An Phoblacht December 2013

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GAS H-BLOCKS PRICE Gerry Kelly’s inside story RISES BREAK-OUT

FR ALEC REID

CHAPLAIN TO THE PEACE PROCESS

Bord Gáis privatisation

anphoblacht

Sraith Nua Iml 36 Uimhir 12

December / Nollaig 2013

PRICE €2/£2

E C N E LITCO ILL K

F R M

MILITARY REACTION FORCE BBC TV Panorama exposes undercover British Army death squad killing civilians in Belfast

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IN PICTURES

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WHAT’S INSIDE

5 Caithfear aitheantas iomlán a éileamh don Ghaeilge san AE 6&7 Breaking the Berlin Wall, Breaking the Border EU conference on Irish reunification 8 Bord Gáis privatisation 9 Haass Talks: Sinn Féin’s proposals on the past, parades and flags 10

In Pictures: 100th anniversary of the Irish Volunteers 11 Megan Fearon MLA: ‘Where are all the women?’

12 People’s Referendum on Irish Unity – Strabane and Lifford say ‘Yes’ 14 Eoin Ó Murchú: Exiting the bail-out 15 ‘Bobby Sands’s ideals and values are still alive’ 18 & 19 The Irish Government’s complicity in global tax avoidance 20 Remembering the Past: ‘Freedom Struggle by the Provisional IRA’ 21 Céard is fiú Foras na Gaeilge mura bhfuil acmhianní aige le obair a dhéanamh 22 & 23 Robert Allen: Give eels a chance 24

John Maclean – Lenin’s man in Scotland 26 & 27 Language, resistance and revival: The importance of culture in struggle 28 Deasún Breatnach An Appreciation, by Gerry Adams 30 ‘Between the Posts’ One equal temper of heroic hearts

5 Members of Sinn Féin Republican Youth form a YES in support the Strabane/Lifford Border poll campaign at the 'Tinnies' on the Border road

5 Sinn Féin EU candidates Lynn Boylan, Liadh Ní Riada, Martina Anderson MEP and Matt Carthy in the EU Parliament ahead of the the ‘Reuniting Ireland’ conference 5 Sinn Féin representatives Brian Stanley TD, Sandra McLellan TD, Senator David Cullinane and Michael Colreavy TD at EirGrid Headquarters, Dublin, after handing in a submission on the benefits of using underground cables instead of the proposed hundreds of 45-metre-tall pylons to transmit electricity

5 Republicans from across Ireland braved the bitter cold on Sunday 10 November to gather at the spot where the Edentubber Martyrs – Michael Watters, Paul Smith, Oliver Craven, Patrick Parle and George Keegan – died 56 years previously. Sinn Féin MEP Martina Anderson gave the main oration

5 Mayor of Belfast, Sinn Féin Councillor Máirtín Ó Muilleoir, at the Armistice Day remembrance ceremony in Belfast with the British Legion to encourage understanding and trust, show respect, and promote authentic reconciliation. Máirtín was accompanied by Fr Des Wilson

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BBC TV Panorama exposé of British Army death squad – ‘Britain’s Secret Terror Force’

The MRF – Part of Britain’s Dirty War

BY JOHN HEDGES PANORAMA’S exposé of the British Army’s Military Reaction Force undercover death squad in west Belfast in the early 1970s shocked many viewers. What was really shocking was that it took the mainstream British media more than 40 years to uncover ‘what the dogs in the street’ had always known and what An Phoblacht/Republican News had reported from the 1970s.

Britain’s Secret Terror Force (broadcast on 21 November) revealed that members of the British Army unit routinely operated outside the law, firing on and killing unarmed civilians in the guise of fighting the IRA. It was a licence to kill.

5 Brigadier Frank Kitson developed counter insurgency tactics through colonial experiences Government ministers told the House of Commons that its soldiers

When it was dissolved, the MRF’s operational records were destroyed. Its commanders and its members are retired on British Army pensions, paid by the British Government and British taxpayer did not breach the ‘Yellow Card’ rules restricting when troops could open fire. The MRF proved that to be a lie.

The MRF was a death squad made up of 40 hand-picked members from within the British Army operating from 1971 to 1973 under the command of a brigadier.

Its genesis was in the counterinsurgency doctrine of Brigadier Frank Kitson developed particularly from colonial experiences in Kenya and Malaya. Kitson brought his tactics to the North of Ireland, officially leaving in 1972. One former lieutenantcolonel interviewed by Panorama admitted that many of his fellow officers had brought a colonial mindset to 1970s Belfast.

One ex-MRF soldier told Panorama: “We were not there to act like an army unit; we were there to act like a terror group.”

The MRF was officially tasked with targeting IRA activists but its ‘elite’ members almost dismissively admit-

5 Victims – Patrick McVeigh and Daniel Rooney

5 Panorama exposed the killing of civilians by the British Army’s Military Reaction Force ted to Panorama that it carried out ‘drive-by’ shootings of nationalists.

These included people keeping watch at barricades to protect their homes from loyalist sectarian gangs in the years after loyalist mobs and the RUC launched pogroms against Catholic areas, burning Bombay Street to the ground.

If they didn’t see a weapon, the MRF said they assumed a ‘suspect’ had one somewhere and they opened fire anyway.

When it was dissolved, the MRF’s operational records were destroyed.

Its commanders and its members are retired on British Army pensions, paid by the British Government and British taxpayer.

With its records destroyed and its commanders silent, it’s difficult to know exactly how many the British Army’s MRF killed, wounded or otherwise attacked and which types of activities they were involved in. There were at least two shot dead by the MRF – there may be more.

The BBC said: “In 1972 there were more than 10,600 shootings in Northern Ireland.

It is not possible to say how many the unit was involved in.

“The MRF’s operational records

5 The BBC showed that the secret British Army unit routinely operated outside the law and the ‘Yellow Card’ rules on soldiers opening fire

have been destroyed and its former members refused to incriminate themselves or their comrades in specific incidents when interviewed by Panorama. But they admitted shooting and killing unarmed civilians.”

Panorama identified 10 unarmed civilians shot, according to witnesses, by the MRF: • Brothers John and Gerry Conway, on the way to their fruit stall in Belfast city centre on 15 April 1972 • Aiden McAloon and Eugene Devlin, in a taxi taking them home from a disco on 12 May 1972 • Joe Smith, Hugh Kenny, Patrick Murray and Tommy Shaw, on Glen Road on 22 June 1972 • Daniel Rooney and Brendan Brennan, on the Falls Road on 27 September 1972 Patricia McVeigh told the BBC she believed her father, Patrick McVeigh, had been shot in the back and killed by plainclothes soldiers on 12 May 1972 and said she wanted justice for him.

“He was an innocent man. He had every right to be on the street walking home. He didn’t deserve to die like this.”

Sinn Féin President Gerry Adams TD pointed to Ann Cadwallader’s justpublished Lethal Allies, a book that connects British state forces with 120 civilian deaths in the 1970s and reveals how the political and judicial system covered up these actions.

“The war is over. But the legacy of conflict remains with us. The pain from decades of conflict is, for many, as real today as it was when a loved one was killed.

“Sinn Féin has proposed that an international, independent truth recovery process underpinned by law should be established. Others have different ideas of how this issue should be dealt with and that is fair enough, but we do need to take this opportunity to move the process forward in a way that listens to, respects and treats all victims on the basis of equality, and also builds the future for the survivors.”

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anphoblacht Eagarfhocal

anphoblacht Editorial CONTACT

THE CHALLENGE IN THE NEW YEAR AS PEOPLE brought the Tipperary-born Fr Alec Reid – dubbed by Gerry Adams “The Chaplain to the Peace Process” – from Dublin, where he passed away on 22 November, to be laid to rest at Clonard Monastery in west Belfast, Belfast city centre was the target of a 130lb bomb.

It is hard to fathom what the so-called ‘dissidents’ hope to achieve. They articulate no coherent strategy. They have no popular support. They have no rationale other than reigniting or perpetuating conflict and damaging the Peace Process and Sinn Féin.

Gerry Adams described the attack as “utterly pointless”.

All political objectives can now be pursued peacefully and democratically, not least because of the work of Fr Alec Reid and others who helped develop and sustain the Peace Process away from the limelight.

November marked the centenary of the Irish Volunteers, Óglaigh na hÉireann, the forerunner of the IRA. Sinn Féin celebrated this historic event at the birthplace of the Volunteers, in the Rotunda in Dublin.

The Irish Volunteers were a response to the threat of the Ulster Volunteer Force, the unionist/Tory anti-democratic drive towards partition and the creation of the gerrymandered, sectarian Orange state dominated by the Unionist Party.

Those days are gone. The days of the Orange state and unionist one-party rule are over.

As we face into a new year, the challenge facing republicans is to convince people on this island who are not republicans that a reunited Ireland – a true republic based on equality, respect and serving its people – makes sense and they have a place in it.

The next edition of An Phoblacht will be published on 2 January 2014 DEADLINE FOR ARTICLES AND NOTICES IS FRIDAY 13 DECEMBER THE STAFF of An Phoblacht send season’s greetings to all our readers and sellers and a heartfelt thanks for your invaluable support in 2013. We look forward to your continued commitment in the challenging year ahead.

NEWS newsdesk@anphoblacht.com NOTICES notices@anphoblacht.com PHOTOS photos@anphoblacht.com HAVE YOU SUBSCRIBED TO AN PHOBLACHT ONLINE? SUBSCRIBE ONLINE to get your An Phoblacht delivered direct to your mobile device or computer for just €10 per 12 issues and access to An Phoblacht’s historic archives You also get IRIS the republican magazine FREE

www.anphoblacht.com AN PHOBLACHT is published monthly by Sinn Féin.

The views in An Phoblacht are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of Sinn Féin.

We welcome articles, opinions and photographs from new contributors but please contact the Editor first.

AN PHOBLACHT www.anphoblacht.com Kevin Barry House 44 Parnell Square, Dublin 1, Ireland Telephone: (+353 1) 872 6 100 Email: editor@anphoblacht.com Layout: production@anphoblacht.com – Mark Dawson

Inquest into UVF murder of pensioner Roseanne Mallon

Weapon came from MI5/British Army agent Brian Nelson British Army agent Brian Nelson

Roseanne Mallon was murdered by the UVF in 1994

THE weapon used by the UVF to murder Roseanne Mallon and injure Bridget Mallon on 8 May 1994 was part of a consignment of weapons imported to Ireland in December 1987 by MI5/British Army agent Brian Nelson and distributed to loyalists.

This weapon was also used in an attack at Boyle’s Bar, Cappagh, County Tyrone, killing Thomas Armstrong, Malcolm Nugent, Dwayne O’Donnell, and John Quinn. Others were also injured in that attack. It was also used to murder Tommy and Teresa Fox at their home in Moy, County Tyrone.

The RUC at the time of the murder of Roseanne stated that the weapon had no previous use at all. We now know that to be a deliberate lie. The question is why?

A car, similar to one of two cars reported to be acting suspiciously outside the Mallon home, was stopped by a regular patrol shortly after the murder.

Three men threw balaclavas and gloves from the car. The home of the driver was searched

BY MARK THOMPSON RELATIVES FOR JUSTICE

and over 1,000 rounds of ammunition and a gun were also found. All three were ruled out of inquiries within hours.

A Peugeot car containing Billy Wright and two other suspects was stopped in the Portadown area and all three taken to Gough Barracks for questioning.

Their clothes were taken for forensic examination but they too were ruled out of inquiries within hours despite the fact that the forensic results were not yet completed.

The most senior Special Branch officer for that region, Frank Murray, had contacted the head of CID for the region, DCI McBurney, telling him that there was a covert operation in place at the time of the attack but there was nothing of evidential value or significance from the operation.

The actual murder investigation team on the

ground was not made aware of any covert operation until local people accidentally discovered secret cameras eight weeks after the attack.

A Special Branch officer (known as P5) said that he had only received the tapes for the day of the murder two days after the killing and it took several more days to analyse the tapes and write up the reports.

So how was Murray able to say there was nothing of an evidential value when the recordings were not yet viewed? The Coroner also found that strange.

These particular tapes have been destroyed, along with notebooks of Special Branch officers.

And nobody who knows or can answer those questions is available to the court due to death or reported illness.

So the bottom line is that within hours the murder weapon is deliberately lied about, the suspects are ruled out despite forensics not being available, and the tapes covered nothing on the day prior to the attack even though the tape recordings had not been viewed.

Coincidence or collusion – you decide.

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December / Nollaig 2013 5

IN PICTURES

Le Trevor

photos@anphoblacht.com

Ó Clochartaigh

Cinneadh le déanamh go luath ag an Rialtas, ach iad doiléir faoina seasamh go fóill

Caithfear aitheantas iomlán a éileamh don Ghaeilge san AE

5 Bronagh Bradley and Michael Vernon of Sinn Féin Republican Youth, Belfast, pictured at the Mahmoud Darwich Museum in Ramallah, Palestine

BHÍ RÍMÉAD agus bród ar Ghaeil ar fud na cruinne ar an 1 Eanáir, 2007, nuair a tugadh aitheantas don Ghaeilge mar theanga oifigiúil san Aontas Eorpach.

Bhí dóchas ann an t-am sin go gciallódh sin ardú stádais don teanga go h-idirnáisiúnta, rud a thabharfadh meanma breise don Ghaeilge in Éireann chomh maith.

Bhí feachtas mhór pobail ar siúl roimhe sin, ar ar tugadh ‘Stádas’, chun an beart a dhéanamh agus tuigeadh ar dtús go mbeadh gá le socrú eatramhach le go ndéanfaí oiliúnt ar lucht aistriúcháín agus ateangaireachta chun freastal ar an éileamh a bheadh ann sna h-institiúid Eorpacha.

Chuige sin d’iarr Rialtas na hÉireann ‘maolú’ ar an riachtanas ag leibhéal na hEorpa. Chiallaigh sin nach mbeadh le fáil ach seirbhísí teoranta ó thaobh aistriu ar cháipéisí faoi leith, córais teoranta aistriúcháin agus mar sin de ar feadh tamall. Ach, ní raibh sé i gceist go mairfeadh an socrú sin chomh fada seo.

Cuireadh síneadh breise cúig bliana leis an maolú i 2012, go deireadh 2016. Is fada an píosa uainn é sin. Cén fáth an

Tá faitíos orm go mbeidh gá le feachtas ‘Stádas’ eile ó phobal na Gaeilge chun cearta Gaeilgeoirí a bhaint amach go h-iomlán san AE bhfuil mé ag tarraingt an ábhar seo anuas ag an bpointe seo mar sin? Bhuel, tuigeann muid chomh mall is a oibríonn meicníochtaí an Aontais. Má tá an maolú le cur ar ceal ag deireadh 2016 caithfear céimeanna dearfacha a thógáil san idirlinn le seo a fheidhmiú.

Ní mhor don Rialtas a chuir in iúl go neamhfhoirmeálta don AE go bhfuil futhú deire a iarradh ar an maolú go luath i 2014. Nuair a tharlóidh sin tosófar ar an obair chun an fhearas a ullmhú agus pearsanra a earcú agus a oiliúint in am do sholáthar na seirbhíse iomlán ag tús 2017. Tógfaidh sé seo an méid sin ama de bharr rialacha agus nósanna imeachta earcaíochta an Aontais.

Chuir mé ceist sa Seanad ar Aire Stáit na Gaeltachta, Dinny McGinley, le laethanta beaga anuas, cén uair a bhí sé i gceist ag an Rialtas iarradh ar an Aontas deireadh a chuir leis an maolú agus is beag misnigh a thug sé dom ina fhreagra.

