Interview with Dixie Elliott

Peace Processing the Memory of the Conflict

No Choice But to Take It

Radio Free Éireann Interview with Richard O'Rawe

Take It Down From the Mast

A bit of Stick had at the recent Anti-Internment March in Belfast

Wiki-Dump

All correspondence in relation to Allison Morris' and Ciaran Barnes' complaints and the NUJ's handling of the issue.

True to Their Words

Disproportionate Coverage of NUJ case in the Irish News

What Price Justice?

For Irish News reporter Allison Morris, Celtic v Cliftonville in Glasgow

The Weird World

Journalists and Online Shenanigans: Double Standards Exposed

Dolours Price Archive

"I look forward to the freedom to lay bare my experiences unfettered by codes now redundant."

Irish Republican Movement Collection

Annoucing the Irish Republican Movement Collection online archive at IUPUI

The Belfast Project and Boston College

The Belfast Project and the Boston College Subpoena Case: The following paper was given at the Oral History Network of Ireland (OHNI) Second Annual Conference in Ennis, Co Clare on Saturday the 29th September 2012

Challenge and Change

Former hunger striker Gerard Hodgkins delivered the 2013 annual Brendan Hughes Memorial Lecture

Brendan Hughes: A Life in Themes

There is little to be gained in going from an A to Z chronological tour of the life of Brendan Hughes. The knowledge is out there. Instead a number of themes will covey to those who are interested what was the essence of the man.

55 HOURS

Day-by-day account of events of the 1981 Hunger Strike. A series in four parts:
July 5July 6July 7July 8

The Bell and the Blanket

Journals of Irish Republican Dissent: A study of the Bell and Blanket magazines by writers Niall Carson and Paddy Hoey

Sunday, September 30, 2012

Republican Contradictions

Guest writer Sean Matthews asking questions of a new republican publication

The new republican newssheet The Proclamation produced by the Sean MacDiarmada Ardoyne branch of the republican umbrella group '1916 societies' exposes much of the contradictions implicit in the politics of the republican movement today. In the front page article it asks the question: 'Where is Our Leisure Centre?'  The article goes on to contrast facilities in the working class catholic & protestant areas of Belfast. The key section reads:

Saturday, September 29, 2012

An Understandable Alien

Guest writer Marty Flynn with a review of a booklet, Jimmy Gralton: An Understandable Alien

This inspirational little booklet was loaned to me by the undauntable Ms Padragín Drinnan, who from such a small package springs a mighty proud Irish woman, whom I’m sure many words will be written about in due course.

Friday, September 28, 2012

The differences between Saville and Hillsborough

A piece from Derry socialist and journalist Eamonn McCann which appeared in the Derry Journal on the 18th of September

One of the differences between the Hillsborough Report and the Bloody Sunday Report is that the Independent Panel which probed the deaths of the 96 Liverpool supporters placed the immediate blame where it belonged - on the most senior police officers on the spot at the time.

In contrast, Saville loaded all of the blame for the Derry massacre onto a single supposedly undisciplined officer and a bunch of squaddies. No responsibility was ascribed to General Robert Ford, for example, second in command of British forces in the North, the man who had drafted the First Paras into Derry to "police" the civil rights demonstration, the top officer on the killing ground as the horror unfolded.

The Hillsborough Report deals head-on with the cover-up of the slaughter and the propaganda operation then mounted by the South Yorkshire police, Tory politicians and low-life elements of the press. It identifies the occasion of the launch of the campaign against the victims - a meeting in a Sheffield restaurant four days after the event, attended by a number of senior South Yorkshire police officers, including chief constable Peter Wright.

The Hillsborough panel traces the notorious front-page Sun story blaming the fans for their own misfortune to a Sheffield news agency and points a finger at the agency's sources - the secretary of the South Yorkshire police federation, four senior members of the force and local Tory MP Irvine Patnick.
Saville had before him all the evidence needed to identify the authors of the cover-up of Bloody Sunday killings and the smear campaign against the victims. He had the phoney 'shot-list', drafted within hours of the smoke clearing from Rossville Street, in the handwriting of Captain Mike Jackson. He knew that the lies about the dead and wounded having been armed were first broadcast just after midnight on Bloody Sunday by Lt. Col. Harry Dallzel-Payne, and that an account of the massacre exonerating the soldiers and damning the victims was then distributed around the world on the instruction of Tory defence minister Lord Balniel.

