? Let me interject that, —by the American liberal Correctorate readers can keep the impression that and subordinate liberal Correctorates, oddly, there is no existing noun corres- Southern Irish Protestants were the greatest including that of the European Union victims of ethnic cleansing in the early ponding to 'monarchy', 'republic', etc. to located in Brussels. twentieth century! describe a totalitarian state. So I have So I think we can fairly say that a total- invented and used elsewhere 'a totalitarium' Roger Casement, in his article The Prob- itarium is 'a state, guided by a secular —it has a suitably all-enclosing sound! lem of the Near West, written at the time of teaching body, which involves itself auth- the Balkan Wars, saw the Balkan Christ- The adjective 'totalitarian' was first oritatively in all aspects of the citizens' ians as mere pawns in British Imperial used in the early 1920s by certain Italian lives'. It is what has been satirically called power politics: writers and by Mussolini when they were in Britain "the nanny State", except that "The true virtue of the Balkan 'Christ- describing the proposed Fascist State. In the guidance of such a State by a secular ians' lies in the possibility of their being the background, historically, was the large- doctrinal authority has been omitted from moulded into an anti-German factor of ly laissez-faire State of classical liberalism. that concept. great weight in the European conflict, In contrast to that, the Fascist State would clearly impending, and in their offering a embrace society totally and concern itself fresh obstacle, it is hoped, to German A 'hard' totalitarium is one that operates world policy… Hemmed in by Russia on totally with the citizens' lives; that is to partly through persuasion, partly through the East and the new Southern Slav States say, with every aspect of their lives. coercion, with harsh punishment, includ- on the South-east, with a vengeful France I remember that in Taine's book on the ing execution, for dissent, and in some being incited on her Western frontier to French ancien régime he mentioned that cases mass murder on ideological or other fresh dreams of conquest, Germany sees at some point in eighteenth-century France grounds. A 'soft' totalitarium operates England preparing still mightier armam- the peasants in parts of France distant ents to hold and close the seaways of the mainly through persuasion, a liberal- from Paris began to say "the Government" world…" (The Crime Against Europe, democratic system, and defamation or p104, Athol Books edition). (meaning in Paris) "should do something effective silencing of dissenters. Further about" this or that. In other words, rather differentiations might of course be made. The Balkan Alliance, facilitated by an than looking to their local seigneur to Anglo-Irish gentleman, was the greatest The authoritative involvement 'in all attend to things in their neighbourhood, ethnic cleanser of the early twentieth cen- aspects of the citizens' lives' can vary in tury and Britain saw its benefit in erecting they recognised the general responsibility degree from 'in all aspects more or less' to a series of buffer States between Germany/ of the French State to see to their welfare. minute and detailed involvement in every- Austro-Hungary and the Ottoman Empire. Leave aside how much precisely they thing, including language spoken in public. No matter that a large community that had included in that notion of the Government's In our liberal totalitarium, technological lived in the area for longer than the Protest- responsibility, and how much they exclud- advance has enabled such involvement to ants in Ireland or the European in North ed. Is it not a fact that today in Ireland, as be more minute and detailed than in any of America, was wiped off the map. in other European countries, people have its predecessors. The Liberal Government, which shirked by now come to calling on the Government the conscription of its own people in its Stalin's Russia, Mao's China, Commun- to attend to a multitude of things; and in ist East Germany and Orwell's Nineteen 'war for civilisation', looked to reassemble fact consider it responsible for almost the Balkan Alliance, as Casement predicted, Eighty Four combined to establish in the everything? when it got bogged down at Gallipoli. But West a notion of totalitarianism that lasted its main components, Greece and Bulgaria, Perhaps, then, the Italian Fascist idea even when it no longer corresponded to refused to play ball. Greece was subsequently of the 'total' state was in that respect not any major contemporary reality except persuaded by armed intervention at Salon- too far from what has actually come to be China up to the 1970s. After Stalin's death ika, Royal Navy blockade and irredentist the case, in contemporary Western states in 1953, and particularly in the 1970s and promises in Anatolia. But it all ended in generally. But Italian Fascism envisaged 80s, the Soviet Union increasingly deve- tears. Bulgaria, which joined the Germans, also that the Italian State would be guided loped in the direction of a soft totalitarium. was defeated. by a secular doctrinal authority, namely, In the years after Gorbachev dissolved it, To end on an interesting note, a few the Fascist Party. As things turned out, it he became the most hated politician in years ago the film Gallipoli (with Mel was guided, at least in its laws, by an Russia as people remembered how life Gibson) was made in Australia. It is, to agreed partnership of the Fascist Party was before. say the least, not very favourable to the and the Italian Catholic Church; but that When I spent a month in Minsk in British. It took three years for the film- was an aberration not only from the Party's 1993, people told me how good (in their makers to secure funding for the film, and original intention but also from what would minds) the 1980s had been in that city. the Australian Government's film agency come to be the totalitarian norm. President Reagan's arms race had made declined support for it. The film was event- In the Soviet Union in the 1920s there Minsk a busy centre of armaments produc- ually produced by R&R Films, a product- already existed a secular doctrinal author- tion, and increasing numbers of people ion company owned by Rupert Murdoch. ity, the Communist Party, directing the were buying cars and more of them than Pat Walsh State comprehensively. A similar author- ever were going on Trade-Union-sponsored Naval Warfare, Part 13, has been held ity, the Nazi Party, would later exist in over to the September issue. Ed. Germany, but military defeat after a Summer holidays on the Black Sea. 19 But the notion had got established in 25 locations in the USA on the subject: the grounds on which my lecture tour had the West that a totalitarian system was by The Northern Conflict: Irish Proposals been banned—just in case I might say definition the opposite of Western liberal for a Solution. I would be talking mainly something derogatory about the Govern- democracy. This notion persisted in the about Irish-British joint rule or con- ment of the day. Second, that, as we had last decades of the twentieth century when dominium and Sinn Féin's four-province often been told about those totalitarian the development in the West of liberal federal scheme, for which I was an active Communist regimes in the East, there soft totalitarianism had made that no longer the case. In my Irish Political Review consultant and drafter. were 'spies everywhere', who would report article in July I quoted from Alexis de Eoin McKiernan, head of the Institute, to the authorities any casual disloyal Tocqueville's prophecy in 1840 of the wrote to tell me that the Irish Consul- remark made in a private conversation. ultimate future of American liberal demo- General in New York had written to him * cracy. I think his most striking insight to say that the Irish Government did not Finally, here is a useful formula I hit on came after he had outlined the minutely approve of my proposed lecture tour, but recently. When an ideology—Catholicism, regulated, conformist, avidly consuming that the Institute was not worried. After Communism, consumerist liberalism—is democratic society of the future, and then some time, McKiernan wrote to me again powerful in a country, it is powerful—shapes added: saying that the Irish Embassy in Washing- how people think and live—because its "I have always thought that servitude message and its rules are (1) endorsed by of the regular, quiet and gentle kind that ton had written to him in similar terms, the rulers; (2) it is preached everywhere; I have just described might be combined and that the Institute (which incidentally more easily than is commonly believed received some funding from the Govern- and (3) many believe the preaching. Note: with some of the outward forms of ment) had decided it would be prudent to in that order of importance. freedom..." withdraw my invitation with much regret. Desmond Fennell * I was puzzled about why the Irish A few months ago when The Irish Government regarded me as a sort of Times and RTÉ were bestowing a secular threat to the State. So I wrote to Garret, Reply To Desmond Fennell's Better canonisation on the late Garret FitzGerald, recalling our shared schooldays, and ask- See Clearly Than Not (July Irish I remembered my only direct contact with ing why his Department's men in the USA Political Review) him as a politician. It was an incident had objected to my lecturing. I received an related to what I have said above about answer from him on Department notepaper Seeing Clearly— 'effective silencing of dissent in a liberal which consisted of a few typed lines democracy'. followed underneath by a couple of lines some thoughts I had known Garret in school, in the in his own hand. I forget what the typed Desmond Fennell has issued a interest- Jesuit Belvedere College to be precise, part said—something formal and blah- ing challenge to readers in asking for a where he was a few classes ahead of me blah-ish. In his own writing underneath debate on how we can arrive at a agreed and a school prefect. After that, he and I Garret had written that I could not expect view on the current state of Ireland and the went different ways and I knew of him the Government to approve of me when, western world and: only as a politician, a journalist and an in a conversation with its Consul-General "Once arrived at a more or less true occasional writer of books. In the 1980s, in Boston, I had described our democratic- view of how things are, and have come to when he was twice Taoiseach, he launched ally elected Government as "your tyran- be as they are, in the West generally and a "constitutional crusade" to 'liberalise' nous Government". in Ireland, we could then proceed with the constitution and laws in the name of I remembered the conversation. It had our monthly discussions about all sorts 'pluralism'. That was code for ending the occurred a year or two previously, in the of matters in the light of that." Catholic Church's determining influence course of a seminar on Northern Ireland at He argues that: on the laws about such matters as Amherst College, Massachussets. Repres- "The essential basis of a true view, it contraceptives and marriage and replacing entatives of all sides in the North (even seems to me, is to recognise that the it with determining left-liberal influence Andy Tyrie of the UDA) and in the Repub- spread of the Marxist-Leninist system of (what he called 'pluralism'). lic had attended. Our Consul-General in values and rules (its do's, don'ts and do- Himself a practising Catholic who Boston, a lady whose whose surname as-you-likes) from Russia to the other engaged in theological studies, and strong- countries of eastern Europe had a counter- escapes me, had come to a late-night drink- part in the West. That counterpart was the ly anti-Republican, he was useful as a ing session of the seminar group. With spread from the 1960s onwards of the 'transition liberal' for the hard-line liberals rhetorical flourish I had no doubt in my new American system of left-liberal who would have their way fully from the conversation with her called her Govern- values and rules to the countries of West- 1990s onwards. I welcomed and contribut- ment 'your tyrannous Government'. It was ern Europe, Ireland included, and to the ed to his New Ireland Forum on the the time of that Cosgrave Government lawmakers of the European Community Northern question and regarded his Anglo- during which, as anyone who lived under in Brussels. Both Marxist-Leninism and Irish Agreement as a useful