Tuigtear dom go bhféadfadh suas le dhá chéad post a bheith i gceist leis seo, gan costas ar bith ar an Stát anseo.

Tá muid ag íoc isteach cheana féin i gciste Eorpach a chuireann na seirbhísí seo ar fáil. Ní bheidh aon maoiniu breise ag teastáil ó Statchiste s’againne chuige.

Le riar blianta tá suas le dhá chéad caoga duine oilte sna

scileanna teanga cuí agus beagnach dhá chéad aitheanta ag córas clárúcháin Foras na Gaeilge do na réimsí seo. Mar sin, tá fórsa oibre ar fáil. Fiú muna bhfuil an líon ar fad atá de dhíth ann, d’fhéadfaí sampla muintir Mhálta a leanúint.

Ní raibh dothain foirne acusan ach an oiread, mar sin cheannaigh siad roinnt seirbhísí ar chonradh isteach chun freastal ar an éileamh go dtí go mbeadh dothain daoine cáilithe.

Is gá don Rialtas anseo cinneadh a ghlacadh tar éis na Nollaig go bhfuil siad chun brú ar aghaidh agus deireadh a chuir leis an maolú. D’iarr mé ar an Aire McGinley an bhfuil sé chun comhairle a chuir ar an Taoiseach le seo a dhéanamh agus dhiúltaigh sé sin a dhearbhú – rud a chuirfeadh imní orm. Tá sé 6 bliana ó baineadh an stádas amach. Faoin am a mbeadh na seirbhísí ar fad le cur i bhfeidhm i 2017 bheadh naoi mbliana déag imithe. Muna bhfuil Aire na Gaeltachta ag brú go láidir ag an bpointe seo gur cheart a leithéad a dhéanamh, cé eile atá chun é a dhéanamh?

Tá faitíos orm go mbeidh gá le feachtas ‘Stádas’ eile ó phobal na Gaeilge chun cearta Gaeilgeoirí a bhaint amach go h-iomlán san AE. De réir an Aire tá ‘plé leanúnach’ ar siúl leis na daoine leasmhara . Beidh plé ag an gCoiste Rialtais ar an Straitéis Fiche Bliain don Ghaeilge ar an ábhar san athbhliain – ach d’fhéadfaí cinneadh a chuir ar an mhéar fhada, mar i dtuairim an Aire ní gá cinneadh a ghlacadh go dtí níos déanaí.

Ní hé go bhfuil mise ag iarraidh Gaeilgeoirí na tíre a dhíbhirt chun na Mór Roinne ar thóir oibre ach, tá suas le dhá chéad post i gceist anseo ag ardleibhéil, a thabharfadh aitheantas idirnáisiunta don teanga agus mar thoradh ar sin bheifeá ag súil le h-ardú aitheantais anseo sa mbaile.

Ach, cé bheadh muiníneach as Fine Gael agus an Lucht Oibre leis an rud ceart a dhéanamh i dtaca leis an nGaeilge?

5 Sinn Féin’s Midlands-North-West EU candidate Matt Carthy inspects his campaign posters as the first batch rolls off the printing press

5 Members of South Down Sinn Féin Republican Youth with Gerry Kelly MLA and Basque pro-independence Senator Urko Aiartza at the Republican Youth Congress

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European United Left – Nordic Green Left (GUE/NGL) European Parliamentary Group CONFERENCE ON

PLANNING FOR IRISH REUNIFICATION

Breaking the Berlin Wall Breaking the Border Aontas Clé na hEorpa/Na Glasaigh Chlé Nordacha Crúpa Paliminta – Parlaimimt na h Eorpa

ECONOMISTS, MEPs, academics and representatives from across the European Union came together at the EU Parliament in Brussels on 12 November to discuss Irish reunification and lessons from the experiences of mainland Europe, particularly the breaking down of the Berlin Wall and the reunification of Germany.

‘Reuniting Ireland: Lessons from Europe’ – hosted by the European United Left – Nordic Green Left (GUE/NGL) European Parliamentary Group – heard contributions on planning for Irish unity, with a particular focus on ensuring such a transition went smoothly in economic terms.

Opening the event, GUE/NGL President Gabi Zimmer, an MEP for Die Linke of Germany and who herself grew up in the previously divided nation of Germany, said: “The project of EU integration is all about bringing people together and breaking down borders.”

She gave her own opinion on the partition of Ireland: “Driving from Derry to Dublin, I have seen that there is still a lot of work to be done to remove the Border in Ireland. There is an urgent need for cross-border infrastructure – something that the EU should prioritise in its structural funding.”

But she also warned: “We have seen how the Irish ‘Celtic Tiger’ did not benefit everybody. How can we ensure that those who managed the ‘Celtic Tiger’ for their own economic benefit do not try to abuse a process of Irish unification for their own financial benefit – against the interests of the majority of the people?”

Professor Christa Luft, who served as Economics Minister in East Germany in 1989 and 1990, gave her experience of dealing with reunification. Outlining the importance of having a grounded and fully-costed economic plan, Professsor Luft said that, due to the belief that German reunification was decades off as the Berlin Wall actually fell: “Long-term policies and resilient economic calculations, potential savings and synergies of the cost of reunification did not exist.”

This short-sightedness resulted in serious economic problems. This was compounded by the fact that, instead of a union, the area of the former East Germany was simply forced to accede to basic law of West Germany. Despite this, she says, hardly anybody anywhere in Germany would like to see the nation redivided even though there are still economic deficits which need to be addressed.

“We tore down the Berlin Wall brick by brick but that is only one barrier. You also need to break down mental walls,” she said in relation to attitudes between East and West.

Cypriot MEP Takis Hadjigeourgiou spoke of his own interest in Irish history, saying, as part of the Good Friday Agreement, the people of

MONAGHAN

BERLIN

‘We tore down the Berlin Wall brick by brick but that is only one barrier. You also need to break down mental walls’ Ireland has the right to pursue the reunifiction of their country.

“We Cypriots have a very stong feeling of kinship with Ireland. Not only that we faced the same imperial power of England, but we are too an island nation. Today, with millions of families that struggle to makes ends meet in Europe, people continue to experience war – an economic war. We need to expand people’s right to change their fate and this will only happen if the democratic forces of the Left in Europe can take power.”

His fellow Cypriot MEP, Vera Polycarpou, said the British used the same divide and rule tactics in Cyprus to retain large strategic military bases on their island. She outlined the problems faced in Cyprus due to the illegal occupation of the north by Turkey and she expressed solidarity with Ireland.

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BY MARK MOLONEY IN BRUSSELS

Dr Gerard McCann, Senior Lecturer in European Studies and Geography at Queen's University Belfast, and Conor Murphy MP

Cypriot MEP Takis Hadjigeourgiou and Martina Anderson MEP “We are united in struggle against the artifical divisions of our countries,” she said. Echoing experiences in Ireland, Vera said talks between political leaders and rapprochement between both Greek-Cypriot and Turkish-Cypriot communities is key. Progress in one aids the other, the MEP said.

She added that EU support and funding for cross-community and youth events is a very important part of that progress, as is EU financial support for renovations in the city of Nicosia – Europe’s last divided capital – in preparation for reunification.

Conor Murphy MP called on the Irish Government to produce a Green Paper on Irish unity with the authority and resources to examine in-depth what processes and challenges there are and what measures can be brought about to assist in reunification.

He also spoke about the need for a Border poll on Irish unity within the lifetime of the next Assembly in the North of Ireland, and said setting a date for such a poll would allow for a proper discussion on what a united Ireland would look like — and it is his belief that the argument for unification would be very persuasive.

Ruth Taillon of Ireland’s Centre for CrossBorder Studies outlined the work which needs to be done to deal with the legacy of partition in Border communites: “Many of the problems that affect the Border region can’t be tackled without cross-Border cooperation. The Border communities have been increasingly isolated because of the conflict and suffered economic decline because of the disruption of the economy and the breaking up of towns and their natural hinterlands.”

She said the Centre for Cross-Border Studies

wants to see a targeted approach to aid the Border region, highlighting how such a region cannot compete at attracting foreign direct investment and therefore indigenous businesses must be supported.

Dr Gerard McCann, Senior Lecturer in European Studies and Geography at Queen’s University Belfast, described EU support for peace building, cross-commmunity and voluntary organisations as incredibly important.

“The involvement of the EU in the Peace Process, North-South integration, and the development of business and the voluntary sector has been unprecedented. It goes across the communities and across the island. And it really has underpinned the process at this point.”

He added, though: “There should be more focus on North/South projects rather than Catholic/Protestant projects.

The drive towards religiosity in terms of funding has not been helpful.”

Economist Michael Burke described how the growth of the economy of the South of Ireland since independence and the massive increase in living standards, long eclipsing that of the North, was down to the ability of the South to decide its own fate in economic matters while the North relied on exports to Britain.

“Unionists were told ‘If you stay with the British Empire you’ll be better off.’ But from the facts we can see that they were sold a big fat lie,” he said.

“They’re worse off, the whole community of the North is, and that’s a pattern you see in relation to colonial possessions right across the globe.

“Speaking from a purely economic perspective, I would say that if people want to change

Economist Michael Burke and Ruth Taillon of the Centre for Cross-Border Studies their living standards for the better, the best way of doing that would be to get rid of the Border and reunify the country.”

“Yes, reunification is an enormous step forward, but to really benefit from it what’s really required is that the new political and economic system that arises from the dissolution of both states either side of the Irish Border is one where investment has to be directed. Relying on big firms, as happened in Germany, simply doesn’t work.”

‘The project of EU integration is all about bringing people together and breaking down borders’ Wrapping up the conference, Sinn Féin MEP Martina Anderson said it is extremely important that Cyprus and Ireland learn from the German experience. She said the way that West Germany subsumed the East was something which should be avoided here, and instead a merger should be based on an equal basis decided by all the people of Ireland.

Martina said the Irish Government has abjectly failed to promote or seek international support for reunification yet, despite this, interest and support across the EU is growing.

Busting the myth that reunification would be bad economically for Ireland, Martina spoke of the waste of money due to the duplication of separate health, education, agriculture, tourism,

infrastrucutre, tax, currency and legal systems on the island: “Those who continue to oppose reunification premise their argument on the basis that a new and united Ireland is not economically sustainable and is completely reliant financially on British state subvention,” she said. “This argument relies on what can only be described as ‘guesstimates’ from the British Government. We do not know the amount of revenue accrued from taxes, including Corporation Tax and VAT, from businesses located in the Six Counties who pay their taxes through their headquarters in England.”

She also noted that tax currently raised in the North of Ireland flows across the Irish Sea to the British Exchequer used in funding Britain’s illegal wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, maintaining the British royal family and their many state buildings, along with funding museums and other public buildings in England. In a reunited Ireland, this tax money would obviously be retained and used for the benefit of the people of the island.

Pointing to Scotland – which will hold a referendum on independence next year – she noted how previous claims from the British Establishment that an independent Scotland could not survive economically were debunked by the Scottish Government who proved that their economy actually produces a surplus.

She said it would be “very foolish” to take British Treasury figures for the North at face value.

“We believe – politically, economically and socially – that it makes sense for us as an island to operate as a single unit. That said, we also know we have a long way to go.”

ANOTHER EUROPE IS POSSIBLE

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Bord Gáis privatisation

BY SEÁN Ó SÉ THE Gas Regulation Bill 2013 now passing through the Dáil and the Seanad allows for the privatisation of Bord Gáis Energy and the risk of large price hikes with the added risk of increased fuel poverty.

In 2008, St Vincent de Paul gave out €3.8million to families in need for fuel and energy; by 2011, that had reached €10.4million — effectively a quarter of the assistance that they distribute.

The past three years have seen energy bills already rise by €500.

What control the state has over energy prices at the present time would largely be eliminated if Irish energy companies were to transfer into private ownership.

Control of the domestic energy market is proving a contentious debate in Britain.

‘The Big Six’ major private energy companies controlling the British market have been accused of ‘fixing’ energy prices.

Public anger has mounted against private energy companies with 68% of people in Britain believing that they should be nationalised, according to a recent YouGov Poll.

Consumer champion ‘Which?’ says only one in seven customers thinks the Big Six power giants act in their best interests. Energy providers are now trusted less than bankers, car salesmen and train operators.

At the same time, those in fuel poverty are seeing their benefits slashed by the Tory-led government. The hangover from the Thatcher era privatisation policies have resulted in an energy market that is driven by profit margins instead of delivering a public good.

How Irish MEPs voted on EU military document

FINE GAEL (4 MEPs) 3 FOR 1 ABSENT FIANNA FÁIL (3 MEPs) 1 FOR 2 ABSTAINED LABOUR PARTY (3 MEPs) 1 FOR 2 ABSTAINED SINN FÉIN (1 MEP)

1 AGAINST

SOCIALIST PARTY (1 MEP)

1 AGAINST

DUP (1 MEP) UUP (1 MEP)

1 ABSENT

1 AGAINST

INDEPENDENT (1 MEP)

1 FOR

ST VINCENT DE PAUL HELP TO FAMILIES IN FUEL POVERTY TREBLES

2008

€3.8million 2011

€10.4million

5 The past three years have seen energy bills already rise by €500 In Germany, a referendum supported by Die Linke and the Green Party was held on whether Berlin’s electricity grid should pass back into public ownership. Over 80% of those who voted favoured the nationalisation measure but it fell

just short of the 25% turn-out needed to become law. In September, Hamburg’s citizens voted in favour of nationalising the electricity grid.

The Labour Party 2012 party conference

passed a motion calling for Irish state assets to remain in public ownership. However, with two Labour Party ministers, Pat Rabbitte (Minister for Communications, Energy and Natural Resources) and Brendan Howlin (Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform) leading the charge in these sell-offs, it appears that Labour Party policy has little impact on decisions made at the Cabinet table.

Many Irish MEPs fail to defend Irish neutrality in European Parliament

FF, FG and Labour fail to fight war plans

BY MARK MOLONEY FIANNA FÁIL, Labour and Fine Gael MEPs have been criticised by Sinn Féin at a Dublin conference on ‘The EU – The Military Dimension’ for failing to stand up and defend the neutrality of the Irish state at European level.

Sinn Féin Dublin EU candidate Lynn Boylan highlighted how most Irish MEPs failed to oppose a European report which notes “with regret” that the EU does not possess a permanent military planning and conduct capability.

The report also expressed regret at the cutting of military budgets across the EU. Lynn told the 16 November conference organised by the Peace and Neutrality Alliance (PANA) and the People’s Movement that it is “shocking” that most Irish MEPs failed to oppose the ‘EU Structures, State of Play and Future Prospects’ report.

Lynn Boylan described it as “a document that defends excessive military spending whilst 64,700 young Irish people are officially out of work, under 26s have had their benefits cut by 30%, and another €1billion is to be cut from the health services”.

The Dublin EU candidate hit out at the

5 Labour MEP Phil Prendergast – Voted for

5 Sinn Féin MEP Martina Anderson – Voted against

€194billion spent on arms by EU member states.

“Defenders of the arms industry will say that it employs 800,000 people in the EU but research shows that for every euro invested in education or public transport twice as many jobs are created than that invested in the arms industry.”

She said Sinn Féin strongly opposes military alliances and instead seeks international cooperation and conflict negotiation.

“Neutrality it is about active engagement in the global community and the relentless pursuit of global justice through peaceful means.”

