1916 Iraq & Britain 1916 Reality General O'Duffy Philip O'Connor Wilson John Haire Manus O'Riordan page 8 page 11 page 14 IRISH POLITICAL REVIEW May 2006 Vol.21, No.5 ISSN 0790-7672 and Northern Star incorporating Workers' Weekly Vol.20 No.5 ISSN 954-5891

Ahern’s The Psychodrama Of Current Politics Path Of Glory Killing people in war is a good thing. It doesn't matter on which side you do it. It The Taoiseach set out a new scheme of doesn't matter what the object of the Army in which you do it is. Doing it is good in itself. the history of Irish independence in his That is the only meaning to be got from the decision of the Irish Government to speech at the opening of an Exhibition on celebrate the killing done in 1916 both by the Irish Army in Ireland and the British Army the Rising: 1916, 1937, 1972, 1998. And in Ireland, France, Gallipoli and Mesopotamia. he names two statesmen of the develop- . A War of Independence veteran, Dan Keating, is quoted in the Irish Times 1916 ment: Sean Lemass and Jack Lynch. The Supplement (15 April): leader of the Opposition complained that "I regard this thing in Dublin as pure nonsense. It serves nothing… The whole thing this was hijacking the Rising for Fianna is just the Government preparing for an eletion. There has been an Irish Army for more Fail, and listed four other statesmen of the than 80 years, but they haven't regained a single inch of our national territory… I think development, all Fine Gael: W.T. Cos- that the dead… should be commemorated by people who believe that we should have a grave, who “presided over the birth of 32 country republic. Ten per cent of the population is holding on to a larger population's democracy”; J.A. Costello, who in 1949 land, for England. Where is the democracy in that? If I was invited to the event I wouldn't go. I will attend our own commemoration in Tralee as I always do." made the formal declaration that the Irish State (made independent by De Valera) He said: "We can start something like that when we have a 32 county republic". was a Republic; Liam Cosgrave, who “led Ireland into the United Nations”; But it has started now. And we reckon it will stay started. We fear that Dan Keating and Garret FitzGerald, who “signed the is mistaken when he says it is nothing but a Fianna Fail election gimmick. There is a Anglo-Irish Agreement” of 1985 (IT present purpose for it that has nothing to do with the North. 14.4.06). The Free State has been visibly militarising in recent years. The glaring omissions from Ahern’s A couple of years ago the official emphasis was on neutrality. That was for the short list are De Valera and Haughey. purpose of browbeating the electorate to vote for another EU measure they did not like. Kenny remedies this to the extent of saying It was then stated that Irish neutrality in international conflicts would not be compromised that Dev, Griffiths and Collins all “played by the proposed European Constitution. In the event it was not necessary to put the an equal and honourable part in winning Constitution to the electorate, the French having disposed of it. Ireland’s independence”. It is a strange When the Constitution fell, it was found to have been unnecessary. The EU just state of affairs when it is left to Fine Gael carries on without it. In that more flexible arrangement, tricky ventures can be embarked to bring Dev into the Pantheon. upon more easily than when everything was put to referendum. Let’s go through Ahern’s “four What exactly the EU Constitution would have done if it had been enacted was never cornerstones of independent Ireland”, clear, but there was a feeling abroad that it would have made the EU a coherent political which are “the foundations of the future”. entity, and that Ireland would have been dragged into participation in its Battle Groups. continued on page 3 continued on page 2

democratic choice of the people (and of Government had shown clearly how 1916 And Patrick Pearse) but it was killed off by the politics operated in Ireland and democracy Unionist armed revolt in 1912 and the did not come into it. They remained Democracy Government accepted that reality. The consistent in this because when democracy How much longer Unionists were brought into Government did again enter the equation in the 1918 will Maurice O’Connell keep stating the in 1915 which copper fastened the death Election they ignored the result in Ireland obvious about 1916—that it is was not of Home Rule, as they would most and thereby caused the War of Independence. democratic? (Rising was noble but certainly ensure it was never implemented. All these matters were as clear as undemocratic. Village, 13-19 April) Moreover, the Government that was daylight 9 decades ago and are even clearer It is getting rather tedious. in power in the UK in 1916 was not an in hindsight. Why is Maurice O’Connell Rebellions are never democratic. They elected government because it had sus- determined to ignore them? While he are either successful and retrospectively pended electoral government when its does so he will produce a kind of history sanctioned by the people concerned or mandate ran out in 1915 and therefore the that is like something along the lines of they are failures and are never heard of issue of democracy does not apply. one handed clapping, and equally again except as footnotes in history. 1916 These are rather important 'democratic pointless. was clearly one of the former. deficits'—to use the jargon of the moment. Jack Lane (14 April 2006) Democracy did not apply in Irish In view of these basic facts, democracy (This letter appeared in politics in 1916. Home Rule was the was for the naïve and the ineffectual. The Village magazine in April.)

would regard an assertion of neutrality as C O N T E N T S a hostile act. In doing this he has re- Page defined neutrality as according US war- The Psychodrama Of Current Politics. Editorial 1 planes re-fuelling rights at Shannon, and not probing the issue of rendition flights. Ahern's Path To Glory. Editorial 1 He complies with US requirements, and 1916 And Democracy. Jack Lane (letter) 1 casts principle to the winds, because all Please Don't Read My Book that counts with him is what will be advantageous to the total egoism of And Don't Believe What We Say. Jack Lane 3 ourselves alone. Editorial Commentary. (Plan B; Denis Donaldson; Troop Reductions; Policing; Mervyn Gibson; Omagh Relatives; DUP Life Peers; Eileen Bell; Eddie Espie; Entry to the EU, even as an appendage Martin Mansergh) 6 of Britain, was, of course, an event of The Somme Commemorations. Pat Muldowney 7 great strategic consequence to Ireland. Geopolitics And Race In Britain's Strategy Towards Iraq. Philip O'Connor 8 But not because it had until then been living in the “sterile ideology of ourselves A Labour 1916 Commemoration (Of Sorts). Brendan Clifford 9 alone”. The Reality Of 1916. Wilson John Haire (Review) 11 Prior to 1972 the Irish economy was a Eoin O'Duffy—A Cautionary Tale. Manus O'Riordan (Review) 14 dependency of the British free market. In Propaganda Then And Now. Indymedia Report 15 1972 it joined the protected market of the Irish Backwardness? (Barra Ó Seaghda (Letter) 18 EU.