step forward. left liberalism were argued theories of it will remember, the Republic came nearer the good human life in society which than ever before or since to being a police- The incident that brought us into fleeting rejected the values-and-rules system of state. direct contact occurred in 1976-7, when the thousand-year-old European civilisation." I wrote back to Garret pointing out that FitzGerald was Minister for Foreign the democratic Opposition, whether in Affairs. At that time I was lecturing in the He goes on to say how this came about the Irish or any other parliament, often in the West: Politics Department of University College used derogatory language to describe the Galway and I had written a good deal "In the West the takeover was done Government in power—language some- differently. The American left liberals about the North in the Sunday Press, The times even more derogatory than the word had emerged as an ideological force Irish Times and in pamphlets. The Irish 'tyrannous'. He did not reply. during the Roosevelt New Deal years. American Cultural Institute had invited But what struck me most were two They were the secularist left wing of that me to lecture to Irish-American groups in things. First, the surprising pettiness of classical liberalism which Daniel O'Con- 20 nell had adopted from the British Non- case as that was always its position. Progress and Evolution. It was the absolute conformists and which remained the basic totalitarian confidence that both sides had Desmond argues that the modern political ideology of Catholic Ireland to in these concepts which made them Liberals lost their moral bearings over the 1980s. These new-style American irresistible to their constituencies. The Hiroshima and Nagasaki. That they "had liberals, who called themselves simply fact that one is defunct politically has signalled their rejection of Western civilis- 'liberals', had signalled their rejection of simply allowed those common beliefs a ation in August 1945, when they joined in Western civilisation in August 1945, free hand in the world by the 'winner'. when they joined in the official American the official American justification of the That is, apart from the Moslem world. justification of the atomic bombing of atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Hiroshima and Nagasaki. In the 1960s Nagasaki". It was also these concepts of Darwinian and early '70s they were able to bring I don't think that Liberals, classic or their programme to centre stage and to Progress that necessitated two world wars otherwise had to wait until Hiroshima to against the Germans, as they were judged get legislative backing from the American reject Western civilisation—by which I State." most equal to the Anglo Saxons in the assume Desmond means the morality that human species stakes. And the fittest has While it is true that O'Connell adopted is claimed for that civilisation. Darwinian to assert and prove itself the fittest. That's classic British Liberalism/ Whiggism I Evolution, along with its twin called a law, the law, of Darwinism—there is a can't see how it "remained the basic politi- Progress, had justified such horrors for permanent struggle to prove who is the cal ideology of Catholic Ireland to the centuries before Hiroshima. These con- fittest to survive and the most vicious 1980s". O'Connell's Liberalism did not cepts together constitute the essence of struggle must be among those who are survive him in Ireland because it was the Whig theory of history, which is applied most alike or most equal. restricted to his base in English politics in to all life, human as well as natural, since In the course of these wars the Anglo his lifetime but the Repeal movement at the beginning of time and until its end. Saxons had to call on their offshoot, the home was not based on Classical Liberalism And the culmination of all world progress Americans, to ensure victory. The latter —far from it. The Young Irelanders, had its apex in Whitehall. That was the naturally came to dominance as they were Fenians, Home Rulers, Sinn Fein, and all Classic Liberal view of things. Hiroshima the real winners of both wars in this part of its offshoots, were less and less influenced and Nagasaki was a crime of passion in the West. They were completely ascendant by classic Liberalism. There was a funda- comparison to the exterminations that had after the second war and naturally they mental antagonism and existential incom- been planned and carried out coldly and came to dominate culturally over those patibility between native Ireland and Classic systematically across centuries, in colonies they had saved in the wars. That is the —i.e., British—Liberalism and that was most beginning with Ireland and North America. source of the Americanisation of the West dramatically illustrated by the fact that the This was Progress and Evolution put into and it did not originate out of America's Whigs/Liberals when they came to power practice. internal demands, which appears to be in the mid-1840s orchestrated the exter- Desmond compares the two world Desmond's argument. They were essen- mination of millions as an intrinsic part of views of Marxism-Leninism and modern tially invited to take over by a Europe that their philosophy. And that was only one left liberalism and, despite all the differ- had destroyed itself twice by falling victim illustration of their relationship with Ireland. ences between them including a 40 year to Britain's divide and rule, or balance of The Irish national movement, as a con- Cold War, I think it's worth considering power strategy, which ended up by over- sequence, remained immune when not what they had in common philosophically. reaching itself and overwhelming both completely hostile to British—i.e., Classic And that was these very concepts of the author and the objects of the strategy. —Liberalism. Its modern version did not Jack Lane take hold in Ireland as a result of post-war American influence. As far as I can see, Letter to Irish Political Review: any American influence in Ireland before and after WWII was compatible with native cultural attitudes and beliefs, complemented them and did not have an Gerard Murphy, "Ethnic Cleansing" undermining role. There was not an in- herent incompatibility, no more than there And A "Disappeared" Jew was with any European influences. Gerard Murphy's replies to James Murphy is having such an argument, rather The takeover that Desmond describes Fitzgerald, as published in the June issue than with any of those "others" who have had a different origin in Ireland and it took of Irish Political Review and the July/ nurtured that particular myth and have hold in the vacuum that emerged in the August issue of History Ireland, are presented his book—either negatively or 70s when the national psyche was thrown virtually identical, but for one vitally positively—as self-consciously attempting into confusion by its unrealistic attitude to important sentence present in the former to be part of that school's literature? the Northern crisis. The Irish Government but omitted from the latter: seriously misjudged a war that it was Éamon de Valera has long been sneered engaged with and as a result lost its nerve "The only reference to ethnic cleansing at—by academic historians and press and its bearings. That's what the Arms in my book (The Year of Disappearances: columnists alike—for his "I look into my Political Killings in Cork 1921-1922) is Crisis was all about and that was the my belief that the departure of Protestants own heart" statement. But what are we to defining moment in modern Irish history. from parts of Cork city could not be make of those same groupings who seek That was effectively the same as losing a regarded as ethnic cleansing if only quick fixes by "looking into their own war and nothing has more serious con- because they were largely replaced by Hart"? The academic supervisor and sequence for a nation. As nature abhors a other Protestants." sponsor of a now much discredited Peter vacuum the traditional British Liberal view He concludes (in both versions): "It is Hart thesis (The IRA And Its Enemies), re-emerged which says essentially that the natives are not up to managing their important to distinguish between what I Trinity College Professor David Fitz- own affairs and never were. The Irish wrote and what he (Fitzgerald)—and, patrick, wrote in the Spring 2011 issue of Times is the vocal and articulate expression indeed, others—think I wrote". But why is Dublin Review of Books: "In subsequent of this and there is almost an inevitability it only with somebody who disputes that essays, such as 'The Protestant Experience that it should re-emerge to articulate the there was "ethnic cleansing" that Gerard of Revolution', Hart went further. He 21 suggested that killings, raids and arson This was a rather mean-spirited savag- a total of 73 Protestant victims from the were the tip of an iceberg of social exclus- ing of Murphy for loyally following the minority community. Let's put these ion and personal harassment amounting line of "what may be called ethnic killings in a European context. During the Nazi pogrom of Kristallnacht, to 'what may be called ethnic cleansing' cleansing", as Hart "suggests", to quote November 28, 1938, no more than 91 …" the language of the latter's own mentor, German Jews were killed—but these 91 This was the preface to Fitzpatrick's Fitzpatrick himself. Any self-respecting traumatised the entire German Jewish savage and personally abusive review of author would have met such a review with community. Imagine the psychological Murphy's book, which must have pro- a robust response. DRB bloggers in March impact on the Cork Protestant community foundly wounded that author by treating it and April did in fact argue the toss with of the IRA murdering 73 Protestants—a as a liability that would only take from the other articles in that same Spring issue, figure not far from the German Jewish figure of 91, Gerard Murphy give short "legacy" of Hart: but neither as a blog nor as a contribution shrift to the notion that the 'South Mall' "Gerard Murphy's disorganised dossier to the subsequent Summer issue did was spared. He points out that 13 Cork on forty-odd killings attributed to Cork Murphy write a single word in his own Protestant merchants—a comparatively City's IRA lacks the intellectual power defence against Fitzpatrick's onslaught. huge number in a small city—were shot and academic skill of predecessors such Nor did he issue a single word of correction for the crime of being, in Florrie O'Dono- as Hart, to whose arguments and copious to the more friendly voices that had ghue's phrase, 'loyal loyalists'… Of the bibliography he is deeply indebted. This enthusiastically welcomed him into the 33 Protestants killed in the period 1921- is the work of an amateur enthusiast who 22, some seven were killed 'before and Hart camp of "ethnic cleansing" story- intended to write a novel but was advised during' the War of Independence proper, by his publisher to refactualise the story. telling in 2010. "Historical detective trail whereas 26 were killed 'after' the Truce. The vast, rambling outcome… deploys reveals 'ethnic cleansing' by IRA in Cork" From all of which we can draw two many familiar devices associated with was the headline for John-Paul McCarthy's conclusions: the 'South Mall' suffered its bad fiction… At times the exposition welcome in the Sunday Independent of share of 'cleansing' and Cork Protestants, resembles that of a mediocre essay by a 7th November last. Playing his customary more than most Protestants, were lucky bright but untrained undergraduate. As role as Eoghan Harris's ever-faithful and the Republicans did not win the Civil history, the book is almost impenetrable War." … The fact that several Freemasons were fawning Sir Echo, John-Paul of Oxford 'struck off' the membership lists of Cork continued: In the Sunday Independent of 9th lodges in 1925/6 is attributed, not to the "They would proceed to interpret the January, Harris reprised the role of Holo- suspension of local lodge meetings for results of the 1918 general election as caust trivialiser: several years, or to emigration, or to a authorisation to redraw the sectarian "Even a pluralist like Dr Garret Fitz prudent decision to abandon a contentious geography of Cork City's south eastern Gerald, writing as recently as last October, association, but to unrecorded killings. side by terrorising hundreds of Protestant could casually tell his Irish Times readers Though ignorant of 'how many of them families out of the Blackrock and Douglas that Southern Protestants