Social Democracy? Imagined Nation? 'Wastrels!' O'Connor Column Brendan Clifford James Connolly Labour Comment page 8 page 28 back page IRISH POLITICAL REVIEW January 2020 Vol.35, No.1 ISSN 0790-7672 and Northern Star incorporating Workers' Weekly Vol.34 No.1 ISSN 954-5891

Pat Cox And The Northern Election His Achievements! Carson’s seat in North Belfast has fallen to Sinn Fein!! If there is a poster boy for the EU in But Carson’s policy for the Six Counties fell a long time ago: ninety-nine years Ireland it is Pat Cox. If there is an Irish ago. Mr. Europe it is him. There was a typical laudatory profile of him in the Sunday Edward Carson opposed the dressing-up of the Six Counties into a distinct political Business Post on 24th November last year body within the British state in which the Catholic third of the population would be by Daniel Murray, reminding us of his governed by the Protestant two-thirds. achievements in Ireland and Europe. Mur- It used to be said, as a debating-point in anti-Partition propaganda, that no Six County ray reports: MP had voted for Partition. That saying has fallen out of use. We have influenced things to that extent at least. “Cox has never been slow to give his pro-European views substantial airtime, but when I ask him whether further inte- There was no vote for Partition. Westminster, heavily indebted to America in 1920, gration and moving towards a federalist did not want to have it said that it introduced Partition. So what it did was introduce model is inevitable, he is more cau- Home Rule in two parts, and left ‘the Irish’ to sort it out for themselves. It set up two tious-. ‘I think, after all these decades, we Irish democracies instead of one. And, if democracy is a good thing, then the more have to move beyond the binary idea of the better! a federal Europe or no Europe’, he says. ‘We are living in a state of negotiated, treaty-based, permanent in-between- What no Six County MP could be said to have voted for was not a Partition Bill but ness. We are not a federation, nor are we a Home Rule Bill setting up Irish Home Rule in two parts. Carson spoke against that merely just a loose intergovernmental Bill, explaining why a Six County Parliament and Government would be a bad thing. connection’…” But Westminster, with its landslide War Coalition majority, carried on regardless; and the Six County Unionists were given to understand that, if they did not operate the Northern This is not a very satisfactory answer Ireland system under the Bill, they would come under Dublin rule. for a man who can claim to have shaped Carson resigned the Ulster Unionist leadership. His place was taken by James the current situation in the EU more than Craig, who was a Junior Minister in Whitehall in 1920—and was the last ‘Ulster’ MP most. Another summary of what he says is to hold Office in the Government of the State. that, in effect, the EU is in a bit of a mess.

continued on page 2 continued on page 12

December 2019 Brexit Summary have exhibited contempt for democratic politics at a historic moment in British and European history when demos power has moved up a gear. It is fitting that the Britain Decides Remain side has been routed. With Boris Johnson’s comprehensive majority following the Referendum in June This UK Election has been a seismic victory in the UK General Election the 2016, as some of its number advised, the event—in Northern Ireland almost as main political milestone on the road to divisions and eventual paralysis of the last much as in Britain—it will be mulled over, Brexit has been reached. That the exit will forty months would have been avoided. written about and cited for many years to pass the point of no return on January 31st As it is, the politicians, lawyers, lawyer- come, internationally as well as in these is now a formality. politicians, economists, commentator- islands. This summary will briefly touch campaigners, journalist-campaigners, on the Election campaign and the signifi- If Britain’s liberal elite had accepted editor-campaigners, high-up civil servants, cance of the results in the context of the the democratically expressed will of the and academics that populate that elite continued on page 13 because it ended the under-representation of Northern Ireland at Westminster, and C O N T E N T S opened the way for Thatcher.

Page More recently, the DUP maintained the The Northern Election. Editorial 1Tories in Office but did not understand Pat Cox And His Achievements. Jack Lane 1that it was an extraneous element, just Britain Decides. Dave Alvey (December Brexit Summary 1as much as the SDLP had been, because Readers' Letters: Corbyn. Donal Kennedy 3it was outside the party-system, which is LEST WE FORGET (4). Extracts from Irish Bulletin. This issue lists what English democracy is all about. It British Acts Of Aggression, 3rd - 10th January 1920 (ed. Jack Lane) 4 refused a Brexit deal with May that was The O'Connor Column (Sweeney astray: social democracy and historical fictions; better for it than any other it was likely Poland’s ghoulish horror show) 9to get; after May fell it threw away its Two Irish Media Commentaries. Dave Alvey 14 bargaining power by putting Johnson at Es Ahora. Julianne Herlihy ((Clair Wills And The Story She Tells, Part 15) 16 the mercy of an obstructive Commons English Democracy. Editorial 18 majority, and suffered in the consequent Northern Ireland & The UK Election. David Morrison 19 Election. Looking Back! Wilson John Haire 21 A Fairytale Moment On The Late Late. DaveAlvey 21 The British news says there is now a Na- The Philadelphia Exercise. Paul Hyde 23 tionalist majority in Northern Ireland—as Photographs, Photostats And Typescripts. Tim O'Sullivan 26 if it mattered how the marginalised politi- An Imagined Nation. Brendan Clifford (A Meeting At Skibbereen, Part 2) 28 cal life in Northern Ireland was represented Biteback: Ryan Commission Embarrassing Statistical Error on the Westminster back-benches—or that Unpublished Letter to 'Irish Times', Niall Meehan 30 most of the Northern majority prefers to 'Ulysses' Cartoon. Submitted by Niall Cusack 32 stay at home. Does It Stack Up? Michael Stack (Climate Change And The Environment; Chambers Of Commerce) 33 From a rational Northern Ireland view- Poems. Wilson John Haire (Politics Of The Bathtub!; point, Westminster is a waste of time. And Love On A Bed Of Nails) 35 BBC news about Northern Ireland is Fake News as a matter of course. When Britain introduced party-political Labour Comment, edited by Pat Maloney: broadcasts on the BBC about sixty years Recruiting: Let The Wastrels Go! ago, the Prime Minister of the old Stormont James Connolly system thought they should not be broad- (back page) cast on BBC, Northern Ireland as none of the parties making the broadcasts contested the elections there. He was over-ruled by Whitehall. He was told that the BBC was Carson, in retirement, was persuaded to None of this was due to Carson. And a state institution over which he had no remain silent in the face of the inevitable, the Ulsterish Unionist who lost North authority, and that the broadcasts would and even to give a muffled squeak of ap- Belfast to John Finucane of Sinn Fein is go ahead just as if the Labour, Tory and proval to it on one occasion. not a Carsonite. Liberal Parties were fielding candidates The incident is entirely excluded from The significant development within the in the Six Counties. Carson biographies, friendly or hostile, and meaningless Six County participation in * from histories of Northern Ireland. But it the British state election is that the SDLP is all there in the newspaper reports of his has given up its ‘constitutionalist’ postur- The Radio Ulster voice of the BBC election campaign in December 1918 and ing by facilitating the victory of the party these days is Stephen Nolan. He conducts in the Hansard report a year later. of the men of violence in North Belfast. long phone-in programmes every day. He also conducts phone-in programmes on The two peoples in the Six Counties Seamus Mallon was shocked when ‘mainland’ BBC at other times of the day, were at war with each other (as part of Tony Blair remarked to him that the diffi- raking in the money. the Anglo-Irish War) when they were cult thing about the SDLP was that it didn’t constituted into a little local ‘democracy’ have an Army. The message has finally One would have expected him to notice and required to operate a little Home Rule sunk in. In the profoundly unconstitutional that something essential to Britain is miss- system of government, which could never structure called ‘Northern Ireland’ there is ing from Northern Ireland—its political be anything but the policing of one com- no virtue in mere constitutionalism, and parties. He could not fail to notice it. But munity by the other. And the Westminster there is no vice in abstentionism. no hint of it ever issues from his lips—even political parties, which did this deed, then when he is harassing politicians from the virtuously withdrew from the Six County Northern Ireland MPs at Westminster viewpoint of British normality. region of the state, and the Ulster Unionist are spectators, except on the very rare oc- fragment of the Unionist Party was left to casions of hung Parliaments. The SDLP The Good Friday Agreement, which fester in isolation for half-a-century, until held the balance of power forty years ago. enabled the War to be ended, is a very the Nationalist minority was provoked into Gerry Fitt maintained the Labour Party strange political arrangement. The BBC making war of the State. in Office. But then he brought it down does not emphasise the strangeness which 2 makes it effective, and often seems to forget it. LETTERS TO THE EDITOR · LETTERS TO THE EDITOR· LETTERS TO THE EDITOR·

A threatened Nurses’ Strike was in the news just before the election. Its demand was parity with Britain. The DUP, when Corbyn The Sunday Times "Mainland" Edition (April 7) led with the Banner Headlines - in Office, had reduced it below parity on "Labour's hate files expose Corbyn's anti-Semite army." the grounds that the cost of living was That paper once "exposed" a former Labour Leader, Michael Foot, as a Soviet agent, lower than on the mainland. Nolan tried and was, quite rightly penalised by a British Court for its lying libel. Now that Foot is to implicate Sinn Fein in that decision in around no more, the paper's stablemate, The Times, and its columnist, Ben Macintyre, an interview with Conor Murphy. Mur- had the brass nerve to regurgitate the same poisonous garbage. The Times also peddles phy explained that it was entirely a DUP the fiction that Frank Foley of MI6, a valued collaborator with the Nazis in Berlin in decision. But, said Nolan, it must also early 1933, put his life at risk when he had the safest billet in that city up to September have been a Government decision. So 1939 (the British Embassy) to rescue Jews from his friends' clutches. Murphy tried to explain, between Nolan’s Love 'em or hate 'em whoever becomes leader of the Labour Party is considered fair interruptions, that the Departments were game for the peddlers of hate in Britain's Right-Wing Press. autonomous within their Budgets, while The last leader of the Party was accused of being anti-British, because HIS father, Nolan was determined that the awfulness Ralph Milliband, was a Marxist. A Marxist who had served Britain faithfully in her of this ‘Government’ decision should not Navy, during the Second World War. Both Ralph's sons became Ministers in a Labour be allowed stand. Government, and like their parents, made no secret of the fact that they were, and con- tinue to be, Jewish. Under the GFA arrangements there is no Margaret Hodge MP, is reported to have said that Jeremy Corbyn has not had a new Government. The ministries are autono- idea in the thirty-five years she has known him. As she appears to be one of those lead- mous Departmentsof State. The system ing the charge of anti-Semitism against their common party, it seems odd that she has is that after Elections the Parties choose taken so long for her to detect anti-Semitism in him. which Departments to take, with the Party with the most votes having the first I've met Corbyn a couple of times, once at the funeral former leader of Haringey choice, etc. The Departments do not then Council. George Meehan from Donegal, a long-serving, diligent and conscientious and cohere into a Government conducted by a non-grandstanding public representative, and once in an Irish pub. Corbyn championed Cabinet but are conducted autonomously the righting of wrongs done to, for instance, to the Birmingham Six, and the ending of by the parties. Each Department is given the causes of wars in Ireland and other victims of Imperial policies. a Budget, but the Minister is entitled to spend it as desired. In 2016 I attended the 80th Anniversary of "The Battle of Cable Street" where resi- dents, Irish and Jewish and others, stopped Mosley's Blackshirts (favourites of The Daily The nearest thing to a Government is Mail) from rampaging through the area). Jeremy Corbyn was there. Hardly evidence of the requirement that there should by a First anti-Semitism. Incidentally, we had near neighbours and friends, an old Jewish couple, Minister, but not a Prime Minister, chosen then in the Labour Party, who always celebrated St Patrick's Day, having met at a dance by agreement (which is to say that it goes organised on that festival by the Communist Party in the East End in the 1930s. to the largest party in Stormont); and Donal Kennedy also a Second Minister, the Deputy First Minister, on a par with the First. Editorial Note: We remember the British, now 'Oh so politically-correct', media offering then Labour Leader Ed Milliband a bacon sandwich to eat in front of the TV cameras, to test how Legislation by the Assembly is subject Jewish he was! to a “Petition of Concern” by either of the officially recognised national com- by overwhelming it with ‘Others’ in a Six be part of a state. Northern Ireland, is not, munities. County election. But, if it did that, the never was, and never could be a state. And There have been no Ministers since Others would then have to decide whether there are only two states available for it to early January 2017 because Sinn Fein will they were Orange or Green. be part of. The relationship between those not agree to the appointment of Arlene two states is in the process of undergoing Foster as First Minister unless she agrees It is not possible in modern times not to a great change. that there should be an Irish Language Act, which was previously agreed but not implemented. Corrections to Irish Political Review, The Alliance Party, which affects to be neither Orange nor Green, made substan- December 2019: tial gains in the British Election, but that is irrelevant to the GFA. Page 2, Col. 2, Line 3: DUP should read SDLP. In Six County affairs Orange and Green are the substance of things. That was always the case. The GFA only forma- Page 2, Col. 3, Line 5" reference should be to national lised it and devised a system for it. The 'territory' Alliance deplores it but could only end it 3 (Continuing our series on the events of 1919 with the help of the daily newspaper of the First Dail, the Irish Bulletin.) LEST WE FORGET (13) THE FOLLOWING ARE THE ACTS OF AGGRESSION COMMITTED IN IRELAND BY THE MILITARY AND POLICE OF THE USURP ING ENGLISH GOVERNMENT AS REPORTED IN THE DAILY PRESS FOR THE WEEK ENDING JANUARY 3rd, 1920. S u m m a r y. Date:- Dec. 29th 30th 31st Jan.1st 2nd 3rd Total.

Raids:- 1 25 2 - 1 5 34. Arrests:- 3 5 2 - 3 - 13. Sentences:- - - 1 6 1 1 9. Proclamations & Suppressions - - - - 1 4 5. Armed Assaults:- 1 - 1 1 - 3. Courtmartials:- 1 - - - - - 1. Murder 1 - - - - - 1.

Daily Total:- 7 30 5 7 6 10 66. The sentences passed on political offenders during the above six days totalled 2 years and 3 months.

MONDAY, DECEMBER 29th, 1919. an armoured car to a military court of inquisition. Raids:- Murder:- Armed police raided the residence of Mr. P. J. Berrills of At an Inquest held at King George V’s Hospital, Dublin Dundalk, Co. Louth with the object of re-arresting him. into the cause of the death of Lawrence Kennedy, four Mr. Berrills who was not at home was recently soldiers concerned in the murder were examined. Their sentenced to 12 months imprisonment with hard labour evidence showed that they got nervous at the supposed for having in his possession seditious documents. He sounds of firing, that they made a sortie from the has been twice released from prison owing to serious Viceregal Grounds on to the public road which is almost illness arising from ill-treatment there. half a mile distant from the Viceregal Lodge; that they Arrests:- challenged the first civilian they saw; that he was deaf, Three unknown men were suddenly surrounded while and being unable to answer a challenge he did not hear passing through one of the gates of the Phoenix Park, he was promptly shot; that while on the ground he did Dublin and were arrested and taken to the Bridewell not seem to be dead so the corporal in charge of the police barracks. No charge was preferred against them. party fired another shot into him “to finish him off”; Courtmartials:- that almost half an hour after when a relief party of Mr. C. O’Mahony, Ahiohill, Co. Cork, was at Cork City twenty men came to the scene Kennedy, who was lying courtmartialled on a charge of having in his possession a face downward on the grass still showed signs of life copy of the official organ of the Irish Volunteers. and the leader of the relief party fired into his head at Armed Assault:- point blank range. The Jury in their verdict declared M u r d e r - In the early hours of the morning of “Lawrence Kennedy was killed on his way home by a Sunday, December 28th, Lawrence Kennedy, while military patrol and we consider that the military acted in walking to his home along the public thoroughfare a most heartless manner”. through the Phoenix Par was set upon by four soldiers Militarism:- and a Lieutenant. Before he realised that he was being “The Irish Times”, chief organ of English propaganda in challenged he was shot. After lying fatally wounded Ireland, commenting on this date on the murder of upon the public road for half an hour he was finally Lawrence Kennedy, says: - “It is clear that Lawrence dispatched by shots fired into his prostrate body by one Kennedy was shot by the military patrol. . . . . Kennedy of the military in whose custody he was. was almost certainly innocent of any design on anybody’s life or property”. The London “Daily TUESDAY, DECEMBER 30th, 1919. Express” of this date commenting upon the same Raids:- occurrence says: - “The whole business suggests an Armed police in large numbers carried out many raids amateur soldiering and a lax discipline which we should on private houses at Enniscorthy, Co. Wexford. In all not expect at the Viceregal Lodge. It has been some twenty-five houses were forcibly entered and lamentable in its effects”. The London “Daily News” searched. says:- Arrests:- “The men (i.e. the soldiers) were frightened and not At the Phoenix Park, Dublin, three men and two women responsible for their actions. . . . . It is the only defence were surrounded by fully armed troops and carried off in to the charges of brutality confirmed in disgusting detail and brought to Mountjoy Prison, Dublin. No charge has by their own accounts.” been preferred against him. Sentences:- WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 31st, 1919. Mr. Felix Connolly of Fincoil, (Fourcuil?, JL), Co. Cork, Raids:- was sentenced by courtmartial held at Cork on Dec. Armed police raided the premises of Mr. Tim Cronin, 20th, 1919, to six months imprisonment with hard Kenmore, Co. Kerry, for copies of the “Watchword of labour, for having in his possession two copies of the Labour”. Military engineers raided the offices of the official organ of the Irish Volunteers. Dublin Corporation and placed barbed wire outside the Proclamations and Suppressions:- windows of the Town Clerk’s Office. At Youghal, Co. Cork, a proclamation was posted Arrests:- prohibiting all New Years Eve Celebrations. Extra Mr. Tim Cronin, Newsagent, Kenmore, Co. Kerry, was police were drafted into the town to enforce the arrested and taken to the barracks by a force of armed proclamation. police for having in his possession copies of “The Militarism:- Watchword of Labour”. Mr. John Wesly Burns The London “Evening Standard” declares that the 1st mentioned below was arrested. Battalion of the Coldstream Guards are to be sent from Sentence:- London to Dublin, to be followed speedily by other Mr. John Wesley Burns, pharmaceutical chemist, 21 battalions of guards. Private Heaps was, at Castlebar, Kings Inn Street, Dublin, was sent to prison for one Co. Mayo, shot dead by Private Harpington, a Sentry. month by Mr. Lupton, English-paid police magistrate, Harpington in his evidence at the Coroner’s enquiry for taking part in a demonstration by chemists’ assistants stated that the believed when firing at Heaps that he who are on Strike, against the attitude of their (Heaps) was a civilian. employers. Mr. Burns when asked to pay a fine of 40/- Armed Assault:- said – “I will not pay any fine or give any undertaking, I At Blarney, Co. Cork, two policemen named Donoughoe will do what I have been doing – calling attention to the and Moore, were, by English appointed Magistrates, wrong conditions under which we have been working”. unanimously convicted of assaulting a bar-keeper who refused to give them drink under the influence of which THURSDAY, JANUARY 1st, 1920. they already were. They were fined 20/- each. NOTE:- Sentences:- It will be remembered that on April 8th, 1919, four Mr. John O’Reilly, 89 Chord Road, Drogheda, was young men were courtmartialled on a charge of sentenced by courtmartial, held on December 20th, to assaulting two constables by trying their hands two months’ imprisonment for having ammunition in his and disarming them. Twenty reliable witnesses possession. Patrick Molloy, Murragh, Rahan, was proved that none of the four men were near the scene of sentenced by district courtmartial held in Dublin on the occurrence when the tying was done. Yet these December 19th to four months’ imprisonment for having were sentenced to 3 years penal servitude and one in his possession ammunition and a seditious document. to twelve months hard labour. Further, on December Messrs. Owen Jackson, Ed Horgan, Peter Young and 13th, 1919, the following sentences were passed upon Wm. Barry were returned for trial at Cork, on a charge five young men who were charged with assaulting and of obtaining possession of a rook rifle. They will be kept disarming two constables:- One was sentenced to 3 years in prison until next March when the assizes at which penal servitude, and the other four to terms of they are to be tried will be held. imprisonment with hard labour ranging from 11 months Armed Assaults:- to 9 months. Armed police barricaded with ropes the public highway at Ballyconnell, Co. Cavan. All traffic was SATURDAY, JANUARY 3rd, 1920. stopped and searched and passers-by questioned. Raids:- Ill-treatment of Prisoners:- The offices of the New Ireland Assurance Society, 56 No letter has been received from Alderman Kelly, Lr. O’Connell Street, Dublin, were raided by a large Member of the Irish Parliament for St. Stephen’s Green armed force of military and police. Offices, documents, Division, Dublin, since he was deported and drawers and files were ransacked by Detectives and imprisoned, without trial, in Wormwood Scrubbs. A Police. Christmas parcel sent by his sister was not delivered – NOTE:- This Assurance Society was formed to develop neither was it returned. His relatives have been Irish Insurance upon an Irish basis. The members of the informed that no visit can be permitted for three months. Directorate of this Society have, since its formation, been the objects of deportation, arrest and savage FRIDAY, JANUARY 2nd, 1920. sentences for political “offences”. The residence of Mr. Armed police raided the Hotel at Birr, King’s County. B. O’Connor, Building Contractor, 1 Brendan Road, Arrests:- Donnybrook, Dublin, was raided by military and police. John Riordan and Denis Herlihy were arrested at All apartments, out offices, garden, etc. were thoroughly Millstreet, Co. Cork on a charge of unlawful assembly. examined. Seizures were made of election literature and Mr. J. Twohy of Sligo was arrested at Birr, King’s Co., canvassing books. Mr. O’Connor is one of the Sinn Fein Candidates for the forthcoming Municipal Elections. at the office of the Sinn Fein Bank and read the closing Police raided Liberty Hall, the headquarters of the Irish notice to the Manager. The Sinn Fein Bank is a properly Transport Workers’ Union, and seized all copies of the registered Company, carrying on business with the other current issue of “The Watchword of Labour”. On the Banks in the City, and has no power to close except by arrival at Cork of the American Steamer, “Lake Gretna”, direction of the Share-holders. The Bank is directed on a force of police went aboard and seized all the ship’s co-operative lines by a limited Company, with the object arms, consisting of 6 pistols belonging to the officers. of developing Irish Industries, and has no connection Police searched the house of Mr. Thomas Butler, with the political organisation known as Sinn Fein. Turtulla, Thurles. Mr. Butler, who was not in at the Police have served a closing notice on the Young time, was recently released in ill-health from Mountjoy Republican Club of Sligo. The members had previously Gaol. been ordered to remove a signboard with the inscription Suppressions:- “I.R. 1916”. The offices of Dail Eireann (Irish Republican Sentences:- Government) at 76 Harcourt Street, were entered by a Owen Hand, Shop Assistant, Kilcorney, Belturbet, was Police Inspector accompanied by Constables, and the sentenced at Cavan to two months’ imprisonment on a Caretaker was informed that the Police had been charge directed by the “competent military authority” to insist of having seditious documents in his possession. upon the closing of the premises. A Police Inspector Militarism:- accompanied by Constables entered the Sinn Fein The Housing Committee of the Dublin Corporation, of Headquarters and informed the Caretaker’s wife that the which Ald. T. Kelly, M.P., now imprisoned without trial competent military authority had directed the police to in Wormwood Scrubbs, is Chairman, applied for his insist upon the closing of the premises. The caretaker’s attendance at an important meeting of the Committee, to wife who lives on the premises with her husband and sanction the building of 650 New Houses. The Chief three young children informed the Inspector that she had Secretary intimated to the Lord Mayor that Alderman no other place for her family. The Inspector also called Kelly would not be permitted to attend this meeting. ______The following are the Acts of Aggression committed In Ireland by the Military and Police of the Usurping English Government as reported in the Daily Press, for week ending JANUARY 10th, 1920 S u m m a r y. Date: 5th 6th 7th 8th 9th 10th Total.