But none of these individuals were even rapped lightly on the knuckles in Saville's report.
Saville gave us a ringing declaration of the innocence of all of the Bloody Sunday victims - understandably sparking feelings of vindication and joyous relief - while managing to avoid any conclusion damaging to the British Army, the Parachute Regiment or senior politicians. It was for this reason, as some of us pointed out at the time, that David Cameron was able to feel at ease delivering his apology.

If Saville had drawn the logical conclusion from the evidence on the role of Mike Jackson, for example, Cameron would not have been able implicitly or otherwise to suggest that the actions of the paras had been entirely unrepresentative of British Army or Parachute Regiment behaviour and would never have been condoned by any authoritative figure.

Jackson was to rise rapidly through the ranks after Bloody Sunday. By 2003, he had become Britain's top soldier, the Chief of the General Staff. Had Saville put Jackson in the frame, Cameron would not have beenable to dismiss the killings and the cover-up as an aberration.

Cameron couldn't have disowned Jackson. But he didn't have to, thanks to Saville.

The reason this aspect of Bloody Sunday hasn't become the subject of serious controversy is that that wouldn't suit the political establishment, new or old, Irish or British. Saville's report, Cameron's reaction to it, and the response to Cameron of various Northern Ireland political leaders, have been incorporated into the official narrative of events that all those who matter can feel comfortable with.
Which leads me to mention yet again the curious incident in the corridor outside the Guildhall main hall on the day of publication of Saville's report: within minutes of my having read out a statement on the report for the approval by the families, a senior official of the Northern Ireland Office confronted me at about six inches range to say that my remarks were out of order. She explained: 'Everybody was agreed this was to be a day of reconciliation.'

I have on a number of occasions wondered aloud or in print whom she could have meant by "everybody" and how "everybody" could have agreed on a response to a report if nobody had been briefed beforehand on what it would say.

Thursday, September 27, 2012

Open Letter to Adams, Morrison, Gibney, McGuinness, Hartley and McFarlane

A reader of TPQ asked that this item be reproduced. It is an open letter from O’Hara and Devine families to key Provisional figures in control of the 1981 hunger strike. It appeared earlier in Republican Socialist News on the 13th February 2012.

We welcome the fact that Danny Morrison has broken his silence and has given some insight into the events of the first week of July 1981 concerning the hunger strike in Long Kesh. In that light we would like to ask a few questions in the hope of getting answers that may finally put to rest the events surrounding the tragic deaths of our loved ones.

Wednesday, September 26, 2012

Ed Moloney Press Statement - Dolours Price & Jean McConville

Press contact - Sabina Clarke: +1 215 509 2345; +1 215 908 7960

As is well known by now, a Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) investigation in to the disappearance and death of Jean McConville in 1972 led in May last year to the serving of subpoenas by the U.S. Department of Justice on the Belfast Project oral history archive at Boston College. The subpoenas sought, inter alia, the interviews of Dolours Price, a former IRA activist from Belfast.

Tuesday, September 25, 2012

This & That: Take 13

The Price of Peace

Recently Dublin was the stage for a rally in support of Marian Price, currently interned by the British government in the face of protests from an ineffectual nationalist component of the Northern executive. She has been in custody for over 500 days, held without trail and on the basis of information considered so sensitive she is not allowed to access it and accordingly make a defence in a court of law, even a British one where law has frequently proven little more than an invitation to break it. 

Monday, September 24, 2012

Staying out of Politics: A GAA Myth

Guest writer David McSweeney with his thoughts on the GAA picking and choosing about the areas it decides to politically involve itself with.

Well into your fourth decade and still having unquestioned or absolute heroes is something some would look on with pity no doubt.

Sunday, September 23, 2012

A Political Process That Reaps What It Sows

Guest writer Sean Matthews with a piece on sectarianism and inequality

Recent Loyalist rioting in North Belfast is a reminder that beneath the shiny new ‘normalised’ Northern Ireland is a political process that reaps what it sows. While our local politicians continue to promote and sell the North to greedy developers, investors and tourism the reality is the majority of us, the working class have been left behind by a so-called settlement in which we are left to rot to be discarded and disposed when necessary.

As increasing poverty, sectarianism, lower wages, mass unemployment, lack of affordable and social housing - including the introduction of water charges back on the agenda - being as raw as ever the need to build a political alternative to the politics of green and orange is as urgent and relevant as ever.

For some, the three days of rioting was reminiscent of loyalist rioting across the North in 2005 and a re-wind to the Drumcree standoff in the 1990s, while for other media commentators this was an attempt by sections of the loyal orders and loyalist paramilitaries to give a signal that all is not well in loyalist working class heartlands.