Labour Comment, edited by Pat Maloney: The Irish economy was predominantly EU Decision: One Of The Most Destructive In History Of Conflict In Middle East agricultural. Britain had since the mid- 19th century arranged things in the world Michael D. Higgins, back page in such a way that cheap agricultural (Grand Kyklops) McDowell's Law (A Suitable Target For Labour? produce flowed into it from all continents, Seán McGouran, p 19 subsidising its own farmers very heavily in order to drive down the price of imports. That was the market in which Irish farming, “The Proclamation [of Easter 1916] “Through our membership of the EU, emerging from centuries of deliberate was the foundation of our independent we have emerged as a confident and British destruction and distortion, had to state”. It depends on what you mean by achieving nation, sure of our place in the make a living. Then in 1972 it gained foundation. It was a piece of paper handed world. Over a decade previously, Sean access to the strong, protected market of out by a group of conspirators attempting Lemass had opened negotiations for the EEC, and began to flourish. a coup d’etat, which was crushed within a Ireland’s entry… Advocating Ireland’s entry… Jack Lynch summed up our week, leaving no form of organised choice as being “the choice of Robinson But economic development was very existence behind it. Crusoe when the ship came to bring him slow, and when it came it was not Lynch It was a striking event which acted as back into the world again”. The decision who brought it. He left the economy in a an inspiration. But, if one wants a to join the EU was the moment when a parlous condition, and in the 1980s the foundation, in the solid meaning of the confident and hopeful Ireland left behind state was on the verge of bankruptcy. word, it comes in December 1918/January what had become the dated and sterile 1919 with the Election, the assembling of ideology of “ourselves alone”.” The breakthrough came around 1990 the Dail, and the Declaration of when Haughey took personal control of Independence as the expression of the Has Bertie forgotten his Irish as well the departments of state most relevant to settled will of a society. as his friends? Sinn fein means “ourselves”, and it was asserted against the economy and, with his colleagues outside of politics (he had very few within Ahern leaps over the 1918 Election, the most powerful Empire in the world politics) re-made the financial system of and all that followed from it, to the 1937 which was trying to re-make us into the state; and when for a few years he Constitution. something that was more serviceable to made Ireland appear to be an independent If one is to find fundamental its interests than what we actually were. European state, no longer an echo of significance in the 1937 Constitution, it We preserved ourselves in some measure Britain, and hosted a major European event must be as a formal repudiation by the by means of 1916, 1918, 1919-21, 1932, in Dublin Castle. Christian Democratic electorate of the 1922 Constitution. And and 1940. Sinn Fein amhain was never Europe in those years—not long before it what was so wrong with the 1922 the slogan or the policy of any major was subverted—could see Ireland as part document? That it was dictated by the policy or tendency that we ever heard of, of itself, and welcomed it with an award of British Government, made an Oath to the or even a minor one. 8 billions (Irish pounds). That was the Crown a condition of entry into the take-off point for the seething Legislature, and included other measures What Bertie has been leaving beyind entrepreneurship that now characterises of subordination. But, following the is not the never-was philosophy of Irish economic life—and that appears to electoral defeat of the Treaty Party in ‘ourselves alone’, but ourselves as a have subverted the major act of political 1932, the Oath was removed and other definite existence. His guff about us now independence that brought it about. forms of the British incubus were dispelled. being “sure of our place in the world” is After all of that, the 1937 Constitution the reverse of the truth, and “ourselves We will return in a future issue to the was more a flourish than a foundation. alone” was never as accurate a description of our attitude towards the world as it has Taoiseach’s new scheme of landmarks— and its omissions, which seem to be in line From 1937 Ahern leaps forward to been under his government. He has made with Senator Mansergh’s views—and to 1972. The reader is probably wondering the country a pliable instrument of US Fine Gael’s alternative scheme. what foundation event happened in 1972. militarism, because he reckons America Ireland accompanied Britain into Europe: 2 Psychodrama continued · Biteback · Biteback· Biteback· Biteback· Biteback· Biteback· Biteback· Biteback Neutrality was emphasised in order to lull Please don’t read my book… the electorate. There is no real doubt that the Government wanted to participate in The Irish Academic Press has stolen a march on other publishers in the quanity of new the Battle Groups, but dissimulated for publications they have published related to 1916. There is obviously some bright spark the purpose of winning the referendum. within the company who detects the way the wind is blowing and sees a future of When the Constitution lapsed, it could commercial suucess with the anti-revisionist tide. ease off on asserting the right of neutrality One of these books is a reprint of Ruth Dudley Edwards’ book on Pearse The Triumph and proceed obliquely towards engage- Of Failure. It, along with some others, was launched by the Irish Ambassador at the ment. And, as part of this development, Embassy in London on 5th April. The Ambassador praised the book and its author while the aspiration of the Defence Force to acknowledging that he had disagreements with her on Northern Ireland. He had clearly become a fighting Army was given read all the books being launched and gave pertinent quotations from them to show, freedom to express itself. among other things, that the Rising was provoked by the success of ‘Carsonism’, i.e. the Unionist revolt of 1912. The revival of the 1916 commemorat- Other authors introduced their books and were naturally delighted to have their books ion as a militarist display fits in very published and being given such a launch. One mentioned the positive influence of his neatly with this project. grandparents on his work. This seemed to provoke the next author, Ms Edwards, to begin by denouncing her grandmother who had, she claimed, a picture of Hitler by her bedside. RTE has been playing its part in I think she may have said it was actually in her bed. I recall an earlier reference to this developing a spirit of globalist militarism. by Ms Edwards where I think the picture was described as being in the house or on the wall. I wonder will granny be sleeping with Hitler in its next outing? On the eve of the destruction of Falujah (Iraq) last year it carried a long interview She then made disparaging remarks about her own book that she was launching! This with an Irish-American soldier who was must have been a unique event in the history of publishing. She declared that she would to take part in the assault. The thing was not have written it now, being naïve when she did so. She omitted to explain what exactly presented in heroic—almost David and was wrong with it and why she had changed her mind. Why did she allow it to be Goliath—terms. And we never noticed republished was an obvious question that struck people present. Will she disown the that much was said after the event about royalties, I wonder? I suggest they compensate the Irish taxpayer for the launch of the what was actually done to Fallujah. book she did not want launched. Let’s hope that she is never asked to launch a ship. There followed a general assault on the coming 1916 celebrations, but at least those Radio Eireann's World Report series is who opposed the Rising in arms were being commemorated and that clearly gave her strongly Ameranglian in orientation. It is some comfort. propaganda of the new Cold War—which becomes a hot war every couple of years She therefore did not thank the publisher for publishing her book, the ambassador for because enemies are chosen which are launching it, nor did she encourage anyone present to buy or read it. A surreal and incapable of defending themselves. The somewhat embarrassing atmosphere was created. old Cold War—that resulted from the fact that Communist Russia won the war against Germany that Britain started but And don’t believe what we say…… was unwilling to fight in earnest by any John Waters did some agonising in the Irish Times (10 April 2006) and admitted that method other than by fire-bombing the he and others had engaged in spreading a pack of lies in recent decades and all was residential areas of German cities—that justified because: Cold War stayed cold because the enemy “Many of us were convinced by the need to pull the historical rug from under the had the means of self-defence, and Provos, and were therefore acquiescent in the rewriting of the past; and yet we were at the Ameranglia would risk its own existence same time secretly traumatised by the loss of our inherited sense of where we had come by attacking. from. The revisionist project succeeded because of the urgency of shutting down the Provos, and for no other reason….This idea will strike some people as morally dubious Until 1990 we were supportive of pragmatism.., NATO, by and large, seeing it as an Although most of us have sullenly or silently acquiesced in the rewriting of the record, essentially defensive force. It has been very many of us do not hold in our hearts the views we feel obliged to venture in the public realm.” made evident since 1990 that it is an aggressive force. The reason given for its What an admission of moral and intellectual cowardice. No abstract ‘history’, good existence before 1990 ceased in 1990 but or bad, produced the Provos. It was the internal dynamics of Northern Ireland. There was it continued and, when its strong enemy no need whatever to turn Irish history upside down because of their emergence. Waters collapsed, it selected weaker states to be shows the typical total ignorance of Northern Ireland prevalent among the chattering enemies and attacked them. classes in the South. The traditional nationalists had a blind spot about what the Northern Unionists We are still inclined to think that actually were, but it was honestly held and they have adapted to the realities of the forces Europe in the era of Christian Democracy in N. Ireland in recent decades. They did not cause the war in Northern Ireland and they was essentially defensive, but it is now did not engage in intellectual trickery and lies and such pathetic displays of self- evident that Ameranglia was not. And denouncement as Edwards and Waters. They had no need to do so. one of the consequences of the ending of After such admissions by them, why do Waters and co. not just shut up and save us the Cold War was the destruction, by the from any more of such ridiculous moralising about the traumas caused to themselves by force of Ameranglian globalism, of the themselves. After all, after such admissions why would anyone take them seriously Christian Democracy which re-made again about anything? Europe after 1945. Jack Lane continued on page 4 3 One of the first post-1990 aggressions live apart. Britain, intent on restoring its word was said in the BBC propaganda was against Yugoslavia. This was a multi- creation, compelled the exiled King in about how Yugoslavia came about in the national state created by Britain in 1919, London to remake his Government in first instance, or the second instance. And after it had decided to destroy the functional accordance with Tito's demands; through it was not explained how it had come to be and democratic Austro-Hungarian Empire the World Service of the BBC it carried a Communist state. It was not actually as punishment for being defeated in the out black propaganda against the Royalists, said that it was one of the states set up by Great War. Yugoslavia joined Serbia painting them as allies of Germany; and the Soviet Union, but that was allowed to (whose ambition to absorb Bosnia led to it armed the Communists for the conquest be understood. the event which sparked off the Great of Serbia, which was carried out in 1944. War: the assassination of the heir to the RTE played the same game. And one Austro-Hungarian throne, who was Thus Communist Yugoslavia was a has to ask whether Irish neutrality is really preparing to develop the Dual Monarchy British creation, not a Russian. From worth a damn, if not only the Government of Austria and Hungary into a Triple 1948 onwards it was effectively part of propaganda but public opinion just echoes Monarchy of Austrians, Hungarians and the West in the Cold War, though formally what's going on across the Channel and Slavs), with Croats, Moslems and other "non-aligned". After the first few years of ocean? South Slavs, without regard for viability. Communist enthusiasm, it 'liberalised' its The Croats were strongly Austrian in economic arrangements, introducing Here is a recent World Report item orientation and served the Empire until it many market elements. from Sean Whelan, its Europe Editor, was destroyed. The Serbs were the only broadcast on 25th February. He began by people in the new combination who had It was not part of the Soviet system, saying that out of 161 Serbs indicted as conducted a state (which they had estab- and therefore it stayed standing when the war criminals 6 remain at large. But lished by their own power in conflict with states of the Soviet system fell. But it had "putting Karadic and Mladic into the dock the Ottoman Empire). The Croats soon served its purpose for the West with the alongside Slobodan Milosovic and forcing complained the Yugoslavia was in practice ending of the Cold War. Europe therefore them to confront the consequences of their Greater Serbia, and a fierce anti-Yugoslav decided to destroy it. The work was actions, is seen as a necessary psycho- nationalism developed among them. In chiefly done by Germany (which had drama to bring closure to the Balkan 1941 the Government, under Croat influ- destroyed it once before, in 1941) and wars". ence, made a Treaty with Hitler, which Britain, which had set it up twice (the allowed him to pass an army through its second time as a Communist state). Was Milosovic forced to confront the territory to Greece. This led to a Serb revolt consequences of his actions? The which overthrew the Government and The social tensions which made it easy suggestion that he was murdered by the revoked the Treaty. Hitler then invaded to bring down the regimes in the other Court is made plausible by the fact that it and was welcomed in Croatia as a liberator East European states after the Soviet seemed increasingly unlikely that it would from Yugoslav oppression. The Serbs collapse were not present in Yugoslavia. be able to bring in a Guilty verdict, despite resisted, were defeated, and carried on a Britain and Germany therefore set about the way procedure was rigged in favour of guerilla war under the authority of a breaking it up territorially by encouraging the prosecution. And, if a Guilty verdict Government in exile in London. Croats nationalist antagonisms. could not have been brought in without and Bosnian Muslims enlisted in the SS in flying in the face of the evidence, the trial large numbers; and in independent Croatia Under British and German influence, would have been a failure. The scenario there was systematic extermination of the EU disregarded the Yugoslav was that guilt was assumed by the Court, Serbs. Constitution, which it had seen as a fine and Bench and Prosecution collaborated thing while the Cold War lasted. The in an effort to make a Guilty verdict follow The Serbs held together as a national component Republics were encouraged from the evidence presented at a show community, loyal to the exiled King. to rush into declarations of independence, trial against a procedurally-disabled Croats and Bosnians were disrupted which were immediately recognised as Defence. But, despite the restraints placed internally, and divided on the ideological legitimate by the EU—even in the case of on him, Milosovic succeeded in refuting lines of the War, Nazi and Communist. Bosnia, where the majority for one prosecution witness after another. (Britain was little more than an onlooker independence was brought about by a in 1941-2.) voting alliance of Croat nationalists and A commentator on Britain's Channel 4 Moslems, groupings which were television (the most objective in these A strong Communist resistance was profundly antagonistic to each other and parts) said that the difficulty was to devise developed from the disrupted Croats and could never have formed a governing an effective compromise between deliver- Moslems by Tito, but gained little support alliance. ing justice and conducting a fair trial—a in Serbia. The Royalist Serbian resistance remarkable statement which presumes scaled down its activities because of the The second declaration of Croat justice to be known independently of the massive scale of German reprisals against independence was fascist in ideology, trial. But all that is known independently the civil society. But Tito's partisans, who being in many respects a repeat of the of the trial is propaganda demonisation had the purpose of destroying bourgeois 1941 declaration. The EU studiously conducted by media functionaries acting society, were unconcerned about the scale turned a blind eye to this, and the on the instruction of hostile states—even of the reprisals. The Germans were helping Americans armed and trained the Croats if the instructions are only given with a with the destruction of a society which for war and ethnic cleansing. nod and a wink, and the knowledge that they were intent on doing away with failure to get the message would ruin a anyway. When the Yugoslav Government acted promising career. to preserve the state and insisted that In 1943 Britain switched support from changes should be made in accordance Whelan continued that Kosovan the Royalist Serbs to Tito's Partisans, with the provisions of the Constitution, independence is almost certain to come because the Partisans carried out more the EU treated it as being engaged in this year or next, with Montenegrin attacks on the Germans, and the Serbs conquest. independence following soon after. But, seemed content to allow Yugoslavia to because of concern in Macedonia, Bosnia, disappear and let the different nationalities During the wars of the 1990s not a and Serbia, Kosovan and Montenegrin 4 independence— upsurge of Croat and Muslim terrorism election if Britain had not used its power- "have the potential to destabilise the that started the whole thing off. (Those of-state to set aside the election and obliged region… They need careful handling, events were scarcely reported in the Irish/ the Irish to resort to the gun in self-defence. and the less heroic nationalist figures British/European media at the time, and there are in the scene in Serbia, the easier have now been written out of history.) A new Irish state was formed in 1922. it will be for the Government there to And the way Milosovic was treated in The republic of 1919 was destroyed by the make the deals and adjustments that will captivity, and died there, has not gun, and the Free state was established by enable the country to emerge from isolation and economic ruination". encouraged them to seek out Mladic and the gun, and people voted for it under the hand him over. threat of the gun. A section of Sinn Fein He then gave some figures for the bowed to a British threat of overwhelming economic ruination brought about in The EU has three ways of 'democrat- force, destroyed the Republic with British Serbia by EU sanctions. Then— ising' Eastern Europe: coercion, arms and a largely mercenary Army, and "It's felt most in Belgrade, the once subversion, and purchase. Coercion and set up a subordinate regime under the thriving city that dominated the region. subversion have been practised in the authority of the Crown. The Treaty Party It's stepped over the past 15 years into Balkans. In other places 'democracy' is governed in authoritarian style for ten being an isolated backwater. Serbs have treated as a commodity and has been years, and tried to negate the growing watched a stream of regional rivals catch bought. It is pretty well admitted that electoral strength of the Anti-Treaty Party up and then overtake them, in terms of there was wholesale purchase of votes by using the Oath to exclude its prosperity, development, and freedom." with Euros and Dollars in Ukraine. And representatives from the Dail. But the [The Serbs will become free, presum- before that millions of Deutschmarks were 1932 election restored an anti-Treaty ably, when they agree, under extreme spent in buying votes in the critical Serbian majority. It might be said that power was pressure from outside, to do what they do not want to do.] "Even Rumania election, before it was decided in the final then transferred peacefully. But it was an stands on the threshold of EU member- stage that a sort of coup d'etat was armed peace. Fianna Fail was backed by ship. On Monday the EU Foreign preferable, so that there would be regime the IRA, which existed despite the best Ministers will almost certainly sanction change instead of a Constitutional change efforts of the Treatyites to destroy it. And the suspension of talks with Serbia on of Government. British power was not in 1932 what it had what is known as a stabilisation and been ten years earlier. So there was a association agreement. It's the lifeline All these states insist that there must peaceful transfer of power, and the 'Treaty' that the Union throws out to drowning be no external interference in their own was broken peacefully, though not neighbouring states" [in this instance, a elections, but they all favour extreme constitutionally. neighbouring state that it is drowning], interference in East European elections. "or those that are floating without direction or purpose. It pulls them into And in Belarus the EU diplomats were Before a state can become democratic the European way of doing things, opens active election campaigners and street it must in the first place be a state. access to funding, encourages the deep demonstrators—yet the electorate refused Democracy is a form of state, not a form of and thoroughgoing process of legal the bribes and disbelieved the promises. election. A state is a form of organised change known as adopting the Acquis. Information about the actual consequence and regularised power. It's the first step on the road to EU of these revolutions engineered by US/ membership, but it will be put on ice if EU money and propaganda seems to have Iraq used to be a state. But the state Mladic is not sent to the Hague. It's now got about. And, of course, the con- power of Iraq was destroyed by the that the EU has most leverage to exert in sequences brought about by US/UK arms overwhelming military power of two other using political pressure to bring Mladic in Iraq are plain for all to see. states. to trial, one of the keys to unlocking change in the whole region. Public opinion in Serbia has shifted for the first The Iraqi state was smashed and the The Iraqi state was described as a time in favour of his extradition. The routines of political conduct bound up tyranny when it was decided to destroy it. deep reason is the ongoing economic with it were swept away. Three elections It was only described as a tyranny by misery. A majority now accept that his have been held, but there is no Govern- fringe elements on the Left before that. trial is the price of access to the Western ment. The business of elections is to But its nature did not change at the moment system. But a bigger blow against choose the Government of a state, but when the major Western Powers decided extreme nationalism, and its vision of there is no state. In place of a state there to destroy it. It was not in the 1990s the Serb as victim, occurred in June, are only the Occupation Forces. And, something entirely different from what it when Serbian television aired the although they control the territory called had been in the 1980s. Where the change notorious tape of Serb paramilitaries executing prisoners captured in Sreb- Iraq, they do not stand in the elections. occurred was in Ameranglian foreign renica. This week one of the killers seen policy. on the tape pleaded Guilty at his War A black American Senator, whose Crimes trial in Belgrade. Between the name we cannot recall, was interviewed There was extensive intercourse political and economic calculus, and the by RTE about two years ago about the between Ireland and Iraq in the 1980s, and shifting moral climate, there is no longer delay in holding elections. He explained many Irish people went to work in Iraq. It room in Serbia for Radko Mladic." that, in the process of forming a state, was not on the basis of reports by those Whelan here describes the collective elections do not come first. They come people that the people of Iraq were punishment of Serbs by the EU because of last. RTE does not seem to understand. suffering under intolerable oppression that the failure of NATO forces to capture But where is the state that has arison out of the Irish Government changed its policy Mladic and Karadic, and then gives a social chaos by means of an election? towards Iraq. No such reports were made. description of Serbs who think they are There was no conflict between Ireland victims of punishment as extreme Mao Tse-tung said that States come and Iraq. Ireland just followed Ameranglia nationalists. out of the barrel of a gun. While that when it became an enemy of the Iraqi statement not be entirely true, it is close to state. They are being punished to make them it. do NATO's work for it. They refuse to do It is now said that, whatever else may it because they see Mladic as having Perhaps the Irish state would have have happened in Iraq recently, at least the organised their protection against the great been peacefully established out of an Iraqi people have been freed from the 5 tyrant, Saddam Hussein—as if the armies with overwhelming force at their The pressure is all now on Unionists. destruction of the state and the overthrow disposal. They have been thrown back That, however, could change if IRA of the tyrant was not the same thing. into a state of nature with a vengeance. 