Raids:- 25 4 155 3 52 31 270. Arrests:- - - 6 6 1 1 14. Sentences:- - 2 1 4 - - 7. Deportations:- - - 4 - - - 4. Armed Assaults:- 2 1 - - - - 3.

Daily Total:- 27 7 166 13 53 32 298.

The sentences passed for political offences during the above six days totalled 2 years and 9 months.

MONDAY, JANUARY 5th, 1920. war-equipment, accompanied by armoured car, patrolled Raids:- the streets of the town. Police, in Dublin City, entered some twenty-five Militarism:- Newsagents shops and confiscated part of the stock. The Rt. Hon. G. F. Masterman, ex-member of British Armed Assaults:- Cabinet, in the course of an article in the London Daily English troops in Phoenix Park, Dublin, seeing a News, writes:- “It is not conceivable that the present regimental cook proceeding to his barracks at Island government of Ireland by the Sword can be permanent – Bridge, mistook him for a civilian and fired upon him. if for no better reason because English taxpayers will not The firing aroused the troops stationed in the Park and be willing to pay for it indefinitely”. The same writer its neighbourhood and promiscuous firing continued for commenting upon the prevailing unrest in Ireland says it over an hour. An armoured car carrying searchlights “is possible only as an answer to the tyranny which has patrolled the Park roads until dawn. At Maryborough, evoked it”. Queen’s county, armed police attacked a motor-drivers Strike picket, who, in connection with the Strike against TUESDAY, JANUARY 6th, 1920. the Motor Permits Order, had held up a motor cycle. Raids:- Several of the picket were injured, one so severely that Several Motor Garages in Cork City were raided by he was detained in hospital. After the attack large police. bodies of armed police and troops in full Sentences:- In the first letter which Ald. T. Kelly, M.P., has been Patrick Daly of Charleville Parade, Tullamore, King’s permitted to send out from Wormwood Scrubbs since Co., and Malachy Lynam of Chapel Street, Tullamore, his deportation, without trial, on December 12th, he were sentenced by District Courtmartials, held in states that he received a letter, posted on December 23rd, Dublin, on 22nd December, 1919, each to six months on January 1st., that he was not allowed to read letters hard labour on a charge of possessing a revolver without from his relatives, the Governor of the prison reading a permit from the English military. but parts of such letters to him. No food that was sent to Armed Assault:- the prison for him had been given to him. Dr. Keane, Medical Officer of Ennistymon, Co. Clare, Militarism:- was shot by police while proceeding in his motor car to The Manchester Guardian special correspondent in visit a patient. Dublin writes:- “There are almost as many soldiers to be Militarism:- seen any night in Dublin as in a British base like Calais Mr. George Bernard Shaw, commenting on the at the height of the war”. attempted assassination of Lord French, in an article in the “Irish Statesman” says: - “When such incidents used THURSDAY, JANUARY 8th, 1920. to occur in Russia. . . . the English papers notably the Raids:- “Times” used simply to ask Tsardom what it expected if Military and police raided the Headquarters of the it suppressed every popular liberty”. National Government of Ireland, 76 Harcourt Street, Dublin. The staff was ejected and military engineers WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 7th, 1920. proceeded to board up all doors and windows. The Raids:- damage done in the process amounted to a large sum. Large bodies of fully armed military and police raided Similar operations were carried out at 6 Harcourt Street, upwards of a hundred houses in Carrigtwohill, Co. Cork, the Headquarters of Sinn Fein organisation. These latter and the neighbouring districts. At Inchigeela in the same premises are the property of the Sinn Fein Bank, a County, some fifty private houses were similarly raided. properly registered Limited Company. The offices of Armed police raided the Forrester’s Hall, Enniskillen, the Bank were also boarded up. Such closing of a Bank Co. Fermanagh, and searched it. Military and police is illegal, even under English law. For the second time raided, at one o’clock in the morning, four private within a week the Dublin Offices of the New Ireland houses at Dundalk, Co. Louth. The Licensed premises of Assurance Company were raided by military and police. Mr. Peter Kelly, at Ashtown Co. Dublin, was raided by Recent events make it clear that these raids are the result Military and police. of a definite policy of Industrial suppression. On Friday, Arrests:- January 2nd, this Assurance Company’s premises were Messrs. Garland, Clair, Flood and Kenny, four members raided by large bodies of troops and police. On of the Irish Automobile Drivers and Mechanics Union Monday, January 5th, Mr. J. Hoey, Superintendent of the were arrested at Dundalk, Co. Louth, on a charge of Company, was arrested at Bray and deported without unlawful assembly. The Union to which these men trial. Warrants are known to have been recently issued belong is on Strike against the Motor Permits Order, by for other prominent officials of the Company who have which Chauffeurs may not drive a motor car without a consequently to remain in hiding. During the year 1919 permit from the English Military. The four men were several of the Directors of the Company have been subsequently put on trial when it was proved that they arrested and sentenced on trumpery political charges, or had been arrested on a false charge. They were released. deported without trial while agents of the Company all Mr. Bartle. Kelly, of Ashtown, Co. Dublin, was arrested over Ireland have been arrested and imprisoned for on an unknown charge. Mr. James J. Hoey of Bray, Co. various form of “sedition”. The explanation of this Wicklow, a Sinn Fein Candidate in the forthcoming unrelenting effort to break what is purely a business Municipal Elections, was arrested on his way to business venture is found in the fact that the New Ireland on a charge which has not been disclosed. Assurance Company has succeeded since its Sentence:- establishment in taking over business which in the Mr. Cornelius O’Mahoney, of Ahiohill, Co. Cork, was ordinary course would have fallen to English firms in sentenced by Courtmartial held at Cork, on December Ireland. It is known that Agents of these firms have 24th, to six months’ imprisonment for having in his used their influence with the English Government possession a copy of the official organ of the Irish officials in Ireland to secure the suppression of this Irish Volunteers. rival. Deportations:- Arrests- Four men whose names have not been published were At Midleton, Co. Cork, five young men named Maurice deported to England, on the Mail Boat which left Horgan, John Aherne, Joseph Aherne, C. White, and Kingstown on the night of January 6th. Michael Hallinan, were arrested at their work on a Treatment of Prisoners:- charge of being concerned with a raid on Carrigtwohill The forty political prisoners in Cork Jail have gone on Police Barracks. They were subsequently proved to have hunger strike as a protest against their treatment in that had nothing to do with it and having been held in prison. custody for some time were released. At Kilmurray, Co. Cork, Mr. F. Begley was arrested by soldiers and police train. Having taken him into custody they searched his and taken under escort to Cork on an unknown charge. pockets and subsequently released him without any Sentences:- explanation. At Clonmel, Co. Tipperary, Messrs. Thos. Cuddihy, Deportations:- Patrick Drew and Harry Burke, were each sentenced to It is learned that Mr. J. J. Hoey, Superintendent of the two months’ imprisonment for unlawful assembly. Mr. New Ireland Assurance Society has been deported to John Foley, for unlawful assembly at the same place and Wormwood Scrubbs Prison, England, without any trial. occasion, was sentenced to three months with hard Mr. Hoey has not been informed of the charge upon labour. The police evidence was that they came upon a which he was arrested. He and Mr. Bartle. Kelly were group of twenty young men whom they dispersed. among the four men whose deportation is mentioned When the men had gone an empty tin was found on the under January 7th of this list. ground. The evidence produced laughter in the court. Treatment of Prisoners:- Armed Assault:- In Cork Jail the prisoners who are on hunger strike as a Dr. Keane of Ennistymon, Co. Clare, who was shot by protest against their treatment are rapidly failing in police at Ballyvaughan in that County stated in an health. Three of the prisoners have been removed to interview that the police did not challenge him before hospital. Two of those removed to hospital are Peter they fired; that they kept up a rapid fire upon his car for Young a boy not yet sixteen years of age, and Ed. over twenty minutes, during which time the Chauffeur Horgan aged seventeen, both of whom have been and himself lay on the floor of the car for cover; that the imprisoned for several months without having been police knew the motor car in which he was driving was a convicted of any offence. doctor’s car; that when they had broken his arm they Militarism:- expressed no regret and tried to force him in his The London Daily Herald’s special Correspondent in collapsed condition to attend one of their own men who Ireland writing on January 8th said in a comment upon was much less severely hurt. The police poured their the dismissal of the Inspector General of the Royal Irish fusillade into Dr. Keane’s car from behind a wall. Constabulary: “There is no room in the Castle (Dublin Treatment of Prisoners:- Castle) to-day for men who would not be whole- Mr. John Wesley Burns previously mentioned in these heartedly in accord with any policy of violence which lists went on hunger-strike last Sunday as a protest the Punjab Party is contemplating”. against his treatment. He has been removed to the prison hospital in a dangerous condition. SATURDAY, JANUARY 10th, 1920. Militarism:- Raids:- Captain Wedgewood Benn, English Member of At Tuam, Co. Galway, and in the neighbouring districts, Parliament who recently visited Ireland, writes to the armed police raided upwards of a score of house. Armed Edinburgh “Evening News”:- “The fact is Castle police raided the residence at Lower Road, Cork, of Mr. Government in Ireland is infamous. Men are spirited T. Dinan, district Manager of the New Ireland away without cause or trial, children arrested for selling Assurances Society. Every room was searched but flags or whistling derisively at the police; fairs or nothing incriminating was found. In Shandon district of markets on which the whole agricultural population Cork City, armed police raided five houses. The depend for their livelihood are stupidly suppressed residence of Mr. Peter Kenny, Irish teacher was raided at without cause. This fatuous reign of ineffective coercion Lissinagroagh, Co. Leitrim. The residence at Cork of brings in its inevitable train crime and outrage and the Mr. L. Ivers, was raided and searched by armed police. criminals appear to be about the only persons who Armed police raided three garages in Dublin City and escape Mr. MacPherson’s clutches”. “The whole world dismantled all the motor cars found on the premises. is staring at our Prussian experiment of Dublin Castle, Arrest:- and wondering how much longer it will be before we At Belturbet, Co. Cavan, Mr. Hugh McMahon of practice what we preach about small nations” Barrack Hill, was arrested and brought under armed Manchester Guardian. guard to Belfast prison. No charge was made against him. FRIDAY, JANUARY 9th, 1920. Militarism:- Raids:- “How can we talk of self-determination for small nations Armed police raided the private houses of over fifty when we think of the scandal and tragedy of Military farmers at Togher, Co. Galway. In not one of the houses oppression in Ireland”. – Sir John Simon, Ex-Member thus forcibly entered was anything incriminating found. of the English Cabinet, speaking at Manchester on At Baltinglass, Co. Wicklow, armed military and police January 9th. The Daily Mail commenting upon the raided the two local Motor Garages and dismantled all dismissal of the Inspector General, R.I.C. says:- “Under the motor cars found there. the new command there is a possibility that the R.I.C. Arrests:- which is at present a semi-military force will be Armed detectives accosted Mr. P. J. Ward, Member of supplemented by drafts of regular troops, throughout the the Irish Parliament for South Donegal, at the Great entire country, the whole force being under military Northern Terminus, Derry, as he was about to enter the control”. The O'Connor Column