The reality is the recent disturbances is never isolated in the context of Northern Ireland and is firmly located within a political process which has merely cemented and embedded sectarianism and segregation, rather than seeking to overcome and transcend differences and divisions.

Instead of seeking building freedom and social equality for all in terms of class politics and revolutionary transformation(which it never intended to do), we have ‘equality of the two traditions’ and a change in the name and badge of the police. As Jason Walsh Stephen Rainey highlighted in the Irish Examiner this week earlier this month:

Things have improved since the 1990s — the absence of bombs and relative absence of bullets is not nothing — but the expansion of inequality, including the cultivation of fraudulent "cultural difference" among sections of society is the price of Northern society’s persistence. In fact, to speak of "Northern Irish society" is to speak of nothing. All talk of respect, the "two communities", and "new dispensations" pushes all debate into the background….The institutions are dysfunctional and factional. "Justice", for instance, is a republican-unionist issue, so it is not really about justice, it’s about balance. On this and every other issue the balance must be struck between the "two communities".

Secondly, the volatile issue of parades and Parades Commission rulings remains a significant obstacle to overcome and will in the foreseeable future ignite and fuel existing antagonism and disillusionment with the status-quo. Unfortunately, in the short-term this dissatisfaction and resentment will express itself in a sectarian dimension as we witnessed this week. This was apparent listening to Radio Ulster Steven Nolan show this week when North and West Belfast Parades Forum spokesman and loyalist Winston Irvine constantly blamed the rioting on ‘erosion of protestant culture and identity’ while republicans and nationalists are getting everything. This is despite the fact that repeated statistics and figures highlight that Catholics remain more than twice as likely to be unemployed than their Protestant counterparts and in consecutive tables ‘nationalist’ communities top the most deprived and disadvantaged wards in the UK.

This is not to minimise or trivialise social/economic deprivation and grievances especially in terms lack of access to third level education in protestant working class communities but to frame this in terms of us v them in terms of religion is not only dangerous, but is misplaced and suits those in power. Indeed the product of a settlement built on two sectarian ethno blocs competing for resources and power from the crumbs of Westminster.

In contrast, as anarchists, we believe that the fight against sectarianism is also struggle against capitalism and can only be uprooted by building a united working class movement based on self-management, direct democracy and direct action which will wipe away all forms of inequality and discrimination by building a society for all not just the greedy few.

The reality is we are quite far away from this situation especially in a deeply divided society but small steps and bricks must be built if we are to have any chance of breaking the confines. Continuing speculation on who organised the recent rioting, to blaming the Parades Commission and a small republican parade which abided to Parade commission guidelines and was relatively confined to the 'nationalist' New Lodge is a smokescreen which misses the wider picture. 

Parading is a physical manifestation past and present of this lethal mix of rivalry, tension and sectarianism which will only benefit the various shades of unionism, paramilitary godfathers and elements of disaffected republicanism. Attempts by right wing opportunist unionist politicians, and loyalism to deflect attention away from existing tension and division within their own ranks in a sectarian tit for tat needs to be actively opposed.

While loyalism and unionism is sectarian and supremacist ideology it is far from monolithic and will unite in times of perceived threat and danger, which is why we need to expose these existing fractures and tensions providing a space for any progressive element that might emerge. The relative absence and weakness of a strong progressive left and trade unions on the ground will mean the forthcoming celebration of the 1932 Outdoor relief riots( in which the falls and Shankill briefly united) will continue to be a romanticised event for the converted few.  However, it is important that we continue to build and promote what unites us more than divides us at the coalface of conflict and struggle in our communities and workplaces as part of a non-sectarian revolutionary alternative.

Despite a token 'apology' as a PR stunt by the Royal Black Institution over their recent behaviour outside the Catholic Church in North Street, it remains unclear whether our local ruling class and their forces of repression will be able to keep a lid on a serious eruption of violence at the end of the month in commemoration of signing of the Ulster Covenant in 1912, but what is clear as that as long as we have a process that failures to address the root cause of conflict in our society, lasting peace and justice will forever in the short-term remain a suburban middle-class dream.

Saturday, September 22, 2012

Loyalist guns from South Africa

Former Blanket columnist Dr John Coulter lifts the lid on how apartheid South African weapons were used by loyalist death squads to murder dozens of Catholics. It featured in the Daily Star on the 13th September 2012.

Where are the remainder of the South African weapons which loyalist death squads used to slaughter 135 people, mostly Catholics, during a five –year murder spree? That’s the hard-hitting question which well-placed nationalist sources have demanded an answer to.