'criminality' should resume/continue— They did not do it themselves in a depending on whether one believes the It is said that the Iraqi people have destructive revolution. Ameranglia reports of Lord Alderdyce's International been freed, which is a good thing, though destroyed the state, and instigated looting Independent Monitoring Commission. the rest is regrettable. Three years ago we by social elements that in another situation So far, every report has dove-tailed with doubted that such a thing as the Iraqi they would be at pains to put down. And Blair's strategy. people had any coherent existence distinct we helped. Presumably the Irish News was from that of the state, which would survive reflecting Northern Catholic opinion the destruction of the state. There were In the same column, Mansergh when it consigned news of Blair's various peoples in Iraq, thrown together condemns the President of Iran for initiative to a minor place on its front by Imperialist Britain for its own purposes suggesting it was for the peoples who set page on 6th April, preferring to lead in 1919 into what was called a nation state. out to exterminate the Jews to provide with PSNI Gives Stab-Proof Vests To They had no sense of national unity them with territory for a state, instead of All Officers. On the same day the Irish amongst themselves, but it seemed that facilitating them in the enterprise of a Times led with November Deadline Set they were acquiring a sense of national colonial conquest of Palestine. And he For NI Parties To Work Together. Both unity through being drawn into the says: "the State of Israel was created by SF and the SDLP had lobbied against the functioning of the state. In that case the the international community". Shadow Assembly plan. Even Tom destruction of the state would have the Kelly, a former SDLP member who likely effect of stirring up conflict between We will take a closer look, in a future usually supports the NIO position, the various peoples in Iraq. And, if we issue, at the international community that described it as a "betrayal" of nationalists could see that, we cannot suppose that the created Israel, and the way it created it. (IN 3.4.06). US-UK Government did not see it. And in And at the morality which says that it is fact they began talking up civil war within right to take a country away from its Denis Donaldson The timing of the weeks of the invasion three years ago, inhabitants and give it to another people. murder of this IRA informer for the indicating that they saw it very well. British was reminiscent of previous Here we will only remark that the Northern 'psycho-dramas' intended to Senator Mansergh is one of those who attitude of Mladic and Karadic towards derail devolutionary rapprochements. speaks of the good side and the bad side of the United Nations was strongly influenced However this time the Blair Government the invasion. In another connection Fianna by Israel, which was their only supporter. ignored the securocrats' offering. There Fail has been dismissive of the suggestion They thought it was open to anybody to can be little doubt that he was killed by that the two sides of another affair are treat the UN with the kind of contempt his former handlers, who will not have distinct and might be addressed separately. that Israel does. liked his preference for Provo debriefing The two sides of the coin are the same to exile and a new identity. Not that coin, they say, and you can't have one Finally, we must express our gratitude there was not reason enough for repub- without the other. We suggest that there is to Sean Whelan, Radio Eireann's naive lican revenge—not by Provos, but by substance to the distinction between Sinn globaliser, for the term, "psychodrama" others who split off from the mainstream Fein and the IRA—which they dismiss as to describe the way the dominant Western during the period of his perfidy. What spurious—but that there is no substance at powers manipulate world affairs at this makes this theory of a Provo assassin- all to the good side/bad side distinction juncture. ation incredible is that his 'hideaway' with regard to invasion of Iraq. was no secret to them. He was in a family holiday cottage which had been Senator Mansergh says that Ireland is used as a retreat by various republicans. now obliged by international law to support Editorial The killing followed just days after the the invasion of Iraq because the UN Commentary Stickie-orientated Sunday World, in a Security Council gave it retrospective World Exclusive authored by Hugh validation after the event and made terrorist May 2006 Jordan, made public the fact that he was rebels of those who resist it. And he says: in a remote area of Donegal and showed "Despite vehement criticism of the Plan B For eight years since 10th April aerial pictures of the cottage. Donaldson US and its allies, its conduct does not 1998, on various pretexts, the British told Jordan that Stormontgate was begin to compare in savagery with the suicide attacks against civilians or the Government failed to pressurise recal- staged—and himself sacrificed by the abduction and beheading of hostages citrant parties to the Good Friday Agree- British authorities—so that republicans that have been the tactics of the ment to work the institutions. The threat would bear the blame for the suspension insurgents" (IT 17.12.05). of developing Joint Authority with the of the Northern Executive and Assembly: Irish Government was never applied. "It was for whatever agenda they The Iraqis did not do such things under On 6th April, after some weeks of were up to—and that agenda is all too the regime of the tyrant. The great bulk of leaks the 'stick' was finally brandished— obvious. them lived ordinary routine lives, and by 9 months after the IRA agreed to "The plan was to collapse the all accounts, Baghdad, even during the decommision its weapons (which was institutions to save Trimble—David years of the sanctions, was one of the not a requirement of the Agreement as Trimble was trying to out-DUP the DUP and in the end the DUP swallowed him safest cities of the world for foreigners voted on in two Referendums). A shadow up. (and women) to walk about in, day or Assembly will be established on 15th "The whole idea was to get Trimble night. May. There will be three chances to set off the hook and get republicans the up the Ministerial arrangements under blame. But it didn't work, because What Mansergh describes so the GFA between then and 24th Trimble is history now. moralistically is the conduct of people November. If the DUP does not nominate "There was never a spy ring at whose state—whose framework of its Ministers, the representative aspects Stormont…" (19.3.06) normality—has been deliberately and of the GFA will be ended and Joint Why should the Provos kill this person systematically wrecked by invading Authority will be fleshed out. when he was confirming that they were 6 innocent in the 'Stormontgate' affair? in the Dail rejected republican denials of founding principles of democratic An Phoblacht reported Gerry Kelly complicity, saying the killing "bore the nationalism" (IN 30.3.06). MLA as follows about the murder: hallmarks of the execution of Eamon Martin Mansergh has apologised to the "Donaldson Death—Serious Questions Collins outside Newry" [an informer 'Shot At Dawn' campaign (which seeks For PSNI by Laura Friel killed by the IRA]. (Kenny was quoted retrospective pardons for soldiers "“We are told that the man who led approvingly by Eoghan Harris in the executed for cowardice in the Great War) Sunday World journalist Hugh Jordan to Sunday Independent 9.4.06, under the for the role of his relative, Temporary Denis Donaldson's home in Donegal title, Donaldson Did Some Service To Major Robert Otwayåßœ Mansergh of and who secretly filmed him was a former Two States.) the 6th Battalion Royal Irish Rifles member of the RUC, Colin Breen. Shortly after the Sunday World exposé But readers can rest easy: in an (related to the Senator's grandmother) of Denis Donaldson was killed… editorial, Time To Face Political Cork. Major Mansergh presided over "“Given the role played by Special Realities, Geraldine Kennedy assures us the court-martial of Patrick Joseph Branch in Denis Donaldson's life over that Lord Alderdyce will say 'who Downey of Limerick in 1915, who was many years, the revelation of the dunnit'. More significant is the news accused of disobeying orders. Private involvement of Colin Breen in this story that NI Police Ombudsman, Nuala Downey was undefended. Dr. Mansergh is extremely sinister…” O'Loan, will undertake an investigation. said: "According to the Sunday Business "Obviously I'm not responsible for Post, the former officer, Colin Breen Troop Reductions Over the coming two what happened but I am a member, albeit had worked in Tennent Street RUC years the British Government plans to a distant one, of the family…" (30.3.06). barracks in Belfast before his retirement. —is the Senator assuming a genetic blood- Breen travelled with the Sunday World dismantle the five remaining Co. Armagh spy towers and reduce troop levels to guilt here?—a position with racist journalist to the Glenties area of County overtones. Moreover, as Martin Man- Donegal to track Donaldson down. 5,000. "Breen… is not a member of the Policing Denis Bradley is withdrawing sergh justifies Britain's role in the Great Sunday World's staff and photographers from his position as Policing Board Vice- War, surely he should defend the means employed by the newspaper were not Chairman. He suggested that PB necessary to prosecute it? used… Hugh Jordan made no mention members elect a Catholic Chairman this of Breen's role. time around (a suggestion criticised by "Breen secretly filmed Donaldson… Tom Kelly, IN 31.3.06), and this would video film was sold to a number of have happened if the UUP had followed British television stations and broad- The Somme cast… Within days of the coverage through on its threat to boycott the PB Donaldson was killed. (see April Irish Political Review). Sir Commemorations "The timing of the killing, just two Desmond Rea was re-elected Chairman, days before the British and Irish govern- with Barry Gilligan, a property devel- The Government proposes a new ments unveiled their plans, has been oper, as his deputy. postage stamp and other steps to commem- seen by many as a deliberate attempt to In an interview with the Irish News orate the Battle of the Somme. But unless thwart the political process… (23.3.06) Denis Bradley said that, though this experiment is finely calculated it could, "This is not the first time Hugh Jordan he and his home had been physically like the attempt to put a loyalist parade has been the media conduit for Special attacked, "from the start Sinn Fein and through O’Connell Street, go horribly Branch's dirty war. In the late 1990s a the IRA never intimidated him" or “were former Special Branch agent, Thomas wrong. Douglas who worked as part of a black anything but properly adversarial at a propaganda group, claimed he had fed debate level”. Indeed, "on many Should all of the foreign wars in which Jordan fabricated stories designed to occasions senior Sinn Fein figures were Irish people participated be comm- undermine the IRA cessation at that the first to call at his home after an emorated, whether or not there is now a time. attack". The former PB Vice-Chairman consensus in favour of the objectives for "It's not the first time that an agent, also described "the decision to hand which they fought? Should we com- apparently considered more useful dead security over to MI5" as a "mistake". memorate those Irish who fought on the than alive, has been killed. William Mervyn Gibson, a former Special Branch pro-slavery side in the American Civil Stobie, a Special Branch agent who officer who became a Presbyterian War? Should we commemorate the battles supplied and later disposed of weaponry Minister in 2000, has been ousted as used in the murder of Pat Finucane, was of Cremona, Blenheim, Ramillies, shot dead after he backed the call for a Chairman of the Loyalist Commission Oudinard, Malplaquet and Fontenoy? The public inquiry and appeared willing to as the UDA and UVF say he was involved first question we must ask is whether we co-operate with the Steven's probe…" in secret talks with the NIO about parades understand what was at issue in the Irish (13.4.2006). (IN 5.4.06). involvement in these battles. War is about The family has said they do not Omagh Relatives met Chief Constable killing people. Killing people is a serious believe the Provos were responsible for Hugh Order, who rejected their thing and there has to be a very good the killing, as does Andrew McIntyre challenging questions, saying he did not reason for doing it. Though the issue (the dissident whose views often dovetail wish to be "interrogated" (IN 4.4.06). continues to be debated, the political with British strategy). DUP Life Peers For the first time the consensus in favour of the 1916 Rising The Irish Times has suggested DUP's mandate has been recognised, has been confirmed. Donaldson was really working for the with the appointment of three peers: Provos, both editorially some months Mrs. Eileen Paisley, Maurice Morrow But what about the Somme? By that ago, and in its lead story, Double Agent (Chairman), and Wallace Browne point in the Great War, the decision had Found Murdered In Donegal Cottage (Belfast Lord Mayor). been made by the Irish General Kitchener (5.4.06). It has not explained the grounds Eileen Bell of the Alliance Party is to be (are we going to honour him?) and others for the suggestion that he was working the new Presiding Officer of the Shadow on the British side that Germany could not for the IRA, rather than against. The Assembly. be beaten by military science, and the only paper is well connected to British Eddie Espie, an SDLP member since way to win the war was by attrition. This Intelligence circles, and is probably just 1991 (and a Protestant) has resigned as meant that the fighting had to be arranged, repeating what it was told by them. Vice-Chairman: "The party today is a not to obtain a strategic advantage which The Fine Gael leader, Enda Kenny, shadow of the party I joined based on the would bring the killing to a stop, but to 7 maximise killing on all sides. The calculation being that the Central Powers, the European Union of the day, had a smaller population than their enemies to Geopolitics And Race In draw from, and would be exhausted first. Thus the purpose of the planned Britain's Strategy Towards Iraq, 1916 conscription in Ireland was to provide raw In the decade before the First World society, which was pro-Ottoman and anti- material for butchery. This is Britain’s War, British policy towards the Ottoman European. Except that the "European Crime Against Europe, accurately Empire included a concerted attempt to penetration" it was resisting was not predicted by Roger Casement in his book secure control of the provinces of "European" at all, but purely British! of that name. Mesopotamia and the Gulf. Under the Young Turks, the Ottoman Empire for its Haddad describes the nature of British The Somme is a prime example. In part sought desperately to balance its "penetration" of the region, and one of his twenty four fours of fighting there were relations with both Britain and Germany main sources for this is a lengthy about ten thousand Irish casualties. On a and avoid involvement in any greater "Memorandum" by the British Consul- one for one killing ratio, the Irish must conflict. Among modern day American General in Baghdad, Lorimer, to Sir G. have been responsible for about ten "Arabists" these projects of the previous Lowther, the British representative in thousand Bavarian, Pomeranian, Saxon Anglo-Saxon world power are of obvious Istanbul in January 1910 (see PRO-FO and other casualties. Do we now stand contemporary interest. The books they 424/222). Haddad explains—though for over those killings to the extent that we produce—such as those of the prolific "European" the reader clearly should read wish to publicly honour the killers? Were Rashid Khalidi of the University of "British" : those deaths justified? What was it all for? Chicago—are often of interest. "The anti-European pattern developed in opposition to two particular schemes About half of the ten thousand Irish One he edited, titled The Origins Of … The first was the attempt of foreign casualties were for King and Country. In Arab Nationalism (Columbia University capital to monopolize the rights of other words they were fighting for the Press 1991), includes an article by one of navigation on the Tigris and Euphrates British Empire, the three hundred year his students, Mahmoud Haddad, on Iraq rivers, while the second was related to other attempts by foreign capital to project of world conquest, colonisation, Before World War 1: A Case of Anti- ethnic cleansing and genocide which penetrate agriculture. It appeared in two European Arab Ottomanism. phases—an initial phase at the end of reached its apex in the first half of the 1909, and a later… phase during the twentieth century. This part of the Irish Haddad starts with a very convoluted second half of 1913… war effort was supremely successful, as statement to explain the awkward fact that "The 1909 phase started when the the British Empire gained vast territories the most vigorous political tendency in Ottoman cabinet approved a project to in Africa and the Middle East from the Mesopotamia (the socially advanced area amalgamate the Ottoman steamer line, Great War, and went on to pile horror of "Iraq") prior to 1914 was a modernising the Nahriyya, with the British Messrs. upon atrocity right up to Palestine and pro-Ottoman movement, coordinated Lynch Brothers Company. For all Iraq today. initially through the local branch of the practical purposes, the project meant the absorption of the former by the latter. Young Turk Committee of Union and The other half thought they were Messrs. Lynch was to enjoy a virtual Progress (CUP), while anti-Ottoman Arab monopoly for navigating the Tigris and fighting for the freedom of small nations. nationalism was a totally negligible force, the Euphrates for seventy-five years, It became increasingly obvious that they explained away by Haddad as "proto- subject to termination by the Ottoman were the unfortunate dupes of Imperial Arab nationalism", the only meaning of government after thirty-seven years…" politics. So their killing of others, and which can be the Arab nationalism that (pp121-2). their own deaths, were a tragic mistake to does not yet exist: be lamented, not celebrated. "The first idea that springs to mind This led to strong protests to Istanbul when addressing the topic of Arab by a group of leading merchants from By glorifying the tragedy as a positive nationalism, or more precisely proto- Baghdad, Basra and Mosul, "Christians event in history we are in danger of a Arab nationalism, during the period of and Jews as well as Muslims", against the miscalculation which would make the the Young Turks (1908-1914) is the idea decision of the Chamber of Deputies to recent events in O’Connell Street look of Arab versus Turk, or the Arab pro- sanction the sale of the Nahriyya to Messrs. like a Sunday afternoon stroll in the park. vinces versus the Ottoman central Lynch and grant them the navigation Perhaps the way ahead is, like Holocaust government. While this is a proper concession. They feared British trade approach, it is incomplete, because we advantage and its use to advance British Day, to acknowledge the Great War as a may speak of two general patterns within Crime Against Europe, in the tradition of “Arab nationalism” at that stage. One political designs to control the region. In Irish foreign policy pioneered by Casement reflected a reaction to Turkish dominat- addition, they argued that the British would and Connolly. ion, the other reflected a reaction to use this position to manipulate the desert Pat Muldowney European or Western economic, tribes and later use tribal disturbances as (6.3.06, published in Village magazine) political, and cultural penetration. an excuse for military intervention, Although the first pattern was not specifically citing India as an "excellent marginal and should not be taken lightly, example" of how political designs were You can buy books and pamphlets by it was, relatively speaking, minor. It advanced under the guise of trade. cheque or credit card on the Athol was overshadowed and dwarfed by the Books site, where you will find further anti-European pattern that was more The entire incident helped precipitate information about our own publications as important, more broadly based, and more a popular anti-British movement, and also well as archive material: socially and politically significant, at least in the case of Iraq" (p 121). led to the fall of Hilmi Pasha's government www.atholbooks.org in Istanbul as "it could neither grant the or So there we have it. Arab anti-Ottoman concession for fear of British expansion write to an address on the back page nationalism did not exist beyond a "proto" in Iraq nor reject the British for reasons of or phase which was totally "dwarfed" by the foreign policy" (p143). order through your local bookshop main political tendency in Mesopotamian The concession to Lynch finally went 8 ahead in a modified form against the would normally possess at the Port of tunities were also believed to have emerged protests of a majority of Arab delegates in Basra when its construction was complete, for the most radical designs to be the Istanbul Chamber, but with the strong concessions which The Times of London implemented. In 1916, Haddad quotes an support of the Young Turk CUP which described as being essential for "giving unidentified "British editor" as writing of was very keen on building good relations British trade an independent right of the revival of the racial plan for re-settling with Britain. When in the wake of the access to the markets of Mesopotamia". the Euphrates basin: Young Turk revolution a related incident Though the agreement was concluded by "a change of rule would be beneficial arose—the proposed sale of concessions early 1914, Britain stalled in ratifying it, to all inhabitants of Mesopotamia with in former crown lands to raise loans for and, on the very outbreak of war, Istanbul the possible exception of the Bedouins. the hard pressed Ottoman state —the desperately though in vain tried to expand We sympathize with them, but of course political society in Iraq broke with the it into a tripartite Anglo-German-Ottoman they could not be allowed to occupy CUP and began re-organising itself along convention in July 1914. indefinitely such splendid lands they anti-Turkish lines but espousing the neither use nor allow others to use" (p137). Ottoman Caliph and a future within the Mesopotamian antagonism to Britain Ottoman realm. In 1913 rumours were were driven by deep suspicions of British The very negative development of the rife of concessions to up to 20 million intentions, particularly the irrigation war for Britain from 1916—and parti- acres being offered for sale at short notice schemes being undertaken by Sir William cularly the spectacular retreat through to former crown lands in the provinces of Wilcocks on commission from the Mesopotamia—put these plans indefinite- Baghdad, Aleppo, Beirut and Syria. Ottoman government, which, according ly on ice, though as Wilcocks' memoirs Jewish and English money were regarded to the British consul general in Baghdad, show, the dream never fully faded. It was as the prime element behind the proposed "are regarded as a British rather than a precisely this type of ruthless colonial purchases and a movement rapidly Turkish concern". The London Times policy of racial uprooting and resettlement emerged to oppose the sale. reported large meetings denouncing the which so enamoured Hitler to the great "sinister intentions" of the Wilcocks example of the British Empire. The Istanbul regime was being squeez- project. Philip O'Connor ed by Britain as the latter's geopolitical schemes for the Arab lands of the Ottoman That these concerns were not without Empire took final shape in the context of foundation is revealed by Haddad: preparations for launching a war against "We do not know for certain what Report Germany. Istanbul capitulated: specific "sinister intentions" the "At the beginning of 1913,… the CUP, demonstrators were attributing to British once again in power in Istanbul, started enterprise at that point. We can only A Labour 1916 a fresh effort to improve British-Ottoman draw attention to the fact that Sir William relations. In this context, Hakki Pasha, Wilcocks himself mentions in his Commemoration minister plenipotentiary and memoirs his preference for settling extraordinary of the Ottoman govern- Indians in Iraq. For him: “The Euphrates- (Of Sorts) ment arrived in London in February Tigris delta will be reclaimed and settled 1913. His instructions were “to leave no by millions of natives of India, who will The SDLP joined with SIPTU and the stone unturned to settle outstanding make it again the Garden of the East.” Irish Labour Party to hold a 90th differences with Great Britain”. After Although the British government did Anniversary meeting at Transport Hosue months of negotiations between Hakki not seriously consider such a project (Belfast) on April 10th. Pasha and Sir Edward Grey, the British until 1914-15, some British officials entertained the possibility of utilizing secretary of state for foreign affairs, an Sena Farren, whose grandfather, John, Anglo-Ottoman agreement was reached Iraq as an "outlet for the surplus in May 1913. Britain was to support an population of India" as early as 1906. was with Connolly in Belfast a hundred increase of 4 percent of the customs We also know that certain elite groups in years ago, said that the leaders of the duties of the Ottoman Empire. In return, Iraq were not unaware of these ideas…" Rising gave no thought to what it was in Istanbul recognized the special position (p126; Wilcocks' memoirs are entitled nationalism that made it objectionable to of Great Britain in the Persian Gulf, Sixty Years In The East, London 1935). Unionists, and they underestimated the pledged a policy of noninterference in strength of the Unionist resistance. the affairs of Kuwait, agreed to make According to Lorimer, leading merch- Unionism remained to be dealt with by the Basra (not Kuwait) the terminus of the ants in Baghdad and Basra were convinced post-independence agenda, but was not Baghdad Railway, and permitted the that the British intended that "the drama really addressed until the Good Friday election of two British citizens to the of Egypt shall be re-enacted in Iraq". The Agreement, which launched a course of board of directors of the Baghdad irrigation scheme, they believed, would Railway company. Furthermore, navi- "non-coercive persuasion" towards require the service of 25,000 "coolies and nationalism of those who were opposed to gation by steamers and barges on the agriculturalists from India". Transporting Tigris, the Euphrates and the Shatt al- it. With the GFA there came "an offer for 'Arab was to form a monopoly granted produce would be an argument for a rail- the first time ever, of a covenant of honour to an international company of which way, requiring a further 10,000-15,000 between nationalism and Unionism", and the shares were to be divided equally Indian employees. As the Ottoman the Unionists did themselves no good by between Great Britain and the Ottoman Government was insolvent, financial opposing it. But the SDLP looked forward government. The international com- requirements would be met by raising a towards making considerable progress pany… was to be headed by Lord loan in England. Frictions would lead to through non-coercive persuasion during Inchcape (chairman of the Penninsula a raid on the Indian colony by a "foolish the ten years leading up to the Centenary. and Oriental and the British Steam Arab tribe" and military intervention Navigation companies), who would also And it proposed that the Forum for Peace would become imperative: "Occupation and Reconciliation should be re-convened. represent British interests (Haddad, follows and Mesopotamia becomes pp132-3). Egypt." Joan Burton of the Irish Labour Party The agreement also established a joint said that, when Connolly was executed, Ottoman-British commission to police the With the outbreak of war and the British Labour lost its leader, and stood aside as a Shatt al-'Arab waterway and to levy dues expeditionary force to Basra confirming consequence. This led to the two-and-a- and exercise the rights the Government these pre-war "suspicions", new oppor- half party system. 9 The Labour Party was not much given (My last campaign in Belfast politics, Eamon Phoenix subscribed to the song, to 1916 commemorations, but it before I threw in the towel, was against No more heroes any more. The IRB group commemorates the date of Connolly's Fair Employment social engineering. It of the Rising was a minority of a minority. execution instead of making fiery speeches appeared to me that forcing employers to at Bodenstown. It was wrong to think take on Catholics and Protestants in Somebody asked if the logical working that, because of its abhorrence of the proportions reflecting their numbers in out of the GFA was a united Ireland. physical force position, it doesn't the general population of regions would Joan Burton said some of us were commemorate Connolly. have a divisive rather than a uniting effect. repelled by Pearse and the notion of blood Connolly had had many disappoint- I argued this on a number of occasions sacrifice. But there was another side to ments, and he got involved with the IRB with the Fair Employment boss, Bob him: his writings and activity in the sphere as a last resort. Cooper. But he had his vision. He was of education. And in 1998 the Republic 1916 should be seen in the light of the certain. The laws were brought in and relinquished its earlier irredentist claims consequences of 1913. enforced. Employers were compelled to on the North. employ Catholics and Protestants in the Sean Farren said that at least the The third platform speaker, Eamon quotas laid down, while at the same time Proclamation was printed in Liberty Hall, Phoenix (actually the first) gave an denying that they were applying a quota whoever wrote it. And he did not suggest academic account of the 1916 event. system, and going through convoluted that Irish unity was the inevitable working employment procedures to disguise it. out of the GFA, which was the template From the floor, Alban McGuinness Possibly it served some other purpose under which we could engage in non- said he had real difficulty about coming to than reconciliation, but reconciliation was coercive persuasion. terms with 1916 and its value system. its declared purpose. It seemed to me that Eamon Phoenix said that this was How could that event be reconciled with its effect would be to increase the feeling because in 1998 the South bourht into the the goal of reconciliation shared by the of demoralisation in the Protestant 1970 SDLP programme. people there that night? community, and I never found it believable that its architects did not see the same COMMENT Ronan Farren questioned the role of thing.) That's what I noted down when the Connolly as an icon. He was a successful meeting turned out to be much more Trade Union organiser and writer, though Joan Burton said that Church leaders interesting than I expected. I recall in his writings were of their time and not had been against violence in 1916 and addition that Joan Burton said that, very readable today. But he failed as a later. But the brutality of the repression growing up in Dublin, she witnessed many politician, and he was truculent in char- had an ongoing effect. Regarding the Republican demonstrations and ceremon- acter. Then came 1916 and the trans- position of Connolly, she said that writers ies at Arbour Hill. She later rather went formation. And weren't we exaggerating had an advantage over speakers, whose off the Republican view. But she spent his importance? words die with them. many years doing social work in North Civil rights and negotiation was the Africa, and in Tanzania Julius Nyerere Phoenix said in response to this that only way in the North. But you couldn't told her that the Easter Rising was one of there were 20 Labour Councillors amongst retro-fit from the present to the past. the events that inspired him. the 60 members of the Belfast Council, * but many of them were Unionists, and Glyn Roberts of the Federation of Small Dr. Boyd Black's contribution was a there was a basic job of socialist evangel- Businessmen condemned the waste of time disembowelled and castrated adaptation ism to be done. And, though Connolly's since 1998. There were still more people of an idea which I put into circulation in language now smacked of the Victorian employed in the public sector in Northern the early seventies, which built up to a era, he was an important socialist in his Ireland than there had been in Communist fairly impressive cross-community time, and was known to people like Hungary. How stupid we must look to the political force for a few years after the Trotsky. rest of the world. That's what politics was signing of the Anglo-Irish Agreement of Some people now think that, if the about. 