Sweeney Astray: Social Democracy And Historical Fictions

Europe, Paul Sweeney—former- when the Soviet Union itself disappeared “The SD leadership was heavily influ- ly of Sinn Féin the Workers’ Party and then in 1991. But even aside from the pressure enced by the dominant ideas of the milieux the Labour Party, and a long time SIPTU of the Soviet threat—which the framers in which it operated … All politicians and later ICTU economist—sought to of the Marshall Plan very specifically including SDs bowed to the concept of identified as what needed countering— democratic delegation whereby sovereign account for the historic achievements of governments hand power over vital parts “social democracy” was very far from European social democracy, its spectacular of the economy to unelected technocrats recent demise and the challenges to it from being “the most powerful political force in institutions like the ECB and the EU “conservatism” and latterly right-wing in Europe”, turning its “nation states Commission with its Fiscal Compact”. populism (‘The Collapse of European into welfare states”. It was Christian Social Democracy’, Oct. 2018). In ­another Democrats (Sweeney’s “conservatives”), He pleads for a social democratic revival two-part piece he applied the same social sometimes acting with Social Democrats, based on a return “to its roots around the democracy/conservative paradigm he who largely built the welfare states and strong state over the market”. This would saw in Europe to account for Ireland’s collective bargaining systems of the post- “oversee trade, regulate financial flows historic economic take-off from 1987, its war Social Europe, notably in France, Italy and overall finance, protect the vulner- collapse in 2008 and subsequent revival and Germany. able” and “harness the power of the state (‘Ireland’s route from boom to bubble to The term “conservatism” is only margin­ for all citizens to address the excesses of bust’, and ‘Ireland’s recovery: from bust ally useful. Christian Democrats were not the market”, also ensuring “world class to buoyancy’, ‘Social Europe’, Oct. 2019). “conservatives” in the anti-social sense public services” and “individual liberty”. It doesn’t work. implied by Sweeney, as they largely created But surely there are few mainstream cen- Sweeney presents post-war Europe the new “social market economies”—the trist parties in Europe that do not stand as shaped by the political dichotomy of essence of the “Social Europe” idea—on for some version of all of that. On the “social democracy” vs. “conservatism”, the basis of principles of “Christian soli- one that has decided to take it further to- with the former the driving force: “­ Social darity”, specifically as the viable alterna- wards what Sweeney proposes—Corbyn’s ­Democracy (SD) has been the most tive to the wreckage of actual European Labour Party—he remains conspicuously power­ful political force in Europe since conservatism, which had disgraced itself silent.‘ Social Europe’, which I believe the ­Second World War. It turned the na- through collusion with fascism. This is closely allied to mainstream European tion state into the welfare state. Its politics ­politically functional ­philosophy was social democracy, has been no friend of built the welfare state and healthcare sys- built by integrating Catholic community Corbynism. tems in West European countries. Along and social values with capitalist industrial with conservatism it was one of the twin modernisation, producing welfare states But it is in applying his social demo- pillars of European democracy.” and social partnership. This social capital- cratic/conservative paradigm to Ireland ism was initially opposed by many social that the weakness of Sweeney’s thesis Is this really credible? If by “social democrats as a mere thinly veiled capitalist really exposes itself. democracy (SD)” and “conservatism” he “restoration”, but it subsequently became, He describes the “remarkable ascent means general tendencies, he has a work- and remains, the ­programme of modern from a poor EU country to one of the rich- able hypothesis, but if—as seems to be the “social democracy”, as indeed it does of est, with employment and living standards case—he means by them the actual social the “conservative” Christian Democrats. for workers doubling in just two decades” democratic/labour and Christian/ conser- Hence the current stalemate, as all they that occurred in Ireland from 1987. All vative parties, then he certainly has not. seem to differ on is points of style and was well with the new growth paradigm The force that propelled post-war European emphasis. “based on sound economic policies” until development was socialised capitalism 1997 when it began to swerve off-course by as a workable alternative to Soviet-style Europe’s social democratic parties, in adapting to “procyclical neoliberalism”. planned economies, and essential to hold evolving towards Christian democratic Despite this error, he concedes that “the the Soviet—i.e. the internal communist— “social capitalism”, buckled when after the Irish crash was not on the main-street “threat” at bay. Social forces applied gen- Soviet collapse a deregulated capitalism economy but in finance, banking, construc- eral pressure on the capitalist recovery of a became the global mode, weakening the tion and property”. This is very true, and post-war Europe under American capitalist European welfare/collective bargaining is a point continually made during the hegemony on the principle of “après nous systems. Social democratic parties—in actual crisis by this journal, against the then la deluge”—accommodate us or you get Britain, Germany and elsewhere—were dominant catastrophist “Left” narrative Bolshevism. During the halcyon days of as involved in this dismantling every bit peddled by the Irish Times and others. the “Keynesian consensus” (1945-78), the as much as they had once been involved major leftist pressure in two of Europe’s in their construction. As Sweeney—who Sweeney argues, correctly, that the Irish largest states—France and Italy—were not essentially accepts this, despite his illu- economic take-off was only marginally due social democratic at all, but Communist sions about the historic role of “social to low Corporation Tax or EU transfers— Parties, which, predictably, evaporated democracy”—puts it, though both “helped”—with many other 9 policy factors more important. The “big- Every aspect of the subsequent “Celtic to target high-value FDI sectors, luring gest factor boosting Ireland’s economy to Tiger”, down to the details of EU funding these to Ireland precisely as a “forward exceptionally high growth and employment programmes, the IDA strategy, the IFSC base” from which to exploit the coming was its immediate, open access to the 500 gamble, the education breakthroughs, Single Market (a future Column will trace million consumers and millions of firms the globalisation of companies such as this in detail). But nowhere in Sweeney’s in the EU’s single market after 1992”, Kerry, the urban regeneration schemes, ­account is this referred to or Haughey well exploited by a “positive attitude to the attraction of Intel and others, the new even mentioned. globalisation and a highly interventionist industrial relations, equality and social It should be said that the first Partnership state promotion agency, IDA Ireland”. policies—each and every one was inau- Agreement of 1987-90, the Programme The basis for the take off was laid first gurated by that Government, and specifi- for National Recovery (PNR), was fol- by “curbing the rampant inflation of the cally by Haughey, often having to cajole lowed by a further one, the Programme late 1970s and 80s” and then adopting and browbeat reluctant Ministers. Fianna for Economic and Social Progress (PESP) a range of extraordinarily innovative Fail under Haughey was maybe a very 1991-94. The latter fine-tuned the PNR growth strategies. This occurred at least European Christian/Social democratic and added a comprehensive programme of partly through Social Partnership, which party after all? welfare-state building. But it was framed mobilised all kinds of productive factors, as a ten-year project, with subordinate far-sighted “investment in education, Reluctant ministers were not Haughey’s agreements to be concluded each third political stability, good regulation, good only problem. Chief among his opponents year under it. The template for the entire services such as banking and insurance, were Sweeney’s self-describing “social 1990s decade was thus set in that final and favourable taxes”. These “helped democrats”. Labour had adopted a view Haughey agreement, with subsequent to create a virtuous circle, which gener- since the early 1980s that economic Governments simply tweaking, bending ated the key Tiger phase of economic policy didn’t really matter. What mattered or distorting the model. progress.” was ridding Ireland of the “cancer” of Haughey and Fianna Fáil (thus Labour Sweeney’s Haughey-denial and Part- But who did all this? The “social demo- Leader Dick Spring in the Dáil in 1990, nership-denial is not unique. Irish com- crats”? He doesn’t tell us. His only actual almost identically parroting Cluskey’s mentators are unable to write Irish his- reference to political forces is a denuncia- similar comments of a decade previously). tory from the 1970s, as they suffer from tion of “Fianna Fáil (FF), a traditional When the first Partnership Agreement what we might call a “Clementis’s hat” conservative governing party”, which, in was facing ratification by ICTU member syndrome in relation to Haughey. Milan alliance with “a small neoliberal outrider, Unions in late 1987, Spring, Barry Des- Kundera’s famous story—the only one the Progressive Democrats (PDs)”, inau- mond and other Labour leaders and TDs this writer ever learned anything of any gurated the deplorable “neoliberal third joined in the Fine Gael/PD chorus urging use from—concerned the airbrushing phase in 1997”, which led to the crash. them to reject it, which they very nearly of a purged Czech Communist leader, On the other hand, the saintly “outgoing did. (The Irish Times commented that it Clementis, from a photograph, in which ‘rainbow’ coalition, …dominated by the was probably saved “by a few thousand his hat survived in the picture, as he had other main conservative party, Fine Gael” ITGWU votes”). Bill Attley, a leading given it to his colleague – and later purger, had been “constrained by its social-dem- Union figure, was howled down at the Clement Gottwald, to protect him from ocratic partners, Labour and Democratic 1987 Labour Party Conference for his the wintery cold The cynical Czech writer Left … Had the prudent economic policies “betrayal” in entering a Social Partnership powerfully employed this image to illus- of the first two Tiger phases, 1987-2000, with the Haughey Government. When the trate the essential lie at the heart of much been sustained over the third phase by Agreement came up for review in January of post-war Eastern Europe’s communist the government elected in 1997, Ireland 1990, Labour and the Workers’ Party (then history-spinning. probably would have had a soft landing hurriedly transitioning to its post-Soviet Applying this to the Irish case, we can amid the global financial crisis.” “DL” guise) again urged Trade Unionists represent the powerful economic trans­ This parable will not do. We can leave to vote down “this so-called programme formation inaugurated by Haughey as his aside this month the account of the post- for national recovery”. It was a pathetic hat, a stubborn fact that won’t go away from 1997 period. What about the actual growth display. Needless to say, the obvious suc- the historic picture from which he himself period, which Sweeney fairly accurately cess of the Partnership system led these has been comprehensively airbrushed, describes in terms of its achievements? He self-declared social democrats to rapidly or purged, by ideologists like Sweeney. ascribes this to a welfare-state expanding, change their tune by 1991. This airbrushing had already started in mixed economy model, “sound economic It might be added that Sweeney’s the 1990s, when a volume by leading policies” and astute policies exploiting the “post-1992” bit is presumably meant to economists on the transformation, edited globalist opportunities of mobile capital nudge the reader’s conception of the Irish by Frank Barry, could describe the many and the single market (“after 1992”) revival towards the period when his social radical policy changes made without once through a “positive attitude to globalisa- tion and a highly interventionist state democrats secured a rather minor role in mentioning Haughey and only briefly and promotion agency”. government. In fact the key moment of obtusely mentioning Social Partnership. the Irish recovery had already occurred Sweeney’s own books on public enterprise This is all true. But where did it come in 1987, not only in the multiple policy and privatisation similarly make no refer- from? Even his “1992” is a sleight of hand. decisions of Haughey’s Government that ence (other than a very few pejorative ones) The fact is that each one of those policies year referred to already, but also in con- to Haughey at all. was introduced in a spectacular series of sciously deciding to pre-empt the Single But Haughey in fact had even been initiatives by the Haughey Government in Market by fast-tracking capital liberalisa- central to this pet topic of Sweeney’s. just a few months in 1987 and stubbornly tion and moving the IDA from its focus He halted the privatising zeal of other pursued over the following five years. on indigenous manufacture specifically Ministers and top civil servants in 1988, 10 greatly expanded the venture capital flict in 1970s Ireland can be seen as one ages of things exploding and other people and subsidiary enterprises of the State between rival forms of social democracy: dying (the experience doesn’t extend to Companies, and established several new Fianna Fáil which advocated a corporatist ­being actually shot through the leg or hav- ones, notably Coillte, FÁS and Teagasc. state-business-labour base to drive policy; ing your stomach ripped open by shrapnel). Coillte drove a substantial revival of Irish Fine Gael with its “liberal crusade” but near It is computer-game consumer violence. forestry and timber processing. In 1990 Thatcherite economic policy orthodoxy; But throughout the exhibition there was Haughey concluded a far-reaching “deal” and Labour with its welfare statism but only one real theme: that the totalitarian with the Unions—essentially through his profound hostility to corporatism. The Nazi and Soviet dictatorships jointly con- ally, SIPTU’s John Carroll—which took outstanding social democrat was in fact spired to engineer the conflagration. They privatisation off the agenda for a decade Haughey, who combined a dynamic growth allied in 1939 in the “Hitler-Stalin Pact”, and committed to the very expansion of strategy through globalised capitalism with specifically to destroy Poland and impose State industries which Sweeney lauds in a mixed economy and expansion of an their “totalitarian” “terror dictatorships” his books without referring to any role of enabling welfare state that diverged from on the continent. Haughey in it. The slippery road to the Labour’s British ‘dependency’ model. In The exhibition deals little with the ac- privatisations of the post-1997 period this he found reliable allies among the tual military events of the war, focusing only began with some decisions made most dynamic sections of the industrial largely instead on brutalities and crimes of by the Bruton-led “Rainbow Coalition” class and the nationalist section of the extermination. The Column was surprised of 1994-97. Trade Unions. to see the exhibition at least acknowledge the ghastly fate of millions of Soviet Sweeney’s Haughey-denialism leads soldiers taken prisoner by the Germans him to resort to that hairy old chestnut of Poland’s ghoulish in 1941-42. But the emphasis, approved ascribing everything good that happened in horror show by the prominent EU stamp of approval the economic take-off to the brilliance of The Column recently had cause to visit on the museum, is Poland’s critical role a single, small State agency, the IDA. The Poland. It is a country the Column knows as the victim of the joint “totalitarian” absurdity of this would be laughable were better than most Irish people would, and on aggressors. A recent side exhibition was it not such a widespread fallacy among the which it looks with favour, though often titled “Poland: the First to Fight”. Gottwald milliners, who dominate history- with a tinge of despair at the antics of its writing in new Establishment publications ruling elites. When you enter the exhibition you are such as the Dublin Review of Books. The recent visit took the Column to immediately hustled into a smallish but Throughout the 1980s the Chief Executive Gdansk, known for centuries as Danzig. high-ceilinged room where you stand in of the IDA was Pádraic White, who was Its historic core, though smashed to a group of about thirty before a massive a central figure in Haughey’s small radi- ­smithereens at the end of the war, was screen—about 15m long and 6m high. This cal planning group that in 1982 produced carefully rebuilt in the communist era, has a short two-minute no-commentary The Way Forward, the template for the with much of its beautiful renaissance film running on a loop, composed of iconic recovery he implemented with ruthless and Prussian architecture restored. There war clips. But the ones repeated are, firstly, determination from 1987, in alliance with is nevertheless an eerie feeling walking in massive close-up, that of a British Army the major social interests in Social Partner- about this town, which is unsurprising bulldozer shoving distorted human corpses ship (and against the relentless opposition given how the population that inhabits its into a mass grave at Belsen at the end of of Sweeney’s “social democrats”). physical buildings today has little or no the war and, secondly, the exhumation White again played a central role in the connection at all with the population that of Polish officers shot by the NKVD at planning circle at the heart of the 1987 actually built them over centuries, lived Khatyn, with close-ups of their shattered Government which Pádraig — hUiginn in them until 1945 and disappeared in the skulls and scattered personal effects. orchestrated from the Department of the great ethnic re-ordering that followed. Emerging shell-shocked from this ghoulish Taoiseach in close liaison with Haughey. This is a history told locally only through introduction, the visitor then wanders down This group drove all policy making, rather far-fetched euphemisms. alley after alley of movie, poster, memora- initiating the many radical departures of It was with some trepidation therefore bilia and photographic displays, mostly of the period in close association with the that the Column betook itself to the big atrocities of one kind or the other. Film of “Second World War Museum” business and Union leaders forming the and flashy , Einsatzgruppen killing Jews in Russia are “remembrance” inner leadership of Social partnership, which, with massive EU shown on screens alongside stark film of the Central Review Committee, a group- funding, had been opened in 2008 with Soviet NKVD personnel executing “class ing relentlessly vilified in the Dáil by de much fanfare on the eve of the 70th anni- enemies” through shots to the head. The Rossa, Spring and Quinn. versary of the 1939 war. Given the revived message is it was all the same. The key anti-Russia Cold War and the virulent event instigating the war is presented as the To make any sense of what happened posturing of East European states in the EU in Ireland from the 1970s onwards needs Soviet-German Non-Aggression pact of in relation to it, the Column was expecting August 1939, from which everything else an end to Haughey-denialism, and to the some tall tales and mythologising, but was laughable reduction of him to what a friend flowed. To enter the room on the first years not quite prepared for the ghoulish horror of the war, the visitor must walk through a of this Column called “the pantomime vil- show which confronted it. lain of modern Ireland”. Clementis must narrow hallway, at least 5m high, with giant Nazi flags on one side and Soviet ones on be restored to his hat! The exhibitions at the museum are very the other, from floor to ceiling. This will also require an abandoning of stylishly “created” with state-of-the-art the simplistic fable of “social democrats” interactive and virtual technologies. You The exhibition makes no mention driving progress and mean “conserva- could even, rather ludicrously, put on a of the German-Polish alliance of the 1930s, tives” holding it up. That is a narrative Virtual Reality mask to ‘experience’ the which was part of the wider British support worthy of a nursery fairytale. Party con- middle of a battle, with much noise, and im- for the re-armament of Germany and its 11 anti-Soviet expansion policy. No men- certain permanency. milk but it is as well not to engage in eu- tion either of the sudden change in Polish Murray goes on to remind us that: - phemisms and the very pointed silences à policy in 1939 to rejecting a compromise “In Europe, Cox was elected leader of la Pat Cox about how this has come about over the small German city of Danzig, or the liberal/centrist grouping of parties, and its consequences. And Pat deserves of the “British guarantee” to Poland to becoming the first Irish person to do so. full credit for his achievements in that come to its aid if Poland were attacked by In 2002, he succeeded Nicole Fontaine regard. Germany (never fulfilled): a fake ‘guar- as president of the European Parliament, antee’ that prompted Poland to abandon and upon assuming office, set out three A p o s t Br e x i t v i s i o n compromise on Danzig in the first place. goals for his presidency. He pledged to facilitate the enlargement of the EU, to Diplomats must have a way with The Spanish civil war is presented not as raise the public profile of the parliament, words as sometimes they must try to a fascist putsch against a Republic, whose and to reform the controversial system of convince us that black is white. A former defence the Soviet Union assisted, but as excessive MEP expenses. He succeeded German ambassador to Ireland, Eckhard a trial run between the competing “dicta- in the first two.” Lübkemeier, had an opinion piece in tors”. No mention of Poland’s fulsome the Irish Times “How to make Europe Some feedback from Cox on how all support for Franco or of Soviet attempts stronger post-Brexit. Deeper integration of his goals have worked out would have to achieve a joint strategy with Poland and and shared sovereignty are needed to meet been useful but none were forthcoming. the West—which the latter rejected—to future challenges” (5/12/2019). ring-fence and contain Hitler’s Germany. The most ambitious enlargement project that he was very much a special part of was No mention either that it was the USSR He made some valid points: which saved far more Jews from the Nazis the Ukraine – but it is not mentioned. Pat than anyone else—moving 2m of them is not one to hide his light under a bushel “Brexit is a misnomer. It should be eastwards just ahead of Hitler’s invading and the silence is therefore hardly an indi- labelled Engxit for England’s exit from cation of success. And for a very obvious the European Union. Engxit will confirm forces in 1941-42. many English people never warmed to And no mention either of just what Po- reason – the EU’s approach, in which he their membership of what they regard land was at the time. It is implied that it was was a leading light, incited a civil war in as a “continental” club… Thus, if Brexit some kind of peaceable liberal-democratic that area. So silence is golden. happens, English nationalism will have haven, facing the terrible dictators. But won the day. Yet Brexit will also represent up to 1939 it was a military dictatorship, His achievement—euphemistically de- a triumph of European unity in the face engaged in talks with Germany on a joint scribed as ‘to raise the public profile of the of such nationalism and of solidarity parliament’—was quite specifically aimed with an Irish neighbour. Converting this aggression against Soviet Russia, with its triumph into lasting success will be the own aim of a “re-capture” of wide areas of at reducing the authority of the central EU key post-Brexit challenge.” Ukraine. It was also a deeply anti-Semitic institution, the heart of the EU project, regime, driving out its Jews. Indeed the the Commission. That was achieved with He then outlines the integrative meas- Polish foreign minister told Hitler privately spectacular success. ures—with regard to the Euro, budgets in 1938 that if he succeeded in “solving the etc.—that should be taken by the EU to Jewish question” in Germany by forced The European Parliament is a unique face various developments in the world emigration, Poland would erect a statue in Parliament in being responsible to nobody and these will be done because “If united Warsaw in his honour and follow suit. but itself. Europe did not exist, we would have to This topic of Polish historic duplicity is create it to seize the opportunities and one to which the Column will return. And ‘its public profile’ has continued to contain the risks inherent in these devel- rise to the extent that the Commission is opments.” now beholden to its whims. But a weaken- ing of the Commission is a weakening of This is a curious way to ensure the the EU project and as politics, like nature, success of such a unique and difficult abhors a vacuum, that leads inevitably to task as uniting 27 countries, which in- Pat Cox an increase in the power of the Member continued clude some of the oldest and most promi- States, i.e., the inter-Governmental ruling nent states of the world. In itself, it is no arrangement that the project is becom- more than wishful thinking that such a Being in a “permanent in-between-ness” is ing. hardly a sustainable position. It’s a bit like thing should happen. Europe as such is being in Limbo—and even that did not But this in-between situation cannot a ‘geographical expression’ as was once last, despite lasting for a long time. The be permanent as Cox seems to assure us. said of Italy, with plans to be otherwise. A inhabitants had to move on some years ago, Political imperatives and demands will currency and proper budgeting are neces- in 1992, to be exact. (By the way, I wonder ensure that. And the inter-Governmental sary but not in themselves a guarantee that where they were all relocated to?) agenda-setting will more and more become Europe will be integrated. the norm. It will be the central focus for How did the EU get to this position? dealing with the demands of setting the Pat Cox is right in describing it as What direction should it go from its ‘in- future direction of the association. And, being in “an in-between” state at the between-ness’? He surely does not see the more of an inter-Governmental ar- moment. The EU has maintained a this as a satisfactory long-term situa- rangement it becomes, the more unlike united front on Brexit despite every tion? But Pat is too coy to deal with any any kind of European Union in any real British effort to cause divisions. That such issues in any definite way. He takes sense it will be: despite all the fanfare was admirable but it was Macron who the typically Irish, Panglossian view that to the contrary. achieved that when he faced down Orban, whatever ‘Europe’ does is OK. He will in particular, when there was a threat to thrive in it no matter what – that is one There is no point in crying over spilt break ranks at a Council meeting last 12 year (See the Guardian report “Macron target Labour-held Leave-voting seats in puts the boot in after May's Brexit the Midlands and North of England. In the breakfast blunder”, 20.9.2018). On event this worked better than expected, in the other hand, Merkel showed all the that safe Labour seats in Wales also fell to signs of being willing to break ranks over Britain Decides continued the Tories, indicating that the force behind Brexit: and if Macron had not been Presi- Brexit was more than English nationalism. dent if France that was very likely to have Realistically, an Election called in the happened. Merkel lives in a Churchillian obstructionist tactics of the Remainers. middle of Winter as a result of Parlia- time warp. Macron as a French President Its other topics will be: Blaming Corbyn, ment’s refusal to facilitate the passage of knows that “Albion perfide” is a reality Two Irish Commentators, and the Causes the latest Withdrawal Bill after months of and recognises it when he sees it. of Brexit. Brexit deadlock could not have been other Th e El e c t i o n Ca m p a i g n than a Brexit Election. Macron, as President of France has The incoherence manifested by the plans for Europe. For example, he has Remain-supporting parties at Westmin- Wh a t t h e Re s u l t s Sh o w stopped further enlargement and sees ster became amplified during the 6-week The results show that the Tory strategy NATO as brain-dead and is making others campaign. Tactically their best bet was of targeting traditional Labour constituen- wake up to this. The only response from to minimise division between the parties cies with Leave majorities paid off: 24 the others so far has been to utter equally and agree voting arrangements constitu- safe Labour seats fell to the Conservatives, brain-dead mantras. He has plans for ency by constituency so that the Remain all of which saw double-digit swings from Europe but Europe has no plans for him vote did not end up being split. Early in Labour to the Tories. The Conservative only misguided reactions. the campaign efforts to establish a central majorities in three of these constituencies website that could advise people about the are now greater than 20 percentage points: The point is that it is individual member best tactical voting options failed. Then Dudley North (31.3 per cent), Bassetlaw states and their interactions that are more hopes were expressed that voters would (27.6 per cent) and Great Grimsby (22.2 and more determining the nature of the work out their own options without central per cent). EU. Any other view treats the EU and co-ordination. But these were dashed as Europe as abstractions. This is what it became clear that many Remainers had Another clear message from the British Eckhard Lübkemeier does – Europe is swallowed the anti-Corbyn propaganda; a electorate was the deep unpopularity of simply ‘created.’ His grasp of reality is statement by the Chief Rabbi about Labour Tory and Labour rebels who had sought to shown by his conclusion. After all his under Corbyn being anti-semitic became thwart Brexit. Dominic Grieve, frequently plans for creating an integrated EU are a major talking point. referred to very respectfully during Brexit successful, his vision encompasses a grand A sensible answer to the anti-semitic debates as the ‘Right Honourable Member climax! “There is a demanding agenda smear being used against Corbyn came for Beaconsfield’, enjoyed a high profile beyond Brexit. To borrow a phrase from from a very unlikely source in the middle and was considered the legal brains behind a cunning Brexiteer: it is high time we, of the campaign. John Taylor, now Lord many Remainer Amendments. the EU 27, get it done. Only then will the Kilclooney, of the Official Unionist Party Grieve is a pillar of the Establishment— triumph be a lasting one and a British tweeted: President of the Franco-British Society, a re-entry a promising prospect”. “I am no supporter of Jeremy Corbyn former member of the London Diocesan but I wonder are some being dishonest Synod of the Church of England, and in their allegations of anti Semitism! So all the efforts to make EU work awarded the Legion d’Honneur by the properly is make it a place fit for Britain He is opposed to Israeli policy against Palestinians, as are many Jews in Israel, French Government in 2016. He is also to be part of! The purpose of the EU is but being anti Israel is not anti Jewish!” a Senior Council barrister and a former to facilitate a State that wants nothing to (@KilclooneyJohn 5 December) Conservative Attorney General. Given do with it! It’s probably nice to live in a his obvious abilities and achievements, cloud cuckoo land of abstractions which In making that statement Taylor over- together with his high profile in the Brexit is where the EU would be if it had notions threw the natural reflexes of a lifetime debates, and given the favourable cover- like this diplomat for its future. in order to best serve a community (the age given to him by the liberal media, he Ulster unionists) that had been left in the might have been expected to retain his seat Jack Lane lurch by Johnson. Mainstream Remain- as an Independent. But Beaconsfield was ers, by comparison, seemed incapable of not impressed with its Right Honourable viewing their interests with detachment; Member. In the Election Grieve lost to a they allowed their anti-Corbyn feelings new Conservative candidate, Joy Moris- Look Up the get in the way of their anti-Brexit feelings. sey, described in the Irish Times as “an That the Conservatives gained 47 seats American immigrant and former actor who with just a 1.2 per cent increase in their starred in a low-budget comedy described Athol Books share of the vote underlines how poorly by a UK tabloid as a ‘bonk fest’, a mix tactical voting worked on the Remain side, between American Pie and a Carry On notwithstanding the effect of the first past film”. Confronted about her past, Morissey archive on the Internet the post system. laughed it off. She received 32,477 votes as against 15,765 for Grieve. Johnson faced a firestorm of media www.atholbooks.org hostility throughout the campaign which The two other rebel MPs who lost did him no harm at all. The key Tory strat- the Tory Whip in September and stood egy was to fight the election on Brexit and as Independents, former Minister David 13 Gaulke and Anne Milton, also failed to Labour had two tactical factors work- disintegrate. Had the May Deal passed into hold their seats. Former Labour MPs, ing against it in the Election: the need to Law, the Brexit division would have lost Chuka Umunna, Luciana Berger, and shift the focus away from Brexit in what its place at the top of the political agenda. Angela Smith, and former Tory MPs Sarah was always going to be a Brexit Election; In a subsequent Election campaign Labour Wollaston, Sam Gyimah, Philip Lee and and its identification with Remain. Corbyn could have hammered home the advantage Antoinette Sandbach, all of whom stood made a credible effort to present his party of being free from the shackles of the for the Lib Dems, all failed to get elected. as representative of both sides of the Br- EU’s State Aid rule, alongside the other What these defeated candidates had in exit divide but the damage had been done elements of the recent Manifesto. Having common was strong support from the pro- before the campaign started. He made the said all that, it must also be acknowledged Remain, liberal media. It seems that, in this best of the hand he was given and, when that Brexit presented unprecedented chal- instance, being supported by the Guardian/ the public rating of the final Leaders’ lenges that any party or political system Observer/London Times/Independent/ debate on TV came out as 52 per cent would have found difficult. Financial Times was the kiss of death. The for Johnson, 48 per cent for Corbyn, that British electorate clearly saw the above fairly reflected his performance through- It looks as if Corbyn will be standing mentioned former MPs—and indirectly out the campaign. While media attention down as Leader in the relatively near the anti-Brexit media—as responsible focussed on the anti-semitic slur I suspect future. While the air waves will fill up for paralyzing the political system in at- that most Labour voters recognised it for with the usual self-serving denunciations tempting to thwart the expressed will of the contrived ploy that it was. and caricatures of what he represented, the people. he deserves to be remembered as the In retrospect, regarding Brexit, both first socialist to have broken through the Writing days before the Election, Fi- factions of the British Labour Party can defences surrounding neo-liberalism. nancial Times Editorial Director Robert be faulted for not being more proactive Following the 2008 Great Recession, the Shrimsley urged voters to support the from an earlier time in getting the May model of a mixed economy governed by above mentioned group of what he termed Deal passed by the Commons. Such a a democratic political system needs to be ‘moderate’ MPs whom he saw as defying position was a logical development from restored. Corbyn’s Leadership of the Brit- a move to the extremes of Right and Left the party’s Manifesto commitment in 2017, ish Labour Party symbolised the beginning in British politics. He also concluded: accepting the Referendum result. When of movement in that direction, for socialists “The lesson of this wretched election the needlessly-drawn out talks between in Britain and across the world. What he is clear. Under this voting system, mod- Corbyn and May eventually occurred, started will be followed by others. erates need to stop dreaming of creating her Government was already starting to Dave Alvey a British En Marche and join the major parties and fight to reclaim them. If mainstream politics is to prevail again, centrists will have to become entryists” (FT, 9 December).