Friday, September 21, 2012

One of the by-products of the Hillsborough report, after 23 years it finally managed to ferret out Boris Johnson and Kelvin MacKenzie

Mick Hall with a piece from his blog on the 1989 Hillsborough Stadium disaster

 
Supporters of 'Justice for the 96'

One of the by-products of the excellent report into the Hillsborough football stadium disaster was that after 23 years it finally managed to ferret out from their rat holes two of the most contemptible rodents ever to work in the profession of journalism, Boris Johnson, former editor of the Spectator and Kelvin MacKenzie, the editor of the Sun at the time of the disaster.

Thursday, September 20, 2012

Maryam Namazie On Islam Demanding Film Censorship

We never will 

12/09/2012

I have just posted a statement by the Council of Ex-Muslims of Britain in support of Tom Holland’s documentary “Islam: The Untold Story”.

Channel 4 has just cancelled a repeat screening due to threats.

Wednesday, September 19, 2012

From Insurgency to Identity

A Pensive Quill reader recommended this review by Kevin Rooney of Kevin Bean's book on the Provisional Movement. It originally featured in The Spiked Review of Books on the 25th of July 2008.

Sinn Fein president Gerry Adams’ tribute in May to former Irish Republican Army leader Brian Keenan, in which he described Keenan as a peacemaker, revealed much about the party’s retrospective redefinition of its long struggle against British rule in Ireland. Speaking at Keenan’s funeral, Adams suggested that Keenan lived long enough to see his goals realised: ‘Achieving a power-sharing administration with the Reverend Ian Paisley as First Minister would not have been possible but for the work of Brian Keenan.’

Tuesday, September 18, 2012

Marian Price and the lost document

Eamonn McCann with a piece on the dimprisonment of the republican activist Marian Price that first appeared in the Irish Times 18th February 2012

Lawyers for Marian Price will next week launch judicial review proceedings in the High Court in Belfast asking for her release from prison on the grounds that Northern Ireland Secretary of State Owen Paterson had no authority to order her detention.

Hurt and Distress

Daniel Lundy with a letter he wrote to the National Graves Association Belfast on the 14th September 2012


Nothing is impossible until it is sent to a committee — James Boren
To the Committee NGA (Belfast),

At our recent meeting, regarding the omission of my father, Alan Lundy, from the County Antrim Memorial at Milltown Cemetery an explanation that I believe was disingenuous was given for the failure of the NGA (Belfast) to have my father’s name inscribed along with those of his friends and comrades.

Monday, September 17, 2012

Clonard Commemoration September 2nd

Oration given by former republican prisoner Albert Allen, chair of the Clonard Commemoration Committee in honour of two Belfast IRA volunteers, Gerard O Callaghan and Tom Williams.


A Charde.

We are gathered here today to commemorate the memory of two C Company Volunteers Gerard O Callaghan and Tom Williams. It is seventy years since both these young and fiercely dedicated IRA Volunteers gave their lives for a cause they both held dear. Both men would be executed merely days apart and this fact would forever leave in the hearts and minds of those who loved and remember them an inextricable link.

Some Bones To Pick

Guest writer Eoghan O’Suilleabhain with a response to a recent piece by Niall Carson and Paddy Hoey. 

In their article The Bell and the Blanket: Journals of Irish Republican Dissent, authors Niall Carson of the University of Liverpool and Paddy Hoey of Liverpool Hope University write:

Sunday, September 16, 2012

She’s Never Coming Back

For those who love Scandinavian crime fiction this Hans Koppel thriller is one that will keep the pages turning.  While lacking the depth and complex character building of Stieg Larsson, along with the intricacy of the plot, it does nothing to detract from the suspense and the need to rush to the end. The blurb describes it as ‘the story that has obsessed readers across Scandinavia for the past year.’ Despite the simplicity of the narrative it is not too taxing to guess why.

Sinn Fein Ignores the Dissidents at their Peril.

Guest writer radical unionist commentator Dr John Coulter, former a columnist with The Blanket, with an exclusive offering for The Pensive Quill. Here he ponders if Sinn Fein can politically allow the dissidents of the New IRA to develop like the former Provos.

The fall-out from the murder of leading north Dublin Real IRA boss Alan Ryan could be to re-launch the dissident republican movement in the South. To prevent this becoming a political reality, Sinn Fein will need to join the legions of commentators trying to present Ryan’s killing as part of the gangland war between criminal elements.

Saturday, September 15, 2012

Writing to Theresa Villiers

A letter that the Free Gerry McGeough Campaign would like people to send to the new British Secretary of State for the North.

