Towards a United Ireland NATIONAL CONFERENCE
TAKE A STAND FOR IRISH UNITY
12 noon Saturday 21st January Mansion House, Dublin
anphoblacht Sraith Nua Iml 40 Uimhir 1
Price €2 / £2
January / Eanáir 2017
No return to status quo at Stormont
MARTIN McGUINNESS RESIGNS AS R E T S I N I M T S R I F JOINT BLANKETMEN Remembering protesting POWs
THE KILMICHAEL AMBUSH Turning point in Tan War
SINN FÉIN IN PALESTINE Speaking to Fatah & Hamas
2 January / Eanáir 2017
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'There can be no return to the status quo' MARTIN McGUINNESS BY MICHAEL McMONAGLE FOR A DECADE, Martin McGuinness has been at the head of the Northern Executive, driving Sinn Féin’s agenda in the political institutions in the face of great challenges. Prior to 2007, when Sinn Féin went into the Executive alongside the Democratic Unionist Party, the political institutions were led by the SDLP and the Ulster Unionist Party. Through his leadership of the Assembly, Martin McGuinness and fellow Sinn Féin ministers have delivered the
Martin McGuinness has taken courageous initiatives. He has taken major steps towards reconciliation and to deliver equality longest period of sustained government in the North since the establishment of the political institutions. Martin McGuinness has taken courageous initiatives to promote and defend the political process and political institutions in the North. He has also taken major steps towards reconciliation and to deliver equality. He did so against a backdrop of negativity and disrespect from the political institutions from the DUP and a British Government that has totally failed to live up to its responsibilities under the Good Friday Agreement and successive agreements. The growing political crisis was brought into sharp focus by the scandal around the DUP’s handling
of the Renewable Heat Incentive (RHI). Allegations of corruption, incompetence and wastage of public money in relation to the design, operation and 5 Martin McGuinness has shown leadership and partnership throughout closure of the controversial scheme Gerry Adams, Martin McGuinness have undermined public confidence and other senior Sinn Féin leaders in the political institutions. reiterated this call to Arlene Foster. Sinn Féin has consistently called At a meeting of Sinn Féin activists in for an independent investigation into Belfast on Saturday 7 January, Gerry the scandal to get to the truth of what Adams said that unless Arlene Foster happened. That investigation must be steps aside “then Sinn Féin will bring time-framed, robust, led by a judicial this ongoing and totally unacceptable figure and have powers to compel state of affairs to an end”. witnesses and evidence. On Monday 9 January, following In early January, Sinn Féin submitted Arlene Foster’s refusal to stand aside, draft “Terms of Reference” for such an Martin McGuinness took the decisive inquiry to the DUP and the Attorney step to resign as deputy First Minister in General. protest at the DUP’s handling of the RHI Sinn Féin also called on Arlene Foster scheme and attitude to power-sharing. to step aside (without prejudice) as First Announcing his resignation, the Minister to allow for an independent Derry MLA said it was “time to call a investigation to complete a preliminary halt to the DUP’s arrogance”. 5 With Reverend Harold Good at the report into the RHI scandal. This move by Martin McGuinness launch of 'Uncomfortable Conversations'
5 Martin McGuinness worked well with DUP leader Ian Paisley
5 With the Sinn Féin ministerial team at Stormont – striving to make politics work
is likely to prompt a new Assembly election. If an election is the outcome, the returning Assembly will have major issues to deal with. Sinn Féin has been clear that there can be no return to the status quo that led to this point of collapse in confidence and co-operation. Post-election, there will need to be an attitudinal change from both the DUP and the British Government to ensure fully-functioning political institutions based on equality. The British Government has totally failed to live up to its commitments under the Good Friday and successive agreements. It has failed to address the legacy of the past in terms of addressing the legacy of the conflict; it has failed to introduce a Bill of Rights, it has failed to introduce an Irish Language Act;
Martin McGuinness has made it clear that the public need to have confidence in the political institutions and it has failed to establish an inquiry into the murder of human rights lawyer Pat Finucane. It has undermined the political institutions through its dogmatic pursuance of austerity and its determination to drag the people of the North out of the EU against the will of the people. In short, it has lost any claim it may have made to be a moral guardian of the Good Friday and subsequent agreements and the political institutions they helped to create. The Irish Government – a co-guarantor of the Good Friday Agreement with the British Government – stood by and allowed this to happen. This undermining of the Agreements and institutions provided cover for the DUP to disregard and disrespect the political institutions. They were given cover to continue to block marriage equality legislation, a Bill of Rights, an Irish Language Act and a host of other issues. Martin McGuinness has made it clear that the public need to have confidence in the political institutions and that can only be achieved when all parties in the Executive, including the DUP, genuinely embrace the principles of power-sharing and partnership government.
5 Martin McGuinness lays a wreath at the Somme, one of his many acts to foster reconciliation
January / Eanáir 2017
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Martin McGuinness resigns WHAT THE LEADERS SAY Martin McGuinness MLA
“Over the last ten years I have worked with DUP leaders and reached out to unionists on the basis of equality, respect and reconciliation. “Over this period, the actions of the British Government and the DUP have undermined the institutions and eroded public confidence “Sinn Féin will not tolerate the arrogance of Arlene Foster and the DUP.”
Gerry Adams TD
“Martin McGuinness has led from the front in
the Executive for the last ten years, defending the integrity of the political institutions and realising the potential of the Good Friday Agreement. “He has worked with successive DUP leaders and is recognised throughout the North, across Ireland and across the world for his leadership and peacemaking. “In spite of the provocation, disrespect and arrogance from the DUP – and the failures of the British Government to fulfill its responsibilities over that time – Martin McGuinness has always put the people and the political process first.
“This is in contrast to the DUP, who have been acting to undermine equality and partnership.”
SDLP leader Colum Eastwood MLA
“We agree with Martin McGuinness when he tells us the DUP have disrespected the nationalist community.”
Irish Foreign Minister Charlie Flanagan TD
“The Irish Government is very mindful of the need to protect the integrity of the
principles and institutions of the Good Friday Agreement. “In this regard, both the effective functioning of those institutions and respecting the principles of partnership and equality are of critical importance.”
British Secretary of State James Brokenshire MP
“The position is very clear. If Sinn Féin does not nominate a replacement to the role of deputy First Minister, then I’m obliged to call an election of the Assembly within a reasonable period.”
WHAT THE PAPERS SAY Irish Examiner
“Leaving aside, if that is possible, the terrible division, injustice and violence that scarred the North for so long, Ms Foster has a case to answer. She is compromised by a conflict of interest and her position is untenable until the full facts are established. “Her intransigence and Mr McGuinness’s resignation are tragically rooted in the past, one that has little enough to do with wasteful fuel schemes.”
Irish Times
“[Martin McGuinness’s] resignation on Monday is in this instance a proper response from a man who, in his own words, ‘has served 10 difficult and testing years in the role of Deputy First Minister’, to a shambles that may yet cost Northern taxpayers some £490million. And which has exposed the hollowness of formal power-sharing and of the idea of collective responsibility in the Executive. “These are principles that had been difficult for Sinn Féin to swallow – to expect it now to behave as if they were insignificant would be ridiculous. “The legal checks and balances incorporated in the structure of Stormont’s Executive
Office, specifically the co-equal standing of both ministers, impose a special onus on Ms Foster, which she has blatantly ignored, to work hand in hand with Mr McGuinness in dealing with such a problem.”
Irish News
“Martin McGuinness’s resignation yesterday showed Sinn Féin had run out of patience with their DUP partners in government. “The Renewable Heat Incentive scandal was one scandal too many, just as the unnecessary decision to cut a small Irish-language bursary was one slap too far for those looking for signs that the DUP under Arlene Foster had a genuine commitment to equality and mutual respect.”
Irish Sun
“McGuinness’s return to the fray yesterday was marked by a decisive move. Although frail in voice, he spoke strong words which appeared to leave the DUP hanging. “Whatever way you look at it, the 'cash for ash' scandal is an outrage. “Arlene Foster gambled that she might be able to stay in power – but now she will likely face an electorate, many of whom will not have approved of her refusal to stand down.”
4 January / Eanáir 2017
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anphoblacht Editorial
WHAT'S INSIDE 6
The 1972 killing of ‘Official IRA’ leader Joe McCann and the Tory fightback against Para prosecutions 9 WARNING! The articles on this website are likely to be fake, false or misleading OK
‘Fake news’ – Is it news? 10 & 11
Michael Mansfield QC delivers McGurk’s Bar Memorial Lecture 14
‘Farewell, Fidel’ – Gerry Adams in Cuba 22 & 23
European Parliament: Apple under fire, ‘super trawlers’, Britain’s Brexit agenda, militarising the EU 26 & 27
THE
POLOITFICS FOO D 30
Do we really need another new party on the Left? 31
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Stormont brought down by DUP arrogance STORMONT’S Executive Government was brought down by the sheer weight of the arrogance of the Democratic Unionist Party under Arlene Foster and their refusal to truly embrace the challenges of power-sharing.
Martin McGuinness has led from the front in the Executive for the last ten years, defending the integrity of the political institutions and realising the potential of the Good Friday Agreement.
Martin McGuinness’s commitment to power-sharing was unquestionable. It is still unquestionable. It was recognised by that most famous of DUP leaders, Ian Paisley, who formed an unlikely yet successful partnership with Martin McGuinness.
The Sinn Féin leader at Stormont has proved that he can work with leaders of the DUP, including Ian Paisley and Peter Robinson.
Arlene Foster is no Ian Paisley. The Renewable Heat Incentive scandal was the straw that broke the camel’s back. The DUP leader point-blank refused the common-sense request that she stand aside while an independent investigation was carried out into an out-of-control financial disaster presided over by Arlene Foster as minister. Under Arlene Foster’s leadership, DUP ministers have been allowed to not only hollow out the Good Friday Agreement but also to poke the nationalist community in the eye at every opportunity. Coat trailing became the norm for ministers in the DUP who seemed to hanker for the unionist-dominated Stormont regimes of the past and still resent ‘having a Fenian about the place’. It was that old unionist Stormont mentality and policies that sparked the Civil Rights movement in the Six Counties which was brutally suppressed by the state’s paramilitary police and the unionism from which the DUP and the Ulster Unionist Party grew. In the face of DUP obduracy, Martin McGuinness was left with little option but to take a stand. It was not a decision taken lightly by him.
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He is recognised across Ireland and across the world for his leadership and peacemaking. Elections are now inevitable – but after the elections the parties have to make politics work and strive to restore people’s belief that the institutions can deal with the issues affecting their everyday lives, including Tory rule from Westminster and Brexit. Successive British governments have failed to live up to their responsibilities about delivering effective mechanisms dealing the past, a Bill of Rights and Acht na Gaeilge. Their actions have helped the DUP in unionist attempts to frustrate commitments made in successive negotiations processes. The Irish Government has stood and watched this happen. In addition, the British Tory Government imposed cuts to the Northern budget that are felt right across public services. The imposition of Brexit, against the will of the people, will impact on our economy and on all our community, not just in the Six Counties but across the island of Ireland. The Irish and British governments, as co-guarantors of the Good Friday Agreement, have a role to play. They have international obligations. They cannot stand idly by. They should not play at being spectators. Sinn Féin is committed to power-sharing – is political unionism truly committed to power-sharing and making it work?
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 contact the Editor first. An Phoblacht, Kevin Barry House, 44 Parnell Square, Dublin 1, Ireland Telephone: (+353 1) 872 6 100. Email: editor@anphoblacht.com
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January / Eanáir 2017
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IN PICTURES
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Le Trevor Ó Clochartaigh D’fhéadfadh rud ar bith tarlú go polaitiúil i 2017, ach an bhfuil muid réidh chuige?
Bliain lán dúshláin, bliain lán dóchais IS CRÍONNA an té a dhéanfadh tuar ar céard a thitfeas amach i saol na polaitíochta as seo go ceann bliana. Go deimhin, tá neart cainte ar an méid a thit amach i 2016 nach raibh súil leis, ach d’fhéadfadh an pátrún sin leanúint, nó go bhfillfeadh cúrsaí ar phátrúin níos traidisiúnta i rith na bliana seo chugainn.