That just about sums up the present disconnect between the liberal media and Two Irish Media Commentaries the electorate in Britain. For the most part Irish media coverage campaign can be called that, opposition Bl a m i n g Co r b y n of the UK Election has echoed the liberal to Brexit depended on maximising the Following the Election the anti-Corbyn consensus in Britain, being marked by vote of parties other than the Conserva- faction in Labour has become aggres- superficial, gossipy accounts of Boris tive Party. At exactly the wrong moment sive in blaming Corbyn for the party’s Johnson’s alleged character flaws. But from an anti-Brexit perspective, O’Toole disastrous showing. To anyone who has the once influential pro-British contingent decides to make Johnson’s case for him. followed what has gone on at Westmin- in the Irish media has its own reasons Am I missing something? ster over Brexit that will be recognised for opposing Brexit: the now definitely- as nonsense. happening exit has wrecked its long-term In addition to showing himself to be The tactic of aligning Labour to all in- project of tearing up Irish history and an unreliable campaigner, O’Toole got tents and purposes as a Remain party was replacing it with a contrived closeness Corbyn and the central issue in the cam- forced on Corbyn by Keir Starmer, Hilary to Britain. History, one suspects, will be paign completely wrong. As a letter writer Benn, Yvette Cooper, Emily Thornberry and, not least, by the 40,000-strong Mo- unkind to the would-be destroyers of a pointed out: mentum movement that happens to be the true historical perspective. “O’Toole rebukes Corbyn’s ambiguity Labour Leader’s power base. Identifying From the glut of commentary I will on Brexit as an electoral liability. But the party with Remain meant betraying mention articles by Fintan O’Toole and Corbyn’s priority is ending austerity and the millions of traditional Labour voters transforming British society regardless Stephen Collins, both of the Irish Times. who supported Brexit, thereby creating of whether the UK opts for Remain or the electoral weak point that Johnson On 7th December, the Saturday before the a soft Brexit. Labour is losing support and his advisors exploited. If any of the Election, O’Toole delivered a hatchet job in heavily Leave constituencies because pro-Remain Labour MPs, from Starmer on Corbyn. All there is to be said about that most of the Labour leadership—unlike is that it was inconsistent with everything Corbyn—are fervent Remainers. If they downwards, had a shred of integrity they lose those seats it will be because they’ve would own up to their role in gift-wrapping O’Toole had written as a crusader against been insufficiently ambiguous about a large swathe of the blue collar vote for Brexit over the previous three years. In the Brexit” (Patrick Farrelly, IT Letters, 10 the Tories. decisive battle of the war, if the Election December) 14 Unlike Fintan O’Toole Stephen Collins powerful State in the EU. The other was fiscal treaty that, in hindsight, was mainly identifies as a conservative. He has in the the creation of the Single Currency. On top symbolic. In practice, it neither saved past defended the neo-Redmondite strand of the existing British antipathy to Europe, the euro (that would take much bigger these events made Brexit inevitable. If by summit decisions and central bank ac- in Irish conservatism. The following ex- tion), nor curbed member states’ public tract is not from a commentary on the UK some miracle Brexit was to be cancelled spending. Election but does refer to British politics. in line with the wishes of Stephen Collins I am quoting it to show how little Collins and the rest of the neo-Redmondites, the But the aftermath reinforced the sense understands the British view of the EU. result would be calamitous for the EU, the of the UK and EU being on divergent Euro and Ireland. paths. Cameron’s defeat in Brussels “Nigel Farage was a marginal figure was greeted by cheers at home. Rather who caused occasional embarrassment than suffer, his approval rating rose to the Conservative Party until David among British voters. Boris Johnson, Cameron decided to trump him by hold- Th e Ca u s e s o f Br e x i t then mayor of London, said the prime ing the referendum on continued EU Following on from the point that Brexit minister had ‘played a blinder’, while membership. was inevitable, an interesting article pub- the Daily Mail said ‘defiant Cameron’ had stood up to ‘Euro bullies’…” (FT, lished last Summer in the Financial Times That released the Little Englander ge- August 29 2019). sheds light. Entitled, “Goodbye Brussels: nie out of the bottle. The result has been political havoc for our nearest neighbour, what I learnt in eight years covering the Worth noting from the above is that the deep divisions in society and economic EU”, the article is a reflective piece by driving force behind Cameron’s actions consequences that will be felt by the Brit- the outgoing FT bureau chief in Brussels, ish people for decades to come.” was a combination of Tory Euroscepti- Alex Barker. Describing the 2011 Summit cism and British public opinion. Later at which the Fiscal Treaty was finalised in the article Barker describes a row in It is inaccurate to ascribe Brexit to a he wrote: 2014 over the nomination of Jean Claude misstep by David Cameron, as though “The British prime minister [Cameron] Juncker as Commission President. Before society is controlled by the capricious had arrived at the summit thinking he the June Summit of the European Council had leverage. The euro area was in deep decisions of elite politicians. Cameron in that year, Cameron invited the Council promised to hold the Referendum because trouble. The UK was peripheral to the cri- sis, but Angela Merkel needed Cameron’s President, Herman Van Rompuy, to Down- his party was under pressure following support for a treaty change that would ing Street to express British opposition to UKIP’s victory in the European Elections tighten fiscal rules for all members of the the appointment of Juncker. The meeting of 2014. If the Brexit result was a freak single currency — a dose of discipline to lasted little more than half an hour and did accident, support for it would have ebbed assuage German voter concerns over a series of costly financial bailouts, and to not go well. Barker concludes: away in 2017 and 2018 as the divisions in reassure volatile financial markets. both main British parties led the country “As he escorted Van Rompuy down into a quagmire. But support did not de- The Conservative party’s Eurosceptic the No 10 stairs, Cameron lashed out wing expected Britain to win something at the Germans. Asked whether he felt cline to any noticeable degree; Brexit is duped or abandoned, one person privy to driven by a force in British society that is in return. Cameron bid high, insisting he would go along with the treaty only the invective said: ‘It was more explicit anything but fickle. if he won concessions to preserve UK than that’…” control over how the City of London was Membership of the EU has always been regulated. He failed spectacularly. Old There is heaps more that could be quoted deeply unpopular with a large section of hands in Brussels recall it as a supreme from Barker’s article that underlines the example of botched summit diplomacy— the English electorate. A vox pop shown increasingly obvious split between the and that room has seen some breathtaking on RTE news recently gave a good flavour howlers.” UK and the European Union; I trust I of opinion on the ground in the North of … have quoted enough for readers to get England. An old duffer speaking with “Some leaders saw it as a ransom the point. a strong accent said that vast sums of demand, seeking national gain from the eurozone’s woes—and all to reduce money had been paid by UK taxpayers to the burden of regulation on London’s Before finishing I will repeat a point I Europe over the years for the privilege of financial services firms, a sector that have made before. The competence shown having EU law imposed on them. Could many saw as helping to cause the global by Government Ministers and officials he be said to be misinformed? Perhaps, in financial crisis in the first place. “David, throughout the long Brexit saga provides the sense that EU law is determined by a we are not paying you to save the euro”, a marked contrast to the ravings of our thundered Sarkozy”. set of processes that can be described as Anglophile media. Fine Gael, a party that democratic. But his view reflects an ac- “Cameron later said he had ‘exercised is deserving of criticism in many areas, curate understanding of Britain’s historical my veto’ on treaty change, but he never has placed Ireland in a strong position culture and its incompatibility with EU actually used those words in the room. as the post-Brexit future beckons. With The rest of the EU agreed to do a side deal membership. Collins and many Irish com- without him, breaking with the conven- regard to Brexit the party has shown itself mentators don’t understand how different tion that the European Council moved as worthy of the tradition founded by Eamon from independent Ireland England is. one. It was a real political rupture. de Valera.