The Rt Hon Theresa Villiers MP
Secretary of State for Northern Ireland
Northern Ireland Office


As Secretary of State for Northern Ireland you may be aware of the case of Mr Gerry McGeough who has been incarcerated at HMP Maghaberry since 18th February 2011 on alleged conflict related offences dating back to 1975 and 1981, prior to the signing of the Good Friday Agreement in 1998.

When the Good Friday Agreement was signed, Mr McGeough was classified as an ‘OTR’ and therefore, like many other OTR’s he did not benefit at that time from the early release scheme.

Friday, September 14, 2012

Statement by Ed Moloney, former Director, The Belfast Project, Boston College

Press Contact: Sabina Clarke - +1 215-509-2345; 215-908-7960


Preamble

When the US government served subpoenas on Boston College’s Belfast Project archive in May 2011 on behalf of the PSNI, the subsequent legal challenge was led by Boston College and the strategy was decided by the College’s leaders in consultation with their lawyers. These were not our lawyers, nor our strategy.

The sorry truth – Are we healing or hiding from the past?

Brian Rowan with a piece that was originally published on Eamonn Mallie's website on the 9th of September. It is reproduced with the author's permission. 


It is six months since Declan Kearney introduced the word sorry into a reconciliation debate here; sorry in a humanising context to acknowledge the many hurts of war.  Since then he has described the events of Bloody Friday – the IRA bombing blitz of Belfast 40 years ago – as “unjustifiable”.

Thursday, September 13, 2012

Paradoxes of Utopia- Anarchist Culture and Politics in Buenos Aires 1890-1910

Sean Matthews reviews a book by Juan Suriano, on the history of anarchist culture in Argentina. 

We have taken a good path. As we see it, the formation of social study circles and the establishment of libertarian schools are solid, protective bulwarks in our race toward emancipation.  They are the groundwork of the great revolution.’-La Protesta Humana, January 7, 1900.

When the Argentine economy collapsed in 2001, many were surprised by the factory takeovers and neighbourhood assemblies that resulted. But workers' control and direct democracy have long histories in Argentina, where from the late nineteenth century and well into the twentieth, anarchism was the main revolutionary ideology of the labour movement and other social struggles.

Wednesday, September 12, 2012

Airbrushing Out Alan Lundy Would be Vindictive

A letter from Daniel Lundy to the Liam Shannon, the Chairperson of Belfast National Graves Association written on the 3rd September 2012.

Liam,

As Chairperson of National Graves Association (Belfast), I feel it is necessary to bring to your attention a matter that has caused our family undue suffering and distress.

My father, Alan Lundy, was a dedicated lifelong Republican activist. He was assassinated by a UFF death squad with the assistance of the British State on 1st May 1993, while working in the home of his friend and comrade Alex Maskey. At the time of his death he was a member of the McCaughey/Saunders Sinn Fein Cumann, and has been acknowledged at Tirghra and in Republican publications as also being an IRA Volunteer. He was also a former Republican POW.

Tuesday, September 11, 2012

The Bell and the Blanket: Journals of Irish Republican Dissent

Tonight The Pensive Quill carries a study of the Bell and Blanket magazines by guest writers Niall Carson and Paddy Hoey. 

The Bell and The Blanket: Journals of Irish Republican Dissent
by Niall Carson, University of Liverpool and Paddy Hoey, Liverpool Hope University 

Monday, September 10, 2012

Radio Free Eireann interview with Belfast Project Director Ed Moloney




 Ed Moloney, the director of the Boston College Oral History Project on the Northern Ireland conflict, was interviewed on Radio Free Eireann, Saturday September 8 at 1pm ET on WBAI 99.5 FM and wbai.org. A tape recording of a key interview with Dolours Price which reportedly implicates Gerry Adams in a spectacular IRA killing came within hours of being handed over to the British government on Friday when a Belfast court issued a temporary stay. As this is being written, the First Circuit Court of Appeals is hearing a motion to bar the tapes from being handed over to the British pending an appeal to the Supreme Court.

Sunday, September 9, 2012

Sitting Still for Internment

Martin Galvin, New York Attorney at Law, with a letter that appeared in the Irish News on 6th September 2012.

A chara

It was deeply moving to read your double page coverage about the publication of  In the Footsteps of Ann and glimpses into the special hardships suffered by Republican women prisoners.

Saturday, September 8, 2012

The Ballymurphy and Batang Kali Massacres.