Tá Angela Merkel faoi bhrú ollmhór sa Ghearmáin agus í ag druidim i dtreo olltoghcháin. Í faoi ionsaí maidir lena cuid polasaithe ó thaobh inimircigh de agus in ainneoin tacaíocht a bheith aici ó comhleacaithe stairiúla san Eoraip, beidh jab aici na cosa a thabhairt léi agus ag Dia amháin atá fhios cén tionchar a bheadh aige sin ar Aontas na hEorpa ar fad. Beidh athrú ar cheannaireacht na Fraince chomh maith agus deacair a rá ar sa lár, ar chlé nó ar ag eite fíor-dheis ar fad a bheidh an chraobh sa gcomórtas áirithe sin. Má eiríonn le Francois Fillon agus na Poblachtánaithe is féidir a bheith ag súil le móran an cur chuige céanna ó thaobh na hEorpa de. Is beag barúil atá ag daoine do na Sóisialaigh, a bhfuil an tóin titithe astu faoi Hollande agus duine dár iar-réalta Emmanuel Macron ag caint ar seasamh mar neamhspleáigh. An bhfágfaidh sin an bealach níos éasca do Marine Le Pen agus lucht na h-eite deise cleas Trump a dhéanamh agus an lá a thabhairt léi? Dá dtarlódh sin, níl aon amhras ach go n-athrófái dreach na hEorpa ar fad mar thoradh air. Beidh olltoghcháin san Isiltír, sa tSeirbia, sa tSlóivéin, i bPoblacht na Seice agus san Ungáir freisin. Tabharfaidh siad sin léargas níos cruinne ar cé chomh leathan is atá an dearcadh frithimirceach ag leathnú agus ag buanú sna tíortha eile ar fud na coigríche. Beidh toghcháin áítiúla i Sasana, in Albain agus sa Bhreatain Bheag i mí na Bealtaine chomh maith. Slat tomhais a bheidh iontu seo maidir le ceannaireacht Jeremy Corbyn ar Pháirtí an Lucht Oibre agus an mbeidh
cosmhuintir an pháirtí ag déanamh dul chun cinn sna comhairlí áitiúla in aghaidh lucht oidhreachta Blair, a bhí chomh glórach i gcoinne Corbyn ag an leibhéal náisiúnta, ach gur thug gnáth bhaill an pháirtí droim láimhe dóibh. In Albain beidh le feiceáil an mbeidh aon teacht aniar ag an Lucht Oibre faoi Corbyn freisin, i gcoinne láidirú damanta Páirtí Náisiúnta na hAlban faoi cheannaireacht Nicola Sturgeon. Ár ndóigh, tá Theresa May in ainm is tús a chuir go foirmeálta le próiséas na Breatimeachta roimh deire mí na Márta agus tiocfaidh fuadar ollmhór faoin idirbheartaíocht leis an Aontas Eorpach ina leith seo. Beidh brú ollmhór ann maidir leis tionchar a bheidh aige sin ar fad ar an gaol idir Éirinn agus an Bhreatain agus todhchaí na sé chontae ins an leagan amach seo ar fad. Tá an saol corrach go maith ó thaobh an
5 Sinn Féin Councillor Sarah Holland, Home Sweet Home spokesperson Dean Scurry and Sinn Féin Councillor Chris Andrews stand behind activists occupying Apollo House in Dublin
5 Michael Culbert of prisoners' group Coiste na n-Iarchimi with Sinn Féin's Mickey Brady MP and Liadh Ní Riada MEP and Basque MEP Josu Juaristi at an international conference on cross-border co-operation held in the Basque Country
Is cinnte go bhféadfadh nithe eile gan coinne teacht aniar aduaidh ar na páirtithe bunaidh i 2017 Chomhthionóil de agus ó thaobh agus ní féidir a bheith cinnte nach dtitfidh na h-institiúid sin as seo go ceann bliana. Tá cos dhá chuir i dtaca ag Arlene Foster maidir leis an scannal faoi ‘Cash for Ash’ agus neamhchinnteacht go leor ann maidir lena ceannaireacht agus tacaíocht Shinn Féin de mar Chéad Aire. Agus arnó, cá bhfios céard a tharlóidh sa 26 Contae? Níl aon tsúil mhór ag daoine i dTeach Laighean go mbeidh na postaeir toghcháin le crochadh againn go ró-luath, ach cá bhfios céard a tharlóidh. Tá comhrialtas feidhmeach Fianna Fáil agus Fine Gael ag cloí daingean go leor le chéile, in ainneoin go bhfuil an chuid is mó de na cannaí dhá chiceáil síos an bóthar agus gur beag dul chun cinn atá dhá dhéanamh go praiticiúil ar ghéarchéimeanna sláinte, tithíochta agus eile acu.
5 Cork Sinn Féin TDs Pat Buckley, Donnchadh Ó Laoghaire and Jonathan O'Brien enjoy their copy of 'Holly Bough', a seasonal feature of Christmas in Cork
6 January / Eanáir 2017
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The 1972 killing of ‘Official IRA’ leader Joe McCann and the fightback against Para prosecutions
‘Magical legalism’: How the British disguise their illegality as legal BY PEADAR WHELAN THE REACTION of Tory politicians and their media mouthpieces to the news of two British paratroopers being charged with the 1972 killing of ‘Official IRA’ leader Joe McCann has exposed the colonial mindset of the British Right. In an extraordinary attack on the North’s Director of Public Prosecutions, Barra McGrory, Tory MP and former Defence Minister Sir Gerald Howarth described the DPP’s decision to press charges against the soldiers as an “unjust and immoral decision taken
‘The key question for the political system was to find ways to ensure the protection of state agents in conducting counter-insurgency operations by making, if required, what might otherwise be illegal, legal’ by a man who represented ex-IRA commanders . . . potentially with blood on their hands [who] are in government and enjoy immunity from prosecution”. Howarth, who represents the primary British Army garrison of Aldershot, where the Parachute Regiment has its HQ, made his comments in a letter to British Prime Minster Theresa May and published in the Daily Mail. He demanded that “these prosecutions be stopped” and that McGrory be “removed from office”. Howarth and fellow Tory MP Sir Henry Bellingham, in highlighting the fact that McGrory had represented Martin McGuinness and Gerry Adams while practising as a solicitor, were
5 UUP MLA Doug Beattie
5 DUP MP Ian Paisley Jnr
5 10 August 1971: Joe McCann silhouetted by the flames in the Markets (and right)
clearly finding the senior law officer ‘guilty by association’ as they set out to discredit him and his office. It has emerged that two former British paratroopers (identified only as “Soldier A” and “Soldier C”) were to face charges of “murder” over the killing of McCann, who was unarmed when he was shot repeatedly at close range near the Markets area of Belfast in April 1972. Since then, the reaction of the British Right and Northern unionists has been fierce in its demand for the British Government to intervene, in the words of DUP MP Ian Paisley Junior, “to prevent a witch-hunt against former soldiers”. As with Howarth and others of a similar mindset, Paisley is clearly demanding a political intervention from the British Government that will trump the rule of law. Ulster Unionist Party MLA Doug Beattie, a former British Army officer who holds the Military Cross for active service in Afghanistan, wrote an opinion piece in the Belfast News Letter. The politician gave a hat-tip to the principle that “anyone who broke the law
should face the law” but – in applying the Kitsonian view of the law in counter-insurgency situations (see below) – the career soldier went on to write that “there is absolutely no account taken of context or the conditions under which the security forces were operating”. The reaction of the British Right to the decision to proceed with charges against the two former paratroopers is linked to the wider campaign against investigations into the actions of British troops in Afghanistan and Iraq as well. Reflecting this, Defence Secretary Michael Fallon told a Commons
Defence Sub-Committee that probes into the actions of British soldiers in the North of Ireland, Afghanistan and Iraq conflicts would not be allowed to turn into witch-hunts. And, in a worrying example of an influential Tory MP playing fast and loose with the Fresh Start Agreement, Kris Hopkins, a junior minister in the Northern Ireland Office, speaking at a debate in Westminster Hall on 13 December, claimed that historic investigations in the North had focused “disproportionately on the security forces instead of the terrorists” but this would change with the new Historical Investigations Unit set up under the Fresh Start Agreement. The one certainty in this is that British and unionist politicians are determined to ensure that their narrative of the conflict is the dominant one, with the actions of British armed forces – including the shooting dead of unarmed individuals – portrayed as being within the law as defined by counter-insurgency mastermind Brigadier Frank Kitson.
THE KITSON DOCTRINE BRIGADIER FRANK KITSON, who served in the North of Ireland in the early 1970s and commanded the Parachute Regiment based in Holywood Barracks, County Down, advocated the distortion of the law and legal system to defeat “insurgents”. In his essay Collusion, Counter-insurgency and Colonialism: The Imperial Roots of Contemporary State Violence, Mark McGovern of Edge Hill University outlines how this was applied in the North. He quotes Kitson’s own words in his manual, Low-Intensity Operations: Subversion, Insurgency & Peacekeeping:
“The law should be used as just another weapon in the Government’s arsenal, and in this case it becomes little more than a propaganda cover for the disposal of unwanted members of the public.” McGovern explains how this was “entirely in keeping with a ‘peculiarly British way’ of counter-insurgency” and “the key problem was to ensure the civil authorities generated a juridical order that allowed state agents to do ‘what was necessary’ to preserve its interests. “The key question for the political system was to find ways to ensure the protection of
state agents in conducting counter-insurgency operations by making, if required, what might otherwise be illegal, legal.” McGovern also uses the phrase “magical legalism” from Stanley Philip Cohen’s States of Denial: Knowing About Atrocities and Suffering as a way of describing how the British and unionists hold themselves up as committed to the rule of law yet, when it comes to the crunch (as in the case of the killing of Joe McCann), they blur if not erase the lines to justify the shooting dead of an unarmed man.
January / Eanáir 2017
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DUP axing of Líofa Gaeltacht bursary scheme in line with party policy outlined by Arlene Foster prior to 2016 Assembly election
DUP’s war against Irish language BY PEADAR WHELAN FRANTZ FANON, in his classic analysis of colonialism and anti-colonial struggle, The Wretched of the Earth, wrote: “A national culture is not a folklore, nor an abstract populism that believes it can discover the people’s true nature. A national culture is the whole body of efforts made by a people in the sphere of thought to describe, justify, and praise the action through which that people has created itself and keeps itself in existence. “A national culture in underdeveloped countries should therefore take its place at the very heart of the struggle for freedom which these countries are carrying on.” It is in this context that Irish republicans see and understand the struggle for cultural identity and the efforts to revitalise the Irish language. This is, as Fanon again says, part of the process of “national renaissance, the restoration of nationhood to the people”. Fanon’s analysis also explains the antipathy that hardline unionists ooze at the mere mention of the Irish language, or indeed when they hear it spoken. For them, Irish is a threat because it is the portal through which nationalists can see a different Ireland, a nation beyond their English-defined world and British rule. As Seán Cahill writes in his 2007 essay, The Politics of the Irish Language Under the English, Irish is “symbolically central in debates over the political future of Ireland”. Martin McGuinness said in a radio interview in November that there is “a cohort of people within the DUP who hate anything to do with
‘Because of efficiency savings the department will not be providing the Líofa bursary scheme in 2017. Happy Christmas and Happy New Year’ – DUP minister’s email the Irish language”. He was, in effect, calling out the bigots who, as Irish News columnist Brian Feeney says, “never endorsed power sharing with republicans”. This cohort have also steadfastly opposed Acht na Gaeilge or refused to recognise its value to those who use it, unionist or nationalist. McGuinness’s forthright comments were made in response to the news that DUP Education Minister Peter Weir had overturned Department of Education policy on the translation of correspondence into Irish. “The principal language is English,” blustered Weir from behind the fig leaf that correspondence would not be translated into any other languages. Weir, however, has form. Since taking over the reins at the Education Department the DUP minister has rejected five out of six proposals for Irish-language developments. These include plans to open new nurseries at Gaelscoil na Daróige in Derry and Bunscoil an Iúir in Newry, relocate an Irish-language primary school in the Falls area of west Belfast, and his refusal to fund an Irish-language stream on a post-primary site in Derry.
5 DUP MLA Gregory Campbell – Offensive
5 DUP Communities Minister Paul Givan – Christmas week scrapping of Líofa left people fuming
This attitude clearly is the outworking of the threat in the DUP’s 2016 election manifesto that the party would “tackle the preferential treatment” shown to the Irish-medium sector. In September, DUP Agriculture Minister Michelle McIlveen expunged Banrion Uladh as the name of the department’s fisheries protection boat, replacing it with the English version “Queen of Ulster”. The Department of Agriculture, Environment and Rural Affairs “has a single-language policy”, said the minister before asserting that her department has “a fresh identity”. Two months later, DUP MP Gregory Campbell earned himself a one-day suspension from the Assembly for refusing to apologise for mocking Irish-language speakers after he began his address to the Assembly with the words, “Curry my yoghurt, can coca coalyer.” The DUP hit a new low when Communities Minister Paul Givan (who posed for pictures lighting a Twelfth bonfire last July) announced suddenly in Christmas week that the Líofa bursary scheme initiated in 2012 by then Culture Minister
Carál Ní Chuilín for youngsters from disadvantaged communities was to lose its funding. The vindictive tone of the email sent out by the department on 23 December reinforced the belief by observers of all shades that Givan’s decision was a part of a retaliatory strike against Sinn Féin and the party’s demands for an inquiry into the Renewable Heat Incentive scandal and Arlene Foster’s role in it. The email read: “Because of efficiency savings the department will not be providing the Líofa bursary scheme in 2017. “Happy Christmas and Happy New Year.” Carál Ní Chuilín tweeted: “Nothing to do with funds, just hatred of the Irish language.” Niall Comer of Comhaltas Uladh branded the decision a “blatant act of discrimination” and a “deliberate and cynical attack on the Irish language”. That Givan’s action was an attack on mainly working-class and low-income nationalist families
5 Sinn Féin activists supporting the Ríth language initiative
becomes all the more spiteful when set against his decision to fund mostly loyalist bands to the tune of £200,000. When the scheme, funding 68 bands, over-ran its original cost, Givan was able to take an additional £98,000 from his department’s capital budget yet apparently couldn’t come up with £50,000 for children to develop their language skills.