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December / Nollaig 2013 9

HAASS TALKS

Sinn Féin’s proposals on the past, parades and flags IN A BID to stimulate debate and progress on addressing legacy issues, contentious parades and flags, Sinn Féin published three discussion papers for everyone to consider ahead of meeting US diplomat Dr Richard Haass when the former US special envoy arrived back in Belfast on 18 November with his deputy, Dr Meghan O’Sullivan.

In its paper titled Addressing Legacy Issues: Building a Common Future Sinn Féin says it believes that if we locate legacy issues in the framework of conflict resolution and in the context of the broader Peace Process “then we can address these matters in a way which will heal divisions, consolidate the

peace and become guarantors of the future”.

That said, the paper acknowledges that “we live in a divided and largely segregated society”, one where “there are many differing perspectives on the causes of the past conflict, what happened and who was responsible”.

It argues that, in examining legacy issues: “The role and actions of all combatant organisations must be fully considered, including government, state agencies and the legal and judicial system.

“And paramount in all of this must be the views of the victims and survivors. Their voices must be heard

and respected, not simply the loudest voices, not simply those on any particular side or those on no side.

The views of the many thousand victims and survivors who have remained silent must also be heard.

“Regrettably, the past cannot be changed, nor the suffering, hurt and violence which was part of it undone. And none of it can be disowned by any party of the conflict.

“We believe that all parties, political parties, combatant organisations, government and their agencies, should pledge to tell and hear the truth about the past. The role of the media in shaping beliefs many interpreted as truths should be examined.”

PARADES

5 Sinn Féin’s Seán Murray, Gerry Kelly, Jennifer McCann and Mitchel McLaughlin at the talks Sinn Féin believes that an effective truth recovery mechanism underpinned in legislation should be established.

Referencing Sinn Féin’s discussion documents Truth and Truth Recovery (submitted to the British and Irish governments in September 2009), the party reiterates its belief that an independent International Truth Commission – independent of the state, combatant groups,

political parties, civil society and economic interests — is required to deal with legacy issues and the past in an unbiased way.

“Accordingly, the two governments should authorise a reputable body such as the United Nations to devise and implement all measures and processes necessary to achieve effective truth recovery methods” and the public reporting of its findings and recommendations.

FLAGS AND EMBLEMS

Contentious parades have featured in every political negotiation since 1998. While the Orange Order lifted its ban on its lodges engaging with nationalist resident groups in March 2012, it is believed there have only been two instances of direct engagement between the Orange Order and residents (in Crumlin and Ardoyne).

Talks have brought resolutions to previously contentious parades in Derry, Maghera and Crumlin, Sinn Féin notes but says that where “meaningful dialogue” is

not forthcoming from parade and/or protest organisers, then it is incumbent upon the Parades Commission, to consider the balance in rights involved.

The Sinn Féin document details proposals on the regulation of parades under headings for a code of conduct, independent monitoring, post-parade review hearings, bands’ conduct, the introduction of the model accepted by the loyal orders in Scotland for parades, and “non-parade related protests”.

On flags, symbols and emblems, Sinn Féin says it is “committed to proactively work with the republican/nationalist community to develop agreed protocols around flags, symbols and emblems with our unionist/loyalist neighbours”, adding: “What is required is a manifestation of mutual respect for both identities, British and Irish.”

To solve the problem of the proliferation of flags, Sinn Féin suggests “an agreement to establish a single flag-post in each area on which respective national flags will be flown and maintained over time”.

It also proposes: 1. No flags or emblems to be displayed on key arterial routes (to be defined) and town centres; 2. No paramilitary flags, displaying sym-

bols or names, and regimental military flags (e.g. Parachute Regiment) on display in public places; 3. No flags/emblems to be displayed in the vicinity of places of worship, schools, hospitals or any publiclyfunded buildings, or within or adjacent to shared/mixed/new housing developments, interface boundaries; 4. Flags/emblems/symbols that are tattered, torn, discoloured or in general disrepair confer a lack of respect and should be removed; 5. Protocols could be developed in local areas or between neighbouring districts on flags, including a ‘no flags’ policy pertaining to both identities and no pavements to be painted in ‘traditional’ colours (i.e. red, white and blue or green, white and orange.

The full Sinn Féin proposals for the Haass Talks can be read online at www.sinnfein.ie

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Irish Volunteers 100th Anniversary Saturday 16th November, Rotunda, Dublin

YOU CAN READ the historic editions of The Irish Volunteer weekly from:

7 February 2014 until 22 April 2016 with a

yearly online subscription to the Irish Volunteer and An Phoblacht for

just €10

5 Alan Burke sings during a re-enactment of the founding of the Irish Volunteers. Seated next to him are actors Tony Devlin, Ronan Leahy, Michael O'Reilly and Stephen Blount

anphoblacht PUTS HISTORIC WEEKLY PAPER ONLINE The newspaper of the new Volunteer movement, first published weekly from 7 February 1914 to 22 April 1916, just two days before the Easter Rising.

It chronicled the growth of the movement throughout Ireland and provided military instruction and political commentary for the Volunteers.

5 Sinn Féin’s Mary Lou McDonald and Gerry Adams at the re-enactment

5 Aengus Ó Snodaigh launches his book, ‘The Rotunda – Birthplace of the Irish Volunteers’, to mark the 100th anniversary of founding of the Irish Volunteers in the Rotunda. He is joined here by Míchéal Mac Donncha who earlier in the year published his book marking the 100th anniversary of the 1913 Lockout. – See page 31

YEARLY ONLINE SUBSCRIPTION

ONLY €10

5 Some of the Irish Volunteers and Cumann na mBan memorabilia on display

5 Fintan Warfield performs at the event

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MEGAN FEARON

Ten female MLAs out of 29 is relatively good, but two female TDs out of 14 just doesn’t cut it MLA

Sinn Féin’s new National Spokesperson on Women asks . . .

Where are all the women?

AT a recent business event ‘on the Hill’ at Stormont I found myself wondering: “Where are all the women?”

I looked around, continued to politely mingle and then it hit me: I was the ONLY woman in the room.

I was overcome with disbelief, disappointment and anger. It got me thinking about just how under-represented women are in public life and business. More than half (52%) of the population are female but women hold only 18% of positions in elected institutions on this island. Here I was, in a room full of the movers and shakers of the local business world and not a woman in sight. While this had happened before, this time was different – I was outnumbered by a ratio of around 80 to 1.

I began to wonder, is it really surprising that power rests in the hands of a male minority?

For centuries, women have been assigned roles in society by a dominant patriarchy. We can source the wrongful presumptions of what a woman should do and be in 21st cen-

I was the ONLY woman in the room – outnumbered by a ratio of around 80 to 1 tury Ireland to several influential institutions: from the unchallenged and unparalleled control exerted by the Catholic Church on Irish women, to the perpetually demeaning portrayal of women drummed into society by the Establishment media in accordance with ‘popular culture’.

You can open any publication geared towards a female audience and be sure to find its pages filled with idle celebrity gossip, fashion tips and weight loss advice.

We should be angry that our intelligence has been belittled as our interests are characterised as though we were Stepford Wives.

To make matters worse the popular culture that the media takes its lead from is degrading in a very serious way. There is a clear spectrum of chauvinism that covers society, from pop culture to politics. The recent ‘Lapgate’ scandal in the Dáil is an example of this. We, as a gender, have been firmly put in our ‘place’ for too long.

Given the role the media plays in shaping public opinion, and how society views women, it is crucial that women have a key

5 Sinn Féin is one of the most progressive parties on this island when it comes to gender equality role in decision-making to effect change. The most effective way to make this a reality is introducing mandatory quotas.

There is a litany of varied opinions on this, some of which surmise that quotas are ‘unnecessary’ and ‘offensive to women’ or that society should just ‘continue to elect the best person for the job’ (Yes, continue to . . .).

These criticisms would only be valid if we were already on a level playing field, which we clearly

aren’t. Ireland has a female population of almost 3.5million. Are we expected to believe that there just are not 83 capable, intelligent and articulate women who are ‘right’ for the role of a TD. Likewise in the North, is it really impossible to find 54 women who could be competent MLAs? Come on, seriously?

We need to create the conditions to allow women in positions of leadership to be seen as a social norm. The lack of women

5 ’Lapgate’ controversy: Fine Gael TDs Tom Barry and Áine Collins

at the top cements the age-old image of what leadership looks like: middle-aged and male.

Failing to involve women in shaping our economy is a huge waste of potential talent, not to mention unjust, given that austere economic decisions disproportionately affect women.

Sinn Féin is one of the most progressive parties on this island when it comes to gender equality. Women are more represented at all levels in our party than any other – but we shouldn’t be too smug. Ten female MLAs out of 29 is relatively good, but two female TDs out of 14 just doesn’t cut it.

And away from the world of political institutions, many Sinn Féin meetings still take place with far too few women in the room.

And maybe some of these too few women feel as fed up as I did at the business lunch.

We are building ‘An Ireland of Equals’. We need to prove it by our actions, at all levels and in every sphere of activism. No more excuses!

I am a feminist. We need feminism because there should be more than one woman in the room. Because people still ask what the victim was wearing. Because 1 in 4 women are sexually assaulted and rape jokes are “funny”. Because, if I have a daughter, I want her to care about what’s in her head and not what’s on it. Because we still discuss basic human rights as if they are optional.

We need feminism because we shouldn’t need feminism. It’s 2013 . . . and I really am fed up being the only woman in the room.

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5 The count gets underway at the Fountain Street Community Centre in Strabane

PEOPLE’S REFERENDUM ON IRISH UNITY

Strabane and Lifford say ‘Yes’

BY PEADAR WHELAN IN STRABANE AND LIFFORD NINE OUT OF TEN people voting in the ‘People’s Referendum on Irish Unity’ in the Tyrone and Donegal areas of Strabane and Lifford on Saturday 23 November said ‘Yes’ to Irish reunification.

Organising committee member Grace McDermott told An Phoblacht: “Our aim is to illustrate that partition is still a big issue for many people, especially in Border communities. Maintaining the status quo in the form of two competing, fractured economies in Ireland can only perpetuate and increase the obstacles to economic recovery throughout Ireland.”

Grace said that the build-up to the vote in the Strabane East Ward and Clonleigh South across the border in Lifford – the campaigning, the canvassing, the debates it provoked in the local media around the event – has highlighted the question of partition and the effects it has “on the everyday lives of ordinary people”.

The communities of Strabane and Lifford, which straddle the border at the confluence of the Foyle, Mourne and Finn rivers were to all intents and purposes one community.

Each is the natural hinterland of the other. As with many small communities, when partition was imposed as a result of the 1921 Treaty it created a false border and created barriers that saw community, commerce and economic interaction disrupted.

Strabane, being a majority nationalist town, suffered direct discrimination from the

unionist and sectarian regime in Stormont.

The town topped the list of unemployment figures as the governing unionist party starved it of investment. It was economic apartheid.

Indeed, the unionist opposition to upgrading the A5 road from the border at Aughnacloy to Donegal can only be seen as an extension of that discrimination.

Meanwhile, Lifford reflected the lack of investment and interest that the Dublin-cen-

‘Our aim is to illustrate that partition is still a big issue for many people, especially in Border communities’

5 93.4% of voters said Yes to Irish unity with a turn-out of 25.7% of the registered electorate

GRACE Mc DERMOTT tred 26-County political establishment held and still holds for the North West.

High unemployment and emigration, it seems, are good enough for Donegal, Leitrim and Sligo.

Lifford man Fearghal Mac Lochlainn, also of the United Ireland campaign organising committee, said: “The campaign over the last couple of weeks has raised the issue with a lot of people as we have highlighted the ridiculous situation of two economies, two health and education systems and other effects of partition that impact on people.

“Today was a good day.”

5 John McDermott and Grace McDermott are informed of the result by Michael Halpenny

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Fr Alec Reid – ‘Chaplain to the Peace Process’ 5 August 1931 - 22 November 2013

THE SAGART

BY GERRY ADAMS TD PRESIDENT OF SINN FÉIN CLONARD MONASTERY is a place of pilgrimage. They came in their hundreds to say a final goodbye to a good priest, a close friend, a gentle and kind-hearted man, and as courageous and humble a human being as you could ever hope to meet.

Fr Alec Reid died in his sleep in the early hours of Friday morning, 22 November. I had been with him the previous Thursday and he was in good form. Talkative, funny and enjoying his hospital tea in St Vincent’s in Dublin. But his condition deteriorated. I was phoned on Thursday night and told that he only had days. I arranged to travel down on Friday to visit him but shortly after 9am on Friday morning we got word that he had quietly passed in his sleep.

I was deeply shocked and saddened at his death. For 40 years I have known him as a good friend to me and my family, and a selfless and unstinting worker in the search for justice and peace. In the midst of hard times, Fr Reid was always there offering comfort and solidarity and advice. He was one of the good guys.

I first met Fr Alec in the Cages of Long Kesh, where I was interned, in the mid-1970s.

He and Fr Des Wilson were pioneers of peacemaking in those difficult times. They developed dialogue with loyalists and facilitated meetings between us and some prominent people from loyalist paramilitarism.

Both were tenacious peacemakers.

Fr Alec was a friend of the prisoners and part of the line of communication between them and the British Government during the first Hunger Strike in 1980. He actively encouraged initiatives in support of the HBlock Blanketmen and the Armagh women.

It was Fr Reid who suggested that we meet with Cardinal Ó Fiaich on the prison issue and it was Fr Reid who persuaded the Cardinal to visit the republican political prisoners on the Blanket Protest in July 1978.

The then Archbishop Ó Fiaich condemned the conditions under which the prisoners were being held: “Having spent the whole of Sunday in the prison, I was shocked at the inhuman conditions prevailing in H-Blocks 3, 4 and 5 where over 300 prisoners were incarcerated. One would hardly allow an animal to remain in such conditions, let alone a human being.

The nearest approach to it that I have seen was the spectacle of hundreds of homeless

people living in sewer pipes in the slums of Calcutta.”

The Sagart and I had many discussions about the conflict, its causes and how it might be ended. Out of those conversations emerged a commitment to dialogue as the first necessary step. In the early 1980s, we tried to commence a process of engagement with the Catholic Hierarchy, the SDLP, and

5 Gerry Adams and Mary Lou McDonald arriving at Fr Alec Reid's funeral Mass

5 Fr Alec Reid’s Aunt Eita Kavanagh, President of Ireland Michael D Higgins and Gerry Adams TD after the funeral Mass at the in Marianella Chapel in Rathmines

the Irish and British governments. The breakthrough came after Fr Reid wrote a letter to John Hume on 19 May 1986. John phoned the monastery the next day and he arrived at Clonard on 21 May. Towards the end of 1987, we decided that John and I would begin party-to-party meetings. The Sagart formally wrote to both of us as “an interested third party” inviting Sinn Féin and the SDLP to “explore whether there could be agreement on an overall nationalist strategy for justice and peace”. He presented us with a paper entitled A Concrete Proposal for an Overall Political Strategy to Establish Justice and Peace in Ireland.

I brought the invitation to the Sinn Féin Ard Chomhairle. It responded positively and John and I met on Monday 11 January for several hours. For the first time our meeting was publicised and there was an immediate and generally hostile response from the governments, the other political parties and sections of the media.

Fr Reid never allowed any of it to distract him. He was tenacious in his pursuit of peace.