Guest writer Larry Hughes with a piece that addresses the issue of British massacres. Drawing on historical precedent he suggests there is little hope of the Ballymurphy relatives getting justice. 

Much has been made in recent days and weeks of rights and freedom of speech and the right to public protest.  Governments are good at attacking each other and avail of every opportunity to place other nations firmly under the international spotlight in order to cause political embarrassment.  Should it be China on the Tibet issue, Russia over the Pussy Riot incident or America with Guantanamo Bay and rendition.  With this in mind an event which occurred in Malaya in 1948 may be of particular interest to those Ballymurphy residents presently seeking an inquiry into the murder by British Government forces of their relatives between the 9th and 11th August 1971.

Friday, September 7, 2012

Reality must dawn then our day will come

Guest writer Sean Doyle of Wicklow branch independent workers union and Clann Eirigi with a critique of SIPTU.

“From each according to their abilities, to each according to their needs”. These were my thoughts and the long road we still must travel to eradicate gross injustice, inequality, exploitation and the appalling treatment of the most vulnerable, the elderly and the constraints on their carers.

Thursday, September 6, 2012

Boston College Subpoenas: Press Release

As Boston College’s appeal to limit the handover of interviews from its Belfast Project IRA archive begins in front of the First Circuit Court of Appeals in Boston tomorrow (Fri, EST), lawyers for researchers Ed Moloney and Anthony McIntyre will be separately applying to courts in Belfast and Boston to stay the handover of interviews given by the former IRA activist, Dolours Price.

Wednesday, September 5, 2012

Resident Evil

Last week Michelle Martin was released from a Belgian jail, immediately igniting outrage and street protests.  Usually I welcome the release of people from the confines of imprisonment regardless of what they have been sent down for.  Jails are not nice places and for the most part are staffed by thugs or petty minded jobsworths. Moreover, I am mistrustful of the desire to punish even when I feel the urge myself, and suspect the motives of the punisher as something less than wholesome. The righteous discourse within which the desire to punish is shielded helps mask and sanitise an intrinsic need to inflict suffering. It often appears as a primordial urge rooted in sadistic religious hatred and self righteousness: punish and purify the sinner with fire. No pain more severe.

Tuesday, September 4, 2012

Of Fenians and Fairy-tales



Guest writer Alfie Gallagher takes Kevin Myers to task on his interpretation of the Royal Irish Constabulary.

In last Friday’s Irish Independent, the journalist Kevin Myers accused the Irish Times of regurgitating “the standard, fact-free, Fenian fairy-tale” [1]  in its editorial about a recent commemoration of the Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC). [2] However, there are elements of fantasy in Myers’s own analysis.

To begin with, Myers makes a big song and dance out of the fact that the last inspector-general of the RIC, John Aloysius Byrne, was a Catholic. However, he deliberately ignores the broader point that the Irish Times editorial was making: whereas 86 percent of RIC recruits by 1913 were Catholics, the officer class was still 60 percent Protestant in 1920.[3] Myers also fails to mention that Byrne was the very first Catholic to hold the highest rank in the RIC when he was appointed in 1916.

Myers’s characterisation of Home Rule as a genuine form of independence for Ireland is also very misleading. He neglects the stark realities of the Suspensory Act 1914 and the attendant understanding that the Westminster parliament would have the opportunity to pass an unspecified amending bill for Ulster.[4] Carson, Bonar Law and the Ulster Volunteers hadn’t gone away, you know. Partition was on the agenda, not 32-county Home Rule. Yet even if nationalists were prepared to accept partition, a Home Rule parliament would have been a hamstrung one. In fact, it would not have had control over relations with the Crown, defence, foreign policy, custom and excise, or land purchase. Even control of the police was to be retained by Westminster for 6 years. What is more, effective control of Ireland’s economy would remain with Westminster.[5] The offer was so paltry that John Redmond had great difficulty in persuading his parliamentary colleagues to accept it.[6] Redmond told them that it was “a provisional settlement” which would be revised in the future,[7] but the notion that nationalist politicians could have used all of their wiles and guile to turn such a parliament into a fully independent one is dubious, particularly because their representation in Westminster – the real powerhouse of the Empire – would have been massively reduced under the terms of the third Home Rule bill.