1985. It was that a common ground of Rising had lasted for three weeks, Pearse political action for both communites could would not be as famous as he is. He spent Boyd Black: Where did Labour only be established through the party- most of the week behind a typewriter reconciliation fit in? What was happening politics of the democracy of the state. The hammering out the Irish War News. was increasing polarisation. Only the essential thing was the participation in the It was a problem that the Rising did not Labour movements of these islands central political conflict of the state in have a mandate. The SDLP said last week working together could bring about pursuit of power. It was certainly not that that it looks back to Wolfe Tone and '98 reconciliation. Labour, detached from the politics of the rather than 1916. But they were men of state, had any special aptitude for Joan Burton said Labour had been in violence too. But of course people did not reconciling. at the neginning of the peace process. have the vote then and violence was the (That was news to me.) only way. And it was true that 1916 was Dr. Black was one of those who brought different in that regard. that movement to nothing 15 years ago by Sean Farren spoke about the recon- use of Unionist shibboleths. Having helped ciliation of identities coming about through to destroy the live movement that existed Sean Farren made a second statement, people working together with a sense of on education, during which my mind then, and that was exerting strong and social justice. If there was a distinctive increasing pressure on the Labour Party wanders, as it always does in the vicinity Labour way to reconciliation, he would of that subject. But it perked up and by mass lobbying at Party Conferences, like to hear of it, because he didn't know of he and his colleagues went to law and brought me back to attention when it heard it. him say that the forcible mixing of compelled the Labour Party to admit them "Dr. Black: It's suppressed. to individual membership on the condition Catholics and Protestants in work place Alex Atwood: Well, we'll suppress it had not led to socialising, and the oppor- for a wee bit longer then". of not engaging in political activity. And, tunities for progress in that regard did not (Atwood (SDLP) chaired the meeting. in any case, they are not a political prove to be as great as they appeared at Until this moment I had never suspected movement on the ground, as the Campaign first. him of having a sense of humour.) for Labour Representation was. 10 With regard to Connolly and his status as an icon, it seems that what the speakers knew of his last years was what they Review: Six Days Of The Irish Republic by L.G.Redmond-Howard gleaned from the falsification of Robert Aubane Historical Society. £12, 15 Euro, postfree in Europe Lynd, a British Home Rule militarist of the Great War, who in an Introduction to the post-Rising edition of Labour In Irish The Reality Of 1916 History presented him as a rather simple- minded working class socialist (an This book in my opinion has four a cage against stone-throwers—and intellectual marvel, of course, for a major parts: containing B-Specials with the same rifle. working man, but also of restricted outlook One: Six Days of the Irish Republic They are racing up the Donegall Road becase a working man), who could not Two: A pamphlet on Sir Roger Casement (yes, Donegall with two lls) towards the entitled: A Character Sketch without cope with the situation in which Britain nearby Falls Road. At some stage shots Prejudice. are fired and two bodies lie in the street. found it necessary to make war on Three: Ireland, The Peace Conference Germany in order to save civilisation, lost One is of a man lying beside his motor and the League of Nations. cycle with the wheels still spinning. his bearings, and hit out in despair. Four: An Irishman's Home or The Crisis, a play in one act by L.G.Redmond- Nothing now moves, trams and other Connolly's more recent biographer, Howard, and Harry Carson. (son of Sir traffic have stopped and lie empty, people Ruth Dudley Edwards (literary Edward Carson) have disappeared like magic and I am being held down on the ground by someone collaborator of Sean O'Callaghan, I think it is too important a work, and Informer and murderer) also misrepresents for safety while bullets chip the road. The in many ways too complex a work, and date 1936. Connolly's last years on similar lines. She too dense a work for all four parts to be conceals the fact that he was, from pushed into one review. So I will start September 1914 onwards, an active I, as a Catholic, was brought up in with what I call Part One: Six Days of the Protestant areas and went to Protestant participant in the Great War, as an ally of Irish Republic. So here goes. Germany, on socialist grounds which he schools. My father was a Protestant who spelt out clearly (and readably). confined his communism to Northern When I was asked to review this book Ireland. My mother was a Catholic who my immediate reaction was: Not another Lynd's self-justification, I presume, is didn't agree with the 1916 Uprising work on the 1916 Uprising! My brain was because she thought it suicidal and that he thought that in his work as a war already tired at the thought of it. propagandist he was helping to save therefore against her faith. But she and her family actively supported the War of civilisation, and that socmething had to be When I was born in Belfast in 1932 done to negate Connolly's bad example. I Independence from their home in Omagh sixteen years had passed since 1916, and and suffered for it. can't guess what Ruth Dudley Edwards's eleven years had passed since the Unionist justification might be. regime had been established in 1921. So, 1916 was not a topic in our home. Donal Nevin has published a very It was only at the age of 16 when I was in On top of that there was mass contact with the communist Young factual biography of Connolly. The Editor unemployment that gave rise to the Workers League , and meeting with other of History Ireland (who, I gather, was Outdoor Relief Riots. The smell of burning once a revolutionary socialist) gave the teenage Catholics there, did I learn fully potato peels and paper, as a substitute for of the 1916 Uprising. Looking back to task of reviewing and disparaging it to the a coal fire—the down-draught from those 1936 cine images I began to realise real godfather of revisionism, Professor chimneys filling the streets during the David Fitzpatrick. (Foster is only the I had been witnessing an RUC punitive 1930s—on occasions, still fill my nostrils action against the celebration of the showman.) when I think back to that period. Twentieth Anniversary of the 1916 It was reviewed on Radio eireann by Uprising being held in nearby Catholic I have always had an extremely good West Belfast. Mairin de Burca and Joe Higgins. The memory of my childhood, starting from falsifications of Lynd and Edwards did the age of eighteen months. At that age it It wasn't long before I caught up with not seem to have been removed from their was a series of images much like the the history of 1916. I didn't think, when minds by Nevin, judging from their photographs of a still camera. At about picking up L.G. Redmond-Howard's book comments. the age of four this gave way to images as that I was to learn very much more. Brendan Clifford if from a cine camera. You may wonder what this has got to do with 1916 but Brendan Clifford begins his excellent young children are also recorders of grim introduction by reminding us that Louis times. At the age of nine, when I had George Redmond-Howard is the son of New Title achieved elementary reading and writing John Redmond's sister who married an skills, I was able to interpret that part of an Australian called Howard. He was Charles Gavan Duffy: image seen merely as a blur at eighteen orphaned in childhood and brought up as Conversations With Carlyle. months old—the writing on the side of a a member of the Redmond family, and Reprint of the classic of 1892. horse-drawn van I saw from the upper was adopted by Redmond as his son. With Introduction: window of room near Carlisle Circus, Stray Thoughts On Young Belfast. I could now read it as Red Hand An industrial strike has many of the Ireland by Brendan Clifford. Oatmeal—a Protestant Porridge. The date elements of a revolutionary uprising—it 1934. seems to happen instantly, it surprises all Index. 220pp. ISBN 1 0 85034 114 0. Those cine-camera images at the age those outside it, workers once too timid to Athol Books, Dec. 2005. of four are of Crossley Tenders full of the even look the foreman in the eye are E16, £12. paramilitary RUC sitting back to back facing up and eyeballing the executives of holding .303 rifles. Following the tenders the company without a care for the future, came grey-painted lorries—the upper part some of the workers are forever radicalised 11 by the action while others slip back to take which included the telegraph and He re-prints a letter in the Irish Times up their former roles when all is finished telephone system, with links to submarines from Æ on the bad citizenship of the and may or may not come out again when engaged in WW1, and make the enemy "aristocracy of industry". the call is given. blind and deaf? That would have been "There are twenty thousand rooms in like taking over today's Government Dublin in each of which live entire I feel that L.G. Redmond-Howard Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) families and sometimes more, where no himself had been radicalised by the 1916 in Cheltenham in England. Why did they functions of the body can be concealed, Uprising. He begins as the outsider in not capture Trinity College? His and delicacy and modesty are creatures Chapter One, called A Bolt from the Blue. enthusiasm for the Rising grows. Later a that are stifled ere they are born." He is there witnessing that action and he wireless station is seized and messages And this: rightly calls himself a privileged witness. about the Uprising are flashed to the four "True, the revolt was not with any He begins with Larkin's Citizen Army corners of the earth about the establishment concrete economic end in view; but without being fully aware of James of an Irish Republic. He delights in the none the less, it was coloured throughout Connolly. It is like writing of New York idea that messages are picked up at sea by with economic grievances." before the Statue of Liberty has arrived. special envoys, who had been forewarned, Later from his hotel window he hears and sent on to New York and Petrograd. I think those today in Ireland who James Connolly being addressed as Mr. He says: think there might have been another way Connolly. I thought for a while he was "The amazement of Russia and to bring about at least a partial cutting off just going to ponce about from one hotel America must have been considerable." from England should consider those balcony to another forever. Though he twenty thousand rooms in Dublin, and the does have one unique opportunity to view In Lower Abbey Street he notes that a hideous poverty of the rural areas. from the balcony of the Metropole Hotel formidable barricade was composed partly the settling-in of the rebels into the GPO. by paper taken from the stores of the Irish I found it interesting to see how his Eventually he does take to the streets and Times. So the Irish Times did play its part style of writing also changes as he with the cheek of the devil goes to the in the Rising after all. Over in the Four progresses in his thinking. He leaves GPO and asks to see the President in order Courts a barricade is made of wills. behind his heavy Victorian style— to interview him. Ordered to leave he probably learnt at Trinity College—for a returns to the Metropole where from the From here onwards there are so many more direct one in keeping with a balcony he is able to take a snapshot of the quotable pieces that this review could revolutionary time: raising of the new flag of the Republic and become a re-printing of the book so I must "It is the custom to speak of the another of the cheering crowd. At this be selective. Larkinites with scant respect, as if they point he doesn't seem to think much of this were the mad, blind multitude of the crowd. I was unaware in my reading of the 'have nots' in perpetual prey upon the "Thought this was very insignificant history of the period some years ago that 'haves'; but it is quite a false idea, for and in no way represented any the training of the Citizen Army was mostly they have in their movement some of considerable body of citizens, any of the carried out by Captain J. R. White, DSO. those who count socially and better class having disappeared, leaving He was the son of the late Field-Marshall intellectually." the streets to idlers and women and Sir George White, and his "…Labour ideas children or else stray sightseers." got him three months imprisonment only a After this he goes on to mention Captain White. I did consider this to be class few weeks ago", writes L.G.Redmond- Of course he doesn't see himself as an Howard. upmanship for after all this was the early idler and stray sightseer. Women and Twentieth Century and he had been to a When James Connolly is under Jesuit College in Clongowes, to Douai in children also seem to him to be part of the sentence of death, Captain White appeals street debris. France, to Trinity in Dublin and Bonn in to the South Wales miners to help save Germany (as Brendan Clifford points out I was still not convinced, at this stage, him. We are not told how the miners in his introduction). Then I began to think that he views the 1916 Uprising as anything reacted. that maybe he was saying he was of some more than a riot by "thugs, dockers and I think the stuff I read years ago did not worth after all and not just a stuffed shirt others of the lower classes". He seems too allow for any outside intrusion into the amidst the making of revolutionary concerned about wounded British history of 1916 even when it was benign. Ireland. Tommies lying in the street and is proud to The puritanism of Republicism put me off see young girls risking their lives by going it for a time. I can never forget the image in one of out under fire to give some of them a drink the early Cuban films of the 1960s, after of water. He castigates the looters from Continuing to develop, L.G.Redmond- the revolution , of a bourgeois who hasn't the slums more than the British who are Howard has another look at that "lower made it to Miami lying listless on his bed doing terrible damage to Dublin with their class" who previously did nothing but loot oblivious to the sound of tanks and artillery gunboat on the Liffey and their heavy and set fire to buildings for good measure pieces passing his door as they make their artillery, some of which is entrenched in while British incendiary shells hitting way to the Bay of Pigs where they will Trinity College. every building at will is somewhat down- defeat a CIA backed invading Cuban exile played. He now realises that the 1913 army from Miami. (The film was called Later he comes to realise that the rebels lock-out by Dublin employers had caused Memories Of Underdevelopment, 1968. have integrity. Some are sent to the a third of the population to starve. Mr. The blurb said he was "Too lazy to go to Metropole Hotel to requisition some food Connolly becomes James Connolly and Miami, too decadent to fit into the new supplies but they later come back with a therefore comes more fully into his vision: Cuba.) Happily L.G. Redmond-Howard ten pound note. "They should look at the soldier for a didn't lie on his bed oblivious or we week; they must examine the life-long wouldn't have had his personal experiences There is an apparent change in his student of economics and read his History of the Rising. views and the way he is now looking at the of Labour in Irish History and The Uprising. He becomes the fanciful military Reconquest of Ireland, for it is here we He gives the Cunard shipping line a tactician—why didn't the rebels capture have the revolution in its cause, which good hammering worthy of a James the British wireless communications was just as much economic as political." Connolly when five hundred young West 12 of Ireland men arrive in Liverpool and are L.G.Redmond-Howard goes on to edifice of revolutionary endeavour could booed as cowards because they won't join write about the constant pinpricks of the not up and go at a moment's notice even if the British Army and die for England. enemy. they had a will to do so… and they were Cunard has reported their existence on "Thus , if we take the issue of the living in their own country. The Republic board to the authorities. He reminds us Worker's Republic of April 22, 1916, we had been born and now it had to be that Cunard made their fortune from the find an account, quoted from the defended. Most births come at an awkward coffin ships that carried the Irish to Liverpool Courier, of how Connolly, time for everyone—native and foreign America—not wanted in Ireland and not the Commandant of the Citizen's Army, occupier alike. The midwife was this wanted in America either, they had been stopped the police raid, in search of deep pool of talent. It was not a time to papers, on the shop of the Worker's Co- enticed with lurid Cunard coloured posters operative Society at 31, Eden Quay, take to the hills. Thomas MacDonagh was depicting the joys of the New World merely having being informed of their very aware of static warfare and guerrilla for the profit of the company. intention." warfare when he said: From the Liverpool Courier: "In a nation on the run only the He defends Sinn Fein (though I don't "Connolly, says an account, arrived portable arts survive." think he supported that party) against the on the scene just as one of the police got accusation that it is taking German gold. behind the counter. Inquiring if the Augustine Birrell, Chief Secretary for Of course he was aware that his uncle police had a search warrant, they Ireland, was as shrewd as they come. He John Redmond had been accused of taking answered that they had not. On hearing noted: American dollars. this, Mr Connolly, turning to the "A genuine literary Irish revival, in policeman behind the counter as he had prose, poetry and drama which has lifted up a bundle of papers, covered him produced remarkable books and plays, As in Iraq today civilian causalities are with an automatic pistol, and quietly not counted nor is anyone welcome to and a school of acting, all characterised said: 'Drop those papers or I'll drop you.' by originality and independence of count them. L.G. Redmond-Howard also He dropped the papers. Then he was thought and expression, quite divorced wonders how many civilians are dead. ordered out from behind the counter, from any political party, and tending There was talk of secret carnage: and he cleared. His fellow-burglar tried towards and feeding latent desires for "Which was supposed to have taken to be insolent, and was quickly told as some kind of separate Irish national place during what was euphemistically they had no search warrant they were existence." called 'the rounding-up of the rebels' and doing an illegal act, and the first one who 'house-house visitation' while the citizens ventures to touch the papers would be What he was witnessing—and I'm sure of Dublin were confined…" shot like a dog. After some parley, they he felt it in his bones—was the cultural slunk away, vowing vengeance." revolution which usually proceeds the Francis Sheehy Skeffington, a pacifist, military one. and out in the street during the Rising in L.G.Redmond-Howard goes on to say that the story runs for a column or more. order to help the wounded of either side, is George Bernard Shaw, Irish butler- picked up, blindfolded and executed as a cum-clown to English dramatic circles, is rebel on the 26th of April, 1916. A British Liberty Hall is then garrisoned by a 150 determined armed men and more were not so generous when in the London Daily officer is arrested and an enquiry is News of May the 10th, 1916, he castigates promised. (Much like today.) As a pacifist trooping in every few minutes followed by the Women's Ambulance Corp and the the British Government for turning minor he loathed violence and was able to poets in heroes and martyrs. pinpoint where most of it might be coming Boy Scouts. The Irish Volunteers were also on the alert. Liberty Hall then began "Now they will take their place beside from. L.G.Redmond-Howard integrates Emmet and the Manchester Martyrs." into his book a very important letter written to be guarded day and night. by him: I suppose if left alone they could be "Probably, however, the best In the meantime Carson's Ulster getting the odd poem into Tit Bits. diagnosis of the situation immediately Volunteers had been blatantly given two proceeding the outbreak was the letter years immunity by the British I wonder what GBS would have published by the New Statesman on May Government. thought of Bobby Sands? Persuade him 6th, that had been written as early as April 7th, and which, coming from the take his porridge and he might get a poem My conclusion from this report and into Village or Fortnight? most imminent victim of the danger so from Francis Sheehy Skeffington's letter clearly foreseen by him, must have is that the 1916 Uprising stopped special force at the present moment." Give me the poetry of Bobby Sands something much worse to come. The any day. His work is made of flesh and There then follows Francis Sheehy Rising was not so much an offensive action blood unlike the uncommitted Seamus Skefffington's letter in which he accuses but more of a defensive action. Ireland Heaney whose poetry rings mostly of General Friend of the British Army of was no stranger to the art of guerrilla University shall speak unto University, being on the point of setting Ireland ablaze: warfare. Labour had acquired premises don upon don, sinecure upon sinecure. "Twice already General Friend has like Liberty Hall and printing presses, the But back to reality. been on the point of setting Ireland in a Volunteers drill halls and other property. blaze—once last November, when he The leadership was well-known to the The Ulster Volunteers were also mainly had a warrant made out for the arrest of authorities and thousands of other holding defensive positions. It is Bishop O'Dwyer, of Limerick; once on personnel were on their books. Even at mentioned in this book that if it wasn't the March 25th, when he had a detachment that time the camera was being used to GPO in Dublin being burnt to the ground of soldiers with machine-guns in build files plus the sketch artist was at it could have been the City Hall in readiness to raid Liberty Hall. In both work in Dublin Castle. Patrick Pearse had cases Mr Birrell {Chief Secretary for Belfast—a hefty Portland stone building his school running and his poetry and with a mighty dome built to reflect Belfast's Ireland. WJH}, intervened in the nick of essays had been published. Thomas time, and decisively vetoed the militarist city status granted by Queen Victoria in plans. But some day Mr. Birrell may be McDonagh was a university lecturer. He 1888. overborne or may intervene too late. was a published poet and his plays were Then, once bloodshed is started in appearing on the Dublin stage. Connolly, Francis Sheehy Skeffington was Ireland, who can say where or how it a nation-wide Trade Union organiser, also convinced that: will end?" had his work published. Such a solid "The British military authorities 13 in Ireland know perfectly well that the Republic and its Government in waiting. acknowledge that other historians have members of both these organisations There was no going back. To defend her questioned the accuracy of Hart’s research. {Irish Volunteers & Citizen Army WJH} meant death. But it should also be pointed out that Cork are earnest, determined men. If knowing was no border territory. The minority of this, General Friend and his subordinate Not to defend her meant death. Cork Loyalists who supported Britain’s militarists proceed either to disarm the And to those charlatan Irish history war against the Republic were against Volunteers or to raid the Labour Press, it revisionists boiling over with money can only because they want bloodshed— self-government for any part of Ireland. from the elite universities of England because they want to provoke another In contrast, the two Ulster communities who think it could have all been done '98, and to get an excuse for a machine- involved in a conflict of nationalities in differently: think again about what gun massacre." County Monaghan can be viewed, at least Thomas MacDonagh said: in retrospect, as having been engaged in At that time, in my opinion, it was "No man has the right to fix the creating their own de facto Boundary either wait to be massacred in the open or boundaries to the march of a nation." Commission, through a struggle to make a defensive stand. No amount of determine on which side of a future border constitutional horse-dealing could have Wilson John Haire. they would lie. That this was essentially reversed this situation. It was all too late. 19th April, 2006 a conflict between two national allegiances There stood the fully-fledged Irish To Be Continued rather than a religious war was underscored by O’Duffy’s willingness to embrace an Ulster Protestant like Ernest Blythe who had crossed over from his own community Review: Eoin O’Duffy—A Self-Made Hero by Fearghal McGarry, Oxford in order to give his allegiance to the Irish University Press, 2005, Euro 35 /£25 independence struggle. It was, of course, a conflict that could Eoin O’Duffy—A Cautionary Tale very easily have degenerated into some- thing far more ugly. McGarry writes that Fearghal McGarry first made his mark Gaelic Athletic Association. His leader- “Republican violence in Monaghan was as a historian with Irish Politics And The ship qualities would subsequently come inevitably more sectarian than much of Spanish Civil War (1999), described by to the fore as IRA leader in his native the rest of the country”, but he also gives me as “the definitive textbook on the County Monaghan during the War of credit to O’Duffy for “the relative restraint subject” in the Fall 2003 issue of Irish Independence. In contrast with much demonstrated by the IRA during this Literary Supplement. This was in the latter-day writing of Irish history, it is to period”. In terms of the ruthless pursuit of context of a review of his second book, the author’s credit that he begins by informers, the author recognises that Frank Ryan (2002), a biography criticised clarifying the essential character of that “order could not be maintained without as both disappointing and sensationalist, war: “Established by democratic means, discipline”. He concedes that, notwith- with little evidence of the depth of research the Republic would be defended by standing the high proportion of Protestant and analysis required to do justice to its violence”. And, when O’Duffy personally targets, “few, if any, people were shot subject. The hope was nonetheless led the attack on Ballytrain RIC barracks solely because of their religion”. And expressed that the author’s future work in February 1920, he took the opportunity where he does speak of “questionable would demonstrate a return to the “high to give the police the following lesson in murders”, it is to his credit as a historian standards of scholarship, balanced democracy: that he presents the pros and cons of each presentation and conscientious evalu- “At the general election the people individual case