He was there during the first hunger strike and became ill as a consequence of the stress. He was there during the battle of the funerals, including the funerals of the IRA Volunteers killed at Gibraltar. He was in Milltown Cemetery when the mourners were attacked. Three were killed and over 60 wounded. Several days later he administered the last rites to the two British soldiers killed at the subsequent funeral of one of the victims, Caoimhín Mac Brádaigh.

Later, Fr Reid helped broker talks between Sinn Féin and the SDLP and between Fianna Fáil and subsequently the Irish Government and Sinn Féin.

In 1999, he became involved in the ongoing efforts to locate the remains of those who had been killed and secretly buried by the IRA and others. After several years it became apparent that our initial hope that all of the remains would be located quickly was naive. He and I discussed this and consequently we put to the governments a proposal that experts in the recovery of remains, using high-tech equipment and archaeological methods, should be employed.

In 2005, he was an independent witness, along with Rev Harold Good, to the IRA putting its arms beyond use and during this time he was also involved in trying to develop a peace process in the Basque Country.

The Sagart lived a full life. His contribution to peace in Ireland is immeasurable. There would not be a Peace Process at this time without his diligent doggedness and his refusal to give up.

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COLUMNISTS’ VIEWS IN AN PHOBLACHT ARE THOSE OF THE AUTHORS AND DO NOT NECESSARILY REFLECT THE VIEWS OF SINN FÉIN

IRISH GOVERNMENT PROSTRATES ITSELF BEFORE OUR EUROPEAN MASTERS

Exiting the bail-out even raise a voice of protest or argue for any modification of the policy thrust. The reason is that speaking up will bring down on us the ire of German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schauble – the same Finance Minister who has turned a deaf ear to every

BY EOIN Ó MURCHÚ THE Irish Government’s laughable assertion that it has recovered our economic sovereignty as a result of exiting the bail-out is contradicted by two points: first, the Fiscal Treaty gives the EU permanent oversight of our budgetary and economic policy; second, our economic capacity has been savaged by austerity for a very long time into the future.

Government spin cannot alter these facts any more than they can just wish away the thousands of young people who have been forced to emigrate, the miserable failure to meet growth targets again and again, or the fact that while we have ensured that

The need for a rejection of this crippling austerity was recently recognised by Romano Prodi, the man who first suggested the euro Europe’s banking system is untouched our own is incapable of providing the credit needed for businesses to operate, notwithstanding the billions already poured in.

Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz, on a visit to Dublin, warned that it had been a mistake to burden taxpayers with bank debt, and that because of austerity it will take at least ten years before we recover.

That is ten years of emigration and loss, ten years of penury and worry.

IN PICTURES

Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz, on a visit to Dublin, warned it had been a mistake to burden taxpayers with bank debt, and because of austerity it will take at least ten years before we recover

5 Former President of the European Commission Romano Prodi and economist Joseph Stiglitz Yet, far from the Government recognising the harm that has been done, they brazenly boast that their policy has been a success. Some success when the consequences have been so dire.

It is not just Ireland, however, that needs a reflationary policy, an expansion of state investment in job creation. It is the whole of Europe.

But Europe is now completely dominated by Germany, which is sucking the life out of every other economy and, ironically, in the long run, creating huge problems which will rebound on Germany itself.

If the other European countries are too impoverished to buy German goods, that will have a negative impact on Germany itself further down the line.

The need for a rejection of this crippling austerity was recently recog-

nised by Romano Prodi, the man who first suggested the euro. Prodi has argued that the countries of southern Europe need to come together to outvote the Germans and insist on a change of policy. And what Prodi proposes for Spain, Portugal, Italy and Greece is true for Ireland too.

Politically, however, no leadership has emerged from these countries to take the first steps in forming such a bloc, as each one hopes that by being a good boy in class the German teacher will smile on them and give them a break.

And none are as supine in prostrating themselves before the German masters as the Irish Government (fully supported by Fianna Fáil in opposition).

Meanwhile, the EU Commission reported that overall growth in Ireland this year will be low, just as the

Government boasts that we have turned the corner and can see ‘the green shoots of recovery’.

Alas, these shoots only exist in the Government’s imagination.

The central problem, apart from the billions which have been wasted being poured into the banks (which was all done to benefit Germany) is that Europe’s monetary policy is dictated by German needs. But this policy is strengthening the euro on international markets and thus making our international exports more difficult, just as Europe itself is floundering.

We should never have joined the euro, over whose exchange rate and other policy directions we never had any influence; and we MUST exit it if we want to regain any alternative to austerity and economic collapse.

But our craven government will not

humiliating plea for easing our burden.

Instead, they concoct one set of figures for domestic consumption while giving Europe another set for deal discussion. At home, we are supposed to have turned the corner, even though the unemployment queues and emigrating lists belie this claim; in Europe, we want not a public line of bail-out credit but a nod and a wink from Angela Merkel that she will see us right.

Meanwhile, the crisis continues, and it continues throughout Europe.

The whole edifice is tottering on the brink but rather than try and rescue us from this calamity our politicians play at being with the big boys, shutting their eyes to the reality of austerity and shutting their ears to the growing list of European economists who are denouncing what is going on.

photos@anphoblacht.com

5 Sinn Féin Republican Youth members at their annual conference in Omagh took time out to support the Strabane/Lifford Border poll campaign. 100 members took part in a 'Hands Across the Border' demonstration on the 5 Sinn Féin Dublin West representatives Paul Donnelly and Natalie Treacy join local Corduff residents to protest against Labour Party Housing Minister Jan O'Sullivan and her department's failure to tackle the housing crisis bridge which transcends the Border

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‘THE DIARY OF BOBBY SANDS: THE STORY OF AN IRISH YOUNG MAN’ wins literary award ahead of Seamus Heaney, Roddy Doyle and Joseph O’Connor

IRA Volunteer Bobby Sands

‘Bobby Sands’s ideals and values are still alive’

9 March 1954 – 5 May 1981

THE ITALIAN translation of a biography of Bobby Sands for younger readers has been named as this year’s winner of the ‘Citta’ Di Cassino: Letterature Dal Fronte’ international award.

Il Diario di Bobby Sands: Storia di un Ragazzo Irlandese(The Diary of Bobby Sands: The Story of an Irish Young Man) is by Silvia Calamati, Laurence McKeown and Denis O’Hearn.

It is the Italian translation of I Arose One Morning – A Biography of Bobby Sands for Younger Readers by Denis O’Hearn and Laurence McKeown with photographs and additional materials by Silvia Calamati.

It was the winner of the 2011 Alessandro Tassoni Award in Modena for the book published in Italy that most represents the universal values of human rights.

Silvia Calamati is an award-winning writer and author of several books on Ireland.

Denis O’Hearn is Professor of Sociology at Binghamton University, State University of New York.

Laurence McKeown, a playwright and filmmaker who co-wrote the feature film H3, is a

‘A freshness in the language spoken by young people and in a narrative style which is meaningful and clear at the same time’

former hunger striker and was a political prisoner from 1976 to 1992.

Cassino is internationally recognised as a ‘martyr city of Europe’ as a result of the war of 1943-1944 and ‘The Battle of Monte Cassino’ (17 January to 18 May 1944) when the historic hilltop abbey founded in AD 529 was pummelled by 1,400 bombs dropped by the US Air Force.

In 2006, the Italian Cultural Association Letterature Dal Fronte (Cassino) was set up to continue the activities carried out by the ‘Committee to Remember the Battle of Monte Cassino’.

The Letterature Dal Fronte association believes that nothing like a good novel, a good story or a good movie is able to present a better portrait of an era or historical period and it created a prize to recognise this.

The aim of the prize, beyond the purely literary, is to involve young people in the reading of texts by European writers who are regarded as “carriers of testimonies of crises of humanity, wars, disease, persecution, and violence”.

Each year the award focuses on a different country and the literature from that country.

In 2013, the chosen country was Ireland.

Students from high schools in four Italian cities (Rome, Trieste, Cassino and Pico), together with a scientific panel consisting of representatives of the world of information and culture, vote for the book of their choice.

Seamus Heaney’s Fuori Campo was second in the vote with Roddy Doyle’s The Dead Republic and Joseph O’Connor’s The Star of the Sea coming third and fourth respectively.

The ‘Motivazione Ufficiale’, written and agreed by all the award jury members, formally explained that they decided to give the award to the book on Bobby Sands because what shone through was “the belief in values”

and that they could recommend it to anybody: “Many of the students have confessed they did not know the history of Northern Ireland and we must credit Silvia Calamati, Laurence McKeown and Denis O’Hearn for having uncovered for us this sad chapter of our European history and having done so with a freshness in the language spoken by young people and in a narrative style which is meaningful and clear at the same time.

“Their merit lies also in having reported the facts, using their pen as a scalpel to cut into the open wound of the contrast between British institutions and politics and the consequences of those policies on a people.”

5 Laurence McKeown and Silvia Calamati at the award ceremony

Silvia Calamati and Laurence McKeown were in Cassino to accept the award on Saturday 19 October and to meet the students. On the Friday, H3 (the feature film cowritten by Laurence McKeown with Brian

‘Their merit lies also in having reported the facts, using their pen as a scalpel to cut into the open wound of the contrast between British institutions and politics and the consequences of those policies on a people’

Campbell) was screened (with Italian subtitles) in a nearby college and followed by a Q&A with the students, professors, and journalists.

Silvia said: “This award, the second award in Italy in three years, and the heartfelt interest for this book shown by hundreds of Italian students, indicates that Bobby Sands’s ideals and values that he believed in are still alive and strong all over the world. The decision taken by the Florence City Council to name a street after Bobby Sands is just one of the many examples that show how his ideals, values and desire for a free Ireland cannot be quenched.”

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“

A history of imprisonment and escape GERRY KELLY tells An Phoblacht’s PEADAR WHELAN why he decided to put pen to paper to tell the real inside story of ‘The Great Escape’ from the H-Blocks of Long Kesh in September 1983.

“AS WITH most escape stories, I wrote the book from the point of view of the political prisoner, of those who took part in one of the most high-profile IRA operations of the conflict.

“There will always be detractors but my experience in writing this book and talking to those POWs involved is that they maintain a great pride in having been part of this historic escapade.

“I share that pride.

“This is my narrative. Others, including the prison guards who served in the North’s prisons, may have their own story to tell but I have set out to set the escape in the context of Britain’s prison strategy and the long conflict we all experienced.”

Kelly was born in the Falls Road area of Belfast in 1953. Like many young people of that time, he became involved in republican politics as a response to the unionist pogroms of 1969.

Reacting to the demands of the Civil Rights Association for equality in voting, employment, housing allocation and education, the unionist government unleashed its state

Winchester Crown Court on 14 November 1973 and given two life sentences and 20 years. “I was 19 at the time,” he recalls Seven others from Belfast were convicted too: Dolours and Marian Price, Hugh Feeney, Roy Walsh, Martin Brady, Billy Armstrong and Paul Holmes.

“After we were sentenced,” Kelly says, “we were determined to be repatriated as political status had already been achieved for republicans imprisoned in the North of Ireland.”

Gerry Kelly and others, including the Price sisters and Hugh Feeney, staged a hunger strike demanding to be transferred to prison in the North. Refusing food, he was force-fed 167 times in the course of a 205-day hunger strike.

“Pretty horrific stuff,” he recounts. Every time he was aggressively pinned down by several prison warders as his mouth was prised opened and a tube roughly shoved down his throat. Then a type of gruel was poured into him.

“We were later joined on hunger strike by IRA Volunteers Michael Gaughan and Frank Stagg from Mayo, both of whom died later in

I know it’s a bit of a cliché to talk of ‘the University of Long Kesh’ but it was important for us, as republicans, to develop our politics and learn from the experiences of others involved in anti-colonial struggles

English prisons,” he recalls, pausing in memory of them.

In April 1975, Kelly and Feeney were transferred to the Cages of Long Kesh while

Refusing food, he was force-fed 167 times in the course of a 205-day hunger strike police force in the Royal Ulster Constabulary and its loyalist allies who firebombed hundreds of Catholic homes along the Falls from Dover Street and into the Clonard, where Bombay Street was razed to the ground.

“This brought home to me,” says Gerry Kelly, “that the Orange state, as a Protestant state for a Protestant people, was irreformable at that time. “After internment was imposed in 1971, the British Army paratroopers killed 11 people in Ballymurphy. They were then deployed to Derry where they carried out the slaughter of peaceful civil rights protesters on Bloody Sunday. It became clear to me that there was no alternative but to take up arms.”

On 8 March 1973, IRA Active Service Units planted four bombs in the centre of London.

Two of the devices exploded: one outside the Old Bailey and another at Scotland Yard.

“The intent was to bring the message home to the door of the British Establishment,” says Kelly of the attacks in London “I was one of nine people convicted at

EARLY 1970s

GERRY KELLY was imprisoned for the first time in Dublin in August 1971 and jailed for two years. Within five months he had escaped from Mountjoy Prison.

He returned North and went on the run.

He was captured a second time in England in the aftermath of the Old Bailey bombings.

While in England, in Wormwood Scrubs Prison he made an unsuccessful bid for freedom.

Back in Ireland, having been repatriated after his hunger strike, he made another escape attempt, this time from Lagan Valley Hospital, where he had been taken for medical treatment.

Five years later, in 1982, he and three comrades were thwarted as they made their way to the perimeter of Long Kesh having evaded the security at their Cage.

Sent to the H-Blocks, Kelly was central to the success of ‘The Great Escape’, rocking the British political establishment to its core.

Dolours and Marian Price were moved to Armagh women’s prison alongside those republican women POWs with political status.

In the Cages, Kelly read a lot.

“I know it’s a bit of a cliché to talk of ‘the University of Long Kesh’ but it was important for us, as republicans, to develop our politics and learn from the experiences of others involved in anti-colonial struggles. I was still very focused on escaping, though.” He laughs: “I wanted back onto the streets and into the struggle again.”

It was after attempting to escape in 1982 with Peter ‘Skeet’ Hamilton, ‘Big Ned’ Maguire and Francis ‘Flakey’ McIlvenna that Kelly had his political status removed. He was transferred to the H-Blocks and ended up playing a central role in the 1983 escape.

The Great Escape had a huge impact on Gerry Kelly.

“One of the strangest things for me after the escape was the way in which I came across people from all political walks of life throughout the country — Fine Gael people, Fianna

EARLY 1980s

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DATELINE: 25 SEPTEMBER 1983 38 IRA prisoners smash their way out of the maximum-security H-Blocks of Long Kesh, considered one of the most escape-proof prisons in Europe

‘THE ESCAPE’ The definitive story of a spectacular IRA operation

5 Gerry Kelly is captured in the Netherlands in 1986 Fáil and Labour people — who were willing to help us. Houses and homes were opened up to us by people who did not see themselves as republicans but who understood why we were fighting.”

Gerry’s journey from Long Kesh to south Armagh and then on to the relative safety of Leitrim is part of legend, especially the weeks he and seven other escapees spent hiding under floorboards in the County Armagh town of Lurgan.

“We couldn’t move from the day we arrived, the day of the escape, until the day we were smuggled across the Border. It was unbeliev-

‘Fine Gael, Fianna Fáil and Labour houses and homes were opened up to us by people who did not see themselves as republicans but who understood why we were fighting’ able what the people of the house endured to protect us.”

Many of those who got away went to ground before reporting back to the IRA for active service.

Gerry Kelly disappeared until 16 January 1986, when he was captured in the Netherlands along with Brendan ‘Bik’ McFarlane in Amsterdam.