opted out of were actually killed', Murphy is 'of the Road areas. Martin Corry's reputation political participation in the new State in view, however, that the majority of these should be interred with his victims in spite of the Senate giving them a voice… men probably disappeared'. And so he Sing Sing, along with Neil Jordan's Historians have settled for huffing about goes on, building up a dossier of myster- Michael Collins, that celluloid titan who the right of Dáil Éireann to wage war… ious or unconfirmed killings without ade- bears little relation to Murphy's jeering I believe that what happened to Irish quate confirmation, relying on his person- Mars who insists on something called Protestants between 1920-23 is the last al 'belief' or 'view'… Perhaps the most 'vengince byjasus' in his two cameos in taboo in modern Irish history. And I also serious misreading concerns one of the this book. Professor John A Murphy fares believe it is part of a European experience basic sources for the hypothesis of 'ethnic little better. His claim that 'there was no of denial that stretches from Spain in the cleansing', the sharp reduction in the ethnic cleansing on the South Mall' is Thirties to Vichy France in the Forties. In Protestant population between 1911 and treated with derision." recent years this belief has been reinforced 1926… Murphy correctly observes that by the historical exhumations of historians the non-Catholic population of Cork City Kevin Myers similarly welcomed Murphy like Peter Hart and Gerard Murphy… declined by 50 per cent, compared with to the Hart camp in the Irish Independent This was sublimated, just like the 40 per cent for the county. This leads him on 12th November, as he wrote of an mistreatment of French Jews during the to assert that the city experienced a Second World War… The reluctance of particularly rapid Protestant exodus, 'the "Interim Solution", with its implications of a "Final Solution" en route, demonstrat- Irish Protestants to engage with politics reasons' for which 'are not hard to fathom'. was a rational response to a period of After some more rumination, he almost ing how such cheap Holocaust trivialis- prolonged marginalisation that began bites the bullet of 'ethnic cleansing': 'If ation possesses little moral superiority with what must have seemed like a prelude you were a Protestant living in Cork in over Holocaust denial. But first out of the to a pogrom, in the period 1911-21." the summer of 1922, you would be trap a week previously, in the Irish Exam- forgiven for thinking that a process was iner on 5th November, had been Eoghan John A. Murphy replied to John-Paul in place to drive you out'. The trouble Harris, writing as follows: of Oxford—aka His Master's Voice—in with this analysis … is that the reduction the Sunday Independent on 14th Novem- in Protestant population was invariably "Gerard Murphy recalls the continuing ber, as he had already replied to Harris greater in urban than adjacent rural areas, scepticism in certain republican circles himself, with a letter appropriately head- partly because of the larger number of about a systematic campaign against Cork urban Protestants holding jobs associated Protestants. In particular he quotes lined "There was no Kristallnacht on the with the military and civil services, which Professor John A Murphy's jibe that there South Mall", in the Irish Examiner on disappeared upon independence… The was 'no ethnic cleansing in the South 10th November: rate of departure of the city's Protestants Mall'. It is a remark that the professor "In his review of Gerard Murphy's new was not abnormally high. The doctrine of might want to revisit when he has digested book, Eoghan Harris refers to a comment Cork exceptionalism as a source of sectar- this book. Gerard Murphy calculates that (not a 'jibe') that I made several years ago ian terror is not sustainable, at least on the from the summer of 1920 to the start of that 'there was no ethnic cleansing on the basis of demographic inference… One the Civil War, 33 Protestants were shot in South Mall'. Senator Harris suggests that can only lament that a major historical Cork city proper, while another 40 were in the light of Dr Murphy's book I might opportunity has been largely squandered." put to death in the area around the city— like to 'revisit' the comment. 'Ethnic 22 cleansing' is a phrase I shouldn't have otherwise "(was) disappeared" by that comrade and friend (but Civil War enemy) used. Indeed, since it has a clear and same Army of Dáil Éireann. Had a single of Michael Collins—who was both a specific meaning in the context of the Jewish victim been found, it would then Catholic and the tailor in question; while Balkans in the 1990s, it is anachronistic the Jewish victim—Ernest Kahan— have been given the same statistical and misleading to apply it to other com- earned his living as a civil servant in plex historical conflicts, as in the Ireland significance by Harris—as hysterically Ireland's Department of Agriculture." of 1920-23. Otherwise I stand over my claimed by him in respect of Protestants— remark. I simply meant that the promin- that the IRA had outdone what the Nazis I repeated this point in a further essay ence of Protestants in Cork's commercial would later do on Kristallnacht. entitled "Citizens of the Republic: Jews in life was largely unaffected by the up- The problem posed for Hart, Harris and Independent Ireland" which was published heaval of 1920-23. Indeed, Dr Murphy Murphy was the fact that there was not a by Dublin Review of Books in Summer makes it clear that, far from being an single Jew to be found who had been a eccentric opinion, mine is 'a widely held 2007, while in a letter in the Sunday belief' and that it 'is generally accepted by victim of the IRA, neither during the War Independent on 1st July 2007 I added: historians that… urban Protestants… of Independence, nor during the Truce, "The identity of the Free State Army officer maintained their hegemony and their nor during the Civil War. Harris throws who murdered Ernest Emmanuel Kahn in control of the professions right into the around terms like "the Jews" and "prelude 1923 was known to the authorities from years of the Free State'. Moreover, as far to a pogrom" as one might confetti, but the very outset, and to society at large as I can see from the book, the author such statements are totally devoid of since 1934 when Sean MacEntee publicly nowhere states that the exodus of Protest- genuine conviction or concern, since they ant residents from the Blackrock and named him in the Dáil as James Conroy Douglas areas was accompanied by a refer to non-occurrences. This is nothing and warned of his re-emergence on the collapse of Protestant commercial inter- more than a studied pose, as Harris stud- scene as a Blueshirt activist." I was com- ests in the city centre. Unless. Of course, iously avoids any acknowledgement of menting on a report, headlined "Killing Senator Harris has startling new evidence those Jews who had actually been murder- spree led to fear of pogrom on Dublin of a Kristallnacht on the South Mall ed in that period. "Murder in Little Jews", and published on the previous some night in the early 1920s?" Jerusalem" is the title of a TV documentary Sunday, 24th June 2007: It is obvious that Gerard Murphy was transmitted by RTÉ on 11th October 2010, "A killing spree that saw two Jews rendered dumbstruck by the ferocity of and introduced as follows: gunned down on the streets of Dublin in David Fitzpatrick's springtime assault on "Even though the Dublin of 1923 was the Twenties resulted from an anti- both his analysis and arithmetic, what we a troubled place, recovering from the war Semitic vendetta involving officers in the newly formed Irish Free State Army, might call the "think of a number and of independence and the very recent civil war, the city was shocked by a spate of according to previously unpublished double it" school of statistics so beloved secret files. At the time, the apparently of Harris. But why—in the happier month murderous attacks on Jewish men walking home to the area off the South Circular motiveless murders, within a fortnight of of November's press adulation—had he Road, known then, as 'Little Jerusalem'. each other, caused panic in the city's not corrected Myers and Harris/McCarthy Bernard Goldberg, a 42 year old jeweller small Jewish community. Armed police when they praised him for following in from Manchester and Ernest Kahan, a 24 were drafted in to patrol a terrified 'Little the footsteps of Hart on the "ethnic year old civil servant in the Department Jerusalem', Dublin's Jewish quarter just off the South Circular Road… The first cleansing" of Protestants? For—as is of Agriculture, were attacked and shot dead. Within the space of two weeks, two to be murdered was Bernard Goldberg, evident from the manner in which he 42, a Manchester jeweller and father of quoted John A. and was also interpreted Jewish men had been shot dead and two more had been badly injured—the tightly four who was shot on St Stephen's Green by Fitzpatrick—"ethnic cleansing" of knit Jewish community in Dublin now on October 31, 1923, after three men had Cork Protestants had indeed been "sug- feared the worst—that this was the stopped him and his brother Samuel and gested" by Murphy, in the manner of Hart beginning of a cold-blooded anti-semitic demanded their names. Samuel, who lived before him. And it was not the only ethnic campaign… This is a story of intrigue, in Dublin, had a narrow escape. He was hit on the head but managed to run towards target "suggested" by Hart and eagerly mystery, scandal, divided loyalties and cover up…" Cuffe Street, later discovering three bullet echoed by Harris. In the Sunday holes in his overcoat. Emmanuel Kahn, Independent of 25th July 2010, in his I participated in that documentary by 24, a Department of Agriculture civil personal obituary of the recently, and virtue of my own investigations into these servant of Lennox Street, who was known locally as Ernest, became the second undoubtedly tragically, deceased Peter murders. In April 2007—in an essay-in- victim, on November 14, 1923. He was Hart, Harris emphasised—not just once, review entitled "GAA Founder No Bloom- but twice—the following statement by gunned down in Stamer Street in the ing Anti-Semite!" which was published at Jewish quarter as he returned home after Hart, with all the hares it might set running: on the An Fear Rua—GAA Unplugged! an evening playing cards. David Millar, "Beneath the official rhetoric of courts website at www.anfearrua.com/story.asp?id a Victoria Street moneylender who was martial and convictions, the IRA were =2126—I noted: with him in the Jewish Club in Harrington tapping a deep vein of communal pre- Street, was also shot in the shoulder but judice and gossip: about grabbers, Black "The following set of circumstances managed to stagger home. Before the Protestants, and Masonic conspirators, have not otherwise been brought together shooting, two men had stopped them, dirty tinkers and corner boys, fly boys and properly chronicled. In the turbulent shouting 'Halt!' Millar said the men used and fast women, the Jews at No 4 and the early years of the Irish Free State, 1922- 'profane language' and demanded their disorderly house at No 30." 