surveyed, allowing the ation” that he had previously shown. had voted for freedom. The police were reader to come to different conclusions acting against the will of the Irish people. than his own. For this reviewer there is How then does McGarry’s third book, He appealed to them to leave the force and join their brother Irishmen.” just one such killing that remains a biography of the Irish fascist leader, questionable as to whether the motivation Eoin O’Duffy, measure up to such hopes? A year later, in January 1921, there might have been less a suspicion of inform- The author states that he has attempted to was a sharp escalation in the Monaghan ing and more a desire to eliminate a explain rather than condemn such a life, vociferous political opponent who had but that he has uncovered little to warrant war. McGarry conscientiously chronicles the complexity of such a war in an Ulster disrupted a local authority vote of revision of previous negative assessments border County that not only had a 25 sympathy on the death of Cork Lord Mayor of O’Duffy. But this is not for the want of Terence MacSwiney. However, that trying. In contrast with his previous percent Unionist minority, but also a sullen hardcore of defeated Redmondites— particular victim had not been some biography, this work is meticulously which ensured that local hostility to the Unionist opponent but rather a Redmondite researched. It is the story of a one-time Hibernian one; not at all a Protestant avowed champion of democracy who had Republic amounted to as much as a third of the population. The minority was Orangeman but a Catholic “Molly fought to vindicate the will of the Irish Maguire”. people in the 1918 Election, being furthermore a very powerful one, in terms of property, influence and guns. McGarry transformed into a convinced fascist who Eoin O’Duffy emerged from the War describes the town of Clones as “a sought to crush the will of the Spanish of Independence with a well-deserved Protestant stronghold”, while there were people after their 1936 election; of a reputation that his Civil War opponent as many as 1,800 UVF members highly disciplined and impressive military Ernie O’Malley described as “energetic throughout Monaghan County as a whole. leader, who had led by selfless example and commanding”. How then, in the during the War of Independence, In such a frontier society it was years before his death in 1944, did O’Duffy becoming the high-living commander who inevitable that there would be an inter- end up being described in intelligence selfishly abandoned his own troops during ethnic aspect to the conflict. McGarry, reports as the “representative of the Axis the Spanish Civil War. however, does himself an injustice by powers in Ireland” and a “potential comparing his own detailed narrative of Quisling, suffering from acute alcoholic McGarry begins by portraying the the war in Monaghan with Peter Hart’s poisoning”? McGarry retells the story of younger O’Duffy’s devotion to duty earlier approach to Cork in The IRA And O’Duffy’s disastrous 1937 intervention through tireless work on behalf of the Its Enemies (1998), although he does on behalf of the fascist side in Spain that 14 “cost Franco a small fortune—and killed During the course of the Civil War, as And Irish Politics (1997). McGarry, more of his own soldiers than the enemy”. well as in his capacity as Commissioner of however, takes research in this area very He presents some new research in this the Garda Síochána for the first decade of much further by providing a systematic area, notably O’Duffy’s recently-found its existence, O’Duffy continued to employ narrative of the highly racialist and diary of that escapade, and he quotes the the rhetoric of democracy in his public violently anti-democratic hate-propaganda description of O’Duffy as an “Operetta utterances. McGarry, however, also penned by Blythe throughout the course General” penned by one of Franco’s own highlights O’Duffy’s cultivation of a of 1933 and 1934. Generals. McGarry concludes that Spain highly-orchestrated personality cult on his destroyed O’Duffy’s reputation as a man own behalf at the same time as the Com- O’Duffy’s own personal pietism has of action, as previously “the General’s missioner’s private reports to Cabinet were sometimes led to a far too simplistic classif- reputation as a politician had been complaining that “the Irish public is ication of Blueshirt fascism as being little destroyed by his leadership of Fine Gael”. rotten”. The General even began to alarm more than an excess of Catholic zeal. But how had this degeneration come his own ruthless Minister for Home Blythe, of course, also knew how to about? Affairs, Kevin O’Higgins who, in the opportunistically play the Papal Encyclical months prior to his 1927 assassination, card, but he himself never ceased to be an McGarry devotes a lot of attention to had been on the point of sacking O’Duffy. Ulster Protestant. Blythe’s fascism was O’Duffy’s position as a protégé of IRB profoundly political and was in many ways President Michael Collins, who would Knowing the threat that O’Duffy had much more alarming than that of O’Duffy, eventually promote him to Treasurer of come to pose to their own regime makes because it was all the more coherently that body’s Supreme Council. While the the Cumann na nGaedheal leaders all the thought out. McGarry notes that Blythe’s IRA itself was a democratically-structured more culpable in their attempt to bring fascism continued unabated throughout organisation, the continued existence down the Fianna Fáil Government in 1933 the war years and that Irish military within its ranks of a secret society like the with a strategy of installing Blueshirt leader intelligence also viewed him as another IRB was to have a profoundly destabilising O’Duffy as the first President of Fine potential Quisling. Blythe surely merits a effect, both North and South. Collins Gael. McGarry provides chapter and verse biography in his own right. Having hailed O’Duffy as “the coming man”, to demonstrate just how thoroughly fascist- produced such a comprehensive biography proceeding in July 1921 to pull off a stunt minded and anti-democratic O’Duffy’s of O’Duffy, one hopes that Fearghal behind the back of Minister for Defence own personal philosophy had become at McGarry might be motivated to do just Cathal Brugha by unilaterally making this stage. And while quibbling with a that. O’Duffy Deputy Chief of Staff of the IRA statement of my own in a 1984 study— Manus O’Riordan for the post-Truce period. Collins brought that anti-semitism had also come to form First published in Irish Literary Supplement, O’Duffy with him to London for the start an integral feature of O’Duffy’s personal Boston, Spring 2006. Manus O’Riordan will of the Treaty negotiations and it was ideology—he nonetheless provides year- return to the issues raised in Part One of this O’Duffy who would obtain the artillery by-year examples of such anti-semitism series in a future issue. from Britain’s General Macready in order that actually confirm my conclusions. But to commence the Civil War in July 1922. McGarry does not always get his facts right. When he quotes Seán MacEntee’s Report: launch of The Origin And Meanwhile the IRB leadership was accusation that one particular Blueshirt Organisation Of British Propaganda In the behind-the-scenes manipulator of had personally murdered a Dublin Jew, he Ireland, 1920 by Professor David Miller another little war. In the Summer of 1921 states in a footnote that this had occurred of Spinwatch; Chair: Danny Morrison) O’Duffy had already explicitly criticised during the Civil War. It had not. It had Aubane Historical Society, 9 Euro, $6 de Valera for suggesting that Counties occurred six months after the conclusion with a Unionist majority should be allowed of that particular conflict, in November Propaganda to opt out of a unified Ireland if Britain 1923, and the subsequent escape to Then And Now would agree to a Republic for the rest of America of the army officer charged with the country. With Collins by his side, that murder had been facilitated by both Reading Brian Murphy on how the O’Duffy delivered an inflammatory Garda and Free State Army authorities. British manipulated the truth in 1920 speech in Armagh in September 1921 in "made the hairs stand up on the back of which he threatened the majority of people The very last words of McGarry’s your neck" said Danny Morrison. The in Belfast that, if they were not going to narrative sum up O’Duffy’s biography as parallels between events in that one year accept being part of the Irish nation, “they “a cautionary tale”. What makes it all the and British activities many years later in would have to use the lead against them”. more so is the author’s determination to Ireland are striking, he said. Such bombast only had the effect of demonstrate that O’Duffy was not just The one time An Phoblacht editor and intensifying the horrific Orange pogroms some solitary freakish individual. He Sinn Fein Publicity Director, now author against that city’s Catholic minority, just highlights how the Cumann na nGaedheal and playwright, launched Brian Murphy's as in the post-Treaty month of March leadership’s own virulent propaganda had The Origin And Organisation Of British 1922 the murder of the McMahon family already begun to publicly question the Propaganda In Ireland, 1920' on March followed a Collins/O’Duffy military legitimacy of the Fianna Fáil Govern- 24th in the Teachers' Club in Dublin. offensive in West Ulster. Without the ment’s election victories of 1932 and 1933, The 100-page work was also launched knowledge of the Free State Cabinet, before they ever came a-courting O’Duffy by Professor David Miller of Strathclyde O’Duffy and Collins were to be responsible to become the leader of their blueshirted University and by the author, Brian for yet another failed Northern offensive second coming. But McGarry also says a Murphy. during the month of May that ended in lot more. In the first history of that further disaster for Northern Ireland’s movement, The Blueshirts (1970), A major addition to our understanding of Catholic minority. O’Duffy had indeed Maurice Manning of Fine Gael had media manipulation subdued the Unionist minority in his native expressed some disquiet at one or two of Morrison detailed the way in which Monaghan, but to ham-fistedly dream of Ernest Blythe’s 1933 utterances. Blythe’s Murphy's book outlines how the British similarly taking on the Unionist majority importance as an ideologist of the plotted to kill a solicitor who defended in Antrim and Down was quite a different corporate state was more specifically high- IRA prisoners, how they abolished proposition. lighted by Mike Cronin in The Blueshirts inquests, and how they utilised the 15 "language of criminalisation" in the previous misrepresentation of a section of an essential part of Britain's attempt to attempt to marginalise resistance to British The Record in Hart's The IRA And Its hold on to its empire. He said that lessons rule. The false accusation that prisoners' Enemies. An Irish Times reviewer of Hart's on media manipulation were passed on injuries were "self-inflicted" was the same British Intelligence In Ireland, Brendan Ó and honed from conflict to conflict. Miller, as that attributed to prisoners in Castle- Cathaóir, referred to Hart as Editor of Tell me Lies, which deals with reagh in the 1970s, said Morrison. The "disingenuous" (28 January 2003) on this the conflict in Iraq, drew parallels with Defence of the Realm Act (DORA) and the point. that conflict. Miller observed: Restoration of Order in Ireland Act "One of Murphy's most extraordinary (ROIA) legislation would also be familiar Spin yesterday and today revelations is that the techniques, which to those who experienced or studied the Professor David Miller, co-editor of shocked the world in Abu Graibh, have recent conflict. Spinwatch (http://www.spinwatch.org), a history longer than perhaps anyone contributed a Foreword to Murphy's study outside the military and their political Damned lies and statistics and outlined the connection with wider masters has suspected. He quotes the records of the torture of Tom Hales and Reading Murphy's account of the Brit- aspects of British policy. Miller has Patrick Harte who were viciously ish manipulation of statistics with regard researched extensively the origins of attacked, kicked, punched, hit with to IRA actions called for a reconsideration British propaganda and its connection with revolver butts and tortured with pincers. of recent statistics on the conflict in the the development of public relations. Both They were threatened in a mock North, said Morrison. Killings attributed were originally designed, said Miller, to execution. As Murphy notes 'attempts to the UDA or UVF should rightfully be preserve the British Empire and also to were made to humiliate them by making attributed directly to British forces, which subvert democracy in Britain itself. them hold the Union Jack and set up and controlled such paramilitary Miller outlined how Basil Clarke, who photographs were taken of Harte with proxy forces or 'counter gangs'. Morrison ran the propaganda operation in Ireland, the flag held loosely in his hand'. These mentioned the attempt on the life of former was a key member of British imperialist photographs still exist, and in a telling aside Murphy simply notes that it is one Sinn Fein Lord Mayor of Belfast, Alex networks. of these torture photos which adorns the Maskey. British agent Brian Nelson, who According to Miller's foreword, Clarke front cover of revisionist historian Peter telephoned British Army Headquarters in and his colleagues, Hugh Pollard and C.J. Hart's book, The IRA at War 1916-1923 Lisburn to confirm Maskey's identity, Street, worked closely with the head of (2003). coordinated the unsuccessful attempt. Special Branch in London, Basil Thomson. Morrison referred to Sir John Stevens of "Through him they were connected There were also parallels with the the British Metropolitan Police who spent to the key imperialist lobby networks in photographs taken of torture by British 15 years, or one third of his professional London. These individuals were not troops in the 1970s. Miller referred to a life, investigating British collusion with abashed about their politics, describing recent article by Gerry Adams in The unionist paramilitaries. Stevens published their network as the 'diehards' and the Guardian on this point. 17 pages of a 3,000 page report. Morrison 'London Imperialists'. Central to it and very close to Thomson was Admiral asked, "How much more is in there?". Reggie 'Blinker' Hall, who was the IRA 'criminality' in 1920 The point leads directly to the question: director of Naval Intelligence in the In his talk on the work Murphy quoted who should the 34 deaths in the 1974 1914-18 war. Together with Thomson, propagandist Major John Street as saying Dublin-Monaghan bombings be attributed Hall interrogated Roger Casement in "the IRA rank and file" were "poor dupes to statistically: the UVF, the RUC, the 1916 and personally leaked his 'black of the designing criminals who pose as British Army, or all three? diaries' to the press in order to ensure their officers". Street's views are positively that Casement would not be reprieved as civilised beside those of Hugh Pollard: How the truth was "mutilated" a result of the campaign being run by "The Irish problem is a problem of the Morrison said that Brian Murphy's Arthur Conan Doyle. According to Irish race, and it is rooted in the racial book should be commended for the way in historians, Hall's ensuring that Casement characteristics of the people themselves", was hanged 'was all very gratifying; an which it showed how the British created a object lesson in secret service power wrote Pollard in 1922. The Irish he thought "false narrative" about the conflict and which Hall… was never to forget'." were "racially disposed to crime", have how modern history books reproduced "two psychical and fundamental that narrative. Morrison referred to the Clarke went on to set up the first public abnormalities… moral insensibility and "official" account of British soldiers being relations company in Britain, and he was want of foresight" which "are the basic "hacked to death" and of "mutilated" associated with the setting up of 'National characteristic of criminal psychology". bodies after the IRA's Kilmichael ambush Propaganda', later to become 'The Furthermore, noted Street, warming to his in November 1920, an account that was Economic League' in 1924. Clarke and his theme, "the Irish demand for an the concoction of the chief propagandist, associates recruited former Black & Tans independent Irish Republic is… a purely Basil Clarke. This is the account that after the war in Ireland to break up strikes hysterical manifestation". revisionist historian Peter Hart asserted and to infiltrate Trade Unions and left- "should not be so completely dismissed" wing organisations. The Economic League Correcting Kevin Myers in his The IRA And Its Enemies (1998). was notorious up until its demise in the Murphy outlined how propaganda and Besides Hart, the historians Roy Foster 1990s for blacklisting workers on a media manipulation was organized and and David Fitzpatrick were mentioned in massive scale and for other forms of how this propaganda 'spin' had a shelf life this context. clandestine reactionary subversion of left that infected modern day accounts. Kevin The book contains an appendix in wing and industrial politics. Another of Myers in The Irish Times republished one which Brian Murphy questions Peter Hart's the Dublin propaganda group, Hugh concoction of Clarke's that attempted to omission of a section from an internal Pollard, flew Generalissimo Francisco discredit hunger striker Terence British intelligence document, The Record Franco from the Canaries to Spain in 1936 McSwiney. McSwiney was accused of of the Rebellion, detailing British forces' to enable him to start his fascist coup that plotting the assassination of the Bishop of racist and sectarian view of the Irish. This lead to the Spanish Civil War and nearly Cork. Uniquely, Myers later apologized is in Hart's edition of The Record, entitled 40 years of brutal dictatorship. for recirculation of this defamatory lie. British Intelligence In Ireland 1920-21 (2002). Murphy, in addition, questions Photographing torture However, it was only at the book launch Hart's failure in this book to account for a Miller indicated how propaganda was that we found out how and why Myers 16 came to apologise. was a true measure of its support. They propagandists believe their own propa- McSwiney's grandson, spoke during leave aside the inconvenient fact that 25 ganda, if there was anything on the the Q&A session afterwards about how seats were uncontested by Sinn Fein's situation in the North at the time, on the getting the apology published was "not opponents, so pathetic was the level of role of the Internet in creating an alternative easy". He accompanied his mother, Maura (non) support for opponents of the view, and observations about how the McSwiney Brugha, "as her assistant" in republicans. No vote took place in those Irish Times permits letter writers to pursuing Myers into The Irish Times seats. A more accurate measure would be question Kevin Myers' use of language building and pressurising Myers to listen closer to 70% Sinn Fein support on the but not to correct abuse of the facts. Manus to his mother's account of how he got it island of Ireland, a truly phenomenal O'Riordan, author of a recent pamphlet on totally wrong. Myers was later to admit achievement. James Connolly, took up Murphy's publicly that he had been "duped" by, "the invitation to discuss the problem of insidious concoctions of the black Murphy also made the point that the censorship on the Irish Times letters page. propagandist", Basil Clarke. non-appearance in the historical narrative Murphy asserted that he was able to have However, subsequently, Clarke's other of the role of the ultra repressive ROIA a letter published recently when "Madam" "insidious concoctions" found in the post- and of its predecessor DORA in 1914, was "away", apparently at a funeral. apologetic Myers a willing receptacle for "has also contributed to a flawed analysis" publication of further propaganda. of the causes of the 1916 Easer Rising and Danny Morrison suggested that Kevin Myers did not detect Clarke at work in of subsequent Irish history. Myers "as a human being" might change the British account of the Kilmichael his opinion if he took up Morrison's ambush. In The IRA And Its Enemies Peter British Empire and "capitalistic invitation to visit West Belfast during the Hart thanked Myers for his help. Myers imperialism" West Belfast Festival and see for himself. returned the compliment by praising the Murphy said that events in Ireland had Unfortunately, Myers has perennially been 1998 revisionist account as a "master- implications for Britain's Empire and the unable to take up the invitation, on one piece". Myers wrote in his Irishman's policy of developing an Anglo-American occasion, as he informed Morrison, Diary how Tom Barry and the IRA alliance. Murphy quoted Childers on the because was unaware that his wife had allegedly "systematically slaughtered post World War One Paris Peace simultaneously organized a barbeque in disarmed RIC Auxiliaries after they had Conference that resulted in the Treaty of the Myers back garden. surrendered". This account, following Versailles, a treaty that sowed the seeds of Peter Hart, is from the Basil Clarke school the Second World War. Childers wrote: Brian Murphy was encouraged by of media manipulation and, as Clarke puts "it has not been difficult to stifle the voice many speakers to continue with his it, "verisimilitude" or the appearance of of Ireland at Paris. Her independence has valuable and stimulating research and, as truth. no market value, while its repression on Terence McSwiney's grandson put it, to the grounds of military necessity was the "keep seeking the truth". The role of Erskine Childers best of all precedents for similar policies Brian Murphy outlined the very elsewhere." He concluded, "the subjection The Origin And Organisation Of British significant role of Erskine Childers in of Ireland is international poison Propaganda In Ireland, 1920, by Brian Murphy exposing publicly the extent of British contaminating the politics of the world". is available from http://www.spinwatch.org terror in Ireland. Childers also wrote and http://www.aubane.org. extensively on the nature of British prop- Murphy said that: aganda as part of the strategy of a military "Great Britain was free to develop its (This account first appeared on Indymedia) machine. This work deserves to be re- empire and its quest for oil in such areas as India, Mesopotamia (modern Iraq) published and perhaps the Aubane Society NEW PAMPHLETS will consider doing so. Murphy made Afghanistan and Africa. The War of Irish Independence was fought out in the observations about the significant role of Britain's Great War, Pope Childers and other Irish Protestants in the context of these and other battles by British forces to make good their claim national struggle that are still relevant Benedict's Lost Peace: How to these new zones of imperial Britain Blocked The Pope's Peace today. They helped expose the nature of expansion". British terror and set up organizations like Efforts Between 1915 and 1918 by the White Cross Society, founded in 1921 In the context of the third anniversary Dr. Pat Walsh. ISBN 0 85034 114 6. for relief in Ireland. This is another part of of the present Iraq war Murphy said it 60pp. ABM No. 27, March 2006. E6, £4. the narrative of the Independence struggle was— August 1969: Ireland’s Only that revisionist voices seek to stifle. "sobering to consider that at that time, Murphy made the point that the mass the much vaunted Irish-American Appeal To The United Nations: imprisonment of Sinn Fein members in influence in America counted for nothing a cautionary tale of humiliation 1918 in conditions of blanket censorship in comparison with the powerful Anglo- and moral collapse by Angela and other forms of repression makes the American interests that dominated the Clifford. Captain Kelly/Arms election victory that year all the more corridors of power in Washington. An Trial Series, No. 1. ISBN 0 85034 impressive. interest that still exercises far more sway than the Irish over American policy 113 8. 96pp. ABM No. 27, March 2006. today, despite the generous gift of E7.50, £5. Erskine Childers was astonished at the Shamrock and Shannon Airport to James Connolly Re-Assessed, imprisonment of his cousin, Robert Barton, President Bush". after Barton won a seat in the 1918 General The Irish And European Context Election. Barton was one of many Childers said in 1919, "look behind the by Manus O’Riordan. ISBN 1 imprisoned Sinn Fein TDs. The attempt force that holds down Ireland and you will 903497 26 4. 60pp. AHS, Feb. 06. E6, by revisionists to undermine that victory recognize, in one of its unnumerable forms, £4. is made seemingly plausible by leaving the ugly face of capitalistic imperialism". Was 1916 A Crime? A out these and other important factors. Discussion from ‘Village’ Notably, revisionist critics habitually Lively discussion Magazine. Intro: Jack Lane. attempt to suggest that Sinn Fein winning A lively discussion took place ISBN 1 903497 25 6. 48pp. AHS, Jan. 06 48% of the first reference vote in 1918 afterwards, with speakers asking whether 17 McDowell continued to keep out unproductive elements, like interview is a major hostage to fortune on children or migrant’s families, who might the part of the Progressive Democrats. be a drain on the economy. The Labour Party has gone into alliance “loyalist Belfast” speciality. “The with Fine Gael, which is the real origin of international Marxist view” , according The fact that it was racist in effect the PDs ‘philosophy’ (as opposed to its to McDowell, is that nobody should be means that the Ku Klux Klan was closer to personnel). The Irish Labour Party ought turned away. It is doubtful if Loyalism is the mark politically than the author of the to be aiming for a grand alliance of Fianna politically advanced enough to be anything law. He blames “the media” for not Fáil, Sinn Féin, and possibly the Greens. as definite as racist. They’ve probably publishing the truth when he enunciates it. been promised weapons by their racist While sympathetic to Declan Bree and The innocent reader might come away others, Labour should stand for election (spook-ridden) ‘friends’ in England, if with the notion that the Irish media is they make life hard for immigrants. on the current ticket and try to work from ferocious in its pursuit of the PDs and Mr. within to push for a more realistic alliance. McDowell, which is nonsensical. This The current stitch-up between Pat Rabbitte The “Marxist” jibe is possibly a dig at small faction has (largely through the good the ‘Stickies’ embedded in the Labour and Enda ???, leader of Fine Gael, appears offices of former ‘Stickies’) had a luxuriant to be based on mutual, apolitical distaste Party. But the PDs were, like the Workers’ BMW-like ride through the media. The Party of Ireland, a product of the Cold for Sinn Féin. SF wins elections in the senior partners in the current coalition, Republic, marginally because it is attached War. The Stickies abandoned the ‘Fenian Fianna Fáil are the objects of abuse. Mr. faith’ for Leninism: which then collapsed. to Sinn Féin in the North, but mainly McDowell adds some venom of his own because it works for its constituents and The PDs were ‘modern’ in the 1980s and in this ‘interview’, sneering at Bertie so decided that ‘Fenian’ indifference to puts forward policies which make sense to Ahern’s ‘socialism’, though Ahern the average voter. Bree, and others, could Leninism and liberal-capitalism was probably had in mind the decidedly social ‘parochial’, ‘provincial’, or something— argue such a case in the Party. Especially aspect of Haughey’s politics. And that as Rabbitte is an electoral liability. His Old Ireland at its insular worst. The fact social (Labour-leaning) aspect which was that Old Ireland was intimately engaged adventures in Sticky-land have been the part of Fianna Fáil’s make up since its subject of a number of letters to the press with every continent through the foundation in the 1920s. ‘missions’ does not exercise the minds of by Fianna Fáilers. They point out that he now expounds policies, similar to those the PDs, not even for the sake of analysis, A genuinely Labour Irish Labour Party or reviving that energy in the interests of which led him to leave the Labour Party in (founded by James Connolly) would the 1970s. The Official IRA has not really the ‘Celtic Tiger’. The PDs are inverted concentrate its fire in the up-coming (crude) Marxists: they believe that been alluded to but as we get closer to the general election on McDowell. He is the election, he will be asked what he knew economic relations are paramount—that PDs in most people’s minds, and this is the reason for McDowell’s law. It was about its ‘fund-raising’ activities. Seán McGouran