At the time of their arrest, cash in several currencies, maps and fake passports and the keys to a storage container holding 14 rifles, 100,000 rounds of ammunition and nitrobenzene for explosives were recovered by the Dutch Police.

On 4 December that year, the pair were extradited from the Netherlands into British custody. And the struggle continued.

AT the official launch of his book, Gerry Kelly told his audience in Cultúrlann Mac Adaim Ó Fiaich that “this is the closest to the truth of the 1983 escape from Long Kesh that we are likely to get”.

Having read the book it is clear that – for reasons of legality and security – what he said is true.

He could have added that while some things cannot be said, the reality is that the authenticity of Kelly’s writing means that this is the definitive story of what must be one of the most spectacular IRA operations of the conflict.

“Unprecedented detail,” says veteran Ireland commentator David McKittrick.

From the initial ideas for the break-out right through to the meeting of the IRA Army Council when the full escape plan got the green light and the nuts and bolts planning of the massive back-up operation by IRA Volunteers from the South Armagh Brigade, what we see is a co-ordinated military assault on the British Establishment that had far-reaching political ramifications.

Kelly’s account of that period is set firmly in a post-Hunger Strike Long Kesh still locked in the highly-charged atmosphere of five years of a brutal ‘Blanket Protest’, two hunger strikes and ten republican POWs dying in a struggle with an unyielding and brutal regime.

The H-Blocks still reeked of the viciousness of the prison regime, the callousness of the Thatcher Government and the arrogance of prison officers who beat, starved and degraded republican Blanketmen for years.

So as the authorities basked in their ‘victory’ with the ending of the 1981 Hunger Strike, the IRA was plotting the next phase of the struggle in the jails.

‘THE CLOSEST TO THE TRUTH OF THE 1983 ESCAPE FROM LONG KESH WE’RE LIKELY TO GET’

British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher’s visit to Canada was overshadowed by the news. ‘The Iron Lady’ was most unhappy at the international media spotlight being on the political conflict in the North of Ireland once again. “It is the gravest [breakout] in our present history, and there must be a very deep inquiry,” she told reporters through gritted teeth.

Kelly’s book recounts the meticulous planning and highlights both the ingenuity of the POWs and the very personal stories of those involved.

Through the pages, you feel the tension and the surge of adrenalin as the plan is put into action. The stakes were high not only for those going on the escape but those who were left behind — the rearguard.

Gerry Kelly focuses on the part played by the rearguard, those who held H-Block 7 until the

What we see is a co-ordinated military assault on the British Establishment that had far-reaching political ramifications On 25 September 1983, 38 IRA prisoners burst out of Long Kesh maximum-security prison, considered to be one of the most escape-proof prisons in Europe.

The political and military ramifications of the ‘Great Escape’ cut to the heart of the British political establishment.

5 The British Army mounts a checkpoint in Belfast searching for escapees following the break-out

very last minute to give their 38 comrades the best possible chance of getting away. These were men with very little of their sentences left to serve and the repercussions for them were immeasurable.

Another aspect of the story is the way in which the prison officers arrested by the POWs as they seized key locations in the escape plan were treated. None was gratuitously ill-treated despite the fact that among their number were some of those who had inflicted vindictive beatings on Blanketmen during the protest years.

Towards the end of the book, the author remembers those who were part of the operation who have since died.

Some of these returned to active service and lost their lives in IRA operations while others died of natural causes.

It is a reminder to us all that the story of our struggle is first and foremost a struggle of ordinary people who accomplished extraordinary things in extraordinary times.

• The Escape, by Gerry Kelly. Price £12.50 or €14.99. Available from the Sinn Féin Art Shop, 53 Falls Road, Belfast; and the Sinn Féin Bookshop, 58 Parnell Square, Dublin.

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The Irish Government’s complicity in global tax avoidance

DUBLIN BAG MAN IS THE

FOR MULTINATIONALS

BY CIARÁN QUINN

into the matter by the Oireachtas Finance Committee they eventually agreed but refused to ask any multinationals to attend and be questioned about tax affairs the questions that have been publicly put about Irishregistered companies in London and Washington.

There are countries that have very low or no Corporation Tax rates. There is a reputational cost with companies being associated with these states. The 26 Counties has a headline Corporation Tax rate of 12.5%. This is low but not a tax haven.

The issue of tax avoidance is not about the headline rate but the funnelling of funds through this state and into tax havens. It is about the Irish tax law and enforcement.

There are loopholes in company and tax law across many, many states. However, it is Irish

AT THE Clinton Global Initiative conference in New York in September, Bill Clinton raised the question of what actions companies could take to support development in Africa. Mo Ibrahim, a Sudanese-British mobile communications entrepreneur and billionaire (no raving Marxist he), pleaded that global companies should pay their taxes in Africa. “All those big companies don’t pay taxes in Africa. That is just not acceptable,” he said.

We as citizens and our businesses are expected to pay our taxes yet multinationals are facilitated to avoid paying much more tax

The Irish Times reported that the sainted Bono defended the Irish tax system and the use of Irish companies by mega-rich multinationals to reduce their global tax bills, saying that the state is “very pleased to compete on that front”.

While successive Irish governments might be pleased with the outcome of global tax competition, the same cannot be said for other states.

A US Senate hearing in Washington was told that Apple had a special arrangement that provided a 2% tax rate and one Irish subsidy had profits of over $40billion but was not tax resident anywhere in the world.

A Westminster parliamentary committee took Google to task for paying a minuscule amount of tax on revenues raised in Britain.

At the end of September, an Irish Google company had revenue of €15.5billion and paid €17million in Corporation Tax in the 26 Counties.

The response of government has been that it is not an Irish problem but a global problem.

When Sinn Féin Finance spokesperson Pearse Doherty TD called for a special investigation

tax law that allows a company to be established and registered here but classed as a tax resident elsewhere. These companies can gather up profits without any tax liability to the state.

There are two main ways in which global companies use Irish registered but non-resident companies to avoid tax. The first is straightforward enough.

They process all bills and payments through a company in the 26 Counties.

Google in Britain claimed that sales in Britain did not ‘happen’ in Britain but were completed in Dublin and so no local tax was due. This approach is replicated across many multinationals who have established global sales offices in the state. So a sale in Africa is completed in Dublin and is therefore not liable to tax in Africa.

The other method is transfer pricing. An example would be that a company in Ireland owns the rights to a product and sets up a company in Germany to sell that product in Germany. The German company makes a

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5 It is clear that the Irish Government is complicit in global tax avoidance profit of €10million, the Irish-registered company then bills the German company €10million for use of right to the product. Therefore, on paper the German company does not make a profit and no local taxes are due.

In global tax avoidance, the approach is to transfer international profits to Dublin and from there into a low tax or no tax haven – in the case of one Irish subsidy of Apple, into the ether.

The scale of tax avoidance is staggering.

In 2005, before the recession, taxable profits that were transferred out of the state state were €26.3billion. Through the downturn these profits were stable and in 2011 amounted to €26billion. Over the same period, royalties and licences out of the state (which are not taxable) more than doubled from

We need a fair and ethical tax policy €15.5billion in 2005 to €32.7billion in 2011. In addition, in 2011, €35billion was transferred out under the heading of “businesses services”. This is tax-free transfer pricing on a massive scale.

It is clear that the Irish Government is complicit in global tax avoidance. It is the competitive advantage that the state is keen to retain.

Ethically, there is no standing over these scheme. Taxes should be paid in the states where the revenue is raised. This is a particular issue in developing countries who are dependent on Corporation Tax to support vital public services and promote economic growth. There is also the issue of tax fairness.

We as citizens and our businesses are expected to pay our taxes yet multinationals are facilitated – and encouraged by the authorities – to avoid paying much more tax.

Leaving aside the moral and ethical issues (as is the want of many governments), the question remains as to the benefits of facilitating tax avoidance and its long-term sustainability.

Thoroughout the recession, successive governments have allowed the domestic economy to stagnate and focused on the

5IDA are filling vacancies from outside the state as they require foreign language skills at a native speaker level issue of international reputation with regard to any default on bondholders and exportdriven growth. Without a doubt, Ireland’s international reputation has been undermined by facilitating tax avoidance.

With regard to export-driven growth, exports and surplus (exports minus imports)

are at an all-time high, yet the domestic economy is flat. Export figures are above the previous high point of 2000-2002 but unemployment is three times the rate and emigration in through the roof. So exports are not delivering the scale of jobs growth required to tackle unemployment.

5 Pearse Doherty TD has called for a special investigation by the Oireachtas Finance Committee

This is most evident in the high-tech sector of information and communications where exports more than doubled from €19billion in 2006 to €40.5billion in 2012. Hidden within these figures are the bulk of royalty and licence payments that are non-taxable. Over the same period, employment in this sector rose by only 15%. Despite the scale of exports, it remains one of smallest employment sectors in the economy.

On an anecdotal level, many of the global payment and customer service centres now opened by multinationals and promoted and supported by IDA Ireland (the agency responsible for industrial development) are filling vacancies from outside the state as they require foreign language skills at a native speaker level. So the state is promoting jobs that cannot be filled. When questioned on the number of jobs announced that are recruited out of state or filled through internal company recruitment, IDA Ireland contend that they do not keep this information or that it is commercially confidential.

It is clear that states across the globe are seeking to act on tax avoidance. In that regard, the Irish Government’s position and approach is not sustainable.

The reliance on highly mobile customer service and payments centres is creating a bubble in the jobs market and in the national economic figures. A significant movement of finance due to the ending of tax avoidance will have the potential of reducing the paper GDP and so increasing the debt-to-GDP ratios with a consequential knock-on to the overall economy and borrowing.

Successive Irish governments have been content to be the fixer for multinational tax avoidance in exchange for highly mobile employment.

That is morally and ethically wrong and the short-term gain may not be sustainable. It would appear that the Government is continuing to live in denial about this and the international community is closing in. We need a fair and ethical tax policy.

The long-term growth of the economy is dependent on investment in our national competitiveness, our enterprises, our infrastructure and our education. Foreign direct investment should be the icing on the cake and not the key economic driver.

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Any man who claims to be a republican and gets involved in sectarianism is denying the real meaning of republicanism and has no place in our Movement. We appeal to the Protestant people of the North to join with us and let us go forward together to the New Ireland.

BY

BY MÍCHEÁL MÍCHEÁL Mac Mac DONNCHA DONNCHA

‘Freedom Struggle by the Provisional IRA’ MARTIN McGUINNESS, Bodenstown 1973, ‘Freedom Struggle’

BY the end of 1973, the armed conflict in the Six Counties had been going on for four years. British military repression in nationalist areas was intense and hundreds of Irish political prisoners were interned in Long Kesh and other prisons and hundreds more were held as convicted prisoners in the North, the 26 Counties and England.

Despite the intensity of British repression, republican resistance, spearheaded by the IRA, had gone from strength to strength since the formation of the Provisional Army Council in December 1969 and the beginning of its armed campaign in 1970. This followed attacks on nationalist districts by the RUC and loyalist mobs and the expulsion of many hundreds of nationalists from their homes and workplaces.

The one-party Unionist regime at Stormont would not deliver the reforms sought by the Civil Rights Movement. On the contrary, with the support of the British Army, redeployed in the Six Counties in strength in 1969, the unionist government reacted with violence, imposing internment without trial in August 1971. The murder of 14 nationalists in Derry on Bloody Sunday 1972 and the subsequent surge in support for the IRA forced the British government to abolish Stormont and introduce direct rule from Westminster.

An increasingly confident IRA won widespread support at home and

abroad. It called a truce and republicans held talks with the British Government in June 1972. British military and loyalist actions ended the truce and the IRA campaign resumed with numerous attacks on British forces across the Six Counties. In 1973, the campaign was extended to England, with scores of bombings taking place that year.

The intensity of the war, republican confidence and the belief that British withdrawal from the Six Counties was achievable in a short time were all reflected in a major publication by the IRA in June 1973.

Freedom Struggle by the

Provisional IRA was a book that detailed the course of the struggle since 1969 from the republican viewpoint. It gave the Irish historical background, outlined previous IRA campaigns, set out the Provisional IRA position on the split in the IRA and Sinn Féin in 1969/70, and narrated the conflict from 1970 until the middle of 1973.

At this time, Sinn Féin was banned in the Six Counties, republicans were legally barred from TV and radio in the 26 Counties and self-censorship was extensive in print and broadcasting media in Ireland and Britain. Thus it was felt that (in addition to the weekly republican newspapers, An Phoblacht in Dublin and Republican News in Belfast) a susbstantial publication was needed to state the republican position.

Freedom Struggle carried all the main IRA statements from 1970 until 1973. It gave the background to the truce and defended IRA actions before and after it. It also carried commentary on the political manoeuvres of the British and Dublin governments and the unionists. It stressed the nonsectarian nature of Irish republicanism, repeating the words of Martin McGuinness at Bodenstown that year: “Any man who claims to be a republican and gets involved in sectarianism is denying the real meaning of republicanism and has no place in our Movement. We appeal to the Protestant people of the North to join

5 ‘Freedom Struggle’ gave the background to the truce and defended IRA actions

emembering R

with us and let us go forward together to the New Ireland.”

Freedom Struggle was banned and treated as an illegal document on both sides of the Border. People were charged and convicted for possession of it. However, it was estimated that up to 20,000 copies were sold. The defiant spirit it reflected was also seen in the helicopter escape by three IRA leaders from Mountjoy Jail in October 1973.

The changing nature of British counter-insurgency and harsh political realities, North and South, would soon mean that republicans had to critically re-assess British Government intentions and IRA strategy; but at the end of 1973 the prevailing republican

5 ’Freedom Struggle’ outlined previous IRA campaigns, set out the IRA position on ‘the Split’ in 1969/70, and narrated the conflict from 1970 until the middle of 1973

outlook was summed up in the closing words of the introduction to Freedom Struggle: “Finally, a warning to the Tory Government of Great Britain. The Provisionals, as you already know from talks in the past, will never go cap in hand to London. They are not an army in disarray or fatigued; in fact they speak from a pinnacle of proficiency and strength never before enjoyed by Irishmen at war with England. Prime Minister Heath and others would do well to take cognisance of these facts.”

the

Past

• Freedom Struggle by the Provisional IRA was published 40 years ago in 1973.

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BOOK REVIEW

EOIN Ó MURCHÚ

The Hidden Ireland in Liverpool

Céard is fiú Foras na Gaeilge mura bhfuil acmhianní aige le obair a dhéanamh?

BÍONN an rialtas ag maíomh i gcónaí go bhfuil siad taobh thiar den straitéis fiche bliain don Ghaeilge, ach ag an am céanna tá siad ag gearradh siar ar gach aon chaiteachas atá riachtanach don straitéis.

Bunchloch na stratéise is ea an coras gaelscolaíochta, ach tá Foras na Gaeilge i ndiaidh stop a chur leis an deóntas a bhíodh ar fáil ag eagraíocht na naíonraí — sa gcaoi go bhfuil fadbanna airgeadais anois ag gach naíonra sa tír.

Tá go maith maidir le oideachas saor ó smacht eaglasta — agus fáiltímse roimhe sin — ach is léir nach bhfuil aon spéis ag an Aire Oideachais Ruairí Quinn sa ngaeloideachas, ná ag an Roinn Oideachais ach an oiread.

Tá Foras na Gaeilge ag cur stop freisin le scéimeanna pobail a thugann acmhainní do eagraíochtaí le cúrsaí gaeilge a chur chun cinn go háitiúil ar fud na tíre.