British dislike of the EU increased in Cameron badly misread Merkel and Dave Alvey relatively recent years as a result of two the strength of Germany’s fixation on treaty change. The German chancellor events. One was the unification of Ger- and Sarkozy elbowed him aside over a many, which made that country the most 15 “Many of the larger, unionized contrac- tors sold off parts of the job to smaller businesses, subcontractors or ‘subbies’ who then had to cut corners to make the work pay.” es ahora * The Murphy brothers were from Kerry and they liked employing men from their “In England we have … almost no great writers about Society—its historical and own area. monumental aspects, its rich and authoritative consciousness, its shifting values. In this aspect alone the almost unique importance of Sir Osbert Sitwell cannot be “John Murphy (the green vans) and over-rated: he anatomises not a single life but an age.” Joe Murphy (the grey ones), Lowery, Coleman, R.S. Kennedy—these small and Elizabeth Bowen, ‘Tatler’. medium-sized contractors thrived during “… the 1950s and early 1960s, in part because Among the blue flowers of the flax a linnet of a lack of regulation in the building sang out ‘Lundy’ industry. Gangers in charge of teams of ten to twelve men made their money by at the implication of that bleach – agreeing a price for a job, calculated on a green. ‘It was merely a figure of speech’. number of hours’ labour, and an amount ‘Call it what you like. of equipment. If they could get the job ‘The grey skies of an Irish Republic done quicker (reduce the number of paid are as nothing compared to this blue dome’. hours) and skimp on materials, that was He tailed all over the flax-dam money in the pocket. to return with a charm of goldfinches This meant driving the men hard, sack- ing any who were unable to keep up the who assailed me with their ‘Not an inch’ pace, and often refusing to provide cover and their ‘No’, and yet again, ‘No’. in wet weather, wellington boots, or even As they asperged me with kerosene sufficient timber to create safe working I recognised the voice of Sir Edward Carson; conditions. Richard Power found himself ‘Bid me strike a match and blow’. working in leaking wellingtons because ‘Louis’ by Paul Muldoon, Meeting the British, the subcontractor had sold off the supply Faber & Faber, London, 1987. he had been given for the men.” “One man interviewed by Charles Parker argued that even simple dig- ging jobs—like digging trenches Clair Wills and the Story She Tells to lay cables and pipes— became Part 15 hazardous under these conditions: Men are dying in trenches— you might be As I already wrote, Wills started her on our research, that the full version was down 12 maybe 13 feet, no timber there academic career with a book on the poetry produced. (I find it striking that Leland and anything can happen, I often saw a of Paul Muldoon and it was while I was also wrote a book titled ‘The Lie of the crack maybe four feet back. You say to the reading her essay in ‘The Chosen Ground, ganger man is there any timber here he’ll Land: Journeys through Literary Cork’, just laugh at you. If you don’t put your jack Essays on the Contempory Poetry of published by UCC in 1999 following the to it you’re not wanted. There’s twenty Northern Ireland’, (Edited by Neil Corc- title of Wills in her earlier work!) maybe thirty contractors who won’t buy oran, Seren Books, Mid Glamorgan, 1992) timber, looking for big profits.” called ‘The Lie of the Land; Language, Going back to the book in question, Wills ‘Lovers and Strangers’, I finished Imperialism and Trade in Paul Muldoon’s Wills is right to show us the ugly reality my previous article with the intention of ‘Meeting the British’ that I came across his of Irish companies exploiting Irish workers looking at work conditions of the new poem ‘Louis’ with that striking last line. and she avows: And who can forget that whole imbroglio immigrants in post-War England, espe- cially the Irish. And there is no doubt ”The brutal terms on which men were where I already quoted that last refrain of required to work for many (though not all) W.B. Yeats: that Wills did a huge amount of research which informed her conclusions and that contractors, and the physical toll which it took on them, created a permanent ”We the great gazebo built, is where I will pick up now. According to They convicted us of guilt; need for ‘raw men’ coming across from her, the major employers were “McAlpine, Ireland, who could not refuse the work. Bid me strike a match and blow”. Wimpey and Costain”. She then looks at a ‘Man lands here he might only have a This was Yeats’s famous and furious huge construction by them, writing: pound, he might have nothing … he has roar of rage in his poem ‘In Memory of no option, if he doesn’t get down in that ”The Isle of Grain on the Kent estuary trench he has no food, he has no digs, Eva Gore-Booth and Con Markievicz’ at was a huge project, including a power he’s lost’.” the latter’s conversion to the nationalist station and oil refinery, which employed cause. The poem was quoted in a much nearly 5,000 men at any one time from My problem is the violence, almost abridged form in ‘The Irish Times’ during 1950 until 1962”. recreational—that the Irish became famed the furore over the sale of Lissadell House She states: “The way the Isle of Grain for, as Wills amply testifies to—but how and it was only through the intervention was getting run, it was worse than the could working often twelve hours a day of the ‘Irish Political Review’ with the Yukon”. And this was because, even with “in brutal conditions” allow anyone, Cork journalist Mary Leland, picking up the larger civil engineering projects, they no matter how tough, the extra physical “operated with an informal economy of endurance to fight, as it appears, to let off It Is Time bribes and kickbacks”. stream? D—nall Mac Amhlaigh’s memoir 16 of labouring in the 1950s is punctuated with Were the Irish fighting to drown their theatre.’ Like Brendan Behan, indeed stories of pitched, ‘tribal’ battles. He spent sorrows and loneliness? Did the pub perhaps because of Behan, he was re- much of 1952 living in a camp at Stratford become the only place where they could garded as an ‘anthropoidal’ ape man, as in the Vale, while working on the airfield meet as other labourers suggested? one reviewer put it, a savage thrilling the London theatre.” at Brize Norton. He wrote: Wills notes that “to their English neigh- “Fights started out of nothing. As I went I looked up the footnotes and found this bours, the Irish habit of fighting looked like to sleep tonight, the silence was broken comment to belong to Michael Billington, a racial characteristic, rather than one with shouting and screaming, dreadful a critic from whom I would expect nothing cursing and the noise of heavy blows. It that was caused by circumstance”. Then better! He was recently much praised in was the Connemara men and the people she goes on to muse that maybe the Irish the Daily Telegraph—enough said. from Dublin. They’ve been fighting this violence was “rooted in something deeper, many a day… Later, laying rails in a even more existential”. Perhaps Sartre’s railway tunnel near Northampton, fights Brendan Behan was a prodigious influence can be detected here, not in the started easily from an unguarded word drinker and as Wills writes: or look, either in the pubs after work Irish men but in the bias of the writer? “favoured an old-style version of Irish or on site. A small amount of spilt tea Richard Power thought the violence of the troublemaking—though he was only ended with two men ‘lamming away at Irish was caused by “the absence of any in his early thirties himself. His public each other in anger and hate; and what checks by family and community … the profile—unshakeable after he appeared matter but there was so little reason for problem for the Irish labourer was that he drunk and swearing in a live television the whole thing.” was ‘without household, without authority, interview with Malcolm Muggeridge in Certainly, Wills seems to assert the without having to answer to their family, 1956, to publicise his play ‘The Quare to the state, to anyone at all’.” Fellow’—was a caricature of the drink- old adage about the enmity between the ing, fighting Irishman.” country men/the ‘culchies’ and those from Another labourer told the filmmaker Dublin. This rings true, as it seems to con- Philip Donnellan, “We’re dependent on Wills amusingly adds that MI5 were tinue today in the media with ‘culchies’ nobody. We have to fight to exist.” Beside watching Behan— scorned for their accent and choice of this extract in Wills’s book, I have pen- “because of his IRA and communist clothes. Put a cap on a Kerryman—no cilled in my own question—how true is activities. A Report dated 11th June 1956 matter how successful—and he is seen this picture? Wills too seems to be having concludes that: ‘as an individual he is too as a walking national joke! second thoughts for she alights on this unstable and too drunken to be particu- “In a series of interviews conducted problem and then makes an incredible larly dangerous’.” in the early 1960s by Charles Parker, a admission. producer at BBC Pebble Mill in Birming- They obviously learnt nothing as Guy “The often brutalising conditions in ham, Irish labourers were disarmingly Burgess, Kim Philby et al were embedding which the men worked …. was something open about the violence which lay just themselves in the security services and that was rarely mentioned in contem- beneath the surface of Irish emigrant they could drink Behan under the table and pory accounts of Irish violence. In fact, life. Tony Crumlin, who had left Dublin although several of Charles Parker’s were troublemakers of proven rank. The aged fourteen to work on construction interviewees attempted to explain the English were as bad as any troublemak- sites and who described himself as ‘a effect of daily rough treatment on the ing Irishman—but the gaze of the host delinquent’ in his youth, acknowledged worksites, their comments were not his own prejudice against the English nation made the latter fit a perfect trope included in the film he made with Philip and the Culchies… ‘Dublin people think for English susceptibilities. Donnellan about the day-to-day life of they are superior,’ they wear Teddy boy Irish labourers in 1965.” suits, and at the slightest provocation As Wills concludes her chapter on ‘there would be a row’. He recalled his Wills calls it as it is. She states: ‘Drinkers’, she accepts the odds that digs in Manchester in the mid-1950s;’… were stacked against the Irish labouring a smell of dampness. Three beds in the ”It amounted to a form of censorship. emigrants: one room, 10 by 8. A little box to put (All underlinings and blockings are by your clothes in, and your suitcase you me –JH) So this 1965 documentary/film ”They were exploited and they knew kept locked at all times. The men were ‘The Irishmen’ was seriously flawed in its it… They worked long hours in poor con- only allowed in the house to sleep, and methodology. Its portrayal of the fighting ditions, and the worst off lived in lodging to eat their evening meal: Irish had an intent to show us in the most houses that were little better than slums. A dozen blokes round the table. At least unflattering light, helping this stereotype The pub became their refuge. Several twice a week there was a row, a punch- to be embedded in the host nation. But we contractors who had made money and up in the dinner room… They were like were not helped by our own writers, who invested it in lodging houses and pubs condemned to take the lower things that by now had to know what their English were notorious for paying the men in were dished out in life…” audience wanted. The playwright Tom their own pubs on a Friday night—so Murphy wrote a play ‘A Whistle in the that almost before they had got their pay But surely Tony Crumlin spoke for the Dark’ “about a group of Irish brothers who they gave it back to their employers in the few— not the many. Some time later he believe they have to fight to exist”. It was price of drink. The men were restless and says that he came back to Dublin “where he staged in London in 1961, the reviewers unsettled, but it was not so much freedom found he could not settle…. ‘I left Dublin found it hard to distinguish the playwright as the lack of it that was the cause of all for the second time to drink. I was drink- from his material: the drinking and fighting.” ing every night of the week. Friday night ‘The only thing that separates his char- I wouldn’t even bother to go home, I’d be P.S. acters from a bunch of wild gorillas This is the time of the year that there stinking… going straight to the pub—out is their ability to speak with an Irish from Saturday to Monday night.” accent.’ Kenneth Tynan warned that: is a round-up of ‘Books of the Year’ in all the newspapers. In ‘The Irish Times’ of But he still managed to do a week’s ’Thomas Murphy is the kind of play- 30th November 2019, they had “twenty- worth of back-breaking work!! wright one would hate to meet in a dark five leading Irish writers and critics pick 17 their favourite new fiction and non-fiction article ‘The Subjective Side of History’ No evidence of anti-Semitism in the titles of 2019”. Simple enough, one would (listed to be ongoing) and he’d give Barry Labour Party has come to light. There have think, but alas Roy Foster didn’t seem to McCrea a run for his money regarding been no prosecutions. The expression of get the memo, as his most important book modernist literature. anti-Semitism is against the law, and we was Barry McCrea’s— have been told loudly with regard to other “dazzling ‘Languages of the Night: But another of Foster’s reads is matters that breaches of the law should be Minor Languages and the Literary Imagi- Margaret Kelleher’s ‘The Maamtrasna referred to the police and not dealt with nation in Twentieth-Century Ireland and Murders: Language, Life and Death in internally within private organisations. Europe’ which I came to three years late: Nineteenth-Century Ireland’, described And yet people have been expelled from a linguistic and critical tour-de-force, as “a powerful reconstruction of language the Labour Party, or suspended from it, as rereading Joyce, Pasolini, O’Riordáin being anti-Semites, without the issue being and Proust and decisively changing the shift and legal process in Victorian Ireland way we read modernist literature and which is also a complex meditation on referred to the police. The outstanding literary history.” historical violence, injustice and cultural case is that of Chris Williamson. incomprehension—echoing forward to One of my colleagues in the ‘Irish reflections of this episode in the work of Remember the Maria Cahill affair? Political Review’ in last month’s issue James Joyce”. She is now a journalist on the rabidly (December), Brendan Clifford wrote an Julianne Herlihy © anti-Republican Sunday Independent, but she was once a ‘dissident’ Republican—a very extreme Republican who opposed the Adams/McGuinness leadership on the issue of the Good Friday Agreement. She alleged sexual harassment against a English Democracy member or members of Sinn Fein. The accusation was dealt with by an internal Although there was no Irish participa- restored Parliament to the position of being disciplinary process. That process was tion in the electoral contest to decide which an instrument of Government. then condemned as a Kangaroo Court and Party should govern the British state, part Sinn Fein was accused of usurping the of Ireland will continue to be governed There was gross religious intervention judicial authority of the State by failing under the winner, regardless of how the in the election campaign by the Jewish to refer the matter to the police. subordinate Six County arrangements fare. Chief Rabbi and the head of the Church Well, sauce for the goose is sauce for Some comment is therefore required. Department of the State, the Archbishop the gander. And the Labour Party has The outstanding feature of the election of Canterbury. They branded the leader of dealt with allegations of anti-Semitism campaign was the free and liberal use of the Labour Party an anti-Semite. The cry by an extreme form of the Kangaroo the word “lie” by media commentators was taken up by media commentators, and Court method. when interviewing politicians. The head by influential leaders of the party, including of Channel 4 gave instructions at the its Deputy Leader, Tom Watson, and by There is an active lobby which asserts outset that politicians were to be called Sir Keir Starmer with some reservations. that anti-Semitism in the Labour Party out as “liars” at every opportunity. But Watson found it prudent to retire from under Corbyn’s leadership is so extreme The BBC followed suit. The result was party-politics when his part in stirring up that it would have been advisable for all ­bizarre. A politician who undertook to of wild claims about paedophilia in very Jews to leave the state if he had become do something was called out as a liar if it high places broke in the news. Prime Minister. And the effective demand proved impossible to do it. In meaning- of that lobby is that an allegation of anti- ful language the condition of possibility Sir Keir’s view was that anti-Semitism Semitism should be taken as proof of it is always understood, as it is understood is a serious problem in the party. This and should be followed by immediate that exaggeration is the well-established came as a shock to many people with expulsion. mode of political rhetoric. long experience in the Party (both Jews None of these allegations have been The notion that party-politics was de- and gentiles) who had never come across passed on to the police to be dealt with basing democracy was much in the news a trace of it. under the law. We can guess the reason at one point, and there was talk of freeing Shortly before the Election (Newsnight why—the law does not treat anti-Zionism democracy from partisan distortions. But Dec.6), there was a very interesting inter- as anti-Semitism. partisanship is of the essence of democracy view with Barry Gardner on the subject of Chris Williamson’s anti-Semitism of the Anglo-American kind, which now anti-Semitism. He was pressed to explain seems to have consisted of an opinion that dominates most of the world and which why the Party had not acted promptly the Party leadership was grossly exaggerat- insists that it is the only authentic kind. The against slogans that were shouted at a ing the presence of anti-Semitism in the normality of democracy was restored by public demonstration. He said he had gone Party membership. We would judge that the clear party victory in the Election. to the police about them. They replied that to have been an opinion soundly based they had investigated complaints about on fact. There was for a period a Parliamentary these, but found no laws had been broken. majority hostile to the Government. It The slogans complained about were anti- During the couple of weeks since the sought to perpetuate itself by preventing Zionist. They were not anti-Semitic. The Election anti-Semitism has gone out of an election from being called, and by Labour Party too had made that distinction the news. The campaign of allegations taking to itself the power of legislation in the past, but now it had “moved on”, has served its purposes. by back-bench consensus. But there was Gardiner said. enough party-sprit within that consensus to That obviously is the nub of the We doubt that it had any effect on rebel against it and call an election which matter. the outcome of the Election. Its clearly 18 discernible purposes were to distract at- tention from the racial policy of the Jewish State, and to blacken Corbyn’s character Northern Ireland and the UK Election, in certain regions of the Labour Party in 12th December 2019 the interest of the Blairite old guard. Its effect on the country was probably to % vote shares and seats in 2019 compared with 2017 generate a degree of anti-Semitism where 2017 2017 2019 2019 Change none existed before. %vote seats %vote seats %vote DUP 36.0 10 30.6 8 -5.4 -2 It was said by members of the leadership that the Party had become “institutionally UUP 10.3 0 11.7 0 +1.4 0 anti-Semitic”—a thing that nobody had Tot 46.3 10 42.3 8 -4.0 -2 noticed before. When Corbyn agreed to stand down it was magically purified. SF 29.4 7 22.8 7 -6.6 0 The root source of it all was the hubris SDLP 11.7 0 14.9 2 +3.2 +2 of the Blairite leadership in giving the Tot 41.1 7 37.7 9 -3.4 0 Party membership the power of electing the Leader. When the membership was rendered mindless by Blair’s charismatic APNI 7.9 0 16.8 1 +8.9 +1 influence—a very English phenomenon into which we have no insight—that was a safe thing to do. But, with that Fuhrer The main features of the election whereas she increased the SDLP vote from influence gone, it became problematic. were: 11,303 then to 27,079 this time, which was The business of the membership is to A fall in both the DUP and Sinn Fein votes 57.2% of the total vote. The sitting DUP maintain ideals, while the business of the across Northern Ireland compared with MP, Emma Little-Pengelly, came second Leader is to govern a finance-capitalist the 2017 UK election, 5.4% overall in with a mere 24.7% of the total vote. state with an extensive influential network the case of the DUP and 6.6% in the case Foyle where the leader of the SDLP, inherited from the Empire, in which those of Sinn Fein. Why? Probably because Colum Eastwood, had a spectacular result, ideals could be put into effect only to an of discontent amongst voters that the regaining the seat the SDLP lost to Sinn infinitesimal degree. institutions of government haven’t been Fein in 2017. Then, Elisha McCallion restored when there are serious local beat the former leader of the SDLP Mark The rhetoric of idealism, which is problems to be dealt with, particularly Durkan by 167 votes. However, faced necessary to the party-structure of British in the health service. with Colum Eastwood this time, she lost democracy, is not implementable as British nearly half her vote, which declined from A substantial rise in the SDLP vote from State policy. The ideals of democracy are 18,256 to 9,771, whereas Colum Eastwood 11.7% to 14.9% overall and a spectacular moonshine to a very considerable extent. raised the SDLP vote from 18, 807 to rise in Foyle mostly at the expense of Practical democracy is elitist. Being Prime 26,881 (57.0% of the total vote) giving Sinn Fein. Minister would have been an excruciat- him a majority of 17,110. The votes she ingly painful experience for Corbyn. The Alliance Party also did very well, lost seem to have transferred directly to more than doubling their overall vote him. What could have caused that? Sinn When the Chief Rabbi denounced from 7.9% to 16.8%. Fein’s abstentionism? him as another Hitler, Miriam Margoles, 4 of the 18 seats changed hands: a Jewish actor, told the Rabbi he was North Down where Stephen Farry won entirely wrong in characterising Corbyn the seat for the Alliance Party, replacing North Belfast where the sitting MP, as an anti-Semite, while at the same time Sylvia Hermon who retired. She was origi- Nigel Dodds, the DUP leader at Westmin- advising Corbyn to stand down from the nally elected as a UUP MP, but she left the ster, was beaten by John Finucane of Sinn Party leadership. UUP in 2010 when it went into an alliance Fein. He is the son of Pat Finucane, who with the Conservative Party and from then was murdered in 1989 at his family home On the Brexit issue, the Parliamentary on sat as an independent Unionist. On by loyalist paramilitaries, and is currently Party, led by Keir Starmer, took a stand, her retirement, it was expected that the Lord Mayor of Belfast. His victory was not against the membership on this issue, DUP would easily take the seat since Alex made very likely because the SDLP did but against the core working class base Easton of the DUP ran her a close second not put up a candidate and Dodds’ major- of the Party, and lost it. The working in 2017. However, that was not to be: ity in 2017 (2,081) was only a little larger class stood by its Referendum vote and most of Sylvia Hermon’s vote transferred than the SDLP vote in 2017 (2,058). On therefore voted Tory. English national- to the Alliance Party, whose vote went up the day, John Finucane won well with a ism runs deep. spectacularly from 3,639 to 18,358. Even majority of almost 2,000. so, Easton would likely have won if the The other thing to remember from UUP hadn’t put up a candidate this time South Belfast where Claire Hanna had the Election campaign is the disgusting and taken nearly 5,000 votes which would a very good result for the SDLP, winning depths to which party-political democracy have seen him over the line. back the seat that the SDLP lost in 2017. (the only functional kind) can sink. Its David Morrison She benefited from the absence of Sinn characterisation of Corbyn as a would-be References Fein and Green candidates this time. But Hitler must not be forgotten. see page 20, col. 1 in 2017 they got around 9,400 votes, 19 offering to consult the Labour Party in the offering the public a referendum on any hope of gaining their support for her Brexit Brexit deal” (See: The Independent, 28 bill, the Party decided to participate. Yet, May 2019). British Labour Woes despite May’s compromises on things like Feeding off the growing confusion After the General Election which has workers’ rights being advanced in those this was followed in June 2019 when been so disastrous for the Labour Party the consultations, the Labour Party decided to Tom Watson gave a speech in which he inevitable appraisal of the reasons for that oppose her Bill and it was this decision that said that the party should adopt a policy disaster began to emerge. Unfortunately, led to its final defeat in March 2019. committing itself to a second referendum. those appraisals have concentrated on This pushed the party back to the posi- (See: D. Telegraph, 17 June 2019) things like the role of an aggressively hos- tion of only supporting a Brexit of its own Then, in September 2019, in advance tile media, the lies from the Conservative making—something that was reliant on of the Labour Party Annual Conference , Party, the unpopularity of Jeremy Corbyn winning a General Election. But, while Tom Watson went on record to state that among the electorate, etc. this had a certain logic to it, the absence the result of the 2016 referendum was no The one reason for the defeat that all of a continuing definite commitment to longer valid and advocated a second ref- appear to studiously avoid is the role the 2016 result continued to compromise erendum (see: Daily Mail, 11 September played by the systematic destruction of the its standing among the Leave-voting 2019). If anything could be better designed policy which it had advocated in the 2017 constituencies to damage the prospects of the Party in the General Election and which had proved ‘leave’ constituencies, it could only have successful at that time. That policy was It was also a position that the hard- been something like the LibDem’s policy clear and precise and it was based on a Remainers inside the party refused to of arbitrarily abandoning Brexit without a respect for the result of the 2016 referen- respect and the impetus for an arbitrary referendum. Whether Watson was aware dum. But it was a policy that from early commitment to a second referendum (in of this or not is difficult to know but he on some powerful right-wing elements alliance with other parties and indepen- resigned as an MP and from the office of in the Parliamentary Party and the left- dent of a General Election) continued to Deputy Leader before the results of his dominated constituency party conspired to mount inside the party. The extent of the contribution became manifest. destroy in the full knowledge that it would pressure in this direction was evident by be impossible to formulate an alternative May 2019 in the lead-in to the elections The denial of the legitimacy of the 2016 policy on Brexit that possessed the same to the European Parliament. referendum was now complete and this clarity or claim any real adherence to a In an attempt to shore up the existing led to even more myopic ideas on how the democratic mandate. party policy in advance of those elections party should proceed. By now the Party’s the Labour Party’s National Executive commitment to a second referendum was Surprisingly, among the earliest voices Committee was reported to have— a given. All that was left was to argue over advocating the abandonment of the sen- “agreed yesterday that its manifesto how the party should campaign in such a sible and clear 2017 Labour policy came for the European Parliament elections referendum. The only thing that the second from John McDonnell, the man considered will reflect existing Labour Party on referendum-advocates and the Remainers Brexit, without a stronger commit- to be Jeremy Corbyn’s trusted ally. This had in common was a determination to pur- ment to a second referendum. A party sue a policy that was contemptuous of the was in November 2018. At that time John spokesperson said, ‘The NEC agreed McDonnell was reported as saying that the manifesto which will be fully in sensibilities of those Labour-supporting “Labour would ‘inevitably’ back a second line with Labour’s existing policy; to ‘leave’ voters on which so many of the referendum if the party was unable to force support Labour’s alternative plan, and Labour seats in Parliament relied. This a general election” (see: “Labour Will In- if we can’t get the necessary changes is where the left-influenced CLP came evitably Back a Second Referendum, Says to the government’s deal, or a general into its own, with Momentum activists election, to back the option of a public McDonnell”, The Guardian, 28 November eagerly pushing for the party to opt for a vote.’ This comes despite strong pressure policy of ‘remain’ in any referendum. The 2018). This was effectively a statement from Labour pro-Europeans, particularly that the party would not support any Br- Deputy Leader Tom Watson, for the party Party, which relied upon a Parliamentary exit plan that did not come from its own to offer a stronger commitment for any presence of Members from Leave con- efforts when in government. But, when Brexit deal to be put to a referendum” stituencies, was to become the party that Teresa May’s difficulties in getting her (See: Open Europe, 1 May 2019). actively campaigned for ‘remain’. Such Brexit deal through parliament led to her was the logical end product of left-wing While these meanderings on policy strategy. were the direct result of the need to ac- “A leading leftwing activist, Michael commodate an increasingly avaricious Chessum, who has coordinated local References and assertive ‘second referendum’ and party efforts to push a pro-Remain motion ‘remain’ lobby, the effect was to make through conference, told the Observer that https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2017_ the Party’s policy more complicated and patience among delegates was running United_Kingdom_general_election_in_ incomprehensible by moving further out as the leadership appeared intent on Northern_Ireland away from the clarity of the 2017 policy defying ordinary members and imposing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019_ central control… ‘We have a party that of simply “respecting the result of the wants Remain, voters overwhelmingly United_Kingdom_general_election_in_ referendum”. wanting clarity, MPs that want Remain Northern_Ireland and a front bench that wants Remain— https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belfast_ Then, later in May 2019, another close and yet a ludicrous insistence that the North_(UK_Parliament_constituency) ally of Corbyn, Diane Abbott, added to party machine might not back them’…” and equivalents for other seats the confusion when she was reported as (Observer, 21 September 2019) “Labour is now committed to saying that The disingenuous nature of this state- 20 on a personal level, but a political party ment by a Momentum activist is breath- the media were just as hostile. Principles taking. The “voters overwhelmingly want- that seeks redemption from the electorate and policies were similar in every way - ing clarity” were for the most part those needs to have individuals from all sides apart from on the key issue of leaving the in the leave-voting constituencies which of the debacle being equally contrite. In EU. In 2017 the manifesto said "Labour so many of the Labour MPs represented. that context, the behaviour of Corbyn and accepts the referendum result" but in 2019 said "Labour will give the people The reference to the party machine was McDonnell has only facilitated the likes of Keith Starmer and others in their determi- the final say on Brexit." just plain mischievous as the policy be- Keir Starmer, Labour's shadow secre- nation to direct responsibility away from ing advanced by Michael Chessum, was tary of state for exiting the EU, visited one he knew was opposed by Corbyn. As themselves (and it is significant that there Wirral West Labour's campaign office the things turned out, Corbyn’s position was has been no absence of finger-pointing other week. Jo Bird tried to express her saved by the Trade Unions and, despite from that direction). If this is the way experience of persuading on the doorstep the pressure being exerted by a combina- that the party is dealing with the disaster, and phone—the hardest policy to defend was a final say/second referendum. tion of the right and the left of the party, it does not bode well for the prospects of the Labour Party being fit for government People wanted their democratic votes not only to have a second referendum to be honoured. His response was smooth anytime soon. in its election policy but to compel it to and I wanted to believe him. But he campaign for ‘remain’ in that referendum, The most meaningful analysis of the was adamant on a second referendum was defeated by Corbyn who managed to reasons for the electoral disaster was pro- policy. But clearly the case did not convince have his idea of the party remaining neutral vided in a posting on the Facebook Page in the referendum endorsed. (See: BBC millions of leave (and previously Labour) of the Labour Heartlands group on 15th voters in England and Wales. News, 23 September 2019). December. This was as follows: This evidence shows changing La- Corbyn, forced to navigate an impos- “Why did Labour's share of all votes fall bour's policy away from respecting the sible political landscape by the combina- from 40% in 2017 to 32% in 2019? referendum result was a terrible error of tion of the Second Referendum advocates General election turnout was the same judgement, at best.” and the ‘remainers’ in the party, was now (68%), Labour had the same leader and Eamon Dyas in the position where, in order to minimise the damage that their position would inflict on the party’s chances of being elected, he while part of your father’s family glory in was left only with the option of advocat- Unionism and discuss who in the family ing a policy that the party remain neutral Looking Back! signed the 1912 Ulster’s Solemn league It’s an absurd situation being friends in any second referendum. However, this and Covenant against the Third Home Rule with Unionists and even B’Specials who was not a policy that was respected by Bill. Your mother remains mute and so do are part of a conspiracy that clamps down the ‘referendum’ and ‘remain’ lobbies. your sisters while your father, captivated on your Catholic community to deny it Corbyn’s position was a difficult balanc- by the discussion, forgets your existence human and civil rights. But this is North- ing act and was reduced to ridicule when and declares for it. ern Ireland. In the rural area they are at leading members of the PLP and those It’s a sort of helplessness. It all stops times attacking your home, poisoning the inside his own Shadow Cabinet began to suddenly and they’re looking at your well water. challenge it. Very soon we saw the likes muteness. They themselves, you notice, At work in the city you make friends of Keith Starmer publicly defying Cor- are helpless. It’s their turn to be mute. with what you feel are decent types. They byn’s position in statements that he would it takes a bit of time to warm things up may be teenage B’Specials but you can campaign for ‘remain’ in any forthcoming again. It’s downcast eyes and a bit of guilt end up going to cinemas with a few of referendum. on both sides. them after work or meeting up in dances This, combined with the contemptuous at the weekend. Then the reason you are here is remem- dismissal of the vitally significant ‘leave’- You live in two worlds, rural and urban bered —the corpse in the parlour, your voting Labour constituencies, by the left and the two worlds must never meet. uncle in the open coffin. You notice the activists and the right-wing Members of Orange regalia next to the lid of the coffin Parliament, in the end proved too much for Much in the way the mixed family you and it’s a shock— he was an Orangeman. the long-standing Labour voters in what come from cannot have two full sides of He was also a kind man that always visited used to be the party’s heartlands. the family meet. One side has a record with presents or dished out 2 pence to you of IRA activity from the 1920s and the and your sisters when children back in The foregoing won’t be admitted in other, your cousins, are in the RUC, the the 1930s. A sister will exclaim for days any of the “official” appraisals inside the B’Specials and the British Army. You meet afterwards: Party. The emphasis will be on the need cousins at funerals and they will come to "Uncle Willie gave me 2d!" for unity across the Brexit divide. Argu- your funerals. It’s all amiable when you ments about the need to bring the party visit their homes, even when you spy a Helpless Ulster, each locked into their back together will be the order of the day, .303 rifle in the corner or a .45 revolver own nationality with one the overdog. and that need will ensure that any honest sticking out of a hung-up overcoat. Those Maybe you left for London to get away account of how the Party got itself into the are the weapons you wish you had against from all of that and returned in the 1950s position it had when entering the election your enemies in the countryside. with a wife and two young children to avoid will be avoided. conscription. Private accommodation is However, the sight of Corbyn and The difference lies in the fact that both bleak. You look up a friend you knew from McDonnell, donning their hair-shirts and rural and city members of the oppressing early teenage days when you were both kneeling on hot cinders is not indicative Unionist policing can voice their political in the The Young Workers’ League and of anything healthy in the party. Seeking opinions quite openly while you remain then the CPNI. He’s still lives at home. redemption in this manner might be ok mute on your rural oppression and mute His step-mother is a leading Unionist and 21 part of a collective of powerful Unionist shop assistants were apprentice-trained. apprentice draughtsman. But usually your women who control the Co-Op movement Dividends were as high as half-a-crown in calloused hands gave the game away as in Belfast. His father is a civil servant at the pound at one point. It had a Tea Room you held their dainty hands in a dance. Stormont, a former professional soldier where a quartet played in the afternoon. Maybe you might just might do until they in the British Army. He is Protestant and This was during WW2. My mother and found someone with soft hands? votes Irish Labour on the sly but appears her sister would drag me along to there. On the 10th of May, 1972. PIRA bombed Unionist at work. Three different political They were Tea Room people. Sometimes it. I happened to be on a visit to Belfast so opinions in one small family. it was the Tea Rooms of Bell’s of Anne I went along to look at the result. Most of In a general discussion you bring up the Street. The Co-Op one was the finest. one. it was a small mountain of debris with steel lack of proper accommodation in Belfast Both women smoked openly in the street girders sticking out of it. i couldn’t believe and the difficulty in getting public hous- outside as a mark of rebellion when they what I was looking at. Internal fires in the ing. The stepmother has a plan: A fellow could have smoked in the Tea Room. Most rubble were still burning and giving off Unionist she knows very well, runs a post likely, even as Catholics , they would have smoke. The RUC and British Army were office, not too far away. He is standing in taken to the Unionist stepmother as yet everywhere, as if they could reverse the a marginal Unionist/Nationalist area as a another woman who wanted to make her situation. They were even having to chase Unionist MP and needs Catholic votes. own way in life. away looters who were climbing into Her suggestion is that you go to his post As a 12 year old I was sent there to shop, rubble to see what they could find. office, explain that you are a Catholic, getting the bus from Carryduff and then a I met up with my friend. He was on with a young family and could he help tram in the city. My father was earning well his way to visit his father. He wouldn’t get you public housing. He is already, as in the aircraft factory. I can still remember invite me along as he felt his stepmother a Unionist councillor, giving out flats and my family’s Co-Op number. wouldn’t like it. I could only say: “Tell houses to Catholics. In return they will her I’m, sorry too”. And I was. vote Unionist to repay him. He defeats This Co-Op building also had the the Nationalist candidate and is elected Orpheus Ballroom which I went to as a An attempt was made to rebuild this Unionist MP for the area. teenager. I remember it as a magnificent Co-Op building in 1977. PIRA finished off But you couldn’t vote Unionist to get dance place. The only problem was that the attempt with three massive bombs. I public housing. You can’t even pretend the girls seemed to be mostly shorthand- had finished caring now. Anyway, It could you’ll vote Unionist. It’s principle. The typists. It was best not to tell them you were never be the same building.. Things gener- cynics say: 'It’s principle but how many a shipyard worker, or, if they suspected ally would never be the same again. principles do you have in the bank?' you were a shipyard worker, to tell them Wilson John Haire. The family you visit again—Unionist, you worked in the drawing office as an 26.11.2019 Communist and Irish labour­­­—think you are mad to keep your wife and two young children living in one room. Time to get back to London and out of this situation. A Fairytale Moment on the Late Late Keeping tabs on the new Unionist MP: or you can have political correctness; you a few years go by and there is another elec- The expression of an expletive by can’t have both. If creativity is to bear fruit tion. He is voted out. He expects that but, singer/song writer Shane McGowan in creative people need to be able to upend being an MP has pushed him further up defence of the lyrics of his world famous the conventions. the Unionist hierarchy ladder. There was song, Fairytale of New York', marked the McGowan’s story, as told in a BBC a certain honesty when Catholics voted highpoint of a Late Late Show before documentary made some years ago, is in- Unionist in exchange for public housing. Christmas (13 December). The Show was a teresting. Returning from London shortly They had assured the would-be MP that celebration of his career. As he and others after Shane’s birth the family spent six they would vote Unionist. The stepmother performed some of his best songs and as years in his mother’s home place in South had said I was to assure him that he had various figures from the music world told Tipperary. That was obviously a formative my vote in exchange for public housing. anecdotes about him, a picture emerged time for McGowan; photographs show She was bright, she had beauty, she was of a talented if truculent song writer from a small bright-eyed boy surrounded by an early feminist, she was Unionist and the Irish community in London who had older country people in poor clothing she knew of the Catholic plight but her absorbed the Irish musical tradition in a holding various musical instruments. In idea was for them to work the system. circuitous way. the documentary his father explains that She was also an avid believer in the Co- When the Fairytale came up for dis- back in England they got on well with Op movement and she was running it. It cussion, singer Lisa O’Neill was asked English neighbours but found the culture had the biggest single dairy in Northern whether some words in the song should oppressively alien. Like many Irish they Ireland and was the biggest distributor of be changed. She said they shouldn’t, fell back on their own community and coal throughout NI (when coal was used that the song was finished and shouldn’t traditional music became for them an in domestic fireplaces) now be tampered with. It was then put to McGowan that the word, ‘faggot’, could obsession. Shane’s mother was a talented The Co-Op movement she was running give offence to members of the gay com- singer in the Delia Murphy tradition. started in a single shop in the Protestant munity, to which he replied in a London The musical culture of the London Irish Shankill Road in 1888. By 1932 it was a drawl: “Fuck that!” came up on the Show when long time large four-storey building in York Street in It was a telling moment. Sometimes singer Sean O’Shea recounted how he central Belfast. It was decidedly up-market intellectual argument is beside the point. discovered that in London the community but welcomed all. It was Belfast’s Harrods. In their own way McGowan and O’Neill had added their own dimension to the It sold everything on its four floors. The were saying: you can have songs of quality, music. That quirky London addition to the 22 Irish tradition is what defines McGowan’s element of humour—it suits her puckish there is strong evidence to demonstrate that music. It is present in the Fairytale but for demeanour—but she is good across the the statement attributed to Christensen is me the song that epitomises it is A Pair of range of song types. entirely invented, that it is an example of Brown Eyes. Its chorus is arresting and at There was a time when artistic expres- manufactured evidence. Ward describes the same time familiar but it could never sion in Ireland was curtailed by religious the meeting as an interrogation which have been written by a composer in any orthodoxy. These days trendy types in the implies questions and answers, but the of the forms of the Irish tradition. radio stations—our modern gate-keepers alleged Christensen statement does not Lisa O’Neill is also interesting. A great and self-appointed arbiters of taste—are take the form of an interrogation; there mystery of the contemporary music scene the ones doing the censorship. Long may are no questions and no answers. The is how such an obviously talented artist the inarticulate, un-political defiance of entire document is hopelessly beset by is not better known. Thankfully her talent people like McGowan and O’Neill protect errors and contradictions which expose is beginning to get recognition. She is us from conformity! this Philadelphia exercise to be as inept especially good with songs that carry an Dave Alvey and false as the Findlay memo.