Martin McGuinness said there is a cohort of people within the DUP who hate anything to do with the Irish language Back in February 2015, the DUP’s Nelson McCausland, in a rant against then Education Minister John O’Dowd’s call for schools to develop an Irish-language study plan, said Sinn Féin had “weaponised” the language as part of a cultural war. If anything, the actions of DUP ministers since last May’s election show that that their party have never given up their war against the Irish language.
8 January / Eanáir 2017
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Cork – Third regional conference to be held by Sinn Féin
DUAL DIAGNOSIS
A new approach in treating mental health and substance addiction BY MICHAEL DOYLE CORK CITY is the venue for Sinn Féin’s third regional conference on the Dual Diagnosis approach to mental health. Dual Diagnosis is the term used when a person suffers from both a substance abuse problem and another mental health issue such as depression, anxiety, bi-polar or schizophrenia. In general, mental health services and addiction treatment centres in Ireland do not treat people holistically. If an alcoholic's addiction arises from mental health issues that person will not be treated for those mental health issues
Dual Diagnosis is the term used when a person suffers from both a substance abuse problem and another mental health issue until their alcoholism has been addressed. On presentation to a mental health centre it can be the case that they will be turned away until their alcoholism has been dealt with. Crucially, for the first time, the Health Service Executive has recently appointed a medical lead on Dual Diagnosis. The conference hosted by Sinn Féin takes place at University College Cork on 12 January from 12noon to 3pm. Speakers include HSE Consultant Eamon Keenan, Carol Moore from Dual Diagnosis Ireland, and local Cork speakers.
Maryinvites LouyouMcDonald TD to DUAL DIAGNOSIS Mental Health & Addiction 12-3pm THURSDAY JANUARY 12th
Room G01, Kane Building, University College Cork, Hosted by UCC College Road, Cork Sinn Féin
Sinn Féin deputy leader Mary Lou McDonald TD, who has taken on an all-Ireland Mental Health portfolio at her request (supported by Cork TD Pat Buckley as junior spokesperson and Seanad spokesperson Seanadóir Máire Devine), will also be speaking. All interested parties are welcome to attend but pre-registration is requested to ensure numbers are catered for. Sinn Féin is attempting to build awareness is through providing SafeTALK suicide awareness training for its national representatives, councillors, political staff, members and community groups. Four sessions have already been held with TDs, senators and support staff at the Oireachtas in Dublin and more are planned around the country. Under the banner of “SafeTALK – Suicide alertness for everyone”, it’s a four-hour programme to increase the ability to promote the immediate safety of someone who may be at risk of suicide and provide links to further help. SafeTALK suicide alert helpers are trained to:• Move beyond common tendencies
to miss, dismiss or avoid signs of suicide; • Identify people who have thoughts of suicide; • Apply the TALK steps to connect a person with suicidal thoughts to people and agencies that can help. Mary Lou McDonald says: “In the Dáil, Sinn Féin introduced a Private Member’s Bill calling for 24/7 crisis intervention services to be rolled out. Despite not receiving enough support from other TDs, we will continue
Crucially, for the first time, the Health Service Executive has recently appointed a medical lead on Dual Diagnosis to work with the other parties in a consensus fashion to get these services put in place at the earliest opportunity. “We have also met with the Assembly team in the North to form an all-Ireland strategy and further meetings will be held throughout 2017.”
There is a dedicated SINN FÉIN MENTAL HEALTH PAGE ON FACEBOOK SUPPORT IS AVAILABLE 24/7 SAMARITANS
116 123
PIETA HOUSE
1800 247 247
Kevin Fox’s family meet Trust on suicide services BY COLMÁN Mac AN CHROSÁIN OMAGH Sinn Féin Sinn Féin Councillors Anne-Marie Fitzgerald and Stephen McCann (who is also Chair of the council’s Health & Social Care Group) have described as ‘productive’ a meeting held the week before Christmas between Western Trust officials and family and friends of the late Kevin Fox, who tragically lost his life to suicide in July. His mother Veronica Fox, her daughters, son and close friends accompanied both councillors to a meeting at Tyrone County Hospital arranged by Barry Mc Elduff MLA. They met with Trevor Miller and Amanda McFadden, Director and Assistant Director of Mental Health in the Trust, for a meeting which lasted two hours. Later, the Sinn Féin councillors said: “This was a very productive meeting and we want to applaud the courage of the family and
5 The family of Kevin Fox at their meeting with Western Trust directors
friends of the late Kevin Fox. “Despite the suffering and grief they have endured, they have undertaken this initiative in an effort to further highlight the range of mental health services currently available locally for people suffering from mental health and depression issues and to press for further improvements in the services available. “In highlighting Kevin’s story they want to highlight the help that is out there and that no one needs to suffer alone in the hope that it will helps others.” The family are hoping for better awareness, that people would have better coping strategies and that Zest, who supported Kevin, would be available seven days a week in Omagh. Zest provides supportive care and counseling “to people suffering emotional pain and hurt”. The Trust officials said they have 7,000 clients on their books at any given time. They confirmed they are recruiting new nurses and highlighted the new 24/7 Crisis Mental Health team based in Omagh.
January / Eanáir 2017
www.anphoblacht.com
9
SEEKING TRUTH OR REASSERTING ESTABLISHMENT MEDIA AS GATEKEEPERS?
‘FAKE NEWS’ CLAMPDOW N
BY MARK MOLONEY
WARNING!
THE PROLIFERATION of “fake news” could be coming to an end now that social media giant Facebook has unveiled its plan to tackle a problem which many commentators are blaming for having a large part in Donald Trump winning the election to become President, the most powerful (and dangerous?) man in the West. Closer to home, in Europe, the German Government says it is considering measures – including serious financial penalties – to censure social media sites which allow fake news to remain after receiving takedown requests. There is still a major sticking point: What is the universally-accepted definition of “fake news”? Many fake news websites are easy to spot: sensationalist clickbait headlines
The articles on this website are likely to be fake, false or misleading OK
and their viewpoints reported as fact, not even possibly fake. New York Post columnist Karol Markowicz argues that the war on fake news is in fact about censoring real news: “The more ‘curated’ the media becomes, the less likely we are to hear opposing viewpoints and to have ours challenged. That’s a bug, not a feature.” Instead of moving to restrict free speech and clamp-down on yellow journalism, the real solution to tackling fake news is for newspapers and media outlets to get back to the basics and
There is still a major sticking point: What is the universallyaccepted definition of ‘fake news’? and purely fictional reports are used to generate advertising revenue by making their “stories” go viral across social networks. The most notorious example came during the US Presidential election. A group of teenagers from the largely-unknown small Macedonian city of Veles (population 44,000) are said to have raked in thousands of euro via Google’s AdSense online advertising and monetisation tool by posting fake news stories catering to Trump supporters. Headlines included “Pope Francis forbids Catholics from voting for Hillary!” on sites masquerading as American news websites. What worries some people is that this latest attempt to clamp down on fake news is actually a form of censorship aimed at restricting the ability of users to access information and to ensure the mainstream media retains its position at the top of a drastically altered media food chain. The treatment of partisan media outlets such as Russia’s RT or South America’s TeleSUR should be monitored closely and compared with that of US-based partisan outlets such as Fox News. RT and TeleSUR have come in for criticism from the Western mainstream media (even the British press!) for what they claim is bias and propaganda in their reporting. In their defence, these
5 Trump's triumph – aided and abetted by social media 'fake news' channels say they simply give a voice to the views of audiences largely absent or ignored in Western reporting. When Barack Obama reminisced about ‘the good old days’ when three TV channels delivered news that most people trusted (“We are going to have to rebuild within this wild, wild west of information flow some sort of curating function that people agree to”), F a c e b o o k ’s A d a m Mosseri announced that the social media network has “started a programme to work with third-party fact-checking organisations” and that false news will be flagged as such.” And this is where the problems begin. Such moves will worry citizens here in Ireland who remember a time when “curators” here decided that nationalist opinions on the conflict in the North were too dangerous for the general public to hear and decided that Sinn Féin and other voices and views should be banned from the airwaves. The British Army, RUC/UDR, SAS and 5 'Fake news' is not new – The Sun's lies MI5/MI6 – protagonists in the conflict – about the Hillsborough Disaster in 1989 however, suffered no such restrictions
cease giving airtime to “unverified reports” (rumours) and celebrity Twitter spats. Dr Eileen Culloty of Dublin City University’s Institute for Future Media and Journalism maintains that fake news is only part of a much bigger problem. Identifying a range of issues from confirmation bias to media literacy, Dr Culloty says the credibility of traditional news media has played its part in allowing fake news to flourish through the use of sensationalist headlines to drive sales and influence elections: “The public in general is accustomed to dubious reporting – whether as a result of phone hacking scandals
‘For all the criticism of online misinformation, it is worth remembering that the free flow of information is one of the great achievements of our age’ in Britain, the publication of PR and spin as news, or blatant bias on key issues. “Of course, not all journalists are guilty but each scandal damages the reputation of the whole profession. This is a problem because building public trust in legitimate news sources is a significant corrective for online fake news. “For all the criticism of online misinformation, it is worth remembering that the free flow of information is one of the great achievements of our age. The downside is that a much greater burden is placed on people’s capacity to assess the credibility of the information they come across. Balancing 5 Section 31 censorship – RTÉ openly information freedom and the credibility acted as gatekeepers for Government burden is the big challenge for society.”
10 January / Eanáir 2017
www.anphoblacht.com
World-renowned barrister and human rights advocate Michael Mansfield QC delivers McGurk’s Bar Memorial Lecture
British Government’s legacy of cover-up
A TOXIC STREAM OF LIES BY PEADAR WHELAN
WHEN MICHAEL MANSFIELD strode up to the lectern in St Mary’s University College in Belfast to deliver the McGurk’s Bar Memorial Lecture, he scanned the audience through squinted eyes before asking theatrically: “Mr Hamilton, are you out there?” His question was rhetorical, akin to a piece of courtroom drama, because the leading English QC knew that PSNI Chief Constable George Hamilton hadn’t taken up the open invitation to face the questions to be posed by the families of the 15 people killed in the UVF bombing of McGurk’s Bar in North Queen Street, Belfast, on 4 December 1971. Nor would the PSNI Chief Constable hear Mansfield use his famous legally-forensic mind to deliver a lecture that not only indicted the PSNI over its contemporary handling of the McGurk’s case but, by his inaction, that he was undermining any trust the families might have in the PSNI and its ability to deliver on new policing. Speaking without notes, Mansfield used his lecture to put the Unionist Government of the day, successive British governments, the British Army and the RUC (predecessors of the PSNI) metaphorically in the dock over the way they have scapegoated people who have suffered at the hands of their state apparatus. Mansfield’s list included the McGurk’s families, Ballymurphy Massacre families, Birmingham Six, Guildford Four, Stephen Lawrence’s family, and the 96 Liverpool soccer supporters killed in the 5 Human rights barrister Michael Mansfield QC at the McGurk’s Bar Memorial Lecture in Belfast with relatives of the victims Hillsborough Stadium Disaster. The 29-year-old, born in Tottenham in 1981, gunman firing at police frames the debate around But Mansfield moved into his lecture by referring was shot at close range in “an exchange of fire”, Mansfield put the Unionist the killing. to a BBC programme aired the previous night, according to police – yet the gun that he was Government and successive And, similarly, with those killed in McGurk’s. Monday 5 December, that examined the case of alleged to have on him when he was killed was The “intelligence” said the bomb was an IRA British governments in the Mark Duggan, who was shot dead by police in found “some distance away in a park”. bomb and ‘some of those killed were involved London in August 2011. So the “taint”, Mansfield said, that he was a dock with the IRA’; Mark Duggan was ‘a gunman’;
The past and a foreign country WRITING in the arts and literature quarterly magazine, the White Review, in 2013, Natasha Hoare quotes the famous opening line of L. P. Hartley’s novel, The Go-Between – “The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there” – and says that this “wistfully condenses the problems inherent to memory and history”. She continues: “Distant, intangible, unreliable, lost, our histories, at the levels of personal and national, are at best half-remembered and at worst actively misrepresented.” And in the context of the North and the intense political struggle over legacy issues, her remarks have a ring of truth to them, especially her view that the past is actively misrepresented. And so it is, with the British and
The British and the unionist Establishments are distorting history and memory to absolve themselves of any responsibility for the conflict that followed partition and the Orange State unionists constantly accusing republicans of attempting to rewrite history to establish theirs as the dominant narrative of the conflict. What we as republicans see in this strategy is our
political opponents distorting history and memory to absolve themselves of any responsibility for the decades of conflict that we have just experienced following the imposition of partition and the Orange State. Yet if we look behind this ‘blame game’ strategy (‘republicans are to blame for it all’), we also see a framework where the British and unionists are establishing an ideological justification for the war they waged against the republican, nationalist and Catholic community. As this ideological struggle intensifies, the Southern Establishment has shown its neo-colonial colours with both Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael politicians constantly attacking Sinn Féin. They have clearly demonstrated again in recent weeks that, when it comes
to the serious topic of legacy, playing party politics is paramount, regardless of the damage it might do to honest attempts to assist in truth recovery or the Peace Process. The cynical exploitation by the leaders of Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil of the family of Portlaoise Chief Prison
Officer Brian Stack, shot dead by IRA Volunteers in an unauthorised operation in 1983, is a case in point, especially in their focus on Sinn Féin President Gerry Adams TD, who took political risks to try and help the family rather than take the easy option of turning them away with a glib excuse.