Leanfar leis an scéimeanna reatha go cionn bliana eile, ach ina dhiaidh sin ní fios an mbeidh aon scéim eile ann.

Eascraíonn dhá cheist as seo: ar dtúis, cén chaoi gur féidir an gníomh ar an talamh a réiteach le dea-chaint an rialtais maidir leis an straitéis Gaeilge; agus sa dara háit, céard is fiú Foras na Gaeilge mura bhfuil na hacmhainní aige aon obair a dhéanamh, agus gur gearradh siar an t-am ar fad an t-aon ghnó atá in ndán dó. Ó thaobh na hiriséóireacht ar ndóigh, níl aon chomharba ar Ghaelscéal ocht mí i ndiaidh gur básaíodh an nuachtán sin. Sampla eile den easpa fiúntais a bhaineann le Foras na Gaeilge.

Tá gá le athbhreithniú fírinneach ar obair an Fhorais, is cheana fein ta eagraíocht pobail atá le bheith thíos de bharr na gcinnithe is deireannaí seo ag pleanáil freagra aontaithe le fearg an phobail a mhúscailt is a chur in iul go forsúil don rialtas.

A Hidden History – Irish in Liverpool An Ghaeilge i Learpholl

By Tony Birtill Reviewed by Mícheál Mac Donncha I HAD the privilege this year to address a commemoration in Liverpool marking the centenary of the founding of the Irish Citizen Army. It was organised by Cairde na hÉireann in that city and during my visit I learned of the fascinating Irish heritage and enduring Irish connection with the Merseyside metropolis.

Tony Birtill’s book tells what has been, up to now, the truly hidden history of the Irish language in Liverpool. He argues convincingly that the extent to which 19th cen-

The fascinating historic and enduring Irish connection with Merseyside

Insan Ghaeltacht, ta an scéal mar an gcéanna. Níl aon fheabhas ar mhaoiniú Raidió na Gaeltachta, tá deacrachtaí ag dul i mead maidir le féidhmiú na gaelscolaíochta ann is ní fiu labhairt faoi scéimeanna teangan ag leibhéil áitiúla Tá an Seanadóir Trevor Ó Clochartaigh ag iarraidh ar an Aire Dinny McGinley míniú a thabhairt ar fhaillí na Roinne san cásanna seo, ach tá gá go labhródh gach eagraíocht Gaeilge amach faoin scéal sula mbeidh sé ró-dhéanach.

IN PICTURES

5 Parents for Equal Access to Education (PEAE) are joined by Cork Sinn Féin elected representatives Jonathan O’Brien TD, Councillor Thomas Gould and Councillor Mick Nugent to protest at the Edmund Rice Schools Trust calling for the reinstatement of its original admissions policy to allow students in a Cork school to continue their education through Irish

tury Irish emigrants to Liverpool and other cities in Britain and the communities they founded were Irish-speaking has been greatly underestimated.

Wave upon wave of Irish exiles in Liverpool spoke Irish and continued to speak their native language. However, as in Ireland, the dominant political, social and economic forces were Englishspeaking and soon overwhelmed the Irish language. Yet traces of Irish remain in the Liverpool dialect of English; for example the word ‘wack’, a term of familiar

address to people you meet and deriving from the Irish phrase ‘a mhac’ (‘son’).

Birtill chronicles this Liverpool story but his book does much more.

This little volume is in itself a potted history of the decline of the Irish language in the 19th century and its revival at the start of the 20th. There are many interesting sidelights on Irish history and many interesting characters. It is worth having alone for the appendix arguing why it is right to describe the Great Hunger as attempted extermination of the mass of the Irish-speaking peasantry by the British system in Ireland.

The Irish language is still alive in Liverpool today and it was a pleasure to speak it with Tony and others when I was there this year.

Go néirí leo cois Mersey i gcónaí.

photos@anphoblacht.com

5 Former Mayor of Béal Feirste and Sinn Féin Councillor Niall Ó Donnghaile speaks at the AGM of the Mairéad Farrell Republican Youth Committee in Belfast City Hall

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BY ROBERT ALLEN FATHER OLIVER KENNEDY was always going to be a tough act to follow. For 50 years he devoted his life to maintaining a centuries-old tradition. Now it is Pat Close’s chance – and many aren’t giving him one.

Every night between May and October, DHL ship boxes of live eels packed in ice from Belfast International Airport to Heathrow and Schipol, sent by the Lough Neagh Fishermen’s Co-operative Society on Bannside in Toomebridge.

Now the lough is serene, the eels are in their

e c n a h c a s l e e e Giv

habitat, the fishers are out of their boats, and the markets for this unique Irish resource are secure.

The season is over for another year.

Pat Close doesn’t get sleepless nights worrying about the emerging problems that might threaten this valuable industry, like disappearing eels, ageing fishers and bureaucratic conservationists.

He is a positive man and, like Father Kennedy before him, he embraces the future with a purpose, just like the eels, who are no longer a mystery, always a delicacy, especially in London where they go to make jellied eels and in Amsterdam where they go to make smoked eels.

Two years ago, the Lough Neagh eel received ‘Protected Geographical Indication’ status. This is an

When eel fishers were being prosecuted for fishing on Lough Neagh, they turned to Fr Oliver Kennedy official stamp that recognises a food product’s unique place in the lives of people and place.

But it is this past year that has been significant.

Like the eels who make a 4500-kilometre trip twice during their lifetimes, the fishers of Lough Neagh are celebrating a salient fact – they have come a long way in 50 years.

It’s mid-morning and the fish shop on WestKruiskade in the centre of Rotterdam is selling out of smoked eels. The demand these days always seems to exceed the supply. Lovers of this treat are worried.

Pat Close insists they have nothing to worry about. He sends the same message out to those who have been predicting the end of the Lough Neagh eel fishery.

“We are in a unique situation in that we are in control. We have a commercial operation to run and

the goal is to support our members and the sustainability of the fishery.”

Close was Father Kennedy’s ‘second-in-command’ for 25 years. Born in Toome into a farming background, he gave up a good job as an advisor in the Department of Agriculture, accepting the call of the eels.

Like everyone in the area, he knew about the crash. Two years before he joined the co-op, the young eels migrating along the Gulf Stream from the Sargasso Sea, off the coast of Florida, didn’t turn up.

After years of between eight and fifteen million eels coming into the Bann at Coleraine every year, the number was down to 726,000. Father Kennedy couldn’t understand it.

It was a global problem. Every estuary in Europe

6 Sinn Féin Agriculture Minister Michelle O’Neill with the late Fr Oliver Kennedy at Lough Neagh Fishermen’s Co-operative Society

that attracted eels saw a decline. In response, Father Kennedy knuckled down, just as he had done before when the lives of eels and fishers first came into his life.

It was 1963. Eel fishers were being prosecuted for fishing on Lough Neagh. When they attempted to assert their moral rights to fish the lough the courts rejected their argument. They turned to Father Kennedy.

He learned that the fishing rights were held by Toome Eels Fisheries. They leased them from Lord Shaftesbury, whose family had been awarded them by the English crown in the 17th century, following ‘The Flight of the Earls’. He urged the fishers to set up a co-op.

Then he went to Toome Eels Fisheries for licences . . . then he went back for shares . . . then he took a seat on their board . . . and then, in December 1971, he announced the co-op had enough shares to buy the

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Dutch smoked eels The fishing rights were leased to them from Lord Shaftesbury, whose family had been awarded them by the English crown in the 17th century, following ‘The Flight of the Earls’

An oily fish rich with omega 3, the Dutch eat more smoked eel than fresh eel.

Dutch eel-smokers only smoke the fatter fish, because it tastes better. This is a typical dressing for smoked eel.

1 small cucumber, chopped 6 blades of chive, chopped Half a lemon, juiced 2 tablespoons basil, torn 1 tablespoon soy sauce 4 tablespoons olive oil Salt and pepper

company.

The fishers were in control of their own destiny and for two decades, with Father Kennedy quick to establish new markets in England and the Netherlands, they saw a sustainable future for themselves and the eels.

To alleviate the problems caused by the crash, the co-op bought young eels. This is now an issue for Pat Close. “We aim to buy five to six million annually; cost varies on average £300,000 to £500,000.”

Europe and Belfast provide two-thirds of that funding but next year the local element expires and Pat Close sees this as a “genuine concern” and more

ROBERT ALLEN gives us a flavour of Lough Neagh’s eels, regarded as the best in Europe of a threat to their survival than the noises coming from Europe about eel conservation.

“If these proposals were passed by the EU there would be an impact on us but the EC have come up with their own measures, more palatable to everybody.

“Lough Neagh is a commercial fishery being exploited, not over-exploited, and in order to maintain the intensity we need to maintain that stock, not only would that affect our business it would have an impact on the eels stock of Europe.

“If we weren’t here the eels would be depleted.

This is a finite resource and needs to be managed.

We let 40% go back to the Sargasso Sea.” The real issue, Close insists, is local. No new licences have been issued for 20 years and this presents him with a conundrum. At its peak there were 200 boats licensed to go out on the lough; now there are 113. A hundred on the lough is the limit and will remain so while eel stocks are low.

Because the costs of running a boat is high, the fishing has remained with the families who have the tradition, passing from father to son. This knowledge base and the skills that go with it, Close acknowledges, are the key to the future of eel fishing on Lough Neagh.

With a turnover of £3million a year, the vast majority going into the local community, he knows the fishers and the fish must be sustained. And with the fishers getting older, Close wants to see younger people involved but fears the seasonal nature of the work and the long days are a deterrent.

“They go out after 4am, all out together, they look after each other. A couple of hours to lift the lines, grade out the young eels, back in for 7:30am, into the co-op at 8:30, and go out at midday again, to continue a couple of hours, running lines, quite a long day. And I would like to see more young people in it.”

In the Netherlands, they hope so too. They know what Close knows.

“Lough Neagh eels are unique: the flesh is perfect for smoking, which is why they are regarded as the best in Europe.”

Now he is determined to open up the market, ready for the next season. Who says he hasn’t a chance?

Fresh eels with radicchio and ricotta Soak peas for 12 hours in cold water. Fry most of the onion, all of the carrot and celery, in oil, add the peas and water to cover, cook peas until tender. Blend, then pass through a fine sieve to remove skins. Make an emulsion with oil. Spoon into an ovenproof dish and keep warm in a 75°C oven.

If your eels are whole, peel, gut and fillet. Place the fillets between greaseproof paper and flatten. Season fillets with salt and pepper.

Fry the remaining onion in butter until transparent, add the radicchio and braise in the red wine. Leave to cool, add ricotta and egg, mix thoroughly.

Place this stuffing in the centre of each fillet, roll tightly, wrap in foil and cook in the stock for 15 minutes.

Arrange the creamed peas on a warmed plate, placing the stuffed eels on top.

800g eels, fresh 200g black-eyed peas 150g radicchio/chicory 120g ricotta cheese 40g red wine 40g onion, chopped 25g celery, chopped 25g carrots, chopped 40 g olive oil 20g butter 1 egg Fish stock

Jellied eels Spread the eels in a bowl with the coarse sea salt, leave for ten minutes, then rinse the salt off.

In a large saucepan, bring the bay leaves, eels, onions, peppercorns, salt and vinegar to the boil, turn heat to low and simmer until the eels are tender, about 30 minutes with Lough Neagh eels.

Remove the eels, leave to cool.

Reduce the remaining stock by two-thirds. Strain, add carrageen and lemon juice, reduce until the seaweed has melted. Strain again and leave to cool.

Cut the eels into the desired sizes, place in jars with the stock, the cooked onions and peppercorns on top.

Put in fridge or a cold place to set.

For a richer flavour use a fish stock and add herbs, spices and vegetables.

1kg eels, peeled, gutted, filleted 600ml water/fish stock 3 onions, sliced 3 bay leaves 30g sea salt, coarse 5g sea salt, crushed 30ml white wine vinegar 1 lemon, juiced Black peppercorns, handful Carrageen, handful Carrots (optional) Celery (optional) Herbs (optional) Nutmeg, grated (optional)

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Lenin’s man in Scotland

BY PHIL MAC GIOLLA BHÁIN SO MUCH of John Maclean’s story will resonate with Irish republicans – the trumped-up, politically-motivated charges; the speech from the dock that indicts the powerful; the hunger strike in prison and a grassroots campaign for his release.

In Glasgow, the city of John Maclean’s birth, in 2013 there are food banks and without them there would be the prospect of real hunger while Scotland continues to provide young men to die in Westminster’s imperialist adventures.

The proud country annexed in a Hanoverian Anschluss in 1707 has yet to step back into the community of free nations. However, it can do so next year if the people of Scotland so wish it.

Maclean, a Glaswegian born to Highland parents in 1879 who graduated as a schoolteacher in 1904, advocated a Scottish republic free from the imperialists in London. Like his comrade James Connolly, Maclean believed that political separation from England was worthless without creating a Scotland where everyone was valued and cared for.

As a Marxist educator within these islands he is without equal, but he was no armchair theorist. He was out there on the streets. Here was a genuine hero who gave his life’s breath for a greater good. When the British state threatened violence on the working class of Glasgow in 1919, MacLean had a slogan: “Keep Bellahouston Hospital empty!”

Bellahouston had been earmarked to accept the casualties that the authorities were expecting as Glasgow was a tinderbox of revolutionary sentiment. Local soldiers were confined to their barracks in the Maryhill area of Glasgow. The British state feared that some would desert and disappear with their government-issued Lee Enfield rifles to join up with a politicised working class.

Tanks were moved to the city and Maclean did not want to give the state the excuse to massacre demonstrators and strikers. He had the measure of the sociopaths who ruled from Whitehall. Moreover, he had the evidence of their attitude to human life after the imperialist slaughter on the Somme and their response to Easter Week 1916.

He well knew of the British state’s capacity for appalling violence and the scant regard they had for working-class lives, especially those from the ‘Celtic fringe’.

90th ANNIVERSARY OF DEATH OF SCOTTISH REVOLUTIONARY SOCIALIST

John Maclean 24 AUGUST 1879 – 30 NOVEMBER 1923

On Friday 31 January 1919, there was rioting in George Square in Glasgow over the ‘40 hours general strike’, a trade union campaign to move the working week back to 40 hours from the war-time 54 hours.

The British Government deployed troops to ‘keep order’.

While the top brass feared that Glaswegian soldiers would defect to their kith and kin, some Irishmen in the British Army would do exactly that in Ireland and leave to join the ranks of the IRA. Maclean’s pamphlet, The Irish Tragedy: Scotland’s Disgrace, published in 1920, is a trenchant critique of Scottish complicity in British military crimes against the Irish people.

This was the age of ‘Red Clydeside’ and Maclean was Lenin’s man in Scotland. In January 1918, Maclean was elected to the chair of the Third All-Russian Congress of Soviets and a month later appointed Bolshevik consul in Scotland. He was tried for sedition in 1918

Like his comrade James Connolly, Maclean believed that political separation from England was worthless without creating a Scotland where everyone was valued and cared for

5 A USSR postage stamp issued to mark the 100th anniversary of Maclean’s birth

5 Maclean speaks from the dock in 1918

and his speech from the dock, which lasted over an hour, went into the folklore of the Scottish Left.

“I am not here, then, as the accused; I am here as the accuser of capitalism dripping with blood from head to foot.”

Maclean was sentenced to five years’ penal servitude in Peterhead prison, near Aberdeen.

People did not see him as a criminal.