The timing cited in the police report and alleged statement, does not bear scrutiny. The Montevideo event reported by Professor Andrew allegedly occurred The Philadelphia Exercise “about 10 or 11 years ago”, which would be in either 1905 or 1906. Casement was Professor Christopher Andrew is a Síocháin in his 2008 study, where his end- unemployed throughout 1905 and most of renowned authority on the world of In- note reads “Acting Consul, Philadelphia 1906 and was not in South America. He telligence and was official historian for to Nicolson, 10 May, 1916.” (Endnote 16, arrived in Brazil in mid-October, 1906 to MI5. He is yet another Casement expert Chapter 18). This also is false; the Acting begin work as consul in Santos. It is not and has made his contribution in favour Consul in Philadelphia, Mr. Ford, did not credible that he immediately absented of authenticity of the Black Diaries. How- write to the FO. Ó Síocháin, however, cites himself and spent a month in Montevideo, ever, his contribution does not withstand his source as PRO FO 95/776. There is no some 1,200 miles away, nor is there any scrutiny. In an essay Casement and British communication of that date from Philadel- evidence that he did so. Intelligence published in Roger Casement phia to Nicolson in the TNA file. There is in Irish and World History (Daly ed. RIA a telegram from Consul General Bayley in A second error of timing appears on 2005) he writes: NY of that date which informs Nicolson page two of the statement attributed to “One of the reports from Findlay ... that the Acting Consul in Philadelphia has Christensen. “In November 1914, by included the statement that Casement contacted him regarding Christensen. It is arrangement with him, he having ob- and Christensen had ‘unnatural relations’ not clear if that contact between Ford and tained an American passport from a Mr. ...they began when he was a seaman aged Bayley was in writing or by telephone. only fifteen or sixteen and Casement was Landz... we sailed for Norway on the S.S. Oscar II.” The ship carrying Case- British consul in Brazil. According to After the interview with Christensen, Christensen, Casement followed him into ment to Norway departed New York on a typed document of 13 numbered pages a lavatory in a Montevideo hotel where 15th October, 1914. In November 1914, was prepared in Scotland Yard. (PRO DPP they had sex. Christensen jumped ship both Casement and Christensen were in 1/46). This consists of a report (pages 1 and began an affair with Casement lasting Berlin. Casement carried the passport of for about a month.” to 7) dated 5th June 1916 followed by 6 a Mr. James Landy; the Christensen who pages (8 to 13) purporting to be a state- This appears to attribute to Findlay travelled with Casement to Norway on that ment dated 23rd May by Christensen in the comments allegedly made to him by same ship certainly knew the date when Philadelphia office of the Acting British Christensen in 1914. However, Findlay he boarded the vessel and also knew the Consul. The summary report, ostensibly did not make any such report concern- correct spelling of Casement’s alias. But by Chief Inspector Ward, does not bear ing alleged events in Montevideo. The the Christensen represented in the police Ward’s signature. Therefore, his author- Montevideo story appeared in June 1916 statement did not know. ship is uncertain. The six pages numbered after an interview with Christensen in 8 to 13 bear the heading Philadelphia and Philadelphia was conducted on 23rd May The spelling of several words further the date 23rd May. 1916. The interviewer was Chief Inspector betrays the falsity of this endeavour. The This account is purportedly in Chris- Ward of Scotland Yard CID (see appendix) names Bayley, Findlay, Devoy, Meyer, tensen’s first person voice but it too is who stated in his long report that he had Nordenflycht, Landy and Christiania are unsigned. Both documents were typed travelled from London to Philadelphia all wrongly spelled in both Ward’s report on the same police typewriter in Scotland on instruction of the Director of Public and in the alleged Statement. Christensen Yard at the same time. Therefore, the Prosecutions. knew Findlay and Devoy personally and alleged first person typed statement is This visit is first mentioned by Inglis in knew the correct spelling of their names. not an original account by Christensen, his 1973 study (page 352, 1974 paperback He equally well knew the correct spelling but is the work of Inspector Ward and/ edition) where he states that “Christensen of Christiania, the capital city of his own or his colleagues. It is a police version wrote to the Foreign Office from the United country. But, since the pages were typed of a narrative allegedly originating from States suggesting they might like to have his in Scotland Yard on 5th June, Christensen Christensen some two weeks earlier. There testimony against the traitor.” However, was not present to make corrections; more is nothing to guarantee its authenticity, this is false; Christensen did not write to precisely, Christensen never saw these nothing to demonstrate that the typed the FO and Inglis gives no source. pages far less signed them. words in the alleged statement were ever The visit is also mentioned by Ó spoken or written by Christensen. But There is no mention of sex in the police 23 typescript although the innuendo was Therefore the 23rd May date of the did not exist on 23rd May. Therefore attractive enough for Professor Andrew alleged statement is false since it was the Montevideo story which opens the to state as a fact that Christensen had typed in London at the same time as the alleged Statement rests entirely on the confirmed the alleged relationship was summary report dated 5th June. There are word of Ward if he was the sole author. sexual. This is a clear echo of Findlay’s no original handwritten notes made by That the Montevideo story is in prime reports in 1914 and 1915 and indeed this Ward in Philadelphia with the typescript; position at the very start of the alleged ‘Philadelphia exercise’ was intended to Ward relied on a remarkable memory. The Statement indicates the importance given recover something of Finlay’s false memo spelling errors listed above are common to it by the police. It is allegedly the first which planted the seeds of scandal. to both report and the alleged statement. thing related by Christensen. And yet the Although Christensen allegedly refused words and sentences in the Statement, Both report and alleged Statement to disclose his address in Philadelphia, allegedly spoken by Christensen in first claim that Casement was in Montevideo somehow the Acting Consul managed to person, are obviously not his; nor can they to visit the German Minister, Baron Fer- arrange the meeting at short notice. Most be considered a paraphrase reconstructed dinand von Nordenflycht (1850-1931). noticeably, there is in Ward’s report no some two weeks later because there is no The source given is the alleged statement description of Christensen’s appearance, original version by Christensen. There is attributed to Christensen. Indeed, that although brief descriptions of others are no evidence that Christensen related the statement opens with the Montevideo given. Also of note is that Ward, a senior Montevideo story in any form. There is story. Casement did know the German policeman, states that Christensen and incontrovertible evidence that the story diplomat but not in 1905 or 1906; they Landz (Casement) sailed "from Norway" was typed in Scotland Yard by the police. met only in August 1909 in the diplomatic about "November 1914", and further that But, since it is not signed by Ward, we community of Petropolis north of Rio de he has verified the identity of the real cannot be certain that he is the author of Janeiro and Casement became a frequent Landz as a Real Estate agent in Nassau this first person narrative attributed to a visitor to the Nordenflycht home. Roger Street, NY. On a later page of his report named third person. Sawyer verifies the meeting in 1909: “A he contradicts the false and imprecise friendship which began at this period was November date of departure from NY and The errors in the police papers are com- with the German consul-general, Baron cites the correct date—1915. One further mon to both report and alleged Statement. von Nordenflycht” (Casement, The Flawed minor detail confirms that the first person Here are some of them: Hero p75. Routledge 1984). statement allegedly by Christensen was not 1. Christensen wrongly aged 36. However, if, as alleged, Casement copy-typed by the police from any original 2. Departure date given wrongly as travelled to Montevideo to visit von written by Christensen; the archaic spelling “about November 1914”. Nordenflycht in late 1906 or 1907, he "shews" (for shows) is used in both the 3. departure date given wrongly as travelled 1,200 miles from Rio in the report and the alleged Statement. October 15, 1915, wrong direction to visit a person who 4. Departure from NY wrongly given was not there and whom he did not The police papers submitted to the DPP as sailing from Norway. know. This is because in 1906 and 1907 also claim that, when leaving Montevideo, 5. Von Nordenflycht spelled wrongly. von Nordenflycht was working in New Casement gifted cash and jewels worth 6. Bayley spelled wrongly twice. Orleans and did not arrive in Brazil until some $900 to Christensen. This alleged 7. Landy spelled wrongly as Landz 1908 when he became Consul-General. extraordinary generosity is unexplained throughout. The Foreign Office of the Federal and when scrutinised its absurdity is 8. Devoy spelled wrongly as De Voy German Republic confirms that he was revealed. There is no evidence anywhere throughout. posted to Montevideo only in May 1911 that Casement possessed jewelry during 9. Christiania spelled wrongly as by which time Casement had left Rio De his life nor any evidence that he ever gifted Christiana throughout. Janeiro (March 1910), never to return. jewelry to anyone. MI5’s investigation 10. Findlay spelled wrongly as Finlay It follows that either Christensen was of his London bank account does not and Findley throughout. lying or Inspector Ward was lying but reveal the purchase of jewelry. Moreover, 11. Wrong address given for Landz. not both. In either case the Montevideo Casement had been unemployed for over 12. Meyer spelled wrongly as Myers. story is false. 18 months before his posting to Santos 13. Brogan spelled wrongly as Brogden. in late 1906, therefore without income. The language and the grammatical 14. $300 cited in report but cited as $900 in 1906-7 is equivalent to some structures used in the alleged and unsigned $200 in alleged Statement. £21,500 today and amounted to almost statement are those of an Englishman and one third of his annual consular salary. It is well-nigh impossible to under- not those of Christensen, a non-native Though generous, Casement was never stand how a senior police officer with 29 speaker of US English with limited a wealthy man but the gift claim asks years experience, who had distinguished schooling. We are invited to believe that us to believe that he gave away a large himself in detective work, did not notice Christensen himself spoke Ward’s stilted part of his salary before he had received so many errors in a few pages, especially formal English. There are no traces of it and that he brought from England to when decent literacy skills were a basic Christensen’s US English in the text which Santos a cache of jewelry which he then requirement in police service. The pres- is not a verbatim version of anything brought with him to Montevideo only to ence of so many errors suggests that the written or spoken by him. The text is the give away. Such absurdity indicates that narrative was prepared by several officers police version of an entirely imaginary the police lost control of the story they rather than by one officer. first-person account attributed to Chris- were inventing. tensen, many elements of which derive The following anomalies remain un- directly from Findlay’s invented memo of The alleged Statement is not signed explained: two addresses are given for October, 1914 and his subsequent botched – Christensen never saw the Statement ‘Landz’ in NY and even when Ward claims attempts to corroborate. in Philadelphia because the Statement to have verified this detail, he still uses 24 the wrong spelling although the correct that the Montevideo story is a fabrication. Christensen to be a secondary suspect for spelling of Casement’s alias was known It remains to determine who fabricated the invention of the Montevideo story. in 1914; it is also unclear why Ward did the story. The Metropolitan Police is the prime and not identify himself to Christensen at the The prime suspect for the invention only suspect. interview as he attests; Christensen refused of the Montevideo story must be the One commentator on this episode has his address so it is unclear how he was Metropolitan Police because it is in their claimed that Christensen refused to sign contacted by the Acting Consul at short official papers that the story is reported. A the alleged Statement. This is false. notice for the interview on 23rd May. potential secondary suspect is Christensen Christensen was not asked to sign any because the story is attributed to him Statement because no Statement was By 5th June, Ward and his CID col- in those police papers. While it is clear presented to him at the interview and leagues had completed the report and that the police had both opportunity and the report does not record any such alleged statement and top copies were motive to invent the story, it is less clear presentation and refusal. The alleged “handed to” Sir Charles Mathews, Direc- that Christensen had both opportunity Statement was typed in Scotland Yard tor of Public Prosecutions. On 28th June and motive. This is because there is no and was never seen by Christensen a retyped copy of the report and alleged external verification for what happened or in Philadelphia. It is, therefore, not a Statement was sent from the CID to MI5, was said at the consulate in Philadelphia. Statement and is evidentially worthless. where it was read on 30th June by Frank There is only the police account, unsigned Hall, who commented as follows (KV by Inspector Ward and compromised by In order to locate the origin of the 2-9-3): "…in view of Ward’s opinion & multiple errors of spelling, dates and facts. Montevideo story, the following must be the old Findlay incident I doubt if he is If it is allowed that Christensen had op- considered. There is an unsigned and un- … …[illegible] … His statement, if true, portunity, then it follows that a credible dated document in Casement’s handwrit- confirms our knowledge of the connection motive must be proposed. The present ing in NLI among the Dr. Charles Curry between the German-Irish- …[illegible]". writer is unable to propose a credible Papers (Ms. 17,023). This consists of two Thus Hall attested that the Statement motive which explains why Christensen pages, the second containing only a few contained little or nothing that was not might relate a self-incriminating and lines. Here is the complete text: already known to MI5. It is exceedingly false story of a scandalous nature to three “When I first met Sir Roger Casement strange that Hall made no comment on strangers (Consul Ford, Inspector Ward, I am sure he never thought he would ever the scandalous Montevideo story which, PS. Brewer). again meet the Norwegian sailor he had all things being equal, ought to have been The attribution to Christensen is made helped, as he has surely helped many news to him. This lack of comment requires by the prime suspect, the Metropolitan others who were in similar trouble. explanation especially in view of Hall’s Police, and the attribution cannot be I had run away from my ship at a South already recorded interest in such scandal verified externally. Therefore, Christensen American port, as many sailors do and after wandering around for a bit I got about Casement. It cannot be excluded would be a secondary suspect only by so hungry and tired that I did not know that on 30th June 1916 the Montevideo virtue of the prime suspect’s attribution where to turn. story was not news to Hall. which rests entirely on the word of the I could not go to the Norwegian Consul prime suspect. for I was a deserter and liable as such to Ten or eleven years before May 1916 punishment and I had no claim on any would cover 1905 to 1906. In that period It is now necessary to distinguish be- other Consulate. Casement was present in South America tween the falsity of the Montevideo story But I wanted to get to work again and so less than three months having arrived itself and the falsity of the attribution. It I thought I would try the British Consul- at Santos from the UK in mid October is clear that the attribution is effected by ate, where there are always many sailors of 1906. There is no evidence of a visit means of a lengthy first person narrative engaged and wanted. I had no discharge to Montevideo in 1906. TNA files FO purportedly spoken by Christensen but papers from my last ship and so they would not take me.” 368/9/116 contain his frequent reports to prepared by the police and completed the FO during the latter period of 1906 some twelve days after the interview in From the narrative tone and verbal from Santos and these show that he was Philadelphia. Analysis of that narrative economy this appears to be the start of a busy with normal consular duties concern- demonstrates that the sentences were not projected press article to be published un- ing import-export, shipping and transport, spoken by Christensen but were created der Christensen’s name as his own account coffee markets etc. in London, probably but not certainly by of events and Casement probably intended There is no evidence of a visit to Inspector Ward. The error made by the it to include details of the Findlay episode. Monte­­video in the period January to end police was to use first person rather than There is, however, no evidence that it was of June 1907 when Casement left Santos third person; quite simply the author/s ever completed or published and the pages, and returned to the UK. There is evidence lacked the literary skills to create a con- along with other papers, were entrusted to of a two-week visit to Buenos Aires in vincing first person narrative in the voice Dr. Charles Curry in Germany until they March 1907 which he duly accounted for of another person. If Ward was the author, were deposited in NLI. to the FO. Therefore there is no evidence he knew very well that the sentences in Since the proposed article remained un- whatsoever that Casement spent a month his narrative were not genuine first person finished in Germany, it remained unknown in Montevideo in either 1905, 1906 or sentences spoken by Christensen. Since to British Intelligence. Nonetheless, two 1907. those sentences are invented, it follows that essential aspects in those pages appeared they are falsely attributed with the result in Ward’s report of June 1916: Christensen When these facts are added to the fact that there is no evidence that Christensen jumping ship in a South American port that Casement did not know von Norden- said anything about Montevideo. city and then meeting Casement. There is flycht in those years and to the fact that Since both the story and the attribution only one explanation of how these aspects the German diplomat was located in the in the police papers are false, it follows re-appeared in the false Montevideo story. USA in those years, it becomes evident that there are no grounds for considering Christensen himself answered Ward’s 25 question about how and when he had first is unsigned and without probative value. Ap p e n d i x encountered Casement. This would be a Perhaps he felt that pretending to believe it Alfred Ward was a highly-regarded very reasonable opening question in such was a risk worth taking. After all, audacter detective, having solved several high an interview and it is unthinkable that Ward calumniare, semper aliquid haerat. We profile crimes and reaching the rank of did not ask it. And Christensen’s ingenu- must therefore thank him for revealing it Chief Detective Inspector. He joined the ous response corresponded to the basic and, by so doing, unwittingly exposing police at age 21 on 27th December 1887 content of the incomplete article. Thus police duplicity in yet one more example (Warrant number 73106), and served for in 1916 the police and then MI5 learned of manufactured evidence. 29 years until he was killed in a Zeppelin that Christensen had met Casement long raid on 25th September 1916. before the already known meeting on The Philadelphia exercise, although Ward travelled from Liverpool with P.S. Broadway in 1914. And from this hitherto hopelessly incompetent and bungled, is Brewer on the S.S. Cameronia of the unknown information the Montevideo nevertheless yet another clear example Anchor-Cunard Line, arriving in NY story was fabricated. The police report that both police and Intelligence services on 22nd May. His passenger ID was omitted the original reference to the Brit- were prepared to manufacture evidence 610144120113. It is an indication of ish Consulate. in their frenzied determination to destroy the priority given to the prosecution of The un-named port could be Santos or Casement before the trial. However, the Casement that two police officers were Rio de Janeiro or Pará. Casement was in deeper significance of this manufactured sent on a dangerous two-week round trip Santos from October 1906 to June 1907. evidence emerges only if we ask why the across the Atlantic in wartime without He was in Pará March 1908 to Novem- police fabricated the evidence when they even the certainty of meeting Christensen. ber 1908 and in Rio from March 1909 to allegedly held the diaries which made That the S.S. Cameronia was sunk by a March 1910. All were busy ports. If the ten such elaborate fabrication utterly unneces- U-boat in April 1917 is evidence of the year period is correct, the encounter took sary. From this it follows that the need to danger. In the event, Ward returned from place in Santos sometime between mid fabricate reveals itself as evidence of the Philadelphia with little of use to the DPP October 1906 and the end of June 1907. falsity of the diaries. and most of it already known to MI5. From the text of the incomplete article, it Paul Hyde can be understood that Casement helped Christensen in some practical way. As a consul Casement often helped people in difficulty and, since his three postings in Brazil were in busy port cities, those in difficulty were frequently sailors. His correspondence from Santos complains of Photographs, Photostats and Typescripts having to deal with sailors: “…an impos- In his piece Casement and Photograph- politan Police, also, in contrast to Smith's sible task as the men get drunk and come ic Evidence (Irish Political Review, 2019 claim, related how he was the diary-finder ashore and desert in shoals and the place is Dec, p.15) Jack Lane related how “I went and that the discovery was made among a pandemonium” (Letter to Mary Hutton, to the trouble of revisiting the Casement Casement’s effects in London. To back up 24 October, 1906, NLI Ms. 8612). Trial and rediscovered that photographs his claim, he wrote up a number of accounts Christensen later recalled the earlier were a key part of the Prosecution Exhibits, of the finding in various publications and meeting because, though he was not a put forward as evidence. That can only in books he wrote down the years, all British subject, Casement, a stranger, had highlight the point that Hyde makes.” mutually contradictory. helped him. And exactly because “he has He went on to comment with regard to Happily, the glaring inconsistency of surely helped many others who were in the bound diary volumes: “But, mysteri- two rival discovery locations has been similar trouble”, Casement had forgot- ously, the CID made no photographs of resolved for the best part of a century. This ten the encounter after so many years. them.” Further he said: “There is only is thanks to the simple device of the most Therefore the 1914 meeting in NY would one rational explanation for the complete dubious location having been forgotten be a coincidence for Christensen but not absence of CID photographs of the bound about and ignored. So, you will find no for Casement. diary volumes allegedly held in police approving reference to the County Kerry As an example of manufactured evi- custody!” discovery in any pro-authenticity writer dence, the Montevideo story did not strictly A key point he was making was that since the onset of the 1930s. require the link to von Nordenflycht. The there was no photograph taken by the RIC FO knew that the German diplomat had in County Kerry of the bound volumes, as There were no photographs of the diary been based in Montevideo and that Case- there were no bound volumes to be seen or diaries made about the vicinity of Banna ment was a friend from 1909 onwards. there after Casement had landed. Strand because none were found there and Ward (or his CID colleagues) took a risk Nobody today would challenge this, nobody today claims otherwise. So this in choosing Montevideo only because no matter how they would conceive of absence of photographs has absolutely Nordenflycht had been posted there in the the authenticity question. nothing to do with the point Hyde has at- years just before the war. tempted to make that the bound volumes Banna strand did not exist about the time of Casement’s Professor Andrew knows better than F.E. Smith, prosecuting counsel at arrest and before his execution. ordinary mortals that the raison d’être of Casement’s trial, did say in his 1926 book Jack Lane has innocently accorded too secret services is secrecy and deception. Famous Trials of History that the “diary” much significance to the written claims of It is unthinkable that he, an expert on came ashore with Casement at Banna Lord Birkenhead/F.E. Smith made very Intelligence, genuinely believes in the Strand in April 1916. However, Sir Basil many years ago. Established Casement veracity of the alleged Statement which Thomson, head of Special Branch, Metro- Diaries Dogma, it is advisable to under- 26 stand, never remains permanently fixed. A biography by Geoffrey Parmiter, six not wish to repeat what I have already Old material can disappear without trace years later also referred to the showing of said in relation to this matter in earlier from the established canon often just as photos. So also did the investigative study contributions to this discussion. the new bubbles to the surface. The Forged Casement Diaries by Dr. W.J. However, I wish to add that the state- Maloney (1936). of-the-art technology of the Great War Co n f r o n t e d w i t h p h o t o g r a p h s A further point: if, as Lane suggests, period in relation to the reproduction of Lane claimed in his piece regarding the there were no photographs made by the typed text involved the photostat machine. Diary volumes: “But, mysteriously, the CID and displayed, then why was this curi- This produced a black and white copy in CID made no photographs of them. In- ous fact not reported and remarked upon about four minutes which approximated in stead the Metropolitan Police went to the way back in the relevant historical era? quality to a modern photocopy. Handwrit- trouble of creating lengthy typescripts— ten documents could also be reproduced which we are told are copied extracts from Co m m o n s e n s e using this technology. Reproductions the unseen diaries.” The Department of Naval Intelligence, of very high definition would still need Can this be true? from its perspective, sought to undermine to be done using close-up photography. We have archival evidence to the the campaign to have the death sentence Yet, high-definition reproductions would contrary. In correspondence between the Home Office and the Foreign Office and commuted. As well, it aimed to discredit only conceivably be required of unique The British Embassy in Washington there Casement as a traitor who went over to handwritten personal documents, artistic are references to photographs of diary the side of the Germans. Along with that works or some highly complex technical pages. Note: “two photos of specimen it sought to bolster British war fighting drawings. There was no technical sense in pages of the Diary …They will help him morale and also to discredit Irish revolu- making photographs of typescripts during to convince anyone to whom he may show the copies that the diary is not a fake or tionary nationalism. this era as suggested in the book in relation forgery.” – (Earnley Blackwell, legal If the surreptitious strategy to discredit to the case of the US Ambassador. adviser to Home Office to Montgomery Casement were definitively exposed as a The production of photographs in- in Foreign Office, 25 July 1916, Foreign deceit, there would have been catastrophic volved taking the pictures, extracting the Office Archives, TNA FO 395/43) consequences from the viewpoint of the film, developing and drying the negatives, According to a letter to the Times Liter- British Imperial interest. The drive for all of which will take at very least half an ary Supplement, of 18th April 1936 from clemency would have become a clamour. hour. The prints have to be made using Shane Leslie, who had been on the staff The prestige of Casement would again a device known as an enlarger and the of the Washington Embassy at the relevant soar, in Britain and worse still in America. employment of trays of chemicals. They time, “Photographs (of pages of the Di- For Britain had a long-term aim of involv- then have to be dried which will take a ary) were sent to the late Ambassador, Sir ing America directly in the war. number of hours. All of this has to be done Cecil Spring Rice, in Washington, and he, To base an allegation of an obscene diary in a specialised photo-laboratory known as in duty bound, showed them to American upon typed transcripts without the backup a darkroom. Such a time-consuming and journalists.” of corresponding handwritten pages would costly procedure would not be justified to have been to flirt with potential disaster. A secret telegram to the British naval reproduce a number of typed pages when Captain Reginald Hall was daring but he ­attaché in Washington, Captain Guy Gaunt, a so much more convenient procedure was not reckless. He could not have risked of 29th June 1916 went: “Photographic was to hand. carrying out a bluff which could so easily facsimile & transcript of Casement’s di- I hope this serves to clarify matters. have been called. ary of which you have, no doubt, already Tim O’Sullivan heard is being sent to America by today’s All that was necessary was for a canny individual to intuit what was afoot. They mail. Person receiving it will communicate with you when it arrives.” (Foreign Office might select a few typescript paragraphs at Archive - TNA FO 395/43) random and demand to see, within a matter of an hour, corresponding photostat copies According to the first biography of of handwritten pages. If the pages failed Due to pressure of space, Casement in English: to materialize, the whole game would “…The story was most skillfully put have come unstuck. With the technology into circulation that Casement had for of that era a photostat, which corresponds years led a life of gross perverted im- Part Two of morality, and that Scotland Yard had in its to a modern photocopy, took a mere four possession a diary in his own handwrit- minutes to produce. ing, which consisted of a detailed account The use of typescripts without cor- of indecent experiences in London and responding handwritten text would not The so-called Paris and Putumayo. It seemed incredible that anyone but a lunatic could have kept have been a practical approach. The risk ‘Treaty’and the such a diary. But those who expressed of being found out was too great. Such a doubts were at once confronted with gamble was too great to be justified. So, so-called ‘Civil War photographs of which many copies must we can reason, as we are contemplating apparently have been made…” (The Life the conduct of first-rate professionals, it and Death of Roger Casement, (1930), has been held over to the pp 17, Denis Gwynn). could not have happened. February issue, It is worth bearing in mind that this was We r e p h o t o g r a p h s o f typescripts ? written only fifteen years after the events In Paul Hyde’s Anatomy of a Lie, as has the INDEX for the in question, when there were still plenty of Chapter 7 Invisible evidence (p.113), it Irish Political Review individuals about who could relate credibly is claimed the photographs sent to US what they had witnessed or what others of Ambassador Page were photographs of for 2019 their acquaintance had witnessed. typescript pages of the 1911 diary. I do 27 his wife as “a Castle Catholic”. That made Aubane a source of Catholic and A Meeting At Skibbereen, Part Two nationalist bigotry for that particular audience. When later asked by Aubane for a source for that accusation, he did not reply.