Irish Book Launches Backwardness? No. Writing for a British audience, Banville’s main concern—marked by the Saturday, 29th April 3.30 pm In his review of Remembering Beckett, rhetorical double-jab “even then” and “at Beckett Remembering, John Banville last”—is to assure his readers that he is casually refers to Ireland in the early 1970s untainted by association with the stew of CORK CITY LIBRARY, as “a country that was, even then, Catholicism and nationalism in which, as GRAND PARADE, CORK beginning to transform itself at last into he and they know, Ireland has long some sort of a 20th-century nation”. festered. The Origins & Organisation of British Propaganda In Ireland Coming from a leading novelist, the Would a writer who was truly confident 1920 comment itself demands comment. There of his cosmopolitanism need to make this by are contexts in which becoming a gesture? Brian P Murphy osb twentieth-century nation might mean developing into a fascist or communist Many of us, including John Banville, and state, engaging in genocide or in large- broke with our Catholic upbringing several scale, murderous civil war, or indeed decades ago. At the time, we did not pause Florence and Josephine patenting the notion of the concentration to question certain glib polarities—Irish/ O'Donoghue's War of camp and participating in numerous European, backward/twentieth-century, Independence colonial wars. religious/modern, and so on—and some by have built their careers on them. It is not John Miller Borgonovo But John Banville is not thinking of entirely surprising, then, that, under the any of these. Nor is he thinking of a small endlessly polished carapace of Ireland’s All Welcome nation challenging Britain’s long disregard leading Middle-European stylist, we for the democratic wishes of the majority should glimpse provincial insecurity and [email protected] of Irish people and setting an example for the most conventional of thinking. other colonial struggles. Barra Ó Seaghdha (Submitted to the Guardian, 30.3.06)