He went on hunger strike in the July of that year and was force-fed repeatedly. This caused outrage and Forward (a radical newspaper in Glasgow) asked in an editorial:

5 ‘Keeping order’ – British troops and tanks are deployed on George Square in Glasgow City Centre

“Is the Scottish Office to be stained with a crime in some respects even more horrible and revolting, more callous and cruel, than that which the governors of Ireland perpetrated on the shattered body of James Connolly?”

Following the Armistice on 11 November 1918, he was released on 3 December, returning to a huge welcome from cheering crowds in Glasgow.

When he breathed his last at the scandalously young age of 44, in 1923, his funeral was one of the biggest ever seen in Glasgow.

On this, the 90th anniversary of his untimely death, there can be no doubt that his message of political independence from London and social justice is as relevant today in Scotland as it was when he was welcomed back to Glasgow in 1918 as a hero from a British prison.

Maclean’s pamphlet, ‘The Irish Tragedy: Scotland’s Disgrace’, is a trenchant critique of Scottish complicity in British military crimes against the Irish people

• Phil Mac Giolla Bháin’s new book, Minority Reporter: Scotland’s bad attitude towards her own Irish, is available from the Sinn Féin Bookshop in Dublin.

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This is funded by the European United Left/ Nordic Green Left (GUE/NGL)

Aontas Clé na hEorpa/Na Glasaigh Chlé Nordacha Crúpa Paliminta – Parlaimimt na h Eorpa

Philippines devastation underscores effects of climate change TYPHOON HAIYAN – and the appalling devastation it has caused in the Philippines, laying waste to entire communities and leaving 4,000 people dead and more than 1,000 missing – has been attributed to climate change by the head of the United Nations, amongst others.

Climate change must be addressed at international level by everyone.

I am the Shadow Rapporteur for the draft report on the 2030 Climate Framework and have just submitted 35 amendments to the report.

It is essential that governments in industrialised countries take robust steps to meet climate change targets. Large areas of the globe are already experiencing man-made climate change and it is the developing nations that are bearing the brunt of its negative effects.

Scientists such as those involved in the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) forecast more heat-waves, floods and rising sea levels as a result of climate change with evidence linking human activity to extreme weather and droughts leading to crop failures and wildfires or hurricane-strength megastorms.

The COP19 climate change conference in Warsaw (11-21 November) was infiltrated by big corporations pushing for false solutions to climate change such as carbon markets, coal and CCS, shale gas, agro-fuels, and nuclear energy.

Scientists forecast more heat waves, floods and rising sea levels as a result of climate change, extreme weather and droughts leading to crop failures and wildfires or hurricanestrength mega-storms

These vested interests should not be allowed to set an agenda which comes at the expense of climate justice.

A study by the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research and the University of Madrid reports that the frequency of extreme heat waves will double by 2020 and quadruple by 2040. The EU’s current Greenhouse Gas GHG

reduction target, therefore, is dangerously inadequate at only 20% by 2020.

One of the amendments I submitted called for the Commission, when introducing legislation regarding hydraulic fracturing to include a mandatory Environmental Impact Assessment for both exploration and extraction of shale gas.

Renewables (wind, solar and sustainable hydro and controlled sustainable bioenergy) are the only inexhaustible, safe and technologicallyviable energy sources.

It is claimed that increased production in solar electricity attributed to a decrease in short-term electricity prices of up to 40% in Germany in 2011 compared to 2007.

Government should incentivise investors in renewable solutions that will cut Europe’s emissions at the required rate envisaged by scientists to improve energy security and save money for consumers and businesses alike.

It is crucial to include citizens in decisions about our energy future. Local people should be involved at every stage and their support and approval should be solicited before planning permission is granted.

Another Europe is possible

Martina Anderson MEP is a member of the GUE/NGL Group in the European Parliament

International Commission of Inquiry into the case of the Cuban Five – Law Society, London, 7 & 8 March 2014

Sign the online petition for the Cuban Five AN ONLINE PETITION in support of the Cuban Five (sometimes known as the Miami Five) is garnering signatures from across the world of leading political, social, trade union and human rights figures as well as members of the public outraged by the jailing of Cuban anti-terrorism agents by the USA. The ‘Voices for the Five’ petition includes many prominent people in the US, including Noam Chomsky and former US Attorney General Ramsey Clark as well as Sinn Féin Foreign Affairs spokesperson Seán Crowe TD on behalf of the party.

The drive is ahead of the ‘International Commission of Inquiry into the case of the Cuban Five’ to be held at the Law Society in London on 7 & 8 March next year.

Among those who have already pledged their support to the inquiry are the International Association of Democratic Lawyers, lawyers Lord

5 The Cuban Five – René González, Ramón Labañino, Fernando González, Gerardo Hernández and Antonio Guerrero Anthony Gifford QC and Michael Mansfield QC, novelist John Le Carré, actors Emma Thompson, Julie Christie and Roger Lloyd Pack, John Pilger and Sinn Féin President Gerry Adams TD (on behalf of Sinn Féin) among a number of TDs. Also supporting the initiative are

the Irish Congress of Trade Unions, Unite the union, Communication Workers’ Union of Ireland, and Unison.

The Cuban Five – Gerardo Hernández, Ramón LabaĖino, Fernando González, Antonio Guerrero and René González — had

infiltrated Cuban exile groups in Florida that had either carried out or were planning attacks against Cuban targets. They were arrested by the FBI in Miami in 1998 on espionage charges and sentenced to between 15 years and life. Four are still held in prison; one has been

www.voicesforthefive.com/voices/

released but with heavy restrictions.

The two-day Commission of Inquiry in London in March will convene a group of internationallyrenowned commissioners drawn from legal, human rights, political and academic backgrounds and organisations. The commissioners will hear first-hand evidence from a number of key witnesses on the case, personal experiences of terrorism against Cuba, and the role of US-based organisations in these terrorist acts.

The findings from the commission will be presented to the US authorities and directly to President Barack Obama.

It is a public event and will run concurrently with a full programme of rallies, exhibitions, screenings, media and cultural events, including a gala concert, panel discussions and VIP receptions.

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‘LANGUAGE ISN’T JUST ABOUT THE SPOKEN WORD . . .

IT IS ABOUT THE WAY PEOPLE SEE THEMSELVES IN THE WORLD; IT IS ABOUT IDENTITY’

LANGUAGE, RESISTANCE AND REVIVAL

The importance of culture in struggle psychological process as “the most important area of domination”.

Ngugi wa Thiong'o, in his Decolonising the Mind: The Politics of Language in African Literature, writes: “Colonialism imposed its control of the social production of wealth through military conquest and subsequent political dictatorship. But its most important area of domination was the mental universe of the colonised, the control through culture, of how people perceived themselves and their relationship to the world. Economic or political control can never be complete without mental control.”

In his Wretched of the Earth, Franz Fanon talks of this as assimilation.

He maintains that in those colonies where the “colonised people” found themselves “face to face with the language of the civilising nation; that is with the culture of the mother tongue”, this assimilation was at its most relevant and manifested itself in the imperial education system, where control of language epitomised the hierarchical power structures of colonialism.

PEADAR WHELAN, a former political prisoner who learned much of his Irish in Long Kesh, opens up a challenging debate on the back of the recent publication of Feargal Mac Ionnrachtaigh’s new book, Language, Resistance and Revival: Republican Prisoners and the Irish Language in the North of Ireland.

The subject of the book is the revival of the Irish language and the importance of the republican prisoners in that revival but, Peadar Whelan argues, it develops “a polemic around resistance and revival tied into our struggle against Britain’s rule in our country over the centuries”.

THERE ARE powerful forces in the political and media establishments as well as an apathetic attitude to the language in society at large and the education system in particular which make the task of promoting Irish very difficult.

Opposition and the barriers to the Irish language have to be seen in the context of Britain’s colonial domination and destruction of the Irish language and culture as a central part of its subjugation of the Irish nation.

For republican prisoners, whether they were imprisoned in Frongoch after the Easter Rising of 1916, through the fallow years for republicanism after the Civil War to the Cages of Long Kesh and the prison protest that took place in the H-Blocks and Armagh Women’s Prison, education was always political.

Speaking and promoting Irish is always political.

In his introduction to Feargal Mac Ionnrachtaigh’s book, Phil Scraton of Queen’s University School of Law quotes Nelson Mandela.

Speaking of his time on Robben Island, Mandela says: “The challenge for every prisoner, particularly every political prisoner, is how to survive prison intact, how to emerge from prison undiminished, how to conserve and even replenish one’s beliefs.

“The first task in accomplishing that is learning exactly what one must do to survive.

To that end, one must know the enemy’s purpose before adopting a strategy to undermine it.

“Prison is designed to break one’s spirit and destroy one’s resolve. To do this the authorities attempt to exploit every weakness, demolish every initiative, negate all signs of individuality – all with the idea of stamping out that spark that makes each of us human and each of us who we are.”

‘Colonialism imposed its control of the social production of wealth through military conquest and subsequent political dictatorship. But its most important area of domination was the mental universe of the colonised, the control through culture, of how people perceived themselves and their relationship to the world. Economic or political control can never be complete without mental control’

Ngugi wa Thiong’o KENYAN ANTI-COLONIAL WRITER

Nelson Mandela’s words go to the heart of the narrative of Mac Ionnrachtaigh’s book.

The revival of the Irish language and promotion of Irish culture is, for me, about challenging a globalised pop culture that is essentially about cloning people and societies, killing what makes each of us human and turning nations into repositories of dominant ideologies.

This is most obvious in the way the media in Ireland interprets international events through the prism of a dominant western worldview.

Many people are infatuated with the lives of sports and pop or TV and movie stars and media ‘celebrities’.

It is more ‘cool’ now to call your child Tyler rather than Tomás as parents bow to the world of soap opera grandiosity.

At a supposed ‘high-brow’ level we have revisionist Ruth Dudley-Edwards attacking Ken Loach over his film The Wind That Shakes the Barley, saying that “as empires go, the British version was the most humane of all. With all its deficiencies, it brought much of value to most of the countries it occupied”.

Feargal Mac Ionnrachtaigh, quoting Kenyan anti-colonial writer Ngugi wa Thiong’o, describes this

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Feargal Mac Ionnrachtaigh at art installation Teanga-Aisling an Phobail on Belfast's Falls Road.

The piece welcomes visitors to the Gaeltacht Quarter and celebrates the Irish language. It speaks of a resilient and compassionate community full of hope and optimism. A people as strong as the stone.

The imposing stone labyrinth is inspired by the St Brigid's cross and stands in a pocket park adorned with Belfast place names from Ráth Cúile (Rathchoole) to Bóthar Seoighe (Shaws Road).

Artist Robert Ballagh and architect Ciarán Mackel collaborated with Irish-American artist Brian O'Doherty in the creation of the work.

South African revolutionary Nelson Mandela

Irish-language scholar Douglas Hyde

Kenyan anti-colonial writer Ngugi wa Thiong’o

Irish-language writer Máirtín Ó Cadhain

Writing in 1892, Douglas Hyde, the founder of the Gaelic League, identified the crucial connection between the need to revive the language and deanglicisation as steps towards decolonisation: “I have no hesitation at all in saying that every Irish-feeling Irishman who hates the reproach of West-Britonism should set himself to encourage the efforts which are being made to keep alive our once great national tongue. The losing of it is our greatest blow and the sorest stroke that the rapid anglicisation of Ireland has inflicted upon us. In order to deanglicise ourselves we must at once arrest the decay of the language.”

Both the Gaelic League and the GAA, according to Mac Ionnrachtaigh, “envisaged the emancipation of the Irish poor from the ‘dehumanisation, degeneracy and depoliticisation’ of existing athletics clubs”.

This deliberate project of decolonisation, asserts Gearóid Ó Tuathaigh in Language, Ideology and National Identity, was designed to undo “the shame of defeat, dispossession, humiliation and impoverishment the classic colonial condition”.

This enhanced interest in “nationalist ideas”, as Mac Ionnrachtaigh labels them, also coincided with a developing interest in socialist ideology and labour politics, as exemplified by James Connolly and Jim Larkin.

According to Mac Ionnrachtaigh, Connolly drew inspiration from the past and argued for a united ideological front that would enable the reconquest of Ireland in the future based on what he viewed as the culture, fellowship and co-operative ideals of Gaelic civilisation.

When the Easter Rising took place in April 1916, the link between the Rising and the Gaelic League was underpinned by the fact that six of the seven signatories of the Proclamation were members and all but two of the League’s Coiste Gnótha were involved in the Rising.

That the Rising is universally recognised as a defining moment in the Irish revolution is beyond doubt, while Russell Rees argues in Ireland between 1905 and 1925 that “the Gaelic resurgence was the revivifying force which made possible the Easter Rising”.

Sadly, in the aftermath of the Civil War and the defeat of radical republicanism, any hope that the language and the wider cultural

Language, Resistance and Revival: Republican Prisoners and the Irish Language in the North of Ireland

by Feargal Mac Ionnrachtaigh.

Published by Pluto Press.

Available through Pluto and the author as well as An Ceathrú Poilí in Cultúrlann McAdam Ó Fiaich, 216 Bothár na Bhfál, An Cheathrú Ghaeltachta, Béal Feirste, BT12 6AH. www.culturlann.ie SEE ALSO

An Ghaeilge i Long Kesh

LE SÉANNA BREATNACH AN PHOBLACHT, DEIREADH FOMHAIR 2012

revival would flourish were dashed.

Writing in An Phoblacht in 2006, Sinn Féin’s Aengus Ó Snodaigh maintained that, despite the genuine efforts of language enthusiasts to promote Irish in the newly-formed state, “the unionist ascendancy and a pro-British, colonial mentality retained control of most state institutions”, thus enshrining the hegemony of a reactionary Free State.

In the North, unionist hostility, past and present, is summed up by Liam Andrews in his The Irish Language in the Education System of Northern Ireland: Some Political and Cultural Perspectives.

He maintains that the unionists have viewed the Irish language and those advocating its revival as a threat, as an “anti-British counter-culture dominated by republican separatists” and that promoting Irish was “sedition and disloyalty under another name”.

Of course, “sedition and disloyalty” are badges of honour for republicans and the unresolved national question saw many people imprisoned during the different phases of struggle against partition.

And for those in prison, resistance and education went hand in hand.

Learning Irish was central to that not least because of republicans’ commitment to the language. It was also part of a process of conscientisation, of becoming aware that the British imperialist project involved military, political, economic and cultural strategies.

That the educational experiences of republican prisoners inspired unprecedented numbers of people to learn Irish is testament to their resistance and their commitment to change.

Setting the Irish language in the context of colonisation/decolonisation underpins the political ideological imperative for its revival.

Language isn’t just about the spoken word; it is about the way people see themselves in the world; it is about identity.

Former Curragh internee and Irish language teacher Máirtín Ó Cadhain in his often-quoted phrase says: “Is í athgabháil na Gaeilge, athgabháil na hÉireannagus í athgabháil na hÉireann slánú na Gaeilge.”

The reconquest of Irish is the reconquest of Ireland and the reconquest of Ireland is the salvation of Irish.

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Former An Phoblacht Editor’s library donated to NUI Galway

Deasún Breatnach AN APPRECIATION

news bulletins printed in their tens of thousands on Gestetner machines and distributed free door to door were widely used. But the main vehicles of republican publicity were Republican News based in Belfast and An Phoblacht based in Dublin. Deasún was one among many very brave men and women who wrote, designed, laid out and distributed these papers.

He had a sharp intellect, boundless energy and commitment, and was a prolific writer.