An Imagined Nation In one of his books there is a purely fictitious account of what was supposedly said by Jack Lane and A West Cork History Festival was proceedings of the Trial went ‘missing’. myself at a Conference on Hubert Butler organised by a local millionaire three Angela Clifford reassembled the aspects held at Kilkenny. He was not present years ago. Its opening session was of the Trial that were in the public domain at that session of the Conference. I had launched by Professor Roy Foster of by collating the newspaper reports of it. agreed to take part in it only because I Oxford University. Professor Foster told It appeared from this that no other verdict was assured that there would be a record the audience that the millionaire founder could possibly have been brought, in the of the proceedings. Following the of the Festival, Simon Kingston, was a light of the evidence submitted, than Not publication of Foster’s comprehensively very important person in the world of Guilty. The academic world beholden to false account of what I said, I wrote to academia, particularly the academic the Government took no heed. Professor the organisers asking to see the record world of Oxford and Cambridge. Foster did nothing unusual when he of the Conference. The reply was that In his Address Professor Foster made ignored the Court verdict. All that was no record of it had been kept. Foster’s reference to Charles Haughey as “an ex- unusual was the dismissing of historical account of it was therefore based on Provo gun-runner”. The Festival was facts at a History Festival. maliciously ignorant gossip. (I give him attended by some members of the Aubane But Oxford now seems to have the credit of assuming he did not invent History Society in North Cork. One decided that at least this incident in it himself.) of them, in the brief discussion period recent Irish history must be put on a following Professor Foster’s Address, factual basis, and the service rendered by Following that experience I decided took issue with his characterisation of Angela Clifford to authenticity in history to keep well away from any possibility Haughey, pointing out that he had been is acknowledged in a recent Oxford of coming into contact with further subjected to trial on the charge of illegal University Press publication, A Treatise Anglo-Irish chicanery. And I was also importation of guns and had been found On Northern Ireland by Prof. Brendan stimulated to find out more about Hubert Not Guilty. O’Leary, Volume 2. Butler, towards whom I had felt vaguely At the end of that opening session sympathetic. I found that his driving Mr. Kingston suggested to the Aubane It is ideologically awkward for force was anti-Catholic bigotry, and that members that they were out of place Professor Foster that criticism of his writings on the Balkans and Germany at the Festival and should think about his treatment of history which he is should not be taken on trust. leaving it. They took the hint and left unable to ignore comes from the wrong the Festival to mull over a kind of history side—not from stick-in-the-mud Anti- Foster himself was an established in which facts were an unwelcome Partitionist Catholic nationalists, but English historian before he turned to intrusion. Their account of the opening from two-nationists on the North, who Irish history. He would never have been session was published in this journal in also pioneered rational consideration of a major English historian but he was August 2017. Its accuracy has not been Church/State issues in the Republic half established as a niche historian with a disputed by Mr. Kingston, Professor a century ago. biography of Lord Randolph Churchill, Foster, or anybody else. published by Oxford University Press He is overloaded with official approval in 1981, and re-issued as a paperback a Haughey was a senior Government by the regime that was set in motion by couple of years later. Minister in 1970 when, without warning, the failed prosecution of Haughey, and Lord Randolph was an interesting he was dismissed from the Government that became dominant ideologically failure with a ruling class background, by the Taoiseach, Jack Lynch, and Lynch despite its failure at law. He supplied it who darted about in various directions launched a prosecution against him for with the general historical obfuscation it within the loose party politics of the illegal importation of arms. Haughey required and it has rewarded him. But, 1880s, when politics in Ireland were still was subjected to trial and found Not in totalitarian spirit, he is irritated by part of British politics. Foster, with his Guilty. The Fianna Fail Government, an obscure group that dares to publish Anglo-Irish world-view, was at ease in supported by the Fine Gael Opposition coherent, fact-based criticism of him. that region. There was no ‘revisionism’ and by the Labour Party, dismissed the He cannot bask in his glory and take in his approach to it, no debunking of jury verdict as perverse. It was suggested no heed of those “sixpenny papers that the narrative of Destiny into a fairy-tale. that a nationalist jury, flying in the face none of us ever see”—as Redmond did And I do not recall any mention of Sir of the evidence, had declared him Not with the small-circulation Republican Charles Dilke’s boast in Greater Britain Guilty precisely because he was guilty. publications of 1914. that the Anglo-Saxons were the greatest It later came to light that there was extirpating race known to history. a disproportionately high number of He is irritated, but what can he do Protestants on the jury, indicating that, without making things worse? He if there was an attempt at jury-rigging it invents facts. He told a public meeting (Dilke, a very eminent Liberal was on the other side. in Dublin, at which nobody from Aubane contemporary of Tory Democrat Chur­ The official Court Transcript of the was present, that Aubane had described chill, wrote a convincing account of the 28 world as being composed of “dear” There is an English historian of couldn’t find any. So I read the papers, peoples and “cheap” peoples, in which England’s lost colonies: Toby Barnard. which were conveniently available in the the former did what it pleased with the When writing on the lost colonies in Shankill Road, the Newspaper Library latter. Greater Britain is out of print, but Ireland, Barnard does not purport to be and the Linenhall Library. And what I its ideas are not out of date. It remains writing as an Irish historian, and therefore found out from the papers did not tally an accurate description of the world as it he does not need to resort to ideological with the books that began to appear from is beneath the humbug.) contortions. But Foster had to write as the Universities. if he was an Irish historian, rather than Lord Randolph is remembered for England’s “cleverest Irish historian” I had read much about German, his notion of “Tory Democracy”, his (Robert Kee’s description). French and Russian history. And I slogan Ulster Will Fight, And Ulster Will had read about the “Stalin School of Be Right!, but most of all because he It has been suggested that Kee was Falsifiation”. I could see that there was the father of his son, Sir Winston— not actually praising Foster for being was streamlining, and the knocking off “the greatest teller of fairy-tales in the clever but was using the word in the of awkward edges in the official Soviet 20th century”, to quote the notorious sense of ‘Smart Alec’, and was saying account of the Soviet Revolution, the answer given in a radio quiz programme that he had been too clever by half with Short Course In The History Of The broadcast from Belfast during the 2nd his complete negation of the Irish attempt CPSU (B), but it did not purport to be World War. (And Sir Winston would at historical political existence. It would a dispassionate account of the past, and not have denied it. He said frankly that have been prudent to leave some scrap neither did it contradict the actual course Britain could do just as it pleased in the to them as authentic. Depriving them of events leading to the present, in which War because the victor would write the of everything could provoke them into it was a programmatic policy document. history of it, and he set about making asserting themselves forcefully as being But, with regard to Northern Ireland, up the story that would be told about something. It would be more advisable the academic histories half a century it, even as the Russians were doing the for Britain to allow them to have been after its establishment comprehensively fighting that defeated Nazi Germany and something, and ‘help’ them to shape that misrepresented both how it had come the Americans were doing the fighting something, than to rubbish them entirely about and what it was. that withheld Western Europe from the and possibly stimulate them to become Russians who had broken the German something against British disapproval. It was a Whitehall imposition on the military power. Six Counties in which a majority had But I have not seen the source of the insisted that it would not be made part of Sir Winston’s History is a skilfully Kee quotation, that appears as a blurb on either an Irish Home Rule Government woven combination of Von Rankean Foster’s The Irish Story. All I know of or an Irish state. The Ulster Unionist objectivity and a fairy story. If it is read Kee is that he was a television journalist demand was to be excluded from the with attention to detail, and with memory who made some programmes on the Home Rule Bill and be governed as a that is not carried away by rhetoric, it ‘Troubles’ in the 1970s and made books regular part of the British state system. says that Britain made a complete mess of them. I glanced at one of these books. The Unionist leader explained at length of its victory in the 1914 War, and that It told me that Sinn Fein had won the why it would be a bad thing to set up a the 1939 War was an unnecessary war 1918 Election on a minority vote, and local system, unique in the UK, in which brought about by its own policy from that a large percentage of the votes it a Protestant majority would be required 1919 to 1939, not a war that was forced got were gained by fraud in the form of to govern a large Catholic minority. And on it by circumstances beyond its control. mass personation. I looked up the record the Nationalist community did not ask At the same time it told to the great mass and found it was true that it did not get for a local Protestant Government to be of British readers, who were in need of an overall majority of the votes cast. set up between itself and Westminster, a fairy tale, the story that they wanted to But the reason was that in a quarter of cutting it off from the Government of hear. the Constituencies there was no voting the state. But that was what Westminster because nobody stood against Sinn Fein. decided to do. The Six Counties were But this is off the point. The myths And, with regard to “personation”, made into a disenfranchised enclave of English history are sacred to Foster, if it was possible on a large scale, that outside the democracy of the state. It the Anglo-Irish being more English could only mea that the Constituency could only work as the governing (in than the English. In the Anglo-sphere organisation of the Home Rule Party had the sense of policing) of the Catholic he is a believer. He was an orthodox collapsed and had no effective presence community by the Protestant community. English historian when he was called at the polling booths. And that led to the War. upon to produce a ‘revisionist’ history But that is not the story one gets in of Ireland for the Government. And he The whole thing was a red herring the academic histories. had no practice at revision properly so- and I assume that Kee knew it. called, not having questioned the sacred And when war did break out the beliefs of English history, and not having I don’t think I ever read a book on Dublin Government was somehow Irish history in his make-up as he had Irish history until I was in my thirties. persuaded that the cause of it was the English. My schooling, such as it was, ended as way history was taught in the Southern What could nationalist Ireland be to I entered my teens. What I knew about schools and colleges, rather than the Anglo-Ireland except the consequence Ireland was what everybody knew through undemocratic, sectarian, Six County of a colony that unaccountably missed just growing up in Slieve Luacra in the system within the British state. And the its destiny—a colony gone wrong? But 1940s and 1950s. In Belfast around 1970 Government set in motion a movement the story could not be written overtly in I looked for books to explain the strange of denigration of its own history, under those terms. structure of Northern Ireland to me. I the delusion that this would bring about 29 peace in the North and Irish unity. · Biteback · Biteback· Biteback· Biteback· Biteback· Biteback· Biteback· Biteback The chief work of denigration was Foster’s Modern Ireland. Professor David Fitzpatrick, an Australian with Unpublished Letter to Irish Times (27 November 2019) a family grudge against Nationalist Ireland, who was given a post of admin­ istrative authority (which Foster never Ryan Commission 'embarrassing' statistical error had), set in motion the writing a false More than one statistical problem affects the 2009 Commission to Investigate Child narrative of Irish history, in place of Abuse (CICA) : report (Simon Carswell, 'Ryan report not ‘undermined’ by error', 27th Foster’s disparagement of narrative. But November). I alerted CICA last year [2018] to its four-fold inflation of numbers Fitzpatrick’s positively false narrative of children in industrial schools, that resulted in Monday's 'embarrassing' cor- was a step too far, and his chief agent, rection. Peter Hart, seems to have fallen into The report says nothing about abuse in Smyly's orphanages or in any other Protestant disrepute, after being hailed in the first ethos institution, that CICA should have investigated. That may be because, as far as instance as a Liberator by the History I am aware, few (if any) Smyly's victims spoke to CICA. Such victims thought, fol- Department of Cork University. lowing the dominant societal and media narrative, the Commission a "Catholic thing" or "for Catholics". Edmund Burke remarked somewhere; My evidence is anecdotal. Why don't we know for sure? As I pointed out on the report's I think in the Regicide Peace (the tenth anniversary last May, CICA reported testimony from 1,500 former residents but closest thing to “political science” ever not how many from each institution. Institutional case studies were decided upon on produced) that there are states, or nations, the basis of testimony from over 20 former residents of an institution. However accur­ which cannot bear the weight of their ate and harrowing individual testimonies, this self-selection methodology distorted the own history. He called them “truckling overall picture. states” as far as I remember. And he said Within a state-licensed sectarian system of welfare provision, one side of the sectarian their destiny was to be woven into the fence was not investigated. As a consequence, confirmed persistent abuse in Smyly's destiny of others. institutions did not feature in media reports. It is not a topic of political conversation or within Protestant church communities. In this way, fate has smiled on Smyly's, if It never occurred to me, as an not on Artane, Goldenbridge and Letterfrack. unreconstructed product of life in Slieve Luachra, that the Irish fell into that The problem is not confined to CICA. Those permitted to tell the Commission their category. But, if Cork University in the story were required first to have been resident in an institution named on the Residential hands of Dermot Keogh is taken to be Institutions Redress Board (RIRB) schedule. representative of the nation, it can hardly Unlike with CICA, Protestant ethos abuse victims spoke to the RIRB. But the RIRB, be denied that they do. And the West in turn, refuses also to provide an institutional breakdown for the 15,581 people it com- Cork History Festival is conducted on pensated. In addition the RIRB refuses to state how much compensation, per institution, the assumption that they have done. was paid to victims. As a result, we don’t know how much Smyly’s abuse cost the taxpayer. Furthermore, A West Cork History Festival might unlike Roman Catholic Religious Orders, the Church of Ireland ethos Smyly’s institution have been expected to be a celebration did not contribute to the state’s controversial abuse compensation fund. That Roman of the work of the Bantry Band, and Catholic money funds Caranua that helps abuse victims, some from Smyly’s. especially of the writings of the historian A.M. Sullivan and the poet T.D. Sullivan. CICA and the RIRB gave me unsatisfactory excuses for refusal to publish missing Mr. Kingston’s Festival, however, made information. The relevant minister could and should order its production. If reluctant, no mention of either of the Sullivans the Taoiseach or, failing him, the Dáil should instruct that it be produced. or of the Bantry Band. His West Cork Niall Meehan seems to be a parallel country situated in the same territory—a country of holiday The word was originally used to Speaker of the Irish Parliament, was homes in which the busy and successful describe a piece of writing on a page of the opinion that “the mass of the and wealthy citizens of another world in which a previous piece of writing papists feel themselves unconcerned in found rest and relaxation amid a simple had been erased, but later was more the question”. The question referred to peasantry. It was Tir na nOg, and the generally used to describe a painting was what to do about the Papists. Foster Lake Isle of Innisfree combined and on a canvas in which an earlier painting thought that, though they were the bulk transplanted and commercialised. It was had been painted over, but with which of the population, they had no public apparently seen as a site on which West it had not merged, and from it could be sense of themselves. As far as politics Briticising Fianna Fail could establish excavated by chipping away the top layer was concerned, it was as if they did not a counter-offensive against the de- of paint. West Cork might be described exist. The thing to do was to let them Britishising effects of Brexist. as a palimpsest of three or four layers. be in their apathy, and suppress the But the word can only be applied very mischief-makers who pretended to be The word “palimpsest” was hijacked loosely to a functional society because acting on their behalf. by academics and social scientists some the successive layers do not remain I don’t know what West Cork was time ago as a useful figure of speech which separate from each other but fuse into the then, but whatever it was it ceased to be enabled politically awkward conclusions culture of the present moment. it with the ‘Famine’, and the emergence to be evaded. A new figure of speech of the Bantry Band, when it became was enough to make a reputation. In 1795 John Foster, the ‘Patriotic’ coherently national. 30 With the national development, In 1910 West Cork took part in landslide. It tried to continue governing the Sullivans set themselves against the general Co. Cork repudiation of Ireland, trusting that the Irish would Fenianism as the general mode of Redmondism as a Catholic Ascendancy ‘come to their senses’, meaning the sense develop­ment. They established a aberration within the Home Rule of their own incompetence—referred to Constitutional alternative to it within the movement. (Cork University, which by Foster. When the Irish showed signs British system, while at the same time might now be defined as an anti-Aubane of coming to a very different sense of preserving in memorable verse the Fenian institution, seems to be intent on writing things, Westminster declared that the spirit of rejection of the Constitution as that All-For-Ireland phase of development Irish Parliament and Government were Imperialist and repressive. out of the historical record.) illegal and set about abolishing them.