And full independence – albeit under the Crown – was what Home Rule had always meant to most Irish nationalists. Even anti-Fenians like James Daly described Home Rule in 1879 as “a complete, an unqualified control of Irish affairs by the Irish people”.[8] Thus, as Brian Hanley argues, there was a significant gulf between the reality of Home Rule and what ordinary Irish nationalists were expecting. Moreover, even before 1916, most of them were not opposed in principle to using military means to achieve self-government. Nationalists celebrated the centenary of the 1798 rebellion; they sang ‘A Nation Once Again’; they marched in memory of the Manchester Martyrs and many were prepared to fight a civil war against the Ulster Volunteers to secure Home Rule.[9] It seems the chief objection that Home Rulers had to armed resistance against British rule was not that it was immoral, but simply that it was unlikely to succeed.[10] Therefore, it is not really surprising that many former supporters of Redmond’s party voted for Sinn Féin in the 1918 general election.

As a student of Irish history, Kevin Myers ought to know that the percentage of votes cast for Sinn Féin in the 1918 general election grossly underestimated the party’s real support at that time. There were 25 uncontested constituencies in 1918 and most of them were in areas where Sinn Féin was already dominant. Thus, it seems certain that had these constituencies been contested, a clear majority of the electorate in Ireland would have voted for Sinn Féin[11], a party which promised to secure an Irish republic “by any and every means available”.[12] Furthermore, Michael Laffan’s The Resurrection of Ireland shows that while intimidation did indeed occur in the 1918 election campaign, Sinn Féiners were both perpetrators and victims of it. In fact, the British censored Sinn Féin’s newspapers and pamphlets, broke up their meetings, and arrested their election candidates.  In any case, intimidation and personation were often used by Home Rulers themselves in previous elections and Laffan contends that “even if allowance is made for widespread personation, it is likely that in almost all cases Sinn Féin would have won fairly without recourse to such measures."[13] Most importantly, about 75 percent of Irish adults had the right to vote in 1918, as opposed to 26 percent in previous general elections. Thus, for all its flaws, the 1918 general election was arguably more democratic than the preceding ones.

Bizarrely, Myers also believes that Irish republicans behaved far worse than Crown forces in 1916-21. Analysis of the civilian casualties during that period suggests otherwise. According to Eunan O’Halpin, between January 1917 and December 1921, roughly 900 civilians were killed in the conflict. The IRA was responsible for about 31% of these killings while British forces were responsible for about 42%. The remaining 27% of civilians were killed by loyalists, in riots or in ambiguous circumstances. In many cases, their deaths were not attributable to any particular group.[14] Most importantly, Thomas Earls Fitzgerald notes that though individual IRA volunteers may well have made mistakes or acted dishonourably on occasion, “the IRA’s civilian targets were all carefully selected in the sense that the killers had some reason, however tenuous, to believe that their victims were helping the enemy.” Fitzgerald contrasted this with those civilians killed in the “indiscriminate” reprisals by Crown forces.[15]

To my mind, meaningful independence for all or even part of Ireland could not have been achieved without a separatist rebellion. Ulster unionists formed the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) and armed themselves to the teeth in response to non-violent nationalist activism; thus they were not going to be seduced into any kind of united Ireland, federalist or otherwise. Indeed, F.S.L. Lyons believed that a civil war between nationalists and unionists was perhaps averted only by the outbreak of WWI[16], so it is wishful thinking to claim that a peaceful solution was just around the corner but was scuppered by the rebels in 1916.

This is the context in which the Irish revolutionaries of 1916-21 fought their battles. Three constitutional attempts had been made to attain all-Ireland Home Rule prior to 1916, and all had failed. Force (or the threat of it) had worked for the unionists in scuppering all-Ireland Home Rule, so there was reason to believe that force might work for nationalists. Of course, the Easter Rising was not democratically sanctioned, but given the contemporary public approval of past rebellions and of the formation of the Irish Volunteers in 1913, the rebels had reason to believe that they might receive popular support. It must also be pointed out that the Rising was effectively endorsed by the Irish electorate at its first opportunity to do so in 1918. This was the generation of Irish people most affected by the Rising and therefore most entitled to pass judgment on it.


Moreover, the volunteers who fought between 1919 and 1921 were the military arm of a political order that had been established by a popular vote. It is true that the relationship between the IRA and the first Dáil was ambiguous at best. Nevertheless, key figures in the Dáil's executive, such as Cathal Brugha and Michael Collins, were IRA leaders. Indeed, it seems that with Cathal Brugha's reconstitution of the Irish Volunteers as the IRA in August 1919 as well as his plans for IRA volunteers to start swearing an oath of allegiance to the Dail, the provisional Irish government was unofficially assuming responsibility of the volunteers’ activities (though it would not officially declare war on Britain until much later).