He worked long hours to earn a living and raise his family. At the same time he gave freely of his time and experience and writing skills to produce An Phoblacht.

BY GERRY ADAMS DEASÚN BREATNACH was an extraordinary man. His wife Luci (Lucila Hellman de Menchaca) was equally special and together they had six talented and gifted children: Diarmuid, Osgur, Caoilte, Oisín, Cormac and Lucilita.

Deasún lived his life to the full and that is reflected in the 11 books he wrote and in his significant and valuable library of hundreds of books on history and literature, on culture and the Irish language, heritage and folklore that the family recently presented to Acadamh na hOllscolaíochta, NUI Galway.

The Acadamh is charged with promoting higher education through the medium of Irish and works in the Irish communications sector, with a particular reference on journalism.

Deasún would have applauded their decision.

Instead of gathering dust in boxes they will now find renewed life on the shelves of Galway University and play their part in influencing and shaping future generations of journalists and writers.

Deasún was many things – a poet, a novelist, a writer, a political activist, a socialist republican, a Gaelgéoir and a journalist. He was a father and grandfather and musician.

He was also passionate about the co-operative movement and an active member of Conradh na Gaeilge.

Deasún wrote music and children’s stories; was an editor and linguist who published in Irish, English and Spanish.

DEDICATED LANGUAGE ACTIVIST

all found themselves arrested, dragged off to an interrogation centre, abused and briefly before the Special Criminal Court, before being sent off to Mountjoy or Portlaoise prison.

Deasún’s son Osgur was a victim of this process and of the infamous Garda ‘Heavy Gang’.

Deasún became editor of An Phoblacht again in 1977 for two years. In that year the entire editorial staff and the SDLP printer of

the Belfast-based Republican News were arrested by the RUC and British Army and imprisoned before the charges were dismissed.

Official censorship in the South through Section 31 and unofficial censorship in the North meant that republicans had to work hard to promote and defend our political analysis.

There was no social media – no YouTube or Twitter or Facebook or Internet. Local

A LIFE IN NEWSPAPERS At differing times in his life he worked for most of the main newspapers and when he eventually retired he was a sub-editor for the Irish independent. He used many pen names, including Mac Lir, Dara Mac Dara and Rex Mac Gall Section 31.

Deasún was a member of Sinn Féin and on two occasions was editor of An Phoblacht.

He stepped up to the plate in 1973-74 when Éamon Mac Thomáis was imprisoned under the Offences Against the State Act. It was a dangerous and difficult time to be a republican activist and especially a very public activist editing An Phoblacht. Almost

5 Ita Ní Cionnaith and Gerry Adams with Lucilita and Diarmuid Breathnach

READ MORE AT www.leargas.blogspot.ie

In 2004, in a letter slamming some politicians for criticising the provisions of the Official Languages Act as a ‘monumental waste of money’ Deasún in a short paragraph wrote a manifesto for action on the Irish language and on equality for this generation of activists.

He wrote: “Let us please be clear on this. All we Irish-speakers seek is equality, opportunity for equality, official standing for equality, active, obvious and growing countrywide equality, in print, on radio, on TV, on public spending, in the Oireachtas, at local authority level, during elections, in church and in public wherever people gather for business or pleasure. All human beings are entitled under human rights to a respect for their own dignity and, likewise, for their languages, including Irish.”

In 1966, when the Irish Government was celebrating the 50th anniversary of the Easter Rising, Deasún was one of an Irish language activist group – Misneach – who challenged the record of the state at what they described as its “non-achievement of the aims of the signatories of the Proclamation”. They went on hunger strike for a week and picketed the GPO to highlight their campaign.

Micheál Mac Aonghusa, who was also a member of Misneach, said he did not believe that ‘those who died in that Easter week died to have their names celebrated but rather their aims achieved.’

He and Luci were among those who founded the first Gaelscoil in Dublin – Scoil Lorcáin, in Monkstown.

Deasún died at the age of 85 on 3 October 2007.

Tragically for the family it was also the day they were burying their mother.

Luci Bhreatnach was a political activist in her own right working in Amnesty International, the Irish anti-Apartheid Movement and the Irish Council for Civil Liberties.

Together they were a formidable couple.

I want to thank Diarmuid, Osgur, Caoilte, Oisín, Cormac and Lucilita for making this important donation of books to Galway University.

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I nDíl Chuimhne 1 December 1975: Volunteer Laura CRAWFORD, Cumann na mBan, Belfast; Volunteer Paul FOX, Belfast Brigade, 2nd Battalion.

2 December 1984: Volunteer Antoine Mac GIOLLA BHRIGHDE, County Derry Brigade; Volunteer Ciaran FLEMING, Derry Brigade.

3 December1973: Volunteer Joe WALKER, Derry Brigade.

4 December 1972: Fian Bernard FOX, Fian Seán HUGHES, Fianna Éireann.

4 December 1983: Volunteer Brian CAMPBELL, Volunteer Colm McGIRR, Tyrone Brigade.

5 December 1975: Volunteer Terry BRADY, North Armagh Brigade.

6 December 1975: Volunteer James LOCHRIE, Volunteer Seán CAMPBELL, South Armagh Brigade.

6 December 1984: Volunteer Danny

All notices and obituaries should be sent to notices@anphoblacht.com by Friday 13 December 2013

“LIFE SPRINGS FROM DEATH AND FROM THE GRAVES OF PATRIOT MEN AND WOMEN SPRING LIVING NATIONS.” Pádraig Mac Piarais DOHERTY, Volunteer Willie FLEMING, Derry Brigade.

7 December 1974 Volunteer Ethel LYNCH, Volunteer John McDAID, Derry Brigade.

7 December 1987: Volunteer Peter RODDEN, North Antrim Brigade.

8 December 1971: Volunteer Tony NOLAN, Belfast Brigade, 3rd Battalion.

10 December 1975: Volunteer David KENNEDY, North Armagh Brigade.

15 December 1972: Volunteer Louis LEONARD, South Fermanagh Brigade.

15 December 1973: Volunteer Jim McGINN, Tyrone Brigade.

Comhbhrón MULLANE. Deepest sympathy is extended to Councillor Melissa Mullane and family on the death of her father Neily. From the Andy O’Sullivan Sinn Féin Cumann, Mallow.

WARD. Sincere sympathies are extended to the Ward family on the death of their mother Marie. From Cabra Sinn Féin, Dublin.

17 December 1971: Volunteer Charles AGNEW, North Armagh Brigade.

17 December 1984: Volunteer Seán McIlVENNA, North Armagh Brigade.

18 December 1971: Volunteer James SHERIDAN, Volunteer John BATESON, Volunteer Martin LEE, County Derry Brigade.

21 December 1971 Volunteer Gerald McDADE, Belfast Brigade, 3rd Battalion.

21 December 1974 Volunteer Brian FOX, England.

24 December 1973 Volunteer Brendan QUINN, Newry Brigade.

24 December 1973 Volunteer Edward GRANT, Newry Brigade.

24 December 1982 Volunteer Phil O’DONNELL, Derry Brigade.

27 December 1971 Volunteer Jack McCABE, GHQ Staff.

27 December 1972 Volunteer Eugene DEVLIN, Tyrone Brigade.

29 December 1972 Volunteer James McDAID, Derry Brigade.

30 December 1990 Volunteer Ferghal CARAHER, South Armagh Brigade.

30 December 1991 Volunteer Damien BROLLY, Donegal Brigade.

Always remembered by the Republican Movement.

KENNA, Seán. In proud and loving memory of my dear husband Seán.

» Notices All notices should be sent to: notices@anphoblacht.com at least 14 days in advance of publication date. There is no charge for I nDíl Chuimhne, Comhbhrón etc.

Missed every day. From his wife Eileen and all the family.

KENNA, Seán. In proud and loving memory of our friend and comrade Seán Kenna whose anniversary occurs at this time. Always remembered by the Halpenny/Worthington/Watters Sinn Féin Cumann, Dundalk.

McDADE, James. In proud memory of Volunteer James McDade, killed in action in England, 14 November 1974.

Always remembered by Eilish McGettigan and family, Shannon, County Clare.

MUCKIAN, Pat; SHIELDS, Ann. In proud and loving memory of our friends and comrades Pat Muckian and Ann Shields whose anniversaries occur at this time. Always remembered by the Halpenny/Worthington/Watters Sinn Féin Cumann, Dundalk.

» Imeachtaí There is a charge of €10 for inserts printed in our Imeachtaí/Events column. You can also get a small or large box advert.

Contact: sales@anphoblacht.com for details.

Fógraí Bháis

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2013 NATIONAL HUNGER STRIKE COMMEMORATION EVENTS IN MONAGHAN 2nd, 3rd & 4th AUGUST 2013

5 The remains of Derry republican Caroline Moore arrive back home

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5 Declan and Caroline Moore

Caroline Moore Derry City DERRY CITY Sinn Féin Councillor Kevin Campbell has extended the heartfelt condolences of republicans in Derry and the North-West to the Moore and McConnell families on the sudden and tragic death at home of Caroline Moore on Sunday 17 November at the age of 49.

“We extend our heartfelt condolences to her husband Declan, a former POW, her children and the McConnell and Moore families,” Kevin said in a statement.

“Caroline was a lifelong republican and stalwart of the struggle. She was someone republicans could always rely on.”

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BETWEEN THE POSTS ONE EQUAL TEMPER OF HEROIC HEARTS

30 December / Nollaig 2013

www.anphoblacht.com

THE

STRANGE, how the mood-state of a nation can be affected so dramatically by sport. Ireland’s spirited defeat in rugby union by the New Zealand All Blacks in Dublin inspired an afterglow which warmed hearts (if not frozen fingers and feet) across the 32 counties.

It was reminiscent of the moment when Katie Taylor won Ireland’s gold medal at the 2012 Olympics.

Then there was an outbreak of hysteria and emotion which was utterly incredible. Scenes of thousands of people in the street to greet the homecoming of our Olympic champion.

Perhaps the sense of national identity and euphoria apparent in many sporting occasions is something to beware of. After all, it is only sport. But social scientists know that values and expectations can be moulded and influenced by sporting events as much as by any social gathering. So what is the problem?

One of the greatest intellects of our generation, Noam Chomsky, derides the influence of sport as a “crucial example of the indoctrination system . . . It offers people something to pay attention to that’s of no importance. That keeps them from worrying about things that matter to their lives that they might have some idea of doing something about.”

As ever, Chomsky pricks our minds softly with his probing insights. The muffled public response in Ireland to the banksterism of the current Dublin government could be invoked to support his thesis. Eighty-three thousand people can swarm into Dublin on All-Ireland Sunday but a fraction of that number have joined public protests against the economic decimation of many parts of Ireland and in which Cumann Luthchleas Gael has itself suffered collateral damage.

There can be little doubt that men’s sport still dominates the media, and male sports people are afforded a higher status — and often higher earnings.

Compare the profile given to sportspeople competing at national and international level and the differential treatment of women is rife.

But you daren’t ask the coaches or officials why that’s the case (they’re mostly men too). So, is sexism and inequality simply part of sport, or are

BY CIARÁN KEARNEY

5 Rob Kearney sprints in Ireland’s third try from 80 metres out they cultivated and insinuated through our sports?

It could be (and has been) argued by some that the national fervour surrounding sporting events is an outward expression of jingoism and supremacism. The recent twitter tirade against Irish soccer star

James McClean is another example.

Last year he chose not to wear a poppy and was subjected to a barrage of abuse through print and social media. This year, Wigan didn’t field him on Remembrance Sunday and the abuse reignited. ‘Poppy fascism’ seems to be especially infec-

tious amongst sports fans, especially soccer. Likewise sectarianism.

Belfast playwright Marie Jones cleverly examined this through the play A Night in November. It was located in Belfast 20 years ago.

Ireland, North and South, played against one another in a world cup

The trick is to inhale the passion and energy of sport without the toxic fumes

qualifier in Windsor Park. I remember seeing the play with Dan Gordon acting as ‘Kenneth McCallister’, a dole official who rejoiced in the fact that he could keep jobless Catholics waiting in a queue. For sport, Kenneth went to Windsor Park with his father-in-law.

The play potently depicts how sectarian taunts and racist filth was flung at players from the terraces in Windsor Park. So repulsed is he by what he witnessed in the behaviour of his friends and family that Kenneth turned away from ‘his own’.

He came to see himself as ‘a Protestant and an Irishman’. For the uninitiated, this drama about Windsor Park may have seemed melodramatic. But those who ventured there know the sense of menace which pervaded the place. My father once smuggled myself and my two younger brothers into a game there. We all had aliases for the evening. I’ve never been back to Windsor Park since then.

Two decades later, sport in Ireland is in rude health. This year, Rob Heffernan became the World Champion in 50km. Martyn Irvine won a world title in cycling. The Ireland’s women’s rugby team won the Triple Crown. My own hinterland of south-west Antrim celebrated Tony McCoy’s 4,000th win on horseback. William Porterfield became the first batsman to reach a century in cricket for Ireland. The team he captains went on to reach the World Cup final. Of course, no recap of sport this year would be complete without hailing the irrepressible Cork women’s Gaelic team, the inexhaustible male footballers of Dublin, and the indomitable young hurlers of Clare.

Without disputing Chomsky’s thesis, I think we can have our cake and eat it when it comes to sport. The trick is to inhale the passion and energy of sport without the toxic fumes. In that way, improbable feats in other walks of life might even be possible. Sport is something to enjoy, even to inspire. Like this quote from Tennyson’s Ulysses: That which we are, we are; One equal temper of heroic hearts, Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

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December / Nollaig 2013 31

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anphoblacht NEXT ISSUE OUT – Thursday 2nd January 2014 32

Parties in power during finance crisis should be included in European Parliament probe, says Pearse Doherty TD

Fianna Fáil should face test with Troika

BY MARK MOLONEY THE European Parliament is to investigate the “non-transparent” work of the EU Commission, European Central Bank and International Monetary Fund officials (commonly referred to as ‘The Troika’) overseeing spending cuts in the bail-out countries of Ireland, Greece, Portugal and Cyprus.

The unelected officials who were sent into the bail-out states were tasked with advising the respective governments on implementing Budget cuts and harsh austerity policies.

The work of private consultancies involved with the Troika will also be put under the spotlight after it emerged that the Cypriot Central Bank governor — who is also a member of the European Central Bank’s governing

‘I look forward to replies from the Taoiseach and current Minister for Finance but questions should also be asked of Fianna Fáil as the governing party who surrendered the state to the bail-out’ council — agreed to a multi-million “success fee” for a private New York-based consultancy firm involved in the restructuring of the Cypriot banking sector.

The Parliament’s Economic and Budget

Committee says special attention should be paid to “possible evidence of disfunctioning Troika decision-making”.

Sinn Féin Finance spokesperson Pearse Doherty has welcomed the probe but has

called on it to extend beyond simply the current governments in each state. “Questions need also to be addressed to Fianna Fáil as the government of the time of the important decisions,” the Sinn Féin TD said.

Pearse also outlined how Sinn Féin contributed to the questionnaire which will be circulated to governments, EU institutions and the IMF. “These questions include asking the political leaders of each country why they decided to request a financial assistance programme and what role and function they played in the negotiation and set-up of the financial assistance programme for your country,” he said.

“Clearly these are important questions that have never been fully answered in an Irish context. I look forward to seeing the replies from the Taoiseach and current Minister for Finance but these questions should also be asked of Fianna Fáil as the governing party who surrendered the state to the bail-out.”