As between Constitutionalism In 1914 Redmond destroyed the (The great slogan of the Great War and Fenianism there is not ‘right’ and Home Rule movement by putting it at was “the self-determination of nations”. ‘wrong’. It all depends on circumstances. the disposal of the British Empire for The British Prime Minister did not The Sullivans did not think that in its wars of destruction on Germany and explain until 1921 that, in the case of the circumstances of the 1850s much Turkey. Constitutionalism became the the British Empire, self-determination progress could be made in the form of entry-point to a slaughter-house. The was conditional on the agreement of the military conspiracy, but neither did they moment for Fenianism arrived. Imperial Power and had unconditional assert that the end, national independence, application only with regard to peoples could be achieved with it. The circumstances under which tens in the Empires destroyed by the British of thousands were sent off to the trenches Empire. They gave priority to social and and the shores of Gallipoli made it The attempt of the British Govern­ political reform by use of the means possible for an Irish Army to be raised ment to continue governing Ireland provided by the Imperial system but, openly, drilled, and prepared to make as if nothing had changed proved a when the Fenians made an attempt by war on the warmongers. vain endeavour as Local Government other means, they celebrated it in verse. election results confirmed the General “God Save Ireland” was a celebration A disciplined Irish Army took the Election result. The democratic Local within the Constitutional movement of field for the first time in two centuries Government Councils transferred what the English called “murder”. and a quarter. It was defeated in a week- allegiance­ from Dublin Castle to Dail long battle. When defeated it surrendered Government. All this led to war, but war The relationship of the Bantry Band formally in the old-fashioned way—but of a different kind from that of 1916. with Britain was equivocal—but so was was not accorded prisoner-of-war status In 1916 an Irish Army had appeared its relationship with the Fenians. in the old-fashioned way. Britain was discarding old-fashioned way of war in battle-dress to assert national The Sullivans were land reformers. and was pioneering total, or totalitarian, independence, under circumstances in If the landlord gentry could be reformed war—in which unconditional surrender which electorally-based government out of existence, leaving behind them a was the only thing. had been suspended by Britain. In 1919 society of ‘peasant’ owners of property, there was an elected Irish Government, then that was the thing to do. But the The impact of an Irish Army march­ but a Government without an Army Fenians saw land reform both as a ing into the centre of the second city of the drawn up in battle-formation for Britain distraction from military organisation, Empire in broad daylight and taking it over to defeat. It was a merely Constitutional and, if successful, as the removal of was shocking. It was the thing that could Government—a Government resting on a grievance which generated national not happen. And things could never be the mere Constitutional right. feeling. And the best-known of the same again because it did happen. If the will of the populace, expressed Fenians, Charles Kickham, did not electorally, was the source of Right, relish the prospect of a peasant society When the long-delayed Election then the Irish Government was based on without gentry. He wanted the landlords eventually came along in 1918, the Irish Right. And, if a well-established national to behave better and thought they could voted as they had never voted before. body-politic had no right to establish be brought to do so. This is clear from They voted for an independence party to independent government without the his novel, Knocknagow, which (unlike stay at home from London and govern consent of an Imperial Power that had Ulysses) was both famous and widely Ireland. And the core of that party was conquered it and held it by force, then read for many generations, until it was the “conciliationist” movement which the British slogan that had raised scores junked (along with Canon Sheehan’s had dissented from Redmondism in of thousands of Irish recruits for the wars Fenianist Graves At Kilmorna) in the re- 1910. The Redmondites did not even on Germany and Turkey was a piece of indoctrination ordered by Jack Lynch’s field candidates in the Constituencies nonsense for fooling the simple-minded. Fianna Fail, after Lynch’s nerve broke they had lost in 1910. Sir Charles Townshend has made on the North in the early 1970s. fun of those Irish of 1919 who thought (The Fenian suspicion of land reform The Sinn Fein MPs constituted that, in basing a Government on Rights was shared by the ultra-Constitutionalist themselves into a national Parliament proclaimed by the Imperial Power for Redmondite Home Rulers in their in Dublin. That Parliament declared the purpose of waging world war, they response to William O’Brien’s 1903 independence and set up a Government. were basing it on a real foundation. If Land Act.) The handful of Redmondites did not they did not understand that, in the real attend the national Parliament but went world as shaped by Britain, Right is an The Bantry Band became Parnellite to Westminster. Westminster at first expression of Might, then they were for a season, without being creatures of took no official notice of the fact that fools who could not be trusted with the Parnell. it had lost the Election in Ireland by a conduct of a State. 31 But what is Might in this connection? the old world—the world of a few years which had the choice of accepting it Is it only the offensive power of a regular back—incomprehensible. or being brushed away by a British Army? reconquest. It bowed to that ultimatum MacSwiney saw a capacity for The academic notion of the Imagined by a majority of 64 to 57. Nation is trivial. At best it is pedantic. endurance as a form of power. If the This, in Dail terms, was a vote Irish, having decided to form their own The nation had long been a passive to dismantle the Government it had state, endured in support of it, despite the subject, in one sense of the word formed in 1919. In the British view the punishment which the English felt free— “subject”. In 1916-18 it became an Republican Dail was a bit of pretentious under the international circumstances of active subject in another sense of the Irish nonsense, and that was also how the time—to inflict, then they would win. word “subject”, and became incapable of Collins treated it. He had clearly decided And that is really how it was. imagining itself back into subordination to take affairs into his own hands as a under pressure of a combination of purposeful man of action, handle them in Imagination is of the greatest import­ condescending flattery and harassment the light of what he considered realities, ance in these things. Not imagination by the Imperial Power. and pay no heed to Dail Constitutional in the trivial sense of Imagined Nations The task England set itself in formalities. introduced into English propaganda nationalist Ireland in 1919 was B a generation ago and copied in Irish unachievable. The 1918 Election had a ut things fell apart in his hands. academia by Professor Comerford’s profound effect on the electorate, even if The ‘realities’ on which his realpolitik Imagined Ireland, but in the sense of the Mother of Parliaments took no heed was based proved to be brittle. And what a people can see itself doing. of it. the Constitutional formalities of the Dail system did not prove to be mere England overawed Irish imagination It was, of course, a very unusual illusions. for a couple of centuries by the sheer Election. The electors did not choose vigour, military and political, of its between parties wanting to govern a These are serious matters in Protestant Imperialism, with regard to state. What was at issue was whether Skibbereen, where I found myself, both this world and the next. It disabled a state should be established. Sinn by some kind of mistake as I saw it, them in this world but failed with Fein was mandated to establish a state. addressing a meeting last August, held in regard to the next. And, whether that The Home Rule Party wrote off a great rivalry with the Kingston Festival. next world exists in a mundane sense swathe of the country to Sinn Fein and, or not, it is an ineradicable factor in the where it did stand, did not campaign Collins is the man there. But so is life of this world. The cosmic vision of clearly in support of continuing British Tom Barry. And yet Collins and Barry Calvin, Cranmer and Knox was not to sovereignty. were antagonists in the ‘Civil War; the Irish taste. Not many of them took launched by Collins in July 1922. to it, even when it was a way—and the It then rejected the over­ Brendan Clifford only way—of getting a political foothold whelming mandate of the in this world. And, because they were electorate for the formation of an To be Continued incorrigible, their continuing existence Irish state by boycotting the Dail had to be taken notice of, and they had and taking its handful of MPs to be allowed certain secular powers in back to Westminster. Then, in the this world on their own terms. But until 1921 Election, it did not field any 1916 they could not, in the mass, see candidates against Sinn Fein on themselves as governing themselves in a programme of disestablishing their own state. Independence was only the state which had been set a dream. Small groups of bolder spirits up—even though it still did not flirted with it conspiratorially before recognise Irish sovereignty. gravitating towards the British-centred In 1921-2 England conceded Constitutional movement. something in the nature of an Irish state to a Sinn Fein group It was only when that Constitutional organised by Collins, doing so in movement, at the peak of its power, a way that was designed to break plunged the people into a war that was up the Sinn Fein Party. It did not their war, that an Irish Army capable not make a Treaty with the Dail of fighting a war in Ireland against the Government. It never recognised Imperial Government, and conducting it the Dail in any shape or form. It in open battle, that independence became made a deal with Collins, who imaginable. acted independently of the Dail Government and against its When it was voted for in 1918, and instructions. the Home Rule movement withered, it In setting up what is called became the status quo in the state of mind the Treaty Government, Collins of the populace. It became what was acted on behalf of a fictitious predestined—not by some prophet seeing body called the ‘Parliament of visions but by the common understanding Southern Ireland’, which had Cowboys reading Ulysses? of the people who had voted for it. And reality only in British law. The (We are indebted to Niall Cusack for that shift in common understanding made matter was then put to the Dail, sending us this cartoon.) 32 bus. Does this not prove that the collec- soon glossed over. A case was brought tion of taxes under the guise of a ‘climate before the Court by a man who believed Does change’ charge is somewhat of a fraud, he was wrongfully dismissed from his because the buses which are very heavy employment. He gave evidence that he It polluters are treated more favourably than was one of several hundred employees Stack cars? Avoidance of traffic congestion is in a large office building in the city and a legitimate aim but ‘climate change’ is that he was expected to read one thousand Up just an excuse for extra taxes which will emails an hour. ? fall directly on the poor because who can afford to buy new cars? This is a shocking revelation of what Climate Change and Governments do not believe in ‘climate goes on in these new office blocks. If there are, say, two hundred employees at the Environment change’ seriously; if they did, Government would take practical steps such as prohib- this activity gathering data from emails, London Council has introduced a that is 200,000 emails every hour, all day, charge for polluting cars entering into a iting the building of offices, homes and factories on lower levels of land which, every day. Whose emails are these? How is new Ultra-low Emission Zone (ULEZ). a company allowed to do this? However, The charge is £12.50 for diesel cars over according to climate change activists, will be flooded in the future. No practical steps the activities of its members are not ques- four years old and for petrol cars over tioned by the Chamber. Members may be thirteen years old. This charge is in addi­ are taken by Governments. They obviously agree with President Trump that climate solicitors, accountants, bankers, property tion to the existing Congestion Charge developers, data miners or registered chari- of £11.50 between 07:00 and 18:00, change, if any, will not affect us. Not in our time, as President Trump says. ties and the one common activity amongst Monday to Friday. And so we have an them is they are all intent on accumulating additional layer of bureaucracy. The money and as much of it as possible. ULEZ scheme does not stack up because Chambers of Commerce it is inconsistent with the Department of Historically in Ireland, Chambers of So the Chamber represents the interests the Environment Test (DoE) already paid Commerce were established and set up as of members by lobbying Government for by the car owner and which, among corporate bodies by groups of merchants for or against new laws or changes in other things, tests each car for emissions. with a view to protecting and promoting the law. And ‘Government’ here includes It must also be asked, what is so special their commercial interests. The pattern City Councils and County Councils, law about the ULEZ area—other than that the of organisation was similar to Chambers enforcement agencies and so on. All grist London Mayor, Sadiq Khan, suffers from of Commerce in the UK. Reading rooms to the mill. Throughout the year ‘The asthma—that is not also special about the were provided where members could Chamber’ organises gatherings for mem- rest of the country? meet, often on a daily basis, to exchange bers to meet each other and, in theory, to Everybody everywhere will suffer from news and read newspapers and consult meet important speakers. (The speakers at bad emissions and so, rather than being trade directories. Shipping news was events are usually cornered and monopo- ageist—about the age of cars—should important and export merchants could ar- lised by insiders on the committee before not all cars of whatever age, and includ- range with each other to make up cargoes and after the event.) ing taxis, have to comply with a safe low for export. This led to the local Chamber level of emissions to be enforced through of Commerces providing Carnets and The Annual Dinner is the big event the annual DoE test? Otherwise the new Certificates of Origin for Customs and of the year – the attendance at the Cork ULEZ charges will look very like just Excise purposes. Chamber Annual Dinner is usually over another form of taxation and just another 1,000 members and their guests. As well level of bureaucracy. Many of these functions of Chambers as members’ guests, the Chamber itself The really heavy polluters in London of Commerce have disappeared due to invites over seventy ‘President’s Guests’. are the buses, coaches, big trucks, aero- changes in technology, and membership This results in the ticket price of the planes—and the biggest of all is the of the one customs union in the EU. Many dinner, including wine reception, being Underground. The Underground is the Chambers of Commerce have changed over €200 per person. However, as with biggest user of electricity and electricity is, their names by dropping the word “Com- most other things in life, the ticket price as presently generated, the dirtiest fuel of merce” from their titles and as such wish includes VAT for the State of about €25 all. The accelerating and braking mecha- to refer to themselves as ‘The Chamber’ and so the State gets about €25,000 in tax nisms on the Underground are unhealthy in a sort of grandiose way as if mere com- from the dinner, as well as free dinners for (and they smell unhealthy), and the fuel merce is a lower class of word describing the guests who are mainly Government is dirty because it is made elsewhere in an activity that is beneath polite society. Ministers, TDs, County and City Council- power stations fuelled by coal or heavy lors, Managers, Defence Forces—Army fuel oil or by atomic reaction which, It is true that nowadays many of the and Navy—Garda Superintendents and over the lifetime of the power station, is members are Non-Governmental Or- many guests whose value to the ordinary the most dangerous and environmentally ganisations (NGOs), or are registered member is doubtful but who are no doubt unfriendly of all. charities, or are in Public Relations, or are useful contacts for the President and his/ Event Organisers and even Data Assembly her Committee members. The strange thing about the London companies. (Otherwise known as Data Everyone must be kept onside, and in traffic charges is that my twenty-year-old Miners, which is a semi-respectable form that spirit there are usually two Bishops diesel Landrover, can travel freely around of hacking.) Incidentally the data-mining who pray grace before the dinner. One London because it seats twelve, accord- business is very secretive but recently a of the more important guests is, every ing to its specifications. And any vehicle Court case brought the business into the year, the British Ambassador to Ireland. seating over nine people is treated as a daylight in Cork city. Momentarily! It was Currently, Mr. Robin Barnett is Britain’s 33 envoy. It is strange that there is no Am- The lesson to be drawn from this inci- bassador from any other EU country nor CONNOLLY continued dent, and from the statement of Mr Asquith from the EU itself! Were they invited? Or that more severe censorship would be did they refuse? exercised in future is, and mark it well, feasted and toasted the gallant general who oh, ye recruits, that the news is too awful One of the surprising arrangements at on their behalf declared he and they would to be told. the Annual Dinner is that, although the not serve against the Ulster Orangemen ordinary members gather beforehand for who threaten to disrupt your country [2]; Would it not be better for all capable a glass of wine or two in the Executive remember all the truculent threats of the of bearing arms to resolve to fight, and if Reception Area, there is no attendance officers of the army against the unarmed need be to die, for Freedom here at home there of the ‘President’s Guests’, whose forces of Home Rule, and contrast it with rather than be slaughtered for the benefit dinners are paid for by the members but the abject whine for assistance they have of kings and capitalists abroad? instead these free-meal important guests set up in a thousand ways when confronted are corralled in the Lord Mayor’s Rooms with a nation of armed men. And remem- We echo again the historic words of with the Committee and away from the bering all this let the beggars whine—and Fintan Lalor: members. Also, at the end of the evening’s whine in vain for your aid. proceedings, the important guests again Who strikes the first blow for vanish almost by magic from the gaze Mr Asquith and all his friends in and Ireland, who wins a wreath that of the plebs, although for a long while out of the Government are now wroth will be green for ever? afterwards, their black limousines with with the London Times for publishing the their drivers are still lined up outside Cork news to which we have given prominence City Hall. Such is life at the top. at the beginning of this article. They are (JAMES CONNOLLY Michael Stack © in a blue funk lest the truth be known Irish Worker, Saturday, about the awful plight of their beaten and 5th September, 1914.) POLITICS OF THE BATHTUB demoralised army. The effort to discredit the story was made all the more ridiculous Do we need proof of anything by the publication on Tuesday morning in [a] The British suffered a major defeat at the anymore the Times of the circumstances attending hands of the Boers at Spion Kop, West-South- or is it a playful the first printing of the report. West of Ladysmith, Uthukela District of language now being spoken KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa in January 1900. for to be asked for proof is to be labelled a bore It was there shown that the Censor, [b] British Officers at the Curragh military as if the rules of Roughrider F.E. Smith, Mad Carson"s camp resigned in March, 1914 when ordered parliament have been broken. blatant lieutenant from Birkenhead, had to act against the Ulster Volunteers. Faced US admin, dressed actually begged the Times to publish it, with a situation tantamount to mutiny, the as superman, on a high and had even written some of it himself. Asquith government sidestepped the issue. plays in his bathtub (those waters of the world) with his flotilla, while above his head flies LOVE ON A BED OF NAILS their crucifying cross too big the air-arm of for poor Hegarity. bombers waiting to be hurled. These are the rules: Head of this and head Will the gavel of the state thud If he wants something to happen of that, to make him even it happens. keepers of the nation’s less. In his bathtub integrity, he sees all, moves on and rarely fighting that small boy’s Once a light shone into recalls. terrible memories, some dark places Should he decide aka: Jamie Hegarity. and minor figures on war then his tongue fattens met their doom, to say it in a language so obscure it appals, One gives D-Day as his now Caligula’s power but it’s his bathtub, reference, wantonness query him and he make waves. as if that wipes away the has a minus Your downstairs will sins of man, zoom. be flooded with the electrics facing the German Atlantic sparking, wall, Those childrens’ homes. the plaster on your but less dangerous the warehouses, ceiling falling, than the sweet the staff forklift procurers. the walls a muddy We saw into a river water-marking breath So don’t ever again of the damned. nation’s ask him for proof and insult his innards, for a time, calling. Sticking mud that soils now they have turned to ghosts, . a generation? these child wooers. Wilson John Haire The would-be cleaners 17June, 2019. the printed press, Wilson John Haire 20 June, 2019.

34 CONNOLLY continued knows little of the losses of those before GOD SAVE IRELAND and GOD whom they are flying, and any statements SAVE THE KING. to the contrary are merely attempts to cover G. DOWNING, and Maubeuge, then through Le Quesney, their own discomfiture. Lieut.-Col., commanding where desperate fighting took place 7th Service Battalion, southwards continually. Regiments were I am not writing this because I glory in Royal Dublin Fusiliers. grievously injured, and the broken army the tales of the British dead. Those poor fought its way desperately with many rank and filers were, and are, no enemies stands, forced backwards, and ever Is not that the limit for pure unadulter- backwards, by the sheer unconquerable of mine, of my class, nor of my nation. But ated hypocrisy? The cry of 'God Save mass of numbers of an enemy prepared as far as they are items of the forces with Ireland' owes its immortality to the fact that to throw away three or four men for the which the Enemy keeps this country in it first came defiantly and spontaneously life of every British soldier. In scattered subjection, and in so far as the success of from the lips of the Manchester Martyrs, units, with the enemy ever on its heels, the that Enemy is, as I believe it is, a menace condemned to death for the crime of loving fourth division, all that was left of 20,000 to the peaceful progress of the forces of fine troops, streamed southwards. Ireland and daring to serve her. In the name democracy in Europe, the enthronement Our losses are very great. I have seen of the king these three men were hanged the broken bits of many regiments. Let me of Czarism as the dominant force on the for daring to work for Irish Nationality, repeat that there is no failure in discipline, Continent, and the perpetuation of the and as the cry broke forth from their lips it no panic, no throwing up the sponge. degradation of Ireland, to that degree and reached its way to and lodged ineradicably Everyone"s temper is sweet, and nerves for that reason I rejoice with all my heart upon the hearts of every true Irish man do not show. A group of men, it may be at British reverses, and acclaim German and woman. And now in its extremity the a dozen or less, or more, arrives under victories as the victories of the most the command of whoever is entitled to power that hanged them, the power that enlightened nation in Europe—the nation command it. The men are battered with would as readily hang the apostles of a marching, and ought to be weak with whose democracy is most feared by the true Irish Nationality to-day, that power hunger, for of course, no commissariat cunning capitalist rulers of the world. blasphemously couples the holy prayer could cope with such a case, but they For another reason I wish to give of our martyrs with the official formula are steady and cheerful, and wherever it signed at the bottom of their sentence they arrive make straight for the proper prominence to the real state of affairs at the authority, report themselves, and seek front. I wish that no man shall be seduced of death. news of their regiment. I saw two men to go to that front in ignorance. Let the give such reports after saluting smartly. truth be known! Let those who wish to Oh, have we not heard ad nauseam about 'Very badly cut up, sir,' was the phrase sacrifice themselves for England—for The the noble British ruling class, their haughty one used of his regiment. The other said: Enemy—know the extent of their sacrifice nobility, their dignity in the face of danger, 'Very heavy loss, I'm afraid, sir,' when and risks, and then if they go let them know their unbending courage in the front of asked if much was left. adversity, their stoical heroism, etc., etc.? Apparently every division was in that their country disowns them. action. Some have lost nearly all their But let them go—let the dupes go— Have we not heard all those things until officers. The regiments were broke to Ireland is well rid of them. There will be we almost believed in them, and almost bits, and good discipline and fine spirit more room for the good men who remain despised our own class in consequence? kept the fragments together, though they behind. But the above advertisement gives the no longer knew what had become of the true index to the character of our rulers; other parts with which they had once couple it with the frantic letters in the Irish formed a splendid whole." I have just come across the limit— the finest specimen of the tactics of the Times from landowners and "officers and Enemy yet to hand. It is in the form of gentlemen" appealing to you to stand up In addition to this report there was a for the Empire and you have a true picture short report which I read in Reynolds' an advertisement for recruits, and lest it be forgotten in the future I propose to of the nature of the creatures who for so Newspaper on Sunday, in which a British long have ruled and robbed us. soldier who took part in the battle of Char- enshrine it for immortality in the pages of the Irish Worker. We print it "free gratis leroi is quoted as saying that there were There you see our rulers mad with only 20 or 30 survivors left out of 2,000 and for nothing," as the saying goes—for the fun of the thing:- fright, panic-stricken at their losses and with whom he set out to take up position keenly alive to the possible failure of their in that morning. It is then clear that the conspiracy against the life and civilisation real extent of the casualties is being most NOTICE. FOR KING AND COUNTRY. of a peaceful people, turning to the Ireland carefully hidden from the public. That that they hate and exult in browbeating, and public is bewildered by flaring posters, changing their sneers into prayers, their by the exaggerated description of every Men are immediately required for the two new battalions of the Royal Dublin open venom into fawning flattery, their trifling skirmish in which it can be claimed Fusiliers (i.e., the 6th and 7th Service threats against the unity of our country into that the British gained an advantage, and battalions), for 3 years or the war. Old more dreadful, because more loathsome by the almost ceaseless repetition of tales Soldiers, Special Reservists, and un- invocations to God on its behalf. about the losses of the Germans—a matter trained men of every class are wanted. of which the British are completely igno- The true defence of Ireland at the present moment is undoubtedly the defence of The snivelling, hypocritical, dastardly rant. A victorious army occupying in their bullies! Remember how those 'officers and advance the ground formerly occupied by the frontiers of France, where we are in touch with our common enemy. Do not gentlemen' who now beg for help threat- the beaten enemy can certainly arrive at a waste time. As soon as you have read this ened mutiny at the Curragh against your rough estimate of the enemy's losses by apply to the nearest Recruiting Office, or National freedom; remember how they counting the dead and wounded they have the Head Recruiting Office, Brunswick left behind, but a retreating beaten army Street, Dublin. continued on page 34 35 VOLUME 38 No. 1 CORK ISSN 0790-1712 James Connolly Recruiting— Let the Wastrels Go! (Warning: Some readers of the New retrieve his lost reputation by columns to a new base' is by all the signs of warfare Labour and New Left may be shocked of flamboyant description of a petty vic- a panic-stricken rout of a beaten force. at the sheer bluntness and reality of tory on sea. The weaker he becomes the war and imperialism as described stronger becomes every revolutionary Read this from the Special Correspon- by a founder member of the Labour force at home, as conversely the stronger dent of the London Times:- Party in Ireland) he becomes the more defiant and unyield- "Further to the right along the Sambre, ing he will be to every influence for good and in the angle of the Sambre and the At the present moment every nerve is in Ireland. Meuse, the French, after days of long being strained in Ireland to obtain recruits That he is smashed up by land is ap- and gallant fighting, broke : Namur fell, for the British Army. Employers are bring- parent to everyone who cares to study the and General Joffre was forced to order a ing all sorts of pressure to bear upon their reports. True, the Press tells us continually retreat along the whole line. The Germans, fulfilling one of the best of all precepts in workpeople, so-called charitable associa- of the 'fine position' of the allies, of the war, never gave the retreating army one tions are ferreting out particulars of every 'brilliant stand' of the British troops, of the single moment"s rest. The pursuit was family in the tenement houses visited by 'strategic movement to a new base', and immediate, relentless, unresting. Aero- their agents and setting recruiting agents so on, writing always in such a manner as planes, Zeppelins, armoured motors, and like sleuth hounds on the track of every would make the ordinary reader believe cavalry were loosed like an arrow from young unemployed man. The Home Rule that the allied troops were carrying all the bow, and served at once to harass the Press lends its aid by giving startling before them. retiring columns, and to keep the German Staff fully informed of the movements of prominence to every anti-German lie But the 'fine position' is always about the allied forces." that the fiendishly unscrupulous Press 20 or 30 miles behind the last 'fine posi- of England can invent, and a thousand tion', the 'brilliant stand' is invariably a The reader will remember that when diabolical agencies are at work to coax, preliminary to what the historian will the British retreated broken and baffled coerce, or seduce Irishmen to fight the describe as a headlong retreat although from Spion Kop, the Boer general with battles of the Empire. the Press reporter describes it simply as a mistaken humanity refused to fire upon the 'withdrawal', and the 'strategic movement retreating army as he declared it would be All this is good, I say that deliberately unscriptural to do so. [a] This humanity and, as the lawyers would say, with malice Irish Political Review is published by lost the Boers the war. It is conceivable aforethought. It is good, because in the first the IPR Group: write to— that The Enemy believed that he would find the Germans equally ready to allow place it reveals as nothing else could the 1 Sutton Villas, Lower Dargle Road stricken condition of the enemy. Bray, Co. Wicklow or the British a monopoly of ruthless severity 33 Athol Street, Belfast BT12 4GX or in the field of battle. If so the movement narrated in the concluding sentence of the For reasons of clearness and to avoid 2 Newington Green Mansions, London N16 9BT above extract will show how ruthlessly he too undue repetition of the words "British", or Labour Comment, TEL: 021-4676029 "English", or "British Empire", I propose P. Maloney, 26 Church Avenue, Roman was undeceived. The result, as well as the hereafter to refer to the Government of this Street, Cork City completeness of the defeat of the British country and of England simply as "The Subscription by Post: is told in the following quotation from the Enemy". It will simplify matters in more 12 issues: Euro-zone & World Surface: €40; same article. Perhaps in the mess of war ways than one. Sterling-zone: £25 reports you have missed the significance of Electronic Subscription: this report. If so study it now, and realise These frantic endeavours to secure re- € 15 / £12 for 12 issues the plight of The Enemy:- cruits are then a sufficient indication that (or € 1.30 / £1.10 per issue) "The British force fell back through The Enemy is in a bad way. He is smashed You can also order from: Bavai on a front, between Valenciennes https://www.atholbooks-sales.org up by land, and is now endeavouring to continued on page 33