18 Michael McDowell practically nobody is so engaged in a city Much of what McDowell says bears with a ‘catchment area’ of 20 million. this out: “I’m opposed to the socialist “Our critics accused us of being model, because I think that historically Thatcherite, rightwing, selfish… our years it’s turned out to be a disastrous mindset.” in office have been years of unparalleled This is yet another piece of shtick, it is success for this island.” Surely ‘this (Grand Kyklops) essentially meaningless: ‘mindsets’ and island’ is a bit over the top: he had no McDowell’s Law what happens in society are not the same responsibility for 6 / 32s of ‘this island’, (A suitable target for thing. McDowell may be thinking of and he is shy of naming the ‘critics’ of the ‘welfarism’, the sort of thing Fianna Fáil PDs, possibly because many of them are Labour?) and Labour argue about in the Irish political members of the party they share arena. But that is not socialism, or ‘the government with, Fianna Fáil. He does socialist model’. Even the least attractive not, probably cannot, put the years of PDs Magill Magazine for May 2005 had ‘socialist model’, the Soviet Union, is success into context, provided by Haughey an interview with Michael McDowell, now seen to have had a number of virtues. and his FF successors. effective leader of the Progressive McDowell’s remark is ‘Cold Warrior’- Democrats, Minister of Justice, and speak from fifteen years ago, when the Andrew Lynch got him off the ‘ideological’ centre of the government. ‘Soviet Empire’ was (it was believed) economy and onto his job as Minister for The questions put by deputy editor Andrew about to leap into a future of, national Justice. It seems he knows about human Lynch, were hardly penetrating. An independence, unbridled capitalism (of nature because he was a criminal lawyer! introduction claims McDowell is not the sort that has not been seen in ‘the The Irish are not ‘militaristic’ like the universally popular: Charlie Haughey West’ since the 1890s) and galloping Germans, or ‘the British’, and so are and Alan Dukes (a former leader of Fine consumerism. inclined to be disrespectful of the State. Gael) are quoted, in unflattering Lynch puts the question: “You have been assessments of the man. Lynch says: The ‘capitalist model’ has been proven uncompromising in telling the truth about “most of the left-leaning press” don’t like beyond peradventure to be just as synthetic Sinn Fein and their links with criminality. him either. What ‘left-leaning press’? as the Leninist one. It is genuinely But do you ever worry that those attacks The mainstream press in Ireland is synthetic. Leninism appealed to ideas might be counter-productive?” McDowell conservative or reactionary-’revisionist’; like social solidarity and equality of tackles this ruthless questioning head on, some local and regional papers might take opportunity, as did Social (and Christian) attacking “…columnists who say that I a non-’revisionist’ line, but that does not Democrats in west Europe. McDowell is shouldn’t tell the Irish people who’s on make them ‘left-leaning’. unable to see what happened in the rest of the IRA Army Council…”; he ‘regards the EU beyond the UK: he believes what that as the antithesis of journalism’. It The intro admits that, while he is “the he is told by the ‘Euro-sceptic’ media. does not seem to have struck him that most influential man in Irish politics”, he membership of the Army Council might has “twice lost his Dail seat”. According We have been told for at least a decade enhance reputations. to his own answers he “started out as an that Germany has an ‘ailing’ economy. organisation man in Fine Gael…”. He According to the Economist, Financial McDowell rants about the behaviour helped found the Progressive Democrats, Times, and Wall Street Journal, Germany of the IRA, and claims that the State did wanting to be party chairman and not a TD became the world’s—yes, you read that not take part in a ‘dirty war’ on the Spanish (didn’t internal democracy matter?). When right—the world’s largest exporter in the model, which is not entirely accurate. The he did “step into the breach”, he thought last quarter of 2004. These exports are not UK state definitely authorised some very he would “give politics ten years”, which ‘invisible earnings’ accruing to the UK dubious activities, some of them on the implies a very odd attitude to the national economy, due to money-shuffling. They soil of the Republic. Some of the “people assembly. He became reconciled to consist of machinery of every sort from found dead on the border with a bullet in parliamentary life, but in 1997, he was motor vehicles and printing machines to their head” were victims of the British voted out, was made Attorney General optics and the innards of electronic Army, Loyalists under its instruction, the and then re-elected to Dáil Éireann. equipment (and food). McDowell clearly RUC, or semi-autonomous ‘securocrats’. prefers the ‘Anglo-Saxon’ model of Justice Minister McDowell may well think He is a “conviction politician”, “in recycling money, importing basic items, he is expounding a morally courageous 1985, everything was so horrifically wrong and creating ‘MacJobs’: the USA is position, but the average reader can’t help in Ireland, I argued that we had to embrace dependent on the economies of China and thinking that the Progressive Democrats the liberal economic model”. This is a Japan. Despite the Mississippi Basin being got six Dáil seats with 3% of the vote. And piece of PD shtick. What happened from essentially one big field, and despite Sinn Féin got six Dáil seats with 13% of 1985 onwards was that Charlie Haughey ‘agribusiness’, it does not produce all its the vote—ex-Blueshirt McDowell is a reorganised the economy, included the own food. The UK economy is going the worried man. Trade Unions in a social contract, and same way, one of the most noticeable playing the Communitaire game, got huge things about the [London] ‘underground Lynch raised immigration. McDowell quantities of money from the EU. He bombings’ of July 7, 2005, was that few of (who introduced a law making genes, made Ireland safe for capitalism. A serious the people killed or injured were going to rather than residency) the basis of Irish liberal-capitalist political party would have an economically useful job. They were citizenship (and was congratulated by the made him a hero. The PDs have joined in not engaged in manufacture, or otherwise Ku Klux Klan), rejects the notion that he traducing Haughey (and Fianna Fáil), making things—it was the tail end of the is racist: “genuinely nasty racism” is a debilitating domestic politics in Ireland. rush hour in a huge city, admittedly, but continued on page 18 19 VOLUME 24 No. 5 CORK ISSN 0790-1712 EU Decision:

One Of The Most Destructive In History Of Conflict In Middle East

Michael D. Higgins TD Labour President and Spokesperson for Foreign Affairs T h e d e c i s i o n t a k e n b y F o r e i g n M i n i s t e r s o f t h e E u r o p e a n U n i o n a t t h e G e n e r a l A f f a i r s a n d E x t e r n a l R e l a t i o n s C o u n c i l m e e t i n g i n L u x e m b o u r g t h i s w e e k r a n k s a m o n g t h e m o s t n e g a t i v e d e c i s i o n s i n t h e h i s t o r y o f t h e E U’s r e l a t io n s h i p w i t h t h e M i d d l e E a s t .

B y t h i s d e c i s i o n , t h e E u r o p e a n U n i o n h a s c a s t a s i d e t h e f i n a l s h r e d s o f c r e d i b i l – i t y t h a t i t m a y h a v e l e f t i n t h e r e g i o n , s a i d D e p u t y H i g g i n s .

E f f e c t i v e l y , t h e E U h a s d e c i d e d t o p u n i s h P a l e s t i n i a n s f o r t h e o u t c o m e o f a n e l e c t i o n t h a t t h e E U i t s e l f , a m o n g h u n d r e d s o f o t h e r i n t e r n a t i o n a l o b s e r v e r s , m o n - i t o r e d a n d c o n c l u d e d t o h a v e b e e n d e m o c r a t i c a n d r u n , i n a l l o f t h e c i r c u m s t a n c e s, a n d w i t h a l l o f t h e d i f f i c u l t i e s , i n a n e x e m p l a r y f a s h i o n .

A d d i t i o n a l l y , a n d p e r h a p s m o s t i m p o r t a n t o f a l l , t h e E u r o p e a n U n i o n i s a d d i n g t o i t s c o m p r e h e n s i v e s i l e n c e o n t h e i s s u e s o f i n t e r n a t i o n a l l a w i n v o l v e d .

T h e C o u n c i l c a l l s o n I s r a e l t o d e s i s t f r o m s e t t l e m e n t a c t i v i t y a n d c o n s t r u c t i o n o f a s e p a r a t i o n b a r r i e r , b o t h o f w h i c h a r e c o n t r a r y t o i n t e r n a t i o n a l l a w , b u t a n n o u- n c e s n o s t r a t e g y o f v i n d i c a t i o n f o r s u c h l a w . F o r t h o s e b r e a c h i n g i n t e r n a t i o n a l l a w a n d U N r e s o l u t i o n s , i t u s e s m o r a l s u a s i o n . F o r t h e v i c t i m s o f i l l e g a l o c c u p a t i o n, i t t h r e a t e n s s a n c t i o n s .

A u s e f u l s t e p , w h i c h c o u l d h a v e b e e n t a k e n f a r e a r l i e r t h a n t h i s, w o u l d h a v e b e en f o r t h e E U t o h a v e o r g a n i s e d a n i n t e r n a t i o n a l c o n f e r e n c e t h a t e n a b l e d t h e P a l e s t i - n i a n A u t h o r i t y a n d I s r a e l t o e n g a g e i n t h e n e w c o n t e x t t h a t t h e P a l e s t i n i a n a n d I s r a e l i e l e c t i o n s p r o v i d e d . T h i s i s n o w u n l i k e l y t o h a p p e n .

T h i s w e e k’s d e c i s i o n t a k e n c o m e s i n t h e l i g h t o f t h e d i s a p p o i n t i n g f a i l u r e o f t h e E u r o p e a n U n i o n t o e n g a g e w i t h t h e r e l a t i v e l y m o d e r a t e r e c e n t s t a t e m e n t s b y H a m a s , w h i c h s u g g e s t e d a r o l e f o r t h e i n t e r n a t i o n a l c o m m u n i t y i n t h e i n i t i a t i o n o f t a l k s t a k i n g a s t h e i r s t a r t i n g p o i n t t h e i n t e r n a t i o n a l l e g a l p o s i t i o n o f t h e 1 9 6 7 b o r d e r s . S u c h t a l k s m a y l e a d t o r e c o g n i t i o n o f t h e s t a t e o f I s r a e l b y H a m a s .

C o n d e m n i n g P a l e s t i n i a n s t o p o v e r t y , d i s p o s s e s s i o n a n d h u m i l i a t i o n o n t h e o n e h a n d , a n d f u t u r e g e n e r a t i o n s o f I s r a e l i c i t i z e n s t o i n s e c u r i t y o n t h e o t h e r , i s s o m e t h i n g f r o m w h i c h g o v e r n m e n t s o f t h e E u r o p e a n U n i o n , i n p a r t i c u l a r , a n d i n d e e d t h e i n t e r n a t i o n a l c o m m u n i t y g e n e r a l l y, w i l l n o t b e a b l e t o e s c a p e t h e j u d g e m e n t o f h i s t o r y a s c o n s t i t u t i n g o n e o f t h e g r e a t e s t m o r a l e v a s i o n s o f o u r t i m e. w w w . l a b o u r . i e / p r e s s / (12.4.06) Subscribers to the magazine are regularly PO Box 339, Belfast BT12 4GQ or Electronic Subscription: offered special rates on other publications PO Box 6589, London, N7 6SG, or Euro 15 / £12 for 12 issues Irish Political Review is published by Labour Comment, (or Euro 1.30 / £1.10 per issue) the IPR Group: write to— C/O Shandon St. P.O., Cork City. You can also order both postal and electronic subscriptions from: 14 New Comen Court, North Strand, Subscription by Post: www.atholbooks.org Dublin 3, or Euro 25 / £17.50 for 12 issues