January / Eanáir 2017
www.anphoblacht.com
11
PRESSURE MOUNTS ON BRITAIN OVER LEGACY ISSUES
‘THE LITTLE DUTCH BOY’ plugging the hole in the dyke with his finger springs to mind when the British Secretary of State, James Brokenshire, takes to the airwaves to say that the British Government wants “broad political consensus” before publishing any proposals for dealing with the past. For most observers this is tantamount to the British Government playing a modernday version of the ‘Orange Card’ as they know 5 British Secretary of State James Brokenshire – that Arlene Foster’s Democratic Unionist Party playing a modern-day version of the ‘Orange Card’ (which is looking over its electoral shoulder at the atavistic Jim Allister’s Traditional Unionist Voice as well as the DUP's own hardliners) is stonewalling any progress on legacy issues. It's Arlene Foster, after all, who has been preventing Lord Chief Justice Morgan’s proposal to fund legacy inquests to be discussed at the North’s Executive table, allowing the British to hide behind the “no political agreement” excuse. Sinn Féin’s Gerry Kelly MLA said the British Government “can end its stalling” on dealing with legacy issues overnight by implementing the mechanisms set out in the Stormont House Agreement. “Sinn Féin has tried on over a dozen occasions this past year to engage the British Government in a serious negotiation on dealing with the
5 Mansfield QC goes through the evidence
The UN Special Rapporteur warned the British Government that it cannot use national security to override its obligations to provide information about the past
5 Family members speak from the floor
5Solicitor Pádraig Ó Muirigh chairs the event
the dead of Hillsborough were “drunk . . . had no tickets”. Turning to the recent revelations based on documents uncovered by researcher Ciarán Mac Airt of the charity Paper Trail (and whose grandmother Kathleen Irvine was killed in the McGurk’s explosion), the leading barrister said: “This is massive.” One document, a log from the British Army’s headquarters (HQNI Log) written in the hours
‘This is massive’ – Mansfield on documents uncovered by researcher Ciarán Mac Airt after the bombing, notes that a military bomb expert contradicts the official story that the seat of the explosion was in the bar. The document is heavily redacted. In the aftermath of the attack on McGurk’s, Mansfield the barrister declares, it proves that the Unionist government of the day, successive British governments, the British Army and the RUC were telling lies. “They were putting out a false story,” he said.
5PSNI Assistant Chief Constable Mark Hamilton, head of the PSNI Legacy & Justice Department
“If [in the hours after the explosion] they didn’t appreciate what the army was saying . . . they knew the next day it was wrong,” said Mansfield, yet they persisted in what he described as “a toxic stream of lies”. Mansfield challenged the PSNI Chief Constable to look at the document and analyse “the truth of it”. The leading QC cast his gaze further afield as he focused on those at the heart of the “toxic stream of lies”. When he asked “Mr Hamilton are you out there?” he could have been directing his question at British governments, past and present, who have all assiduously worked to evade their responsibility when it comes to dealing with legacy issues. Mansfield encouraged the McGurk’s families in the audience, saying that, over the years, it was people like them whose “persistence” wrought changes from the system. And, in conclusion, he again challenged PSNI Chief Constable Hamilton “as the custodian of the people’s trust” to give the families what they deserve. Mr Hamilton, are you listening?
legacy of the past,” the Assembly member for North Belfast said. “The British Government has refused to deal with the core issues of ending the NIO veto over disclosure of information to families, just as they have stopped the release of funding for legacy inquests, as requested by the Lord Chief Justice.” Things are looking no better for the British on the international stage either. The Committee of Ministers to the Council of Europe – which is scrutinising Westminster’s failure to address legacy issues – has expressed concern that the Historical Investigations Unit and other legacy institutions agreed upon in December 2014 have still not been established, two years later. Embarrassingly for Secretary of State Brokenshire, this became public within hours of his comments on legacy issues in early December. Responding to the Council of Ministers’ findings from Strasbourg, Mark Thompson of Relatives for Justice said: “The very clear frustrations expressed by Europe reflect the deep sense of disappointment felt by thousands of relatives seeking truth and accountability from across the community. “In the face of constant delay, Europe, the Council of Ministers, is one of the few international mechanisms in which families can independently hold to account the UK Government.
5 UN Special Rapporteur Pablo De Greiff – called for effective resources to address legacy cases
“The Council of Ministers also demonstrates the fundamental importance of independence when concerning legacy institutions such as the Historical Investigations Unit which the UK has reacted most to by seeking to block families’ right to know about the killings of their loved ones by trying to establish a ‘national security’ veto.” Relatives for Justice said that the demands by the Council of Ministers, the body directed by the European Court, fly in the face of James Brokenshire’s remarks in which he stated that he is not for doing anything on legacy “citing more unacceptable excuses as to why he won’t proceed – but the real reason is that his government seeks to hide the truth”. United Nations Special Rapporteur Pablo De Greiff, in his report on the “promotion of truth, justice, reparation and guarantees of non-recurrence”, warned the British Government that it cannot use professed national security concerns to override its obligations to provide information about the past. The UN rapporteur also called for the full implementation of the mechanisms agreed at Stormont House, including the provision by Westminster of effective resources enabling them to function correctly. Alongside these international reports, the North’s Criminal Justice Inspectorate on 8 December was critical of the PSNI’s delaying tactics in providing information to inquests. And with Irish Government Foreign Affairs Minister Charlie Flanagan in December surprisingly chastising the British over the delays in establishing the institutions to deal with the legacy of the past, it certainly is a difficult time for the British Establishment trying to hold back the tide on legacy issues.
12 January / Eanáir 2017
www.anphoblacht.com
HAVE YOUR
FACTS READY POST-TRUTH 2017 FOR A
ROBBIE SMYTH looks to the new year ahead
HOW do we prepare mentally and politically for 2017? “The Donald” prepares to take the oath of office to become President of the United States of America with his finger hovering over the nuclear button when it’s not on the Twitter button; the British Government says it will finally press the Brexit button; and the Fine Gael/Fianna Fáil coalition enters its second year of government. These are some of the issues that we know will dominate Irish media attention in the coming year.
Prince to Leonard Cohen and George Michael and global icons Muhammad Ali and Fidel Castro. In Ireland, actor Frank ‘Fr Jack’ Kelly along with writers Willian Trevor and John Montague also passed away. It's okay to have forgotten that Sinn Féin is the third largest party in the Dáil, or that the 2016 Leinster House elections were a record performance for the party. It's easily done considering the ongoing negative reporting of the party by the mainstream media, either by omission from coverage, unrelenting criticism of the party’s proposals, or the unceasing ‘concern’ about Gerry Adams being leader for too long for the party’s own good repeated ad nauseam by commentators at RTÉ and the Irish Independent (who naturally yearn for greater Sinn Féin success).
The Housing Crisis We don’t have enough new houses, we don’t have anough old houses, there are too many vacant homes unused throughout the 26 Counties, rents are high and rising, and there are fewer places for rent than ever before.
Oh, and house prices are rising back towards Celtic Tiger madness levels. And we have a record number of homeless people on our streets (a point dramatically highlighted by the Apollo House occupation at Christmas). So what to watch for in 2017? DAFT.ie produce separate quarterly reports on rents and house prices, starting the first week in January for the previous quarter so we should be hearing the platitudes from Fine Gael/ Fianna Fáil amidst the hand-wringing of ministers failing to deal with a crisis caused by acts of Mammon, not by acts of God. The November 2016 DAFT rental index showed an 11.7% increase in rents to the end of October. The Residential Tenancies Board also produce quarterly reports. Their latest figures released in November showed an 8.6% increase in rents with an average national monthly rent of €973. The Central Statistics Office was once the only producer of property price data, and in 2016 revamped the methodology underpinning their index. Their Residential Property Report in
5 Back to the Future: Campaigners show what a post-Brexit Border might look like
November 2016 showed that, in the 12 months to the end of September, property prices had risen 7.3%, so watch out for the next release of data at the end of January. Property Industry Ireland, a sectoral association of employers’ group IBEC, published its Property Watch Report in September. It estimated that the number of finished new dwellings for 2016 would be 14,000 – the Government target was 25,000. One statistic that would be great to have in 2017 would be the number of vacant dwellings in the state. This is captured by the Census every five years. In July 2016, preliminary Census reports from the Central Statistics Office revealed that there were 259,563 vacant homes in the 26 Counties – more than a quarter
Waiting for medical treatment
Will the roller-coaster of 2016 run into 2017? What a year 2016 was with elections in Ireland, the British “Brexit” referendum, the US elections for Congress and the Presidency – both examples where "fake news" and untruth won the day. I wonder what fake news the year 2017 will bring us in Ireland. In 2016 there was a still a global refugee crisis, another year of ignoring climate change, and it was a year when an incredible number of treasured, creative artists and defining people of the late 20th century died. These ranged from musicians David Bowie and
of a million! The housing crisis culminates in homelessness and more than 6,800 people were without permanent dwellings in 2016. The Department of Housing, Planning and Community Development produced monthly figures in 2016. As I write this, their most recent figure to hand is for October and they estimate that there were 4,377 people homeless, 3,036 in Dublin, However, you need to add in the 2,470 dependants, children of these homeless people, 1,178 families without a home. It makes you wonder about the hundreds of thousands of vacant homes. Sinn Féin TD Eoin Ó Broin launched the party’s proposals on resolving the housing crisis in December, so I recommend keeping either a hard copy or PDF to hand to distribute to all those you meet during the year who speculate on just how to solve the housing crisis.
5The new year opened with new records for the numbers of people languishing on hospital trolleys
“Trolley Watch” by the Irish Nurses & Midwives' Organisation began in 2004. Yes, we have had a healthcare crisis for that long. And if you are of my vintage you can probably still remember the 1986 Fianna Fáil campaign promise to reverse Fine Gael/Labour policies with the slogan “Health cuts affect the old the sick and the handicapped”. So here we are 30 years later and we start 2017 with a record 612 patients left on trolleys in the first week of January. But this is only one measure of the crisis in the healthcare system. There were 538,309 people waiting for hospital treatment in November.
2016 IN FIGURES
11.7% increase in rents
7.3%
rise in house prices
259,563
vacant homes in the 26 Counties
6,800 people homeless
612
on hospital trolleys (January 2017)
538,309
people waiting for hospital treatment
€702
average weekly wage
January / Eanáir 2017
www.anphoblacht.com
13
5 Sinn Féin TD Eoin Ó Broin identifying a serious 'flaw' in rent certainty legislation sent ministers back to the drawing board 5 US President Trump – will his finger stay off Twitter and the nuclear trigger?
The National Treatment Purchase Fund produces monthly figures of the numbers of people waiting for hospital appointments and procedures. The figure has been growing since May 2016, so this figure is one to watch for throughout 2017. There is a way out of this crisis. Take a look at Sinn Féin’s Better for Health document.
Wages and jobs
average annual household income of €10,926. The lowest 10% of earners had 3% of ‘national’ income in 2014 compared to the highest 10% of earners having a 24.8% share of income. Maybe it’s time to read Sinn Féin’s document for Decent Work and a Living Wage. The Low Wage Commission published its second annual report in July 2016, recommending a 10 cent an hour increase to €9.25. The Irish Congress of Trade Unions had lobbied
for an €11.50 minimum hourly wage by 2017, so watch out for the July 2017 report and the predictable kneejerk by employers' lobbyists. On a related issue, New Zealand banned zero-hour contracts in 2016. Is there any chance this could happen in 2017 in Ireland? If you are wondering about the take-home packages of the 1% in Ireland, April is the key month when Irish public companies start their AGMs and we have weeks of revealing pay and remuneration packages. Will anyone top last year’s CRH Chief
Executive Albert Manifold? He has a base salary of €1.4million but possible bonuses could see his salary reach €8.2million.
September school blues Eurostat figures released in December showed that Irish families are spending more than twice the EU average on education. Education accounts for 2.6% of Irish household spending compared to an EU average of 1.1%. Barnardo’s and the Irish League of Credit Unions produce surveys on the cost of sending children
The growing employment figures are an often-repeated and relied-upon statistic for this hybrid Fine Gael/Fianna Fáil Government. And, yes, employment figures are rising. There are monthly Live Register figures showing the numbers signing on, and there is a Quarterly National Household Survey. Quarter 3 2016 showed 2,040,500 people at work in the 26 Counties, up 57,500 on the same time in 2015. Will this trend increase in 2017 with the next figures due in the last week of February? What are these workers earning though? The monthly unemployment figures state that 160,700 people were unemployed at the end of November. The Live Register figures (also produced monthly) show 273,484 people signing on and receiving a social welfare payment. That’s more than 110,000 people working part-time and needing supplements to their wages. The 2014 figures show 16.3% of the population at risk of poverty with an 5 The Irish Naval Service plucked to safety children and adults risking their lives to escape death, starvation or poverty
€338
average weekly wage in accommodation and food services sector
16.3%
share of the population at risk of poverty
65.3million people forcibly displaced around the world
24
people became a refugee every minute of 2015
324
refugees taken into Ireland in 2016
to school, an average of €816 a year for primary school children and €1,313 per secondary-level student.
65million refugees Then there are those with absolutely nothing, displaced and fleeing their country for their lives and those of their children. Look out in June for the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) annual reported. In 2016 it reported there were 65.3million people forcibly displaced around the world (11.7million in Syria alone). In November, the Irish Refugee Protection Programme reported that 109 asylum seekers had arrived in Ireland with an additional 215 were due to arrive by the end of 2016. It doesn’t seem enough, does it?
BETTER WITH SINN FÉIN
Every month of 2017 will bring the facts and figures that show once again how the Fine Gael Government is failing people. It doesn’t take much to keep an eye and ear out for these stories and remind those who haven’t voted for Sinn Féin that there are solutions and a path to a more equal and just Ireland.
€816
average cost of sending a child to primary school
€1,313
average cost of sending a child to secondary school
14 January / Eanáir 2017
www.anphoblacht.com
I was being asked to be an eyewitness to a moment
ERIC SCANLON FAREWELL
in history
IT’S A STRANGE PHONE CALL to get on a Sunday afternoon: “Are you free to travel to Cuba tomorrow morning?” I’d like to say this is a regular occurrence in the life of a Sinn Féin political adviser on foreign affairs but it’s not. This wasn’t just a change of a day-to-day routine – I was being asked to be an eyewitness to a moment in history. I was being asked travel with Sinn Féin President Gerry Adams TD to attend the funeral ceremony in Havana for Fidel Castro. I didn’t have to think twice before accepting this huge honour and privilege. It was also deeply personal. Reading Jon Lee Anderson’s biography of Ché Guevara when I was 16 years old introduced me to the Cuban Revolution and I soon became enthralled. I bought as many books as I could find on the revolution, Cuba and, of course, Fidel. It was these volumes that awakened in me a deep internationalism and that ultimately led me to change my initial plans to become a teacher and switch to study international relations instead. So it was with a heavy heart but a deep sense of pride that I now found myself travelling to Cuba with Gerry Adams to pay my respects to Fidel. We landed late at night on Monday and were up early on Tuesday to head towards the Plaza de la Revolución. In keeping with Fidel’s wishes, his remains remained with the Castro family but people could file into the José Martí Memorial to pay their respects to this patriotic hero. The memorial to the leader of the Cuban independence movement from Spain dominates Revolution Square, along with murals to Ché and Cuban revolutionary Camilo Cienfuegos. We queued for nearly two hours in the searing sun of the Caribbean with tens of thousands of Cubans and some international visitors. Hundreds of thousands had already paid their respects since the news of Fidel’s death was announced. The mood was sombre and people were quite emotional but overall there was an air of defiance. Even with the sad passing of their revolutionary leader, the Cuban people retained their resolute confidence that is summed up by the slogan Ché made popular: “¡Hasta la victoria siempre!” (Until victory always!). It was notable to see so many doctors with
FIDEL
their white coats on waving flags from different African nations in the queue. The night before we’d seen an interview on Cuban TV with a similar group and they explained they were students in the Cuban Latin American School of Medicine. They are some of the thousands of student doctors whose tuition, accommodation and board is paid for every year by the Cuban Government. The international students selected to study in the school come from impoverished and under-resourced communities in their home
countries, and they get fully trained for free, just as long as they undertake to work in the poorest communities of their countries when they return. It was Fidel who came up with the idea to establish such a school and these students were here to pay their own homage to Fidel. Later that night we were invited by the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Cuba to attend the ceremony in Revolution Square to mark Fidel’s death. It was like a meeting of the United Nations with delegates, ambassadors, and heads
Around us stood a million Cubans who had turned out to remember and bid farewell to Fidel
5 More than a million people packed into Havana's Revolution Square for Fidel's funeral
5 José Martí Memorial to Cuba's national hero of state from all around the world packed into our section for invited international guests. Around us stood a million Cubans who had turned out to remember and bid farewell to Fidel. Considering the frenzied reaction of the rightwing media elite and the Establishment in Ireland to Fidel’s death, it was refreshing and inspiring to be standing in solidarity with a million Cubans, reflecting how beloved and venerated the leader of the Cuban revolution is. In between meetings we had arranged with our Cuban comrades, and before we headed home, we paid a visit to the monument to the 1981 H-Blocks Irish Hunger Strikers. The monument is inscribed with the names of the 10 Hunger Strikers who died and a quote from Fidel, the only serving head of state that spoke out in support of their struggle. We laid a wreath at the monument. Reading Fidel’s powerful words again, I was struck by his strong internationalism and understood why he is one of the world’s great revolutionary leaders. Fidel rightly said that the Hunger Strikers “have earned the respect and admiration of the world, and likewise they deserve its support”. The same tribute can also be given to this heroic figure, an inspirational leader to Cubans and millions more across the globe and across the generations. Slán agus míle buíochas, Fidel.
5 Sinn Féin leader Gerry Adams TD with the Secretary for International Relations of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Cuba, José Ramón Balaguer Cabrera, a veteran of the 1959 Revolution and a personal friend of Fidel
January / Eanáir 2017
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IN PICTURES
15
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5 Sinn Féin Deputy Mayor of Belfast Mary Ellen Campbell and Council Group Leader Jim McVeigh head a Sinn Féin delegation to sign 'The People's Book of Condolence' for Fidel Castro Ruiz at City Hall
Cothromas diúltach agus deacracht phearsanta MAR IS NÓS anois ag an rialtas agus ag an bhfreasúra bréagach (Fianna Fáil) cluiche pholaitiúil a dhéanamh as ceisteanna a bhfuil tábhacht dhairíre ag baint leó don phobal, níl ar siúl acu maidir le riaradh cíosa ach cur i gcéill eile. Tá an dá pháirtí – Fine Gael agus Fianna Fáil – ag cloí leis an argóint gur ceist don mhargadh í. Agus tá siad beirt níos buartha faoi a bheith ag cur isteach ar an margadh maidir le cíos ná faoi droch-chaoi an phobail i dtaobh tithíochta. Sé fírinne an scéil ná go bhfuil an coras eagraithe i gcoinne leas an ghnáth-dhuine, agus baintear leas as gach seift le daoine a chur i gcomaoin na dtiarnai talún. Ach tá gné eile den scéal nach luaitear mórán: sé sin daoine a bhfuil i mbaol a dtithe a chailliúint is nach bhfuil aon sheans acu biseach a fháil sa bhfad-téarma ach imeacht ón teach, ar ais go minic go teach na dtuismitheóirí, is an teach fein a ligint ar cíos. Tá an coras cánach ag cur isteach go mór ar dhaoine atá sa riocht sin. Seo scéal a léiríonn droch-thionchar an chorais mar atá. Bean óg, atá ina máthair léí féin ach a cheannaigh teach di féin is dá mac. Ón am sin tá luach an tí titithe go mór ar ndóigh: tugtar cothromas diúltach ar an gcailliúint luacha seo. Freisin, de bharr na géarchéime gearradh siar go mór ar a teacht isteach, sa gcaoi nach raibh sí in ann an mhorgáiste a aisíoc a thuilleadh. Ní raibh sí in ann an teach a dhíol mar gheall ar an gcothromas diúltach agus ní raibh aon dul as aici ach an teach a ligean ar cíos agus filleadh ar theach a máthar. Ghearr sí cíos a bhí beagáinín níos lú ná costas míosúil an mhorgáiste. Agus baineann na Coimisinéiri Ioncaim os cionn 50% den chíos sin uaithi mar cháin. Agus ní cheadaítear di costas an úis ar an margáiste a chur i gcoinne na cánach.
EOIN Ó MURCHÚ
5 Belfast: Christmas day of action in support of Basque political prisoners by republican activists, Sinn Féin elected representatives, the Mairéad Farrell Republican Youth Committee and the Belfast Basque Solidarity Committee who unveil a mural calling for the release of Basque prisoners as two young girls, Banba and Saoirse, hand over hundreds of Christmas cards for prisoners held in Spanish jails to Basque former political prisoner Itziar Martinez and Sinn Féin Assembly member Alex Maskey
Sé sin go bhfuil sí fós ag caitheamh suim mhor airgid in aghaidh na míosa, ach caithfidh sí fanacht sa mbaile lena máthair, í féin agus a mac. Mura mbeadh an mháthair sásta í a ligint ar ais bheadh uirthi dul i lóistíní B&B mar bheadh teach aici dar leis na húdaráis. Agus dá ndíolfadh sí an teach bheadh fiach trom uirthi i gcónaí – fiach a chinnteódh nach
Tá an coras cánach eagraithe le drochscéal a dhéanamh níos measa dóibh siúd a chailleann a gcuid tithe mbeadh teach dá cuid féin aici riamh, is go mbeadh uirthi dul i muinín na dtiarnaí talún le áit cónaithe a fháil toisc go bhfuil an stát ag diúltú tithe a thógáil go díreach. Ní hamháin nach bhfuil aon leigheas ag Fianna Fáil is Fine Gael air seo; is cuma leó is ni thugann siad aird dá laghad ar an bhfadb.
5 Robert McClenaghan, whose grandfather Philip Garry was one of those killed in the McGurk's Bar bombing, presents a display to PSNI Assistant Chief Constable Mark Hamilton outlining the trail of evidence uncovered by families and which exposes the disinformation campaign by the British and unionist governments, the British Army and RUC which sought to falsely blame the IRA for the explosion
16 January / Eanáir 2017
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KILMICHAEL AMBUSH
A turning point in the birth of our nation SINN FÉIN MEP LIADH NÍ RIADA was the guest speaker at the annual Kilmichael Ambush/General Tom Barry Commemoration in Cork in November in what was reported by local media to have been attended by one of the largest crowds in recent years “and certainly a much higher proportion of young people”, Louis Whyte told The Southern Star. Proceedings began with a parade led by Bandon Pipe Band to the monument where Louis Whyte recited a Decade of the Rosary in Irish and, in doing so, also remembered the 1981 H-Blocks Hunger Strikers, the Southern Star reported. This is an abridged version of Liadh’s speech in honour of the IRA Volunteers who “shocked the British Empire at Kilmichael”.
A WEEK PRIOR to the Kilmichael Ambush, Michael Collins’s ‘Squad’ dealt a devastating blow to the British Government’s intelligence operations in Dublin, executing more than a dozen agents and informers across the city. The British may have been prepared to write this off as an anomaly, a freak incident in which they were caught on the hop. However, when the Third West Cork Brigade wiped out a convoy of Auxiliaries at this spot seven days later, the reality must have dawned on them that they were facing a new challenge – a reinvigorated and fearless guerrilla army. Kilmichael was quite unlike anything that had come before in the Tan War. This would not be a hit-and-run operation. Barry had deliberately picked a spot that gave good cover and vantage points but no route of retreat. This would be a fight to the death. In his own words, the British had “gone down in the mire to destroy us and our nation and down after them we had to go”. After a ferocious battle, which involved everything from rifles and grenades to hand-to-hand combat, all but one of the British convoy lay dead. Three IRA Volunteers – Jim O’Sullivan, Michael McCarthy and Pat Deasy – were also killed in the fighting. The ambush had been an outstanding military victory for the IRA and it marked the beginning of a series of large-scale encounters with the British that continued right up until the end of the Tan War, with similar successes for IRA units at Dromkeen, Coolavokig, Crossbarry, Clonbanin and Carrowkennedy, to name but a few. More importantly than any military victory, however, Kilmichael sent out a message to the world that what
The British were fighting to hold on to their empire and the Irish Republic was fighting for its very existence was happening in Ireland was not an inexplicable crime wave; was not “unrest” or “Troubles” – Ireland was at war. The British were fighting to hold on to their empire and the Irish Republic was fighting for its very existence. It sent a message to IRA units across the country that the Auxiliaries, believed to be the elite of the British Army, practically invincible, were far from it, and they responded accordingly. So why do we gather here every year? Certainly not to revel in the deaths of 17 Auxiliaries, loathed though they were by the local population for their brutality. We of course remember the sacrifices of those revolutionaries who risked all for a better Ireland and in particular we honour Jim, Michael and Pat, who made the ultimate sacrifice. The reason this battle holds such significance, the reason we continue to remember Kilmichael 96 years on, is because it was a turning point in the birth of our nation. The Irish Republic was proclaimed in 1916, ratified by the people in 1918, its vision laid out in the Democratic
Programme of the First Dáil in 1919, but it was here, in 1920, that it firmly asserted its right to exist in the face of aggression; that it showed the world that it was determined to survive. It was no longer an academic exercise, nor the romantic aspiration of poets and playwrights. It was here, now, alive, as real as the ground we are standing on and any jackboot that attempted to come down on it was going to find itself booted right back. There are those who talk about the Tan War as if it were a civilised and dignified occasion, a gentlemen’s disagreement, sorted out with all the civility and ceremony of pistols at dawn. It was not. It was a dangerous time to be alive in, one in which brutality was an everyday fact of life and could be visited upon you whether you were involved in the war or not.
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We owe a huge debt of gratitude to the people who endured such times for us and in doing so it is worth remembering what they endured it for. They did not endure it so that we could let people sleep in doorways and alleys while entire estates of houses lie empty. They did not endure it so that working Irish families could scrape through years of austerity in order to pay off a debt that was not theirs. They did not endure it so that the country they fought for could be, in James Connolly’s words, “cut to pieces as a corpse upon the dissecting table” and her sovereignty sold off. Partition has stunted the growth of this island’s economy for almost a century. The reunification of Ireland is the only realistic, achievable and permanent solution to the problem. There are those who only pay lip service to reunification. They tell us now is not the time. Now is exactly the time! The current political landscape does not only present
The Tan War was not a civilised and dignified occasion, a gentlemen’s disagreement sorted out with civility and ceremony an opportunity for reunification, it demands it. They tell us we cannot afford reunification but every major study carried out in the past few years tells us the exact opposite – that we can’t afford partition; that we can’t afford the duplication, bureaucracy, inefficiencies and barriers caused by having two competing entities on our tiny island. They tell us it’s not realistic, but how realistic was the prospect of an Irish Republic at a time when the British Empire was at the peak of its powers? How realistic was the prospect of a largely untrained, underground guerrilla army taking on the strongest military force on the planet? The Good Friday Agreement provides a peaceful and democratic pathway to reunification. Unity is not in the gift of the British Government. It now rests in the
January / Eanáir January / Eanáir 2017
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5 Part of the crowd at the commemoration alongside the monument to General Tom Barry
5 A piper and drummer play Amhrán na bhFiann
5 General Tom Barry, Irish Republican Army
5 Liadh Ní Riada: 'Kilmichael was quite unlike anything that had come before in the Tan War'
5 Liadh is presented by the Tom Barry Committee with a portrait of the IRA legend, and by the Kilmichael Committee with a copy of 'The White Heather Glen', a book about the famous ambush
To those hard-working activists in other parties, now is the time to play a meaningful role in the discussion that will shape a new Ireland . . . To our unionist brothers and sisters, I say your input is as essential as everyone else’s. Take part in the conversation, even from an opposing point of view
hands of the people, North and South, to be expressed in concurrent referendums. We need to secure a vote for the people and to win the vote for unity. Sinn Féin has launched a series of campaigns on our vision for a united Ireland. They cover a broad range of issues, from the price of partition and the possibilities opened up by reunification to our proposals on national reconciliation and an all-Ireland national health service, free at the point of delivery.
So to those who have yet to get involved in the discussion on reunification, I say now is the time to make your voice heard Reunification is not – indeed cannot – be the responsibility of Sinn Féin alone. If we mean to build an Ireland for all of the people then we all have a reponsibility to plan, to act, and to deliver unity. So to those who have yet to get involved in the discussion on reunification, I say now is the time to make your voice heard. To those hard-working activists in other parties, now is the time to play a meaningful role in the discussion that will shape a new Ireland. To our unionist brothers and sisters, I say your input is as essential as everyone else’s. Take part in the conversation, even from an opposing point of view. Share with us your hopes, concerns and ideas and we will share with
5 Tom Barry: The British had 'gone down in the mire to destroy us and our nation and down after them we had to go'
you our vision of a fair, free and progressive country that cherishes all the children of the nation equally. This is a fine monument. A fitting tribute to the nationally significant event that happened here and the brave people who made it happen, but if we really want to honour their memory and live up to their ideals, then the only fitting memorial we can build is a free, sovereign, united Ireland. Let us come together to build it.
18 January / Eanáir 2017
Blanketmen
www.anphoblacht.com
Facebook page lights a candle for protesting POWs
FOLLOWING the death of former H-Block Blanketman Seány McVeigh in June 2016, his brother Michael set up a Facebook page titled Blanketmen. It was Michael’s way of honouring his brother and bringing into focus for people a part of the lives of ex-prisoners – especially those men on the Blanket Protest in Long Kesh and the women in Armagh – that lay hidden. And from humble beginnings, when he expected maybe 20 to 30 people to follow the page, it has now grown in popularity with several hundred followers and a stream of posts and interactions. It is a moving and inspiring tribute to the steadfastness
BY PEADAR WHELAN THE PASSING of former Blanketman John 'Seány' McVeigh in June 2016 struck a chord with many of those who spent time with the Short Strand man in the H-Blocks of Long Kesh during those intense years of prison struggle, on the ‘Blanket’ and ‘No Wash’ protests between 1976 and 1981. It was these protests that culminated in the epic showdown with the Thatcher regime in the 1981 Hunger Strike. As someone with an indomitable spirit, Seány, at just 18 years of age, was the eleventh republican prisoner to go on the ‘Blanket Protest’ and the first from the Short Strand in east Belfast. Seány spent almost five years of his 10-year sentence on the protest and he epitomised that spirit of resistance and defiance which saw hundreds of Irish republican prisoners in the
A moving and inspiring tribute to the steadfastness of Irish republican POWs who went through prison determined to defeat Britain’s criminalisation policies H-Blocks and Armagh women’s prison confront and ultimately defeat the British Government’s criminalisation strategy. Seány’s death from cancer came in the midst of a spate of deaths of other former POWs (again, mostly from cancer). This again raised questions about the links between these deaths and the effects on protesting prisoners of the conditions they were in, not least the possibility that the chemicals used to clean and disinfect the cells may have had some long-term effects on prisoners’ health. In fact, one of the last images that An Phoblacht captured of Seány was, sadly, at the funeral of
5 Gerry Adams shares a laugh with former Blanketman Seány McVeigh while canvassing in Short Strand in 1996
Brendan ‘Benny’ Lynch, a fellow Blanketman who died of cancer in August 2015. Just two months prior to Seány’s death, Peter ‘Dee’ Kavanagh, from Lenadoon in west Belfast, the youngest-ever Blanketman, also succumbed to cancer. Dee was 16 when he joined the Blanket Protest, arriving in H3 in 1978, where he endured three years of deprivation and brutality at the hands of Screws who believed him to be a weak link due to his young age. How wrong they were. One of the other significant features of Seány’s experience on the Blanket was his smuggling exploits or, more accurately, those of his sister Rosie. In the words of John Hunter, who was on a wing in H5 with Seány, “Rosie would have smuggled in a tank if Seány had asked her.” John Hunter also recalled how much the Blanketmen were indebted to Rosie for her smuggling exploits.
of Irish republican POWs who went through prison determined to defeat Britain’s criminalisation policies. The Blanketmen site also recognises the immense sacrifice and commitment of the families, friends and supporters of the prisoners who endured so much as they marched the roads and streets of Ireland and further afield in solidarity with the prisoners. Importantly, the page recalls sadly the many former prisoners who have died in the intervening years, not all of them Blanketmen or Armagh women protesters but who served their time for Ireland.
January / Eanáir 2017
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Screws would often direct hoses into the prisoners’ cells as an act of vindictiveness, sometimes at night, leaving those in the cell freezing cold from the damp cell and wet mattresses
5 On the Blanket Protest
5 Seány talks to 'An Phoblacht' after his house's widows are boarded up following three nights of unionist attacks in 2002
He related how Joe McDonnell, who died on Hunger Strike, would shout down the wing to Seány after a visit: “Was our wee Rosie up, Seány? Are we smoking tonight?” At a tribute night to Seány, on 1 March 2016, the 35th anniversary of Bobby Sands embarking on hunger strike, both Seány and Bik McFarlane (who was OC of the republican POWs in the H-Blocks) paid their own tribute to Rosie, who herself died in 2015. With typical ‘gallows humour’ they recounted how the Screws caught Seány with one of the crystal radios and sent him to “the boards” (the punishment block), no doubt inflicting a beating on him as he went down for possessing the contraband communication. “The boards” were the cells in the punishment block and had a concrete slab with wooden boards for a bed. When a prisoner was on punishment the mattress was removed during the day, leaving the prisoner with only the boards to sit or lie on. At that time, prisoners
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also endured the “Number 1 diet” – which consisted mostly of a small bowl of soup, tea and dry bread – as an added punishment. Needless to say, on her next visit with her
It was the ‘Blanket’ and ‘No Wash’ protests that culminated in the epic showdown with the Thatcher regime in the 1981 Hunger Strike brother, Rosie smuggled in a replacement “Maggie Taggart” – the nickname the H-Block prisoners gave the crystal radio after the reporter from Downtown Radio who was never off the airwaves at that time.
MICHAEL McVEIGH explained that the Blanketmen Facebook page in honour of Seány and the POWs came out of a Facebook conversation with former Hunger Striker Dr Laurence McKeown. “I was having a conversation with ‘Big Lorny’ on Facebook about Seány and who was on his wing, who were his cell-mates and so on, when John Hunter joined the conversation. “I recognised the name so I asked him if he was the same John Hunter who brought a handkerchief Seány had drawn to our house when he was released in July 1981.” He was and Michael (or “Fisher”, as he is known) and John got talking. The Former Blanketman recounted stories about H5, telling Fisher about things he didn’t know about Seány and his time in the Blocks. “Seán never really talked himself about the hardships he went through but John filled me in. He told me about the time Seány spent six weeks on ‘the boards’ for hitting a Screw who put the hose into their cell and soaked them.” (During the ‘No Wash Protest’, prison officers would often direct hoses into the prisoners’ cells as an act of vindictiveness, sometimes at night, leaving those in the cell freezing cold from the damp cell and wet mattresses.) “In a way it all started because John wasn't aware that Seány had died and he knew that a lot of other Blanketmen didn’t know either,” Michael said. “I thought if I could hook up with John Hunter then I could reach others who may not be aware of Seány’s death and I decided to open a group page, “Blanketmen”, on Facebook in his memory. “The main aim was maybe to find 20 or 30 people who spent time with him and hope they would share some memories but it just took off and people started to ask for invites into the group. Now there’s 1,300 members and it’s growing. I also opened it up to the women’s struggle in Armagh. “Former Blanketmen, mothers, brothers, sisters and children of former prisoners are in the group, sharing photos, videos, handicrafts, etc. “It has become a great source for anyone who is interested in that period of our struggle. There are really no rules in the group but I wouldn’t like any arguments or see people falling out. The page is about the prisoners and what they endured and acknowledging what they went through. “I think through the group we have found that there is an incredible number of Blanketmen who have died of cancer and premature
5 Former Hunger Striker Laurence McKeown
deaths. There surely has to be some connection to the protest.” Clearly then the Blanketmen Facebook page is playing an important part in bringing to the fore the stories of the many thousands of republicans who went through the prisons during the conflict. It includes photographs of protests, involving mostly women, as well as rare footage of the time, and shows how this period in our history was a game-changer in the struggle for freedom. And while the sacrifice of the 10 men who died on the 1981 H-Blocks Hunger Strike are to forefront of our minds, we also remember the many ex-POWs who were killed by loyalists or on active service by British forces. What Michael McVeigh has done with his Facebook tribute to Seány is to give people from all across republicanism a very real way to acknowledge the contributions of so many people and in doing so pay them due respect. And he has provided people with a platform where they can give tribute to the many friends and comrades who have passed away in the intervening years, whether it was through illness, old age or in tragic circumstances. ‘The Fisher’ didn’t curse the dark, he lit a candle. Cothrom na féinne do.
20 January / Eanáir 2017
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BOOK REVIEWS BY MICHAEL MANNION
Champion of underdogs of the world Michael Davitt: After the Land League, 1882 -1906 By Carla King UCD Press
THIS is a riveting account of a determined idealist’s non-stop championing of underdogs the world over. The list of Michael Davitt’s activities in his later years are seemingly endless. For a less-committed person, the extent of his travels alone would seem to leave little time for anything else. As well as repeatedly touring throughout Ireland, England, Scotland and Wales, he also journeyed to America repeatedly. He also travelled throughout Europe, visiting France, Italy, Hungary, Germany, Poland, Norway, Sweden, Russia, In addition, he also went as far afield as South America, Tasmania, Egypt, Palestine, Turkey, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Hawaii, and Samoa, amongst other places. When one considers the methods of travel available at that time, with limited infrastructure in many areas, the sheer physically arduous nature of these journeys and the time they took should not be underestimated. Nor were these visits recreational. Lecture tours, fund-raisers and dissemination of the facts of the Irish situation were of paramount importance. In addition, Davitt took every opportunity to champion the cause of labour, the marginalised and the disenfranchised in every location he visited.
Fr Michael O’Flanagan and the Roscommon by-election BY MÍCHEÁL Mac DONNCHA
He made repeated visits to Russia to highlight the anti-Semitic pogroms there. His South African trip was to promote the Boer cause in their war with Britain. His deeply-held anti-imperialist beliefs led him to defend the rights of the indigenous people wherever he went. On top of all of this, he was a Member of Parliament, a journalist and a foreign correspondent, author, convict and tireless campaigner for causes from Home Rule and land rights to prison and electoral reform. Not a bad track record for someone who started work in a Lancashire cotton mill at the age of nine. Don’t be intimidated by the size of his book. It needs to be big in order to do justice to the man.
Remembering the Past
BY JANUARY 1917, many of the hundreds of Irish political prisoners interned in Fron Goch Camp in north Wales had been released. But many were still imprisoned in England. Others, like Count Plunkett, were legally excluded from Ireland. Plunkett had been deported to Oxford after the 1916 Easter Rising. Not previously very active in politics, George Plunkett, a Papal count, came to prominence after the execution of his son, Proclamation signatory Joseph. He was summarily dismissed
Ten views of Ernie O’Malley
Modern Ireland and Revolution: Ernie O’Malley in Context
‘I deny the right of England to an inch of the soil of Ireland’
Edited by Cormac K. H. O’Malley Irish Academic Press
THIS is an unusual and most intriguing book. It is a collection of eleven essays, or rather ten essays and an “Afterword”. The fact that the afterword is written by the doyen of revisionist historians, Roy Foster, does not mean that this is just another work of convoluted revisionist propaganda. In fact, whilst one may disagree with some of the points he makes, this is not one of the usual anti-republican polemics, and is actually spectacularly well-written. The book features essays by ten leading academics and is edited by Cormac K. H. O’Malley, Ernie O’Malley’s son, who is an American-based academic. The essays cover a very broad spectrum. Whilst O’Malley’s great literary works, On Another Man’s Wound and The Singing Flame, are both covered in detail, there is also consideration of lesser-known aspects of his life. Several of the essays relate to O’Malley’s years spent in Mexico and America, where he was exposed to and embraced the modernist art movement. He became a passionate advocate of all aspects of modernist art, including painting, literature and photography. In particular, he was an ardent promoter of Jack Yeats’s painting, which he felt was not getting the recognition it deserved in Ireland. Not all the contributors seem to be
COUNT PLUNKETT
singing from the same hymn sheet. Several seem to belong to different choirs altogether. Professor Nathan Wallace has an essay examining Ken Loach’s use of Ernie O’Malley as the prototype for the character “Damien” in the film The Wind that Shakes the Barley and in which he takes Roy Foster to task for his revisionist reviews of the film, implying gently that he rather missed the point. Another contribution from Dr John Regan examines the destruction of the Four Courts, demonstrating conclusively that it was destroyed by Free State forces, effectively demolishing the myth that it was destroyed in a fit of republican pique. All in all, a fascinating book. Not an easy read but well worth the effort.
from his post of Director of the National Museum. In December 1916, James Joseph O’Kelly, Irish Party Westminster MP for North Roscommon since 1885, died and a by-election was called. The prime mover in having a republican candidate stand in the election was Fr Michael O’Flanagan. A radical priest based in Sligo who was originally from Roscommon, O’Flanagan had supported workers’ and small farmers’ struggles. In 1915 he officiated at the funeral of Jeremiah O’Donovan Rossa in Dublin. Fr O’Flanagan later wrote that the unanswered question before the by-election was whether “the example of the inspiration of the men of 1916 or the terror caused by their defeat would have the greater effect”. He initially approached Michael Davitt (son of the Land League founder) but he declined to stand. O’Flanagan then proposed Plunkett as the candidate and he agreed to run. Geraldine Plunkett Dillon wrote that her father “came home from Oxford without waiting to be permitted to do so” as soon as it was decided that he
5 Fr Michael O'Flanagan – No one had the least hope of victory except him
should contest the election: “No one had the least hope of victory except, perhaps, Fr Michael O’Flanagan, who would not have anything else. It was too much to hope for!” Backing Plunkett was a range of groups, including the Irish Volunteers, Sinn Féin, the Irish Nation League (an anti-partition group), people active in the Irish National Aid and Volunteers Dependants’ Fund, and defectors from the Irish Party such as Laurence Ginnell, MP for Westmeath. While often cited as the first Sinn Féin election victory after the Rising, Plunkett was not officially a Sinn Féin candidate. At that time the party was still controlled by Arthur Griffith and did not adopt a republican constitution until later in 1917. Plunkett’s candidature was symbolic, given his son’s execution, but the politics of the campaign were clearly expressed by Fr O’Flanagan who spoke at venues throughout the constituency. He condemned the Irish Party’s support for the imperialist First World War, urged land reform and endorsed the men and women of Easter Week. With much talk from the British Government and press about the “freedom of small nations” to justify the war in mainland Europe, O’Flanagan demanded that “the freedom accorded to Ireland be the same as that of Belgium, Serbia, Bohemia, Romania, France and Germany”. Warning of the danger of conscription, he said it was “better and easier for young men in Ireland to carry their fathers on their backs to vote for Plunkett rather than to have to serve as conscripts in the trenches in Flanders”. As the campaign proceeded, the country was covered in huge drifts of snow, earning it the name “The Election of the Snows”. This proved no obstacle to O’Flanagan. He organised parties of young men to clear the roads. He later wrote of the 24-mile stretch from Ballaghadereen to Strokestown: “They worked like Irishmen whose heart is in their work. In two days the way was clear. Motoring between these two solid walls of snow, I was
constantly reminded of the energy expended.” The Irish Party and the pro-British press dismissed Plunkett’s chances. The Irish Times declared: “Count Plunkett is a person of no importance.” But as polling day approached it was clear that O’Flanagan had co-ordinated a massive effort. On the day, transport of all kinds was organised and Irish Volunteers were present at the polling stations. Many released prisoners took part and a chastened Irish Times admitted that “against this combination, Mr Redmond’s election machine simply went to pieces”. Polling day was Saturday 3 February. At close of polls the ballot boxes were taken to Boyle, where they were guarded, by both the Royal Irish Constabulary and Irish Volunteers. Fr O’Flanagan wrote: “All night long, a body of police representing the British Empire sat on one side of the boxes and a body of young Volunteers representing Irish Ireland on the other.” The count took place on Monday 5 February and at 2pm it was declared that Plunkett was the winner with 3,022 votes, as against 1,708 for the Irish Party’s Thomas Devine and 687 for Independent Jasper Tully. Speaking to the jubilant crowd outside Boyle Courthouse, Plunkett said he would not be taking his seat in Westminster: “My place henceforth will be beside you in your own country, for it is in Ireland that the battle of Irish liberty will be fought. “I recognise no parliament in existence as having a right over the people of Ireland, just as I deny the right of England to an inch of the soil of Ireland.” Again it was The Irish Times that commented prophetically when it said the Irish Party would be “swept out of three quarters of their seats in Ireland by the same forces that carried Count Plunkett to victory in North Roscommon, believed to be so peaceful and so free from Sinn Féin and the rebellion taint”.
January / Eanáir 2017
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BY PROINSIAS Mag FHIONNGHAILE IF YOU were asked any of the following at a pub quiz, would you know the answer? WHO was behind the last agrarian revolt, the Cattle Drive Campaign, in 1906-1915?
A committee member for the Gaelic League, he worked behind the scenes for Sinn Féin
WHICH Irish republican MP was nearly shot dead by Irish Volunteers during the 1916 Rising? WHO was the most jailed Irish politician? WHO was behind the election successes of Sinn Féin in 1917? WHO was the only Sinn Féin TD ejected from the Free State parliament at its first sitting on 9 September 1922?
WHO accused the British Prime Minister of “murder” in Westminster after the Rising? WHO was the foremost expert on the Brehon Laws?
Born in County Westmeath into a small farming family, he saw the effects of ‘The Great Hunger’ landlord class, the latter being, for the most part, English, foreign and absent. Ginnell became involved with the Land League and was a founding member with Michael Davitt. He then became Personal Secretary to John Dillon in 1886 to 1891. He formed the Irish Literary Society in 1891 with help and advice from W. B. Yeats. He was called to the Bar in 1893 but turned his back on the law as he was gaining a reputation in the field of politics. Within a year he tasted British politics when he again worked as Personal Secretary to Dillon. In 1897 he became Private Secretary for the Irish Party (a political Sinn Féin was still some years away). In 1898 he was a co-founder of the United Irish League with William O’Brien. He clashed with the ideals of Parnell who could not envisage a free, independent Ireland. Parnell wished for greater Catholic freedoms within a British Empire; Ginnell wanted separation. His list of achievements grew even
In 1910 and 1911 he was a committee member for the Gaelic League, an organisation close to his heart. He became an MP for North Westmeath in 1906 and held his seat until his death in 1923. In 1915 he established a Peat Committee to develop such an industry in Ireland. A few years later, we have Bord na Móna. After the events of 1916, Sinn Féin were on the rise and were ready to establish themselves in the political world. Few members of the organisation had any political experience, however. Although Ginnell had not yet officially joined Sinn Féin, he worked behind the scenes for them. He was instrumental in getting the first Sinn Féin politician elected, namely the elderly Count Plunkett. He was rarely away from the side of Plunkett. After his success with Plunkett, Ginnell decided to help and back Joe McGuin-
The Cattle Drive Campaign saw a large-scale ‘removal’ of cattle from the lands belonging to landlords
WHOSE blanket was taken to be made into the “Irish Republic” flag?
There are many heroes of 20th century Ireland and a lot of these individuals became famous for one or two acts. Laurence Ginnell, however, gave a lifetime to the Irish cause. Laurence Ginnell was born just outside Delvin in County Westmeath into a small farming family. He saw the effects of ‘The Great Hunger’ and how the people of the countryside were being kept in near slavery conditions by the
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IRELAND’S FORGOTTEN POLITICIAN driven miles from home and left there. The idea was to waste the time of the landlords and to make operating in Ireland so uneconomical that they would leave the country. Countless English landlords eventually packed their bags and left. A few short years later and most of this land was taken over by the newlyformed Land Commission who then redistributed the lands to native people. Before Ginnell, Irish Catholics rarely held land in Ireland.
ness in County Longford. McGuinness (and Ginnell) won with a large majority over the rival Irish Party who had held the seat for 25 years! Ginnell followed this up by helping a struggling de Valera get elected in County Clare. He was indeed the Sinn Féin political mastermind. Seeing the way the party was going, he joined Sinn Féin, turning his back on Westminster, and won his own seat as a Sinn Féin man. As a Sinn Féin TD he was elected as their Honorary Treasurer in 1917, Sinn Féin Director of Propaganda in 1919, Irish Government Director of Propaganda in 1919, Head of the Labour Bureau for Irish Independence in 1920, Irish Government Representative to Argentina and South America in 1921-22, Legal Adviser and Chief Aide to de Valera in 1922, Council of State Member in 1922, and Official Envoy to the United States in 1923. It should be noted that, during his time as a representative in the Westminster circus, there were 103 individuals who represented Ireland but only one became known as “The Member for Ireland” – Ginnell – such was his high profile. And if that were not enough, Laurence Ginnell holds the record of being the most jailed politician in British or Irish history.
5 Laurence Ginnell was instrumental in getting the first Sinn Féin politician elected
greater in the 20th century. The last agrarian revolt in Ireland, namely the Cattle Drive Campaign, was initiated and run by Laurence Ginnell. This revolt saw a large-scale ‘removal’ of cattle from the lands belonging to landlords. The cattle were then
5 First Dáil meeting on 21 January 1919 with Laurence Ginnell (circled)
22 January / Eanáir 2017
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Another Europe is possible Treo eile don Eoraip
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
Apple and Irish Government under fire for appeal against European Commission tax ruling GUE/NGL’s Matt Carthy MEP has reacted strongly to Apple and the Irish Government’s decision to appeal against a European Commission ruling on illegal state aid which included a record €13billion fine on the tech giant. The Commission’s 130-page ruling into Apple's tax arrangements in Ireland was released recently, having previously accused both Apple and Dublin for being complicit in favourable tax arrangements which contravene EU laws. Matt Carthy – a member on the European Parliament’s Committee of Inquiry into Money Laundering, Tax Avoidance and Tax Evasion (PANA) – said: “The Irish Government’s arguments don’t stand up to scrutiny. The Department of Finance chooses to ignore the economic reality that the structures put in place by Apple and sanctioned by Revenue facilitated industrial-scale tax avoidance. “The crux of the matter is that there was
Opposing the ruling a comfort message to tax-avoiding multinationals
selective advantage conferred on Apple by Revenue’s sweetheart deals, and nothing in the Government’s appeal summary comes close to challenging this finding. The chances of the Government winning this appeal are slim to nil but it will cost taxpayers millions of euros and further damage Ireland’s international reputation on tax justice. “The motivation in opposing the ruling is intended to send a comfort message to tax-avoiding multinationals that the Irish Government will have their backs.” The Ireland North West MEP pointed out that Oxfam has labelled the Irish state as the sixth worst corporate tax haven in the world.
Matt Carthy MEP
GUE/NGL group chooses candidate for EP presidency
Liadh Ní Riada MEP
‘Super trawlers’ legislation tightened MEPs urged to stand up for small-scale and inshore fishermen
LIADH NÍ RIADA MEP has urged Irish MEPs to reconsider their position and join her in standing up for small-scale and inshore fishermen after some of them opposed her European Parliament amendments to fisheries legislation on ‘super trawlers’. Liadh, who is the only Irish MEP on the European Fisheries Committee, had put forward amendments which would distinguish between small, sustainable operations and destructive ‘super trawlers’ and factory vessels. “There are major flaws in legislation that do not properly distinguish between small and large
industrial fishing vessels,” the Ireland South MEP said. “Thankfully, we still managed to get the majority of our amendments through into the legislation and we will also be pushing the Irish Government in the Council to support this position. “If successful, this legislation will be a step in the right direction in tackling ‘super trawlers’ whilst not impeding small-scale fishermen.” She also welcomed an increase in EU quotas for Irish fishermen but said that they must be distributed more fairly. Negotiations in Brussels have seen quotas for Irish fishermen increased by 17,000 tonnes for 2017. The Ireland South representative warned that the increase in allowed catches would mean very little to most fishermen if the quotas were not distributed more evenly between ports.
GUE/NGL has chosen Italian MEP Eleonora Forenza as its candidate for the presidency of the European Parliament. Eleonora said: “I want to thank GUE/NGL for the trust they have placed in me by putting forward my candidature for the European Parliament’s presidency. “I am a feminist from the south of Europe. This in itself makes a strong political statement and I am acutely aware of the heavy responsibilities this carries. “I will work to make the Parliament the centre of a project for a Europe built on the full participation of its citizens in politics.
“Having a fully democratic Europe means radically changing the current set-up in the European Union: a model that is based on neo-liberalism, on austerity, on budget constraint, on the sovereign debts and the blackmails. “In addition, the lack of recognition of the right to work and the minimum income – particularly in southern Europe – must be reversed. “Similarly, an oversight of fundamental rights for women and migrants are all elements which must be changed inside the EU where a third of women have suffered physical or psychological abuse.”
January / Eanáir 2017
www.anphoblacht.com
Matt Carthy
Martina Anderson
Liadh Ní Riada
Lynn Boylan
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www.guengl.eu
are MEPs and members of the GUE/NGL Group in the European Parliament
Britain’s Brexit agenda causing businesses concern
Martina Anderson MEP
Young entrepreneurs are keen to avail of opportunities that being in the EU and access to EU markets bring
MARTINA ANDERSON MEP has said there is clear concern among the business community in Ireland over the British Government’s “Brexit” agenda in its withdrawal from the European Union. Martina – one of the 12-person team of MEPs who will oversee the Brexit process for the EU Parliament – said after meeting the Junior Chamber of Commerce in Derry: “British Prime Minister Theresa May and her government don’t have a plan, pathway or clue what they are doing and they appear to be making it up as they go along, preferring slogans rather than strategy. “None of this is helping the business community, particularly young entrepreneurs
who are keen to avail of the opportunities that being in the EU and access to EU markets bring.” The Ireland North MEP said: “In the midst of all the uncertainty, one thing is certain – the majority of people in the North voted to remain in the EU and that must be respected.”
Time for EU action on illegal Israeli settlements
The EU is on record as being totally opposed to retrospective attempts to legitimise settlements
ISRAELI attempts to retrospectively legalise more than 4,000 houses in illegal settlements and hamper religious observance for Palestinians have been denounced by Martina Anderson MEP, Chair of the EU Palestinian Delegation. “Every day the Palestinian people struggle under Israeli oppression and denial of human rights,” the Irish MEP said. The Israeli Knesset (Parliament) was attempting to bring in “two more pieces of repressive legislation”: one seeking to retrospectively legalise 55 illegal settlements of more than 4,000 houses and another seeking to prevent the use of loudspeakers for late-night and early-morning calls to prayer at mosques.
“There is a need for international action against these oppressive moves, particularly from the EU,” Martina said. “The EU is on record as being totally opposed to the retrospective attempts to legitimise settlements. which it regards as theft of private land. “While the EU has previously voiced concerns, with Israel now maintaining settlements on 47% of privately-owned Palestinian land, it is time for action. “We need to see more than mere condemnation from the EU. It could start by ensuring retailers and importers clearly label all goods coming from settlements.”
Plans to militarise EU short-sighted and immoral LYNN BOYLAN and fellow MEPs have debated with the European Commission’s High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, Federica Mogherini, over the implementation of the Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP). This comes as EU member states are asked to contribute more towards the bloc’s common security and defence policies. On the CFSP report, German MEP Sabine Lösing – who is also GUE/NGL Co-ordinator on the Committee on Foreign Affairs (AFET) – was quick to point out that a lot of development aid actually flows directly into European companies and organisations: “Sensible development aid and sustainable development aid look completely different – 60% of the current development aid returns to European industries. “We tried in vain to find criticisms [in the report] of the arms industries’ exports – just as the EU continues to be one of the major arms traders in the world.” She added: “Arms are being exported in particular to countries in the Middle East and the Far East.
EU is major arms trader to Middle East while people try to flee to Europe so that they aren’t killed by weapons from the EU “I find it rather cynical as you see these people trying to flee to Europe so that they aren’t killed by these weapons. However, they are effectively held up from coming into Europe and are looking for other ways – but it’s almost impossible to find legal migration routes. “We are heading in only one direction: more arms, more money for weapons, merging internal and external security plus the very aggressive rejection of migrants and refugees. “If we don’t want to live with the consequences of our actions, then we would need a fundamental change in policy instead of more and more of the same erroneous approach.” Irish MEP Lynn Boylan, meanwhile, described the entire project as “vain” and “ludicrous”. She
Lynn Boylan MEP
also issued a stark warning that a militarised Europe is repeating the historical mistakes of the 20th century: “We are all well-versed in the history of Europe and know what happened the last time it became extremely militarised.” Lynn wondered:
“Will the only difference be that this time the guns will be pointed outward instead of inward? “This is a promotion of an EU arms industry whilst social expenditure has been slashed. “Reports like this are further evidence of the contempt for neutral member states by many in this Parliament and the European institutions.”
24 January / Eanáir 2017
www.anphoblacht.com
Hamas meets Sinn Féin to learn from Irish Peace Process BY DECLAN KEARNEY SINN FÉIN MLA
THE United Nations’ designated ‘International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People’ occurred on 29 November. A few days beforehand, I led a Sinn Féin delegation to meet with representatives from the Hamas leadership in Istanbul, Turkey. The US State Department lists Hamas as a terrorist organisation. On our return to Ireland, the Belfast Telegraph published a front-page story
Whatever about Western – or even Irish – ideological, political or theological views of Hamas, it exists as an integral part of Palestinian society and its diaspora reporting that a political storm had erupted because of that meeting. The ‘storm’ was an invention by the Democratic Unionist Party. It was a daft story and all the more stupid because DUP MP Jeffrey Donaldson met a member of Hamas last August alongside Sinn Féin MLA Pat Sheehan! The fact is that Hamas has an electoral mandate. It is the government of Gaza. Tens of thousands of people have voted for Hamas, both in Gaza and the West Bank. Whatever about Western – or even Irish – ideological, political or theological views of Hamas, it exists as an
5 Declan Kearney MLA with Dr Musa Abu Marzouk, deputy head of the Political Bureau of Hamas
integral part of Palestinian society and its diaspora. Make no mistake: the failure to secure a democratic settlement over Palestine is bad for the Palestinian people and the Israeli people. The continuing conflict is causing death, injury and fear on all sides. Gaza is under permanent siege. There have been four wars mounted by Israeli forces against Gaza in the last eight years. During these incursions the Israeli state has inflicted indiscriminate destruction and violence against Palestinian communities, schools, hospitals and UNICEF aid facilities. Two and a half thousand Palestinians were killed in the last Israeli war on Gaza, including 700 children, and 500 women – all were civilian non-combatants. Gaza is an open-air prison with two million inmates. There is no free access, in or out. The Israeli state maintains a permanent blockade, denying the supply of humanitarian aid, medical and educational resources, and building materials. A family or business in Gaza can only be sure of a maximum eight hours’ supply of electricity. The day before
we met the Hamas leaders in Istanbul, the electricity supply was cut to the hospitals in the Gaza Strip. Sixty-five percent of young people are unemployed. Access to clean drinking water is deliberately restricted by the Israeli state. There are almost seven thousand Palestinian political prisoners in Israeli jails. Some have been incarcerated for 35 years. One of the Hamas leadership’s delegation we met had served 20 years; another had been detained for five years. Currently, the Israeli state is aggressively colonising land to create new settlements and expand others. Approximately 700,000 settlers have been relocated by Israel into the West Bank. Throughout Sinn Féin’s meetings with the Hamas representatives, Ted Howell, Conor Keenan and I set out Sinn Féin’s experience of and approach to developing the Irish Peace Process. We explained the republican peace strategy and our commitment to peaceful, political and democratic methods to bring about an agreed, united Ireland. We emphasised the absolute imperative of inclusive political negotiations to help end all armed actions,
and develop the circumstances for durable political agreement. We also spoke about the role of compromise and accommodation. We also underlined the need for Palestinian political unity and the importance of cohesion and mutual respect among the various Palestinian factions. Properly constituted and inclu-
2,500 Palestinians were killed in the last Israeli war on Gaza, including 700 children, and 500 women – all were civilian noncombatants sive negotiations are the only way to bring about peace and democracy in Palestine. It is obvious there is no military solution. No side can win. The Israeli state will not militarily defeat the Palestinians, including Hamas; neither will the Palestinians militarily defeat the Israelis. The US administration and other responsible Western and regional states should help to focus all sides on this indisputable reality.
A democratic two-state solution is required which respects the rights of all Palestinians and their diaspora, as well as Israeli citizens. No Palestinian political faction or section of society should be demonised or excluded from the conflict resolution process. In recent years, Tony Blair has met numerous times with Hamas, on behalf of the Middle East Quartet (the United Nations, the European Union, the United States and Russia) in implicit recognition of that position. This much is clear: Hamas must be part of establishing a democratic political solution. Sinn Féin has provided longstanding and significant solidarity to the Palestinian cause. We are committed to engaging on an even-handed basis with all Palestinian political factions and the wider diaspora. We remain willing to share our experience of conflict resolution and peace building. We have done this on several occasions with Israeli representatives in Jerusalem, Belfast and elsewhere. We will continue to take every opportunity to oppose the injustices being perpetrated by the Israeli state and try to influence a change in its policies towards Palestine. We will seek to positively engage with all parties to the conflict in order to promote a lasting democratic political solution between Palestine and Israel.
5 Palestinians search through the rubble of their home destroyed by Israeli strikes in Khuza’a, southern 5 Smoke rises from the power plant in Gaza hit by missile strikes on 29 July 2014 Gaza Strip, in 2014 (UN Photo/Shareef Sarhan)
(UN Photo/Shareef Sarhan)
January / Eanáir 2017
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5 Martina Anderson MEP with Fadwa Barghouti, member of the Fatah Revolutionary Council and wife of imprisoned Fatah leader Marwan Barghouti; Israeli soldiers pass under a mural of Marwan Barghouti
Fatah Congress in Palestine addressed by Sinn Féin MEP Martina Anderson BY DUROYAN FERTL
THE 7th National Congress of Fatah, held in the Palestinian West Bank city of Ramallah, heard solidarity greetings from Sinn Féin delivered by Martina Anderson MEP. The five-day congress – the first to be held by the party since 2009 – was held on November 28/29 and attended by over 1,300 Fatah delegates. There were also 60 international guests from 28 different countries, including China, India, Sudan, Chile and Germany. President Mahmoud Abbas was re-elected unanimously as Chair of Fatah and the congress elected Fatah’s 23-member Central Committee and its 132-member Revolutionary Council. Imprisoned Palestinian leader Marwan Bargh- 5 Palestine Legislative Council's Dr Abdullah outhi was elected to the Central Committee with Abdullah with Martina Anderson the highest vote of any candidate. Addressing the conference on the ‘International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People’,
Unity in the Palestinian struggle was a theme throughout the Fatah congress – Hamas sent a spokesperson for the first time
Martina Anderson conveyed the solidarity of Sinn Féin and the Irish people to the people of Palestine. She highlighted the shared struggle for freedom and nationhood. Martina, who is Chair of