Certainly, one can argue that the first Dáil did not have an explicit mandate to go to war against Britain. However, given the British government's disregard of the mandate for a republic in 1918 and its suppression of the Dáil after some sporadic attacks on the RIC in 1919, one can also argue that the Dáil executive was justified in giving tacit approval to the incipient rebellion. Furthermore, the Sinn Fein manifesto for the 1918 general election uses very militant language. It invokes the 1916 Proclamation, "the principles of Tone, Emmet, Mitchel, Pearse and Connolly", and promises "to render impotent the power of England to hold Ireland in subjection".[17] Therefore, it is hard to believe that the electorate who endorsed this manifesto was utterly opposed to further conflict if it proved to be necessary.

It is difficult to determine how supportive the general public were towards the IRA's guerrilla campaign. For one thing, Sinn Féin won overwhelming majorities in urban and rural councils in 1920 despite being the party associated with the sporadic IRA violence of 1919. Also, the very fact that the British had lost control of much of the South by mid-1920 does suggest a large degree of popular support for the revolution. Armed volunteers did act on their own initiative to start the war, but the fact remains that key members of the Dail's cabinet soon took command of the armed campaign and did this with the knowledge of their cabinet colleagues. That a formal declaration of war was not issued until two years into the conflict appears to have been for strategic reasons rather than opposition to armed action. In fact, Éamon De Valera was concerned that a formal declaration of war would "over-tax their strength".[18]

My great-grandfather Dominic O’Grady was a member of the Sligo IRA. Kevin Myers would probably view him and his comrades as heartless butcherers. Yet Dominic was by all accounts a gentleman. He was also a reluctant soldier: indeed, he would only admit to having fired at enemies in his sights, for he could not bear to believe he had killed anyone. Dominic refused to fight in the Civil War; as a result, he was abused and exploited by both sides. I will not disown his memory, no more than I would disown my own niece and nephews.
 
So Kevin Myers can keep telling himself tales of the heroic RIC, the gentle Black and Tans, and the murderous IRA. I'm quite happy with my “fairy-tale”.





[1] Kevin Myers, Irish Independent, 31 August 2012, Retrieved: 2 September 2012 from http://www.independent.ie/opinion/columnists/kevin-myers/kevin-myers-there-is-no-political-constituency-that-gets-angry-at-the-neglect-of-these-poor-murdered-policemen-3215567.html
[2] Irish Times, 25 August 2012, Retrieved: 2 September 2012 from http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/opinion/2012/0825/1224322962372.html
[3] John M. Regan, Joost Augusteijn (ed), The Memoirs of John M. Regan: A Catholic Officer in the RIC and RUC, 1909-48, Dublin, 2007, p.10
[4]  Robert Kee, The Green Flag: A History of Irish Nationalism, London, 2000, pp.517-518
[5] F.S.L. Lyons, Ireland Since The Famine, London, 1971, pp.301-302
[6] J.J. Lee, Ireland, 1912-1985: Politics and Society, New York, 1989, p.7
[7] Cited in Lyons, Ireland Since The Famine, p.302
[8] Cited in Joseph Lee, The Modernisation of Irish Society, 1848-1918, Dublin, 1989, p.162
[9] Brian Hanley, Fear and Loathing at Coolacrease, Retrieved: September 2, 2012 from http://www.historyireland.com/volumes/volume16/issue1/news/?id=114165
[10] [10] Lee, Modernisation, pp.162-163
[11] Nicholas Whyte, The Irish Election of 1918, Retrieved: September 2, 2012 from http://www.ark.ac.uk/elections/h1918.htm
[12] From the widely-circulated, uncensored Sinn Féin Manifesto 1918, Retrieved: September 2, 2012 from http://143.239.128.67/celt/published/E900009/index.html
[13] Michael Laffan, The Resurrection of Ireland: The Sinn Fein Party, 1916-1923, Cambridge, 1999, p.168
[14] Eunan O’Halpin, ‘Counting Terror: Bloody Sunday and The Dead of the Irish Revolution’ in David Fitzpatrick (ed), Terror in Ireland, 1916-1923,  pp.153-154
[15] Thomas Earls Fitzgerald, “The Execution of ‘Spies and Informers’ in West Cork, 1921”  in ibid., p.190
[16] Lyons, Ireland Since The Famine, p.310
[17]Sinn Fein Manifesto 1918
[18]  PRESIDENT'S STATEMENT. - TRUCE NEGOTIATIONS, Dáil Éireann - Volume 1 - 25 January, 1921, Retrieved: September 2, 2012 from http://historical-debates.oireachtas.ie/D/DT/D.F.C.192101250030.html

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