23, two people—who had been listed as names and religion. They were told to 'go residents of Dublin's Lennox Street on home to hell out of this', and when they In other words, the "suggestion" was the occasion of the 1911 census—would turned to go, the two men opened fire on that the War of Independence was also find themselves murdered by Free State them." army officers: one victim a Catholic and anti-Semitic. And there is evidence that the other a Jew; one a civil servant and the Despite this report appearing in his Gerard Murphy did indeed set off to chase other a tailor. Confounding the stereo- own Sunday Independent, Harris has been that hare, by looking for a Jewish victim types, it was the Irish Republican leader determined to do his best to ensure that the who either "was killed by the IRA" or Harry Boland—War of Independence murdered Jews Goldberg and Kahan 23 should return to the category of non- agenda was being written, and I innocently persons. But their names cry out in glaring believed that the word "disappeared" was contradiction and refutation of Harris's being used in its correct grammatical form es ahora * dishonest propaganda line that minority as an intransitive verb, rather than being communities were so "lucky the Repub- spun as a transitive one, with the meaning licans did not win the Civil War". The of "was disappeared", as subject is convert- CHILD ABUSE, STATE AND CHURCH truth of the matter is that it had been left to the defeated Republicans of that War to ed into object. I replied on 1st May: "The In the Irish Daily Mail, 7th July 2011, expose the fact that James Conroy was a only Cork Spiro I've come across is the Niamh Lyons, their political Correspond- Jew-killing Free State Army officer in reference on page 6 of 'A Cork Pogrom'", ent wrote about the Irish State's Damning 1923 who had returned as a Fine Gael and I attached the text of that article, with Record . Twenty-seven children and young Blueshirt activist in 1934. Nor can Harris, the full title of "A Cork Pogrom's Excluded adults died while in State care last year, inhabiting the historical fantasy land that Friday Night", which had been published leading to claims that inadequate services he makes such efforts to conjure up, face in the April 2007 issue of Irish Political were failing our most vulnerable children. up to the fact that Cork was indeed the Review. In February 2010, Daniel McAnaspie, 17, only Irish city outside of Orange Ulster I quoted from the reports of the British went missing from HSE care. His remains ever to experience an actual pogrom: not, Crown forces pogrom that had been pub- were found dumped in a ditch in Rathfeigh, however, the one his myth-making seeks lished in the Cork Examiner on 13th Co. Meath, three months later. He had to invent, that of Republicans against December 1920: Protestants, but an anti-Irish—yet undoubt- been stabbed and his throat had been slit. "Central Cork in Flames… Mrs. Medalie, Elsewhere, in April 2010, the truth of edly ecumenical—pogrom perpetrated by a Jewess, died suddenly in her house in British Crown forces in December 1920 Tuckey Street, Cork … as military entered what happened to Tracey Fay, 18, was against all Cork citizenry—be they Catho- her bedroom. 'We are Jews', she said, when revealed in a HSE report into her death. lic, Protestant or Jewish. In the March she saw the soldiers, 'and have nothing to While in care, she had engaged in prostitu- 2007 issue of Irish Political Review I do with the political movement'. Then she tion and has given birth to two children at observed: exclaimed, 'Oh, my heart!' … It is stated the age of 16 and 17. In the four years that the Masonic Lodge, Tuckey Street, "In the Sunday Independent on 4th before her death, she had gone missing 23 December 2005, Eoghan Harris reviewed was also searched. The Drapers' Club, Tuckey Street, was broken into about 11.20. times. She died of a drug overdose in Conal Creedon's TV documentary 'The The glass panels of the front door were January 2002. Her body was found in a Burning of Cork'. While praising the broken and both doors leading to the bar quality of programme-making, he had no disused coal bunker in Dublin. What were smashed. The caretaker states that happened to those other 25 unfortunate other conclusion to come to whatsoever articles from the club stock were taken… on its subject-matter, except to offer the MacCurtain Street Post Office was broken youngsters remain unknown to the public following excuse for British murder (in into about 2 o'clock on Saturday morning. at least. But when the Taoiseach got up on March 1920): 'Crown forces would see Mrs. O'Sullivan who is the postmistress, July 22nd 2011 and made his hysterical men like (Cork Lord Mayor) MacCurtain also carries on a large greengrocery busi- speech in the Dail, he had as his object of as a legitimate target. Historical truth ness, and she states that a considerable attack the Catholic Church, and the Vatican hurts, but it is also a moral good.' There quantity of stock must have been taken… is no indignation in Harris's heart at the The shutters were removed from the Cuban and past deeds. And not once did he or burning of his own native city." House, MacCurtain Street, and the window later Michael Martin, leader of Fianna was broken, but as the boxes in the window Fail nor any political party ask the State to My article, entitled "A Jewish Victim contained only dummy cigars and cigarettes, account for its own appalling contempor- Named", concluded that the victims killed the proprietor, Mr. Spiro, suffered no greater ary record on its misdeeds in this area. Not loss than is represented by the smashing of in "the burning of Cork, as the British one HSE member or social worker or pogrom it undoubtedly was … numbered the glass. The burglars were unable to force the door and failed to gain access to the politician has been asked to account for not only the Catholics Jeremiah and shop." what in any measure is sheer savagery Cornelius Delaney, but also the Jewish towards these dead kids. The media may I concluded: "Catholic O'Sullivans and Sarah Medalie". comment but the only time they go for the Jewish Spiros were no more spared the jugular is when the past deeds of the 'neighbourly' attentions of the marauding What, if anything, has this to do with Catholic Church is involved. And while Tans of MacCurtain Street Barracks, than Gerard Murphy? Not much, I would have the Taoiseach had no bother or squeamish- were Catholics and Jews—and indeed thought, on first reading his Disappear- ness in referring to the "rape and torture Freemasons as well—spared the rampag- ances, for that name, in that form, did not of children" he made very sure that this ing raids of the Tans from Tuckey Street ring any bells for me. But on recently did not apply to his own or previous Gov- Barracks." So the Hart-inspired search attempting to tidy up my mail box I ernments. The buck stops with the Catholic for an elusive—by virtue of being non- happened across an email from a Ger Church it seems and the State has a clear existent—Jewish victim of the Cork IRA Murphy, dated 30th April 2008: "Dear pass. during the War of Independence had come Manus, I doubt if you'll remember me, What utter codswallop! The State at all a cropper. On 13th May 2008 Ger Murphy Ger Murphy. I rang you a few years back times worked with the Church and was the replied to me: "Did not realize I was in connection with George Nathan of dead primary mover through its courts in putting sailing into choppy waters with my quest- Limerick Lord Mayors fame. I heard that children and pregnant unmarried women ion on Spiro. And no, I've no proof that he you recently published an article on the into the various institutions run by the was killed by the IRA. I now suspect he experiences of Jews in Cork during the Church. And when the religious orders probably emigrated, most likely to the 1919/23 period. Did you come across any begged for money (and the archives have States." And so we were spared the reference to a man called Simon Spiro, this evidence), the State did not give it inclusion of Spiro in Gerard Murphy's who was a JP in Cork at the time? I because they simply hadn't it. Ireland of "Disappearances" and "Political Killings" wonder is there any possibility he dis- the 30's to the 60's especially was poverty- appeared? Regards, Ger." There was no narrative. indication that a book with a particular Manus O'Riordan It Is Time 24 stricken. In 1961 public expenditure on all past and made a foe of the faithful Church Anyway as "liberal England took Hari to branches of education in Ireland was 17 that always stood by us in good times and its breast, he was awarded many press dollars per head—one-third that of the bad. And they have made a friend of an old awards between 2007 and 2010"—I am foe whose designs have never been benign UK. According to UNESCO statistics not sure if this newspaper is still owned by —how the English Queen must have surely published in 1962 and covering the period the media baron Sir Anthony O'Reilly of laughed at our fawning, bowing and Independent News and Media or whether from 1955-1957, the proportion of Irish scraping. One journalist sneered at one of Dennis O'Brien owns enough shares to children between fifteen and nineteen our former Taoisigh who wrote to the claim it for himself. "In 2008, Hari entered years of age enrolled in secondary, voca- Holy Father in a what was then a most the Orwell Prize and his work hit all the tional, or technical schools was 36%. The humble way—well forget then and look standards", according to the Eye which proportion in NI was 75% and England at now and how we bend the knee to our contains the main source of this article. and Wales 88% (this had everything to do foreign neighbour who is Queen in her "Hari offered the judges a heart-rending with the adoption of the Butler Education own realm and head of her own Church. account of life in the war-torn city of Act throughout the UK post war by the Modern? Most definitely not! And with Birao in the Central African Republic". Labour Government). all the blarney and tokenism to a few The charity that took Hari to Africa has media/political/academia heads, the only None other than David Thornley saw contacted the Eye to say that what he and wrote that the— time Ireland had a State Church—the wrote appalled its staff. Hari did not hire established Protestant one by which our a translator, instead browbeating a charity "modernising tendencies of Pope John people were enslaved by tithes et cetera, XXIII and his great predecessor and the worker into translating for him. He pro- when English politicians eventually dis- influence of the historic encyclicals mised to give her his notes when they 'Mater et Magistra' and 'Pacem in Terris', established it, through the huge campaigns returned so she could file her own report have redrawn the frame of social thinking of the likes of Daniel O'Connell—the on the war, and then broke his word. He in a predominantly Catholic community prelates of the Protestant Church were continued to hold on to the notes even such as that of Ireland. The 'air of spring' furious—but we as a people saw to it that after she complained to Simon Kelner, the which, as His Grace the most Rev. Dr. we never had a State Church again. The Independent's Editor. Conway has said blows so excitingly Catholic Church has never or sought to be The reason for this became clear when through the fields of ecumenism and a State Church. But get this—all the so- his article came out, as "most of the content liturgical reform, can be breathed no less called liberal societies including our near- differed from what interviewees had told in that of social reform…". est neighbour have all State Churches. I us", the aid worker stated to the Eye. Hari was recently reading a history of Sweden "completely exaggerated the extent of But Thornley saw that the political way and their State Church is the Lutheran destruction in Birao". He "completely of PR, enforced on Ireland by Britain, was Church. Similarly with Norway, Denmark invented quotes, in particular those of the never going to be beneficial to Irish society and the Netherlands—all their Royals are French soldiers". In one gruesome vig- until it was totally gotten rid of. As he included in their State Churches. When nette, Hari has French soldiers telling a stated: Crown Prince Wilelm-Alexander of Hol- piteous story of how "children would bring "The constituency organisation of our land (the House of Orange) married a us the severed heads of their parents and parties, the divisive influence of PR and foreign Catholic, she had to abandon her scream for help, but our orders were not the nineteenth-century character of our religion in this day and age and had full to help them". local politics, combine to make 'constitu- instruction in the Protestant faith before "They did not say this. I know because ency service' the touchstone of electoral she could get married to the future King success. J.K. Galbraith would not be I was there and I did the translating for and is now addressed as Crown Princess elected for an Irish constituency unless him". he were prepared, firstly, to hack his way Maxima and all their children have to be "Another of Hari's entries was a story through the undergrowth of the con- brought up in the Protestant faith. Liberal on how multiculturalism was betraying stituency machine, and thereafter, to societies my foot! But of course the UK immigrant women in Germany. He took demonstrate his zeal to his constituents and Irish media want to and have portrayed all his case studies from a piece in Der by devoting the greater portion of his our society as "backward", "mediaeval" Spiegel, conjured up names for the abused time to the battering of the administration for being Catholic. There can be no doubt women even though the German maga- on their behalf with petitions which are now that as we become increasingly zine has not identified them, and muddled more often than not either superfluous or anglicised, there is a corresponding re- the facts about their cases as he transcribed improper. And it is the victims of this alignment with Protestantism itself and its them. Journalists warned Jean Seaton, machine who must form cabinets. If our values especially its intolerance for those the Orwell Prize's organiser, that Hari legislators are to be both economic of us who are weak and sinful—i.e. that is was a phoney. But the judges—John Tusa, geniuses and keep their seats, they must all of us—whatever Taoiseach Kenny and Albert Scardino and Annnalena Mc develop the rare virtue of controlled Michael Martin say! Afee—did not listen. With Scardino schizophrenia." leading the way, the judges bestowed the 2008 Orwell Prize for journalism on ORWELL AND JOHANN HARI But Thornley adds this caution which Hari." as we can now see today is the norm: Johann Hari is a liberal and gay icon and one of the UK's Independent column- When stories of Hari's plagiarised inter- "But if administrations gives us five ists. Since he began his journalistic career, views began to fly around the web last year plans, while democratic politics gives he has been acclaimed for his reportage month, the Orwell Prize organisers thought us an instant mix of vituperation and and viewpoints. He also apparently posted it would be a simple matter to strip him of 'constituency service' democratic politics poison pen attacks on the Wikipedia entries the 2008 prize. Not so. Scardino urged will come to seem a sideshow to the of those who crossed him. But according business of government, from which only caution; Tusa worried that he would look the changeless and unchangeable to an article in Private Eye No. 1293, he like a fool for giving Hari the award in the minority of participants derive either was quite keen on the practice of plagiar- first place; Polly Toynbee, Jenni Russell amusement or profit." ism. With all the upheaval going in the UK and Patrick Cockburn told the organisers over the Murdoch Empire and its appalling that they must not publicly shame Hari. That last bit of course is our modern mispractices—which of course takes in Their pleas are unlikely to sway the media but for them now too, surely the Ireland too—I look forward to the day council of the Orwell Prize when it meets bells toll. The media have rewritten our when our own crowd are unmasked. next week. The Eye's new evidence is 25 damning, and lawyers have already advis- ed its members to declare Hari's 2008 · Biteback · Biteback· Biteback· Biteback· Biteback· Biteback· Biteback· Biteback entry "void". But according to the Eye evidence of Hari's stories ratcheted up and even staff at the New Statesman "also knew that their new recruit was not an honest man. Cristina Odone, then its The War and the Emergency deputy editor and her assistant Barbara This letter was sent to the Irish Times on 14th May, but was not published Gunnell told Statesman editor Peter Wilby The otherwise interesting report by Michael Parsons of his interview with Liv that Hari was making things up. But Wilby did not fire Hari, and whatever reprimand Hempel, daughter of Germany’s envoy to Dublin during the Second World War, in he issued did not terrify him into mending today's Irish Times (14th May) ('Hitler's death didn't mean a damn thing to my father'), his ways." was marred somewhat my the glib remark: "the second World War, known as the Of course I have never been able to Emergency in Ireland". understand the liberal left in the UK which This phrase was first put into circulation by Prof. Brian Girvan in his book on Irish has made a God out of Orwell. In my wartime neutrality a few years ago, published by Oxford University Press. But the claim, opinion, he was a particularly nasty man. regardless of its derogatory intent, is simply untrue, and the editors at OUP should have In WW2 the Allies would never have won picked up on this at the time and excised it. but for the Red Army and their incredible The term "The Emergency" was widely used to refer to the many restrictions put in achievements today are whittled away by place under the Emergency Legislation introduced by the Dáil for the duration of the those types of historians and journalists European conflict. These ranged from the rationing of food, fuel and other commodities (not unlike Hari to some extent). One year to the establishment of the Local Defence Force and restrictions on what the press could in Normandy while travelling there, we publish, so as to minimise the use of Irish media outlets for propaganda purposes by any decided to look at the huge American of the belligerent powers. cemetery which was kept like—to my The conflict itself then raging in Europe, and later in Africa, Russia and worldwide, mind—a military trophy. But in fairness was known as "the second World War" and was generally described as such. to the US, there on the map was the red The distinction between the two terms is obvious, as I know from many conversations line that betold of the massive awesome over the years among my own family—many members of which served in the Irish march of the army of the Soviet Union. forces, prepared to fight an invasion from whichever side it came. Orwell wrote his infamous list (file FO Philip O'Connor 1110/189 at the British National Archives) where he shook dirt over so many people. He "listed Communist Party members, Israel Unresolved their FT's (fellow travellers) crypto The following letter of 20th July failed to be published in the Iri sh Times communists, and paid Soviet spies". The Israel's Ambassador Boaz Modai writes that "the lessons in all this for Israel are that Dublin playwright Sean O'Casey was on international resolutions remain a fiction if they are not backed by a real willingness to the list—and he wondered why he wasn't enforce them" (June 23rd). He was referring to Lebanon’s failure to implement the getting work from the BBC—the latter to provisions of Security Council resolution 1701, passed in August 2006, at the end of the this day vet all their employees by MI5/ last hostilities between Israel and Lebanon. MI6. Stephen Spender who was later Before demanding that Lebanon cast the mote out of its eye in this matter, Israel should knighted was sourly assessed by Orwell cast the beam out its own eye. It is in breach of over 30 Security Council resolutions that in 1948 to be a "Sentimental sympathiser… require action by it and it alone. Tendency towards homosexuality". If any Had it implemented those resolutions, it would have (a) removed all Jewish settlements reader has time, it is worth a look as a from the West Bank, including East Jerusalem (resolutions 446, 452 and 465), (b) necessary corrective to the thinking in reversed its annexations of East Jerusalem (resolutions resolution 252, 267, 271, 298, today's Ireland as propounded by the likes 476 and 478) and the Golan Heights (resolution 487), and (c) allowed the International of the commentariat that Dev himself ban- Atomic Energy Agency to inspect its nuclear facilities (resolution 497). ned all kinds of sex because he was so in David Morrison thrall to the teachings of the Catholic Church. One of these days—and not in too John-Paul And The Brits distant a future, there will be some people whose thinking now is accepted but who This appeared in the Sunday Independent of 1st May will not be able to withstand the 'stare of In his article 'From O'Connell to Pearse and beyond, our Anglophile instincts remain history'. The tears of Archbishop Martin intact', (Sunday Independent, April 17), Dr. John-Paul McCarthy implies that the intellectual traffic between Ireland and England (not to mention Wales and Scotland) on RTE News at Six (20th July 2011) will was all one way. He claims O'Connell was influenced by the Chartists. Surely it was the not have been shed in vain. other way about—or at least a matter of symbiosis? Two of the most distinguished Julianne Herlihy © leaders of the Chartists were Bronterre O'Brien and Feargus O'Connor. Joseph Plunkett and PS O'Hegarty were admirers of HG Wells. Wells was translated into many languages. He was something of a hero in the Soviet Union. Presumably this On-line sales of books, admiration on the part of the Bolsheviks and Fenians did not extend to his appalling racist pamphlets and magazines: views. He believed that "mud coloured" people and other "racially inferior" types (we Irish among them) ought to be exterminated. https:// Dr. McCarthy muses on the notion that Pearse may have been influenced by Matthew www.atholbooks- Arnold. Pearse probably did come across Arnold's views but he was specifically sales.org influenced by Maria Montessori, the Italian educationalist. Seán McGouran 26 control, as they did in Ireland after 1922, Catholic Church, reduce it to penury and the priests became brave enough to preach take all the schools from Catholic manage- Does peace, love and equality of opportunity ment to State control, so that the curriculum It not just to the poor but to all. Ireland was can be controlled. That this happens in a Stack educated by the priests, by the Christian time of economic crisis for the public Up Brothers and by many other various orders purse is rather like that of Henry VIII ? of religious men and women. It was by the whose exchequer was bare and then came enormous and badly-paid efforts of Broth- Thomas Cromwell with his infamous CLOYNE REPORT 2011 & CATHOLIC CHURCH ers and Nuns that the level of education in Dissolution of the Monasteries. Bounty Ireland was raised to a high level. It is an flowed into the King's coffers and it all It does not stack up since politics went acknowledged fact that the standards of came from the Catholic Church. So too in Global. All the politicians are on the one education in Catholic schools was and is Ireland today—the question is Qui Bono? wavelength since Global Capitalism got much higher than in Protestant schools. at them. Nobody believes politicians are This has led to a well-educated intellect- Taoiseach Kenny did not seem to care straight any more even when they are, and ually-competent cohort of people in every whether he had the truth or not. He wanted very few of them are. Irish town. And with the Roscommon to rant and he ranted. And so did Michael The killing in Norway by Anders Hospital incident, where the Taoiseach Martin, leader of Fianna Fail when his Breivik is a symptom of the underlying Enda Kenny was caught out not only in turn came. Arrogantly the media refers to illness in society which is Powerlessness. making a false election promise but his the Report having been "released" on Everyone, worldwide, knows they are denial of it was likewise caught out, and 13th May—just after the Roscommon lies powerless against politicians. Democracy the Taoiseach (a former teacher himself) were found out, but the Report is not as yet is truly dead. Voting does not change had enough of this education for the masses at the time we go to press released to the anything more than the colour of the poli- and he let fly at the Catholic Church. "He retail Booksellers. It is not yet printed and tical scenery. The politicians are ruled by thundered" in the Dail, the media reported. bound which seems to indicate that it was capitalism and this is Darwinian Capital- However, he had no credibility because prematurely released on the internet on ism red in tooth and claw where the weak everyone knows the Catholic Church did 13th July 2011 for a political reason. are trampled underfoot and individual move quickly to deal with the few, the There is another report, which is stated people do not matter. very few, cases to come to its attention to be complete but not published and that One of the global businesses is the regarding abuse. And the only cleric named is the Raphoe Report. Will that also be Business of Politics—the Politics Industry by Judge Yvonne Murphy in the Cloyne released to snatch the headlines and squash in which not only all the top politicians Report as being guilty of inappropriate some awkward political story? operate but also the heads of IBEC, behaviour is Bishop Magee himself. And Yes, it all begins to stack up now. The Construction Industry Federation, CBI, the offence: kissing a seventeen year old politicians are not trying to rescue us. Irish Farmer's Association, heads of State male fondly on the forehead. Is no priest They are trying to sink us deeper in the Departments and heads of Quangos, Heads ever to show a normal sign of affection? morass morally and financially. Trying to of Semi-State companies, Planners and But the main reason Edna Kenny sounded get rid of the Catholic Church is just one Statisticians. They are all in the Politics ridiculous when he went over the top part of the Project. Industry. Worldwide they all understand against the Catholic Church is because we Financially, we have got ourselves into each other and what they are about. They all know that the greatest abuser of children a deep hole—an economic depression are about looking after themselves. presently in Ireland is the HSE. The HSE funded by huge borrowings caused by They are not about looking after ordi- has lost or mislaid countless children avaricious overspending. The only way to nary people's interests. Sure, the roads committed to its care and there have been get out of it is by paying off the borrowings. must be reasonably road-worthy and foot- many deaths of children in HSE care. That is done by saving. Saving is a post- paths must be reasonably level and people Additionally, we in Ireland all know ponement of consumption. So what does must be given concerts and street-parties now that when the Catholic Church's our "Global Politics Industry" member to keep them occupied. The Black Religious Orders set up their homes for do? Our globally-correct Minister for Economy is allowed to flourish, but not orphans and other unwanted children, and Finance, Michael Noonan, wants us to get too much, just to keep people quiet. The when the Catholic Church agreed to run deeper in the mire and he advises us to Black Economy is the retail arm of much Industrial Schools to which children were spend, "spend our way out of the reces- of Global Capitalism. After all it keeps committed by the State Courts and by the sion". This may be good for him but it is people on drink and drugs and prostitution children's families, the Church did so out not good for us. and child trafficking which are the really of its charitable motivation for the good of big money makers for the global industries. the children. And also the Church did set USUK The global politics industry depends for up these Homes so as to prevent the child- There is every indication that the USA its power and money on the other global ren form being put into Protestant and UK economies are in a lot worse industries such as armaments, drugs, proselytising Homes, where not only were trouble than Ireland's. But they control the pharmaceuticals, alcohol, trafficking, the children deprived of their religion but PR, and obviously they control Moodies construction and engineering and food. were in many cases starved to death. The which gave Ireland's bonds junk status These are the biggies from which Politic- 'Bird's Nest' syndrome is not a myth. recently and which still rates the US at ians get their power and money. And so when Taoiseach Kenny triple AAA rating, even though President And religions get in the way. Religion "thundered" in the Dail against the Obama states he will be unable to pay preaches peace and love, forbearance and Catholic Church, he was burying his Federal wages after 1st August 2011 unless toleration. All very well to keep the poor "Roscommon A&E" embarrassment and Congress approves more borrowing satisfied with their lot, especially when at the same time serving the Global Politics power. But, whoa! Back up there! How the priests were under the control of the Industry which wants to get rid of the can more borrowing improve the State as they were under the British State Catholic Church by relegating it to the economy? If USA borrows more, then in Ireland up to 1922 and as they still are slums of the world where they think it USA will be deeper in the cesspit that it is in the UK, Denmark, Norway, Sweden belongs. The Taoiseach has appointed now. And believe me if a country cannot and many other countries world-wide. Ministers Shatter and Quinn whose mis- pay its wages, like President Obama says, But once the priests get free of State sion is to take maximum assets from the then it is in the pit now. Already. 27 But of course the Global Politics Indus- leagues in the European Socialists on June try, of which Congress and Obama are WIKI-LEAKS continued 19th against assuming a second referen- members, will make sure that the Global Armaments Industry will be paid by prov- dum would be successful. that the United States regarded only two iding more borrowing power for USA When French President Nicolas Sark- locations in Ireland as vital to its interests. This ozy arrived in Dublin a month later, on Federal Government to spend. They will wasn't mentioned directly in the Irish Inde- keep at this. On and on until the bottom is pendent expose. July 21st, Mr Gilmore still held this reached. USUK were never at the bottom One, is the Hibernian Atlantic commun- position as he told him there was "no basis of the pit before and so they do not know ications cable, which connects the United for believing that a second referendum how far down it us. So they will keep States, Canada, Ireland, Britain and Europe. would produce a result which is any drawing out from their economies i.e. their Its landing point is Dublin. The other is the different from the first one". tax-payers until they hit bottom. It won't be Genzyme biotech plant in Waterford, which produce the tablet, Renagel. But in that same week in July, Mr long now but it could take five more years Gilmore was presenting a different view to get down. Then when it's down they ****************************************************************************** to the US Embassy. might go away and let the rest of us get on THE LABOUR PARTY Mr. Foley wrote his cable on July 23rd with our ordinary (by then very ordinary) "Tanaiste Eamon Gilmore privately economic lives. Letting all of us with the told U.S. diplomats he would support the —just two days after Mr Sarkozy met debt burden to be paid back by us. holding of a second referendum on the with the Yes and No campaigners in Lisbon Treaty—despite publicly saying Dublin—where he presents Mr Gilmore's SOMALIA the opposite, a leaked embassy cable expectation of a second referendum and Look at what is actually and really reveals" (Irish Independent, 1.6.2011). happening. Take Somalia: his "politically necessary" opposition to a 1. Global Capitalism takes their oil and In a candid disclosure that will prove second vote. other minerals. The Somali Global Poli- embarrassing for the Labour Party leader, NEW LABOUR-SPEAK ticians get their portion of the wealth to buy a leaked US Embassy cable says he admit- "Mouth off as much as you want about jet planes and arms from Global Capitalism. ted a "public posture" of opposition to a Government policies and decisions—but 2.The land of the ordinary people is second referendum because it was "politic- be prepared to back them in the Dail. ruined from the extraction process and ally necessary". "That was pretty much the stark mes- despoliation. Their fishing is ruined. At the same time, Mr Gilmore fully sage from Labour leader, Eamon Gilmore 3. The Somali fishermen have to try to expected a second referendum and said he to backbenchers this week" (Evening make a living from piracy. Global Capital- Echo , Cork, July 23, 2011). would support it. ism fights back to stop the Somalis. 4. Famine caused by the despoliation of After the No vote in the first Lisbon Mr. Gilmore said he and Enda Kenny their resources hits the Somali people. referendum in June 2008, the Labour leader had agreed that TDs would not be muzzled Global Aid Industry swings into action to said the "Lisbon Treaty is dead" and but that 'traps will be set for them'. mop up charitable euros, pounds and dol- opposed a second referendum being held. "I have cautioned my own backbenchers lars from well meaning ordinary people. But Mr. Gilmore presented a different to understand that if they issue a press 5.This Aid Industry spends the Aid scenario a month later to US Embassy release on Friday about something, they money on food produced by Global Capit- staff, according to then US Ambassador may be facing a private members' motion alist Food Industry. The packages of food Thomas Foley. in the House on Tuesday or Wednesday are prominently labelled USAID—giving "Gilmore, who has led calls against a where they'll have to vote on the very the impression that the best friend of the second referendum, has told the embassy same thing. They need to be aware that poor Somalia people is the US. separately that he fully expects, and would traps will be set", he said. (ibid). 6.It all has a purpose: the industrial support, holding a second referendum in His intervention came after Labour TDs members of Global Capitalism and the 2009. He explained his public posture of sent out a barrage of press releases one Global Politicians get richer and the poor opposition to a second referendum as Friday evening several weeks ago on the Somalis are poorer. We who donate aid 'politically necessary' for the time being," issue of Enterprise Minister Richard Brut- are poorer also. the Ambassador said in a 'confidential' on's stance on Wage agreements" (ibid). This scenario or a version of it is enacted dispatch sent to his colleagues in Wash- and re-enacted around the world wherever ington and across the EU. THE HEALTH SYSTEM there are resources to be plundered. Of course, a year later, when the The American Embassy in Dublin wrote Michael Stack © Government secured concessions on to Washington warning visiting diplomats Lisbon, Mr Gilmore and Labour did back about the delays in Ireland's A&E wards— THE DAY THE DREAM DIED the second referendum. as they underlined the chronic overcrowd- ing in the country's hospitals. They had hope, those Afro-Americans. After the first referendum was rejected, Embassy officials in Ireland regularly Radical whites, in their naivety, however, Mr Gilmore said there was no updated the US State Department on saw human and civil rights as equity. question of the question being put a second hospital overcrowding, writing last year White supremacy, protest Rubicon. time. that patients "can expect waits [of] up to A black president and his family, "The speculation that there will be a 12 hours before being seen". voted for, and installed in the White House. second bite at it—there won't be", he said "It's not uncommon for persons to be His politics quickly turned inside-out, on June 13th, the day of the Lisbon I treated in an emergency room or surround- managing to sound-off mere homilies. count. ing hallway", reads one cable—dating Did you not learn from J.F. Kennedy, Mr. Gilmore told the Dail the following from January 2010—obtained by Wiki- Irish-American Catholic, or black, week the vote had to be fully respected. Leaks and published by the Irish must also sing that manic rhapsody. "That is why there can be no question of Independent . They fought for the right to invade and hack, going back to the people for a simple re- Visitors from Washington were advised the rich richer, poor poorer perfidy. run of the Lisbon treaty", he said on June they would need to show extreme patience That Yellow-Brick-Road was a cul-de-sac. 18th. if they required medical attention while Wilson John Haire And the Labour leader advised his col- on any visits here. 11th May, 2011 28 WIKI-LEAKS continued the risk of investing here." of the Taoiseach's Department. Irish officials told their American visitors that US STUNNED BY IRISH FARMER POWER they were "preaching to the converted" in with U.S. a draft copy of the agreement. highlighting Ireland's potential gains from Like McCoy, Sweeney believes that this "Secret government cables reveal U.S. bewildered by reluctance of Ahern admin- a Doha deal, particularly in services and is as good a deal as the unions could have manufacturing. reached in the current economic environ- istration to rile farm lobby over GMOs ment. He worries, though, whether IBEC and CAP (Irish Independent, 21.6.2011). "They acknowledged that the Celtic can get its membership to approve the US Government officials were puzzled Tiger period had pushed Ireland well document. While some union reps have and bemused by the power of the farming beyond its former status as an agriculture- complained about the pay freezes, Sween- dominated society and that farm interests lobby. US officials kept a watching brief ey estimates that inflation will fall below now figured less significantly in the overall the projections used during the negotiat- on agricultural policy, including WTO economy", noted the Americans. However, ions and that real wages will be signifi- negotiations, Common Agricultural Policy the Irish officials insisted that farmers cantly higher as a result. He also noted (CAP) reform and the Irish stance on were "too important a political constituen- that the document does not substantially genetically modified organisms (GMO). cy to lose before the 2007 elections". address non-wage issues, many of which One cable reveals that high, ranking In a summary document, the Americans are very important to his membership. Irish Government officials told the US surmise that public statements in defence "8. (C) Sweeney said that the majority Ambassador that Ireland could not afford of the CAP from the then Taoiseach Bertie of the unions, with the exception of the to be more flexible in EU discussions on Ahern and Agriculture Minister Mary “Trotskyites”, will approve this deal. He the WTO agricultural negotiations, given Coughlan "reflect, in part, decades-old said the worsening macroeconomic domestic political sensitivities with the reluctance within the governing Fianna environment will make it easier to get Fail party to upset the farm community, farm community. approval because everybody wants cer- the party's traditional base of support". tainty above all else. However, he noted The Irish officials told the Ambassador Bizarrely, the Americans also refer to that the union leadership intends to sell of the "political dangers" if they reneged the Great Famine as a possible reason for this as a shorter-than-customary transi- on EU commitments not to tamper with Ireland's reluctance to sacrifice Agriculture tional agreement designed to get the the CAP before Ireland's 2007 General in favour of the Services and Manufact- parties through a prolonged economic Elections. uring sectors. downturn in Ireland. Given this pitch, he Another cable details a meeting between "The 19th Century famine continues to said the unions will expect a better deal the US Ambassador and the then Minister make Ireland sensitive to increased for labor in the next round of negotiations for Enterprise, Trade, and Employment, dependence on foreign-sourced food", the in 2010. In particular, he highlighted the cable concludes. (With the exception of issue of union recognition as being a key Micheal Martin; Secretary General for potatoes imported from Israel, Edit.). component of any future agreement and Foreign Affairs, Dermot Gallagher and It describes the Irish Government re- pointed out that the main opposition to the Secretary General in the Department action when US officials pointed out that this comes from the American Chamber of the Taoiseach, Dermot McCarthy. of Commerce. a successful Doha round could take 300 "The officials adopted the uniform line million people out of poverty in the deve- "9. (C) Sweeney dodged the question that the Government of Ireland (GOI) had loping world: "They concede the point, of whether the social partnership process previously promised the farm community but shrug, citing the political difficulties was anachronistic, only admitting that it that the CAP would not be revisited before involved in confronting Irish farmers". would likely have to evolve into some- 2013", wrote US officials. "The GOI had US officials also monitored the Irish thing different. He did say that the recent relied strongly on those promises to sell attitude towards GMOs (Genetically negotiations were cordial (all the main recent CAP reforms, and any reneging on Modified Organisms), including holding players know each other quite well) but talks with Aidan O'Driscoll, Assistant Sec- tense. He had nothing but praise for the those commitments would be politically retary in the Department of Agriculture. way former Prime Minister Bertie Ahern explosive ahead of the 2007 general Mr. O'Driscoll wondered if the US had handled previous. negotiations and, elections in Ireland." in a mild swipe at Prime Minister Brian understood the complexity of the issue for The cable continues: "The officials Ireland and other EU member states. Cowen said that, “the breakdown of talks noted that while Ireland's 50,000 agri- in August would not have happened if "As far as he is concerned, the question cultural workers and their families were a Bertie were still Taoiseach (Prime of Ireland's domestic stance on GMOs Minister)”. community in conspicuous. economic dec- has been settled: Ireland will allow the line, they formed a political constituency import of GMOs, specifically feed, but Comment that the Government was reluctant to rile will not produce them domestically. He "10. (C) We expect the agreement to be in the run-up to the 2007 vote." said that this is a sensible political solution approved by all sides—not because the given that Irish farmers do not produce sides are happy with everything included The Irish Government's staunch defence much grain but are quite reliant on beef (or not included) but because going back of the CAP in WTO negotiations clearly exports, which depend heavily on GM to the negotiating table raises the risk that puzzled the Americans, who described feedstocks imported from the U.S.", noted a deal will never get done. With the Irish the Irish position as "atypical", since the the officials. financial sector taking a beating and an Irish Government "prefers to stand behind In a summary document, the Americans historic turnaround in the government's EU consensus. on divisive U.S.-EU issues". concluded that: "With a Green Party fiscal situation for the worse, the govern- ment will not want to add labor unrest to The officials added that Ireland's Environment Minister and junior Minister the mix. The U.S. business community is position was also "unusual" in view of the for Food, the Irish Government has gone watching the process with keen interest country's longstanding advocacy for about as far as it can go (at least publicly) because economic stability is one of the developing countries. on GMOs". key attractions for locating in Ireland. A Another cable details a meeting between ****************************************************************************** breakdown in the social partnership model American economic officials and their An earlier leak to 'The Guardian', UK showed threatens this stability and could increase counterparts in the Economic Policy office continued on page 28 29 country of consensus. and a good place process and to draft and present the official WIKI-LEAKS continued for business', he said. agreement for final approval by the "Mr. Kenny expressed these opinions parties. after speaking to former Irish Congress TRADE UNIONS The Deal Below is an account from the Irish of Trade Unions general secretary Peter Independent (2.6.2011) on the US stance Cassells, who told him social partnership "3. (SBU) Under the terms of a deal agreements were central to Ireland's covering the next 21 months, the partici- on the Trade Union movement and Social economic success at the time" (Irish pants in the social partnership talks agreed Partnership, it is followed by the actual Independent , 2.6.2011). to halt public sector wage hikes for the 11 cable as it was distributed by WikiLeaks months, freeze private-sector, unionized themselves. The WikiLeaks Cable: workers pay for three months, and, accord- ing to the Irish Department of Enterprise, "America's top diplomat in Ireland told CABLE REFERENCE ID: #08DUBLIN545 Washington that a breakdown in Ireland's Trade, and Employment website, “set up social partnership model would increase Subject Ireland's Social Partnership Deal's a process to develop a national framework the risk to investors here, according to a Good Enough—For Now on the employment and rights of leaked US embassy cable. Origin Embassy Dublin (Ireland) temporary agency workers”. Given that "Other leaked cables showed how the Cable time the Irish government is expected to run a US position on social partnership changed Wed, 1 Oct 2008 12:25 UTC substantial budget deficit in 2008 and over the years, with diplomats coming Classification CONFIDENTIAL 2009, tax cuts, a key component of prev- round to the view that it was good for the Sourcehttp://wikileaks.org/cable/2008/10/ ious deals, are not included in this agreement. economy. 08DUBLIN545.html History First published on Fri, 22 Jul 2011 "Then ambassador Thomas Foley The business Community issued a stark warning about the dangers 21:39 UTC Media? "4. (C) Econoff spoke to Danny McCoy, of breakdown after a partnership agree- SUBJECT: IRELAND'S SOCIAL head of policy at IBEC and lead negotiator ment was struck in September, 2008, PARTNERSHIP DEAL'S GOOD for the business community, who said that this was about the best deal his con- following a tough round of talks between Classified By: PEO Chief Ted Pierce. stituency could have hoped for in the the government, employers and unions. Reasons 1.4 (b/d). "Just more than a year later, the Social uncertain economic environment. Initial- Partnership system effectively collapsed 1. (C) Summary: On September 18 the ly, union representatives wanted pay when the Government and unions could parties to the Social Partnership talks increases tied to “unrealistically high” not reach agreement on how to cut ¤1 (principally business groups and trade rates of inflation but ultimately had to billion from the public pay bill. unions) agreed on a provisional deal that, settle for a hike of just over four percent "An October, 2008, cable revealed the among other things, would freeze public for the 21-month period. McCoy said this American Embassy attached much sector wages for the next 11 months. A was slightly above what his membership importance to the social partnership leading business representative told U.S. had indicated it had budgeted for 2009. process. this is the best deal his membership could "5. (C) McCoy said that IBEC would "Mr. Foley briefed the office of then have hoped for given the tight economic be able to get its membership to back the U.S. secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice situation. A representative from one of agreement but was not sanguine that the that a breakdown of the social partnership the leading unions agreed but added that private-sector unions could convince their model would threaten economic stability, trade union members will be expecting members. He explained that there is much which he described as 'one of the key “a better deal” at the next round of talks confusion about what was actually agreed reasons for the huge inflow of U.S.- in 2010. Both said that the current on the pay deal and demonstrated—in sourced investment. agreement is meant to get the nation great detail—that the public-sector pay "Mr. Foley's fears had been stoked two through what looks to be a very sharp pause would not actually kick in until late months earlier during a meeting he had downturn for the Irish economy. It is now 2009. For this reason, he reasoned that with then Tanaiste Mary Coughlan. up to the government to “officially” the government would have little diffi- "In a cable marked 'confidential', he present the draft to all concerned parties culty getting the public sector unions to wrote that Ms. Coughlan was 'particularly for an up-or-down vote. The American fall in line. worried' at the time that 'trade unions business community is watching the might adopt aggressive tactics, which outcome of the talks closely because a "6. (C) McCoy agreed that, as union could deter prospective foreign investors'. breakdown of the social partnership membership declines, the social partner- "During the Celtic Tiger period, a prev- model threatens Irish economic stability ship model may become unnecessary in ious U.S. ambassador questioned the need —one of the key reasons for the huge the near future. For now, though, he said for having a social partnership agreement. inflow of U.S.-sourced investment. End that “the best thing about the current deal "In an April, 2006, cable, ambassador summary. is that there was a deal” and that the James Kenny described the original ratio- markets would have reacted poorly to a nale for social partnership—moderate Social Partnership—What is it? collapse in negotiations. He warned that, wage growth to make Ireland more "2. (U) The Social Partnership process as a sop to the unions, the government in attractive for foreign direct investment— describes the (roughly) triennial discus- the next few years, “will likely put restrict- as 'outmoded'. sions to reach voluntary agreements on ions on the use of agency (temporary) "The Ireland of 2006, with full employ- workplace-related topics, most important- workers”, to the detriment of Irish busi- ment, low inflation, and steady growth, is ly wages. The government, the business ness. However, he doesn't foresee that a healthy economy, where labour and community (represented by the Irish the government will enact any kind of business presumably could work out the business and Employers Confederation statutory union recognition—a move terms of employment through direct (IBEC)), and the trade unions (represent- strongly opposed by the American negotiations', he observed. ed, in part, by the Irish Congress of Trade business community. "However, Mr. Kenny was able to Unions (ICTU)) participate in the talks. appreciate why partnership was still The first social partnership agreement The Unions important in Ireland. was reached in 1987 and is often credited "7. (C) Econoff met with Paul Sweeney, "The partnership process nevertheless with being one of the sparks that ignited economic advisor to ICTU, who played a retains its relevance for its psychologic- the Irish economic rebound. The govern- key role in the negotiations and shared ally reassuring message that Ireland is a ment's role is to act as facilitator of the continued on page 29 30 emphasize 'hares, stags and badgers while wrongdoing in occupied Iraq—15 detain- WIKI-LEAKS continued everyone else in the country is drowning ees were arrested by the Iraqi Federal in this economy',". Police for printing anti-Iraqi literature. the documents are themselves genuine, it does not always mean that the analysis Other cables reveal the ease of access FREEDOM OF THE PRESS and gossip reported in the cables are always the US has to the top levels of successive correct. Irish Governments—often being briefed So we ask: "Has Julian Assange and By its very nature, field reporting to on matters of huge public interest prior to WikiLeaks contributed to the Freedom of Washington is often candid and based on the Opposition or the Irish people. the Press?" incomplete information. It is not an expres- Much of this information was shared Maurice Hayes doesn't think so and sion of policy, nor does it always shape with US officials via high-ranking Irish Maurice was a one-time Director in Inde- final policy decisions. civil servants and diplomats. And stringent pendent News & Media PLC, publishers These American diplomats have been efforts were made to keep the identities of of the Irish Independent. trained to listen, probe and prod, milk these contacts under wraps. "That said, one can only be struck by sources, report and write—sometimes The language used in the cables is the banality and essential triviality of most of the information that was being under witty and elegant headlines (one diplomatic. But sometimes the mask slips collected and transmitted, little that could cable relating to the deepening fiscal crisis a little, giving a telling insight into how the US State Department views Ireland, not be gleaned, much less expensively, here was titled: The Irish Economy—As from the better newspapers. One is struck, all set within the context of its own strategic Black as the Guinness). too, by the lack of selectivity or quality interests. "Almost all of the time, they view Irish control in collection and analysis, the men and women simply through the Among the highlights in the cables are sheer overload of information, and reflected mirror of U.S. strategic interests the following: wonders who has the time to read it all at and policy" (Irish Inde. 31.5.2011). * The United States government closely the receiving end. "The wider issue is what hacking of monitors the country's main mosques amid The US is routinely given access to this sort and the wider dissemination of American concern over alleged Islamic sensitive information by the highest levels the information so purloined will do to 'extremists' operating in Ireland, leaked of the Irish government through an exten- the way in which civil servants and embassy cables reveal. sive network of official—but highly diplomats do their jobs, and to the wider confidential—contacts. * The IRA retained active support around public interest. It is a sad, if unforeseen, consequence of the Freedom of Inform- American officials count Government the world right up until it finally put its arms beyond use. ation Act that there is now less information Ministers, senior civil servants and top to access. Civil servants have resorted to diplomats among "confidential" sources, * The United States warned the Govern- not writing down what should have been the leaked US Embassy cables reveal. ment that Ireland would be seen as a "haven recorded, or to using Post-It notes, which Their activities are disclosed in the for terrorists" unless it extradited the can be stripped from files. Applied to Colombia Three. Ireland Cables—1,900 classified docu- diplomacy this leads to lack of document- ments from the whistleblowing organi- * Former Taoiseach Bertie Ahern was ation and an impoverishment of the "generally considered softer" on the Provi- archive which future historians will curse. sation WikiLeaks. In the short term, it discourages candour Roughly half the cables—dating from sional republican movement than either of his two key Cabinet Ministers during the and honest expression of opinion" the Air India disaster in 1985 to the Vatican Northern peace talks. (Maurice Hayes, Irish Ind. 13.6.2011). response to the Murphy Report into the sexual abuse scandal in the Archdiocese * Fianna Fail officials privately admitted One month later, the Irish Independent of Dublin in February 2010—originate they would be the last party to form a got upon its high horse to moralise on government with Sinn Fein—at the same from the US Embassy in Dublin. The rest hacking at the News of the World: time as they were negotiating to push the "Here was a newspaper that was quite are sourced from Embassies and Consul- DUP into a power-sharing deal at Stormont. ates across the globe. clearly out of control and whose senior One leaked cable reveals how former * US diplomats delivered a damning assess- management were, at the very least, pre- ment of Ireland's ailing health system in pared to condone serious wrong-doing in Minister and current Fianna Fail Vice- leaked embassy cables. pursuit of a 'scoop'. President Mary Hanafin briefed the Ameri- "Not only is listening in on people's can Embassy on tense ongoing coalition Below, we publish items which dwell voicemails illegal it is utterly immoral. negotiations. on the Labour and Trade Union movement Perpetrating such a gross violation of The word "PROTECT" appears beside mentioned in the WikiLeaks cables. someone's privacy is never justified, no her name in the cable, meaning her identity matter how juicy or salacious the story and/or her comments were not to be made may be. "SPILLAGE" NOT "HACKING" THANK GOODNESS! "Other journalists would be well- public. "It was the biggest spillage of U.S. advised to learn the lessons of the affair. If we journalists seek to hold others to MINISTER HANAFIN secrets in history", allegedly carried out Ms Hanafin confirmed she gave the by a 23-year old US Army Intelligence account for failing to adhere to the highest analyst at a Baghdad, Iraq military base. standards then we must expect to suffer briefing at the behest of US Ambassador the consequences when we fall short of Dan Rooney. If convicted, the officer, Bradley those same standards" (Irish Ind. 8.7.2011). According to the dispatch, Ms Hanafin Manning faces 52 years in prison. made a number of derogatory comments The key issue in the whole story is But "Spillage" is not the same as "Hack- about her Green Party coalition partners. Manning's motivation. ing"? And what of hacking by our own "She said she had the impression that, He allegedly leaked the files, not for security agencies and their old friends in if some of the Greens had their way, the financial gain, recklessness or malice, but MI5? It goes on every day! Programme for Government would because he genuinely believed he saw continued on page 30 31 VOLUME 29 No. 8 CORK ISSN 0790-1712

"Nations have neither permanent friends nor permanent enemies, only permanent interests" George Canning WikiLeaks and Labour On 28th November 2010, five major countries considered unsavoury, such as and this is vividly reflected in the Ireland newspapers—The Guardian, The New Iran and Syria. Cables. York Times, Der Spiegel, Le Monde and The bulk of the Irish Independent In these instances, it is arguably El Pais—dominated global headlines stories came from the 'confidential' docu- extremely beneficial to have the world's when they published a selection of cables ments. Some of these will scandalize, most powerful political and military that provided readers worldwide with what others will simply confirm long-held opin- machine in your corner. WikiLeaks described as "an unprecedent- ions and prejudices about the nature of But on those occasions when our ed insight into U.S. government foreign Ireland's relationship with the US and the interests diverge, the US State Department activities". wider world. But almost all will provide is never shy about showing their dis- The WikiLeaks database made avail- new and telling insights into the behind- pleasure. able to the five newspapers comprised the-scenes politicking and horse-trading Most of the time, particularly when it 251,187 cables from 280 US Embassies that goes on behind the closed doors of comes to something of strategic import- and Consulates in 180 countries across the international diplomacy. ance to the US, Irish Governments appear globe. The Irish Independent published the unwilling to stand up to its much bigger At that point just 11 cables—all originat- cables (31.5.2011) just a week after the and powerful ally. ing in Dublin—had been published. outpouring of pro-US sentiment that accompanied Barack Obama's on his first SHANNON AIRPORT "The Ireland cables were obtained by Shannon Airport is a good example. visit to this country. The Irish cache gives the Irish Independent through an arrange- The cables reveal several Government ment with whistle-blowing organisation an unprecedented insight into the true Ministers expressed reservations about WikiLeaks that involved no financial nature of our relationship with the U.S.. transaction or any monetary obligations claims from human rights groups that the on either side." (31.5.2011). It is clear from the cables Ireland enjoys airport was being used to transit contro- a very 'special relationship' with Washington. versial rendition missions. An arrangement was reached with Wiki- But this does not appear to be a But, tellingly, they never pushed the Leaks, essentially boiling down to an relationship of equals. issue too hard or took any action that agreed understanding on the terms and In the global political arena, our own would threaten the economic benefits of condition of publication, including redact- interests generally mirror that of the US, the US military's use of Shannon. ing (editing), where necessary, the material We had a good example of this during and compliance with a security protocol Subscribers to the magazine are regularly President Obama's visit in May, with the to protect and handle the sensitive inform- offered special rates on other publications using of Shannon Airport for American ation at our disposal. Irish Political Review is published by military and Imperial expeditions, regard- "We were able to begin the long, at the IPR Group: write to— less of circumstances despite ongoing times infuriating but ultimately accusations about the transport of so-called fascinating process of trawling through 1 Sutton Villas, Lower Dargle Road the entire cache of just over 1,900 cables Bray, Co. Wicklow or terror suspects. relating to Ireland by the first week of last 33 Athol Street, Belfast BT12 4GX or According to the cables, there was a month" (Irish Independent, 31.5.2011). PO Box 6589, London, N7 6SG, or high level willingness to provide detailed briefings to the Americans on delicate Labour Comment, SECRECY C/O Shandon St. P.O., Cork City. issues both at home and abroad. The cables are divided into five TEL: 021-4676029 This cosy relationship extended to a different categories; SECRET/NOFORN Subscription by Post: Cabinet member providing detailed (not for foreigners' eyes); SECRET; 12 issues: £20, UK; information on sensitive coalition nego- CONFIDENTIAL/NOFORN; € 30, Ireland; € 35, Europe. tiations, Ministers promising to advance CONFIDENTIAL and UNCLASSIFIED. Electronic Subscription: US interests at EU level and our own The SECRET cables were an obvious € 15 / £12 for 12 issues Ambassadors briefing American officials starting point. This category only covered (or € 1.30 / £1.10 per issue) in sensitive trouble spots around the world. a limited number of themes; the spread of You can also order from: It is also important to stress that, while nuclear material and military exports to https://www.atholbooks-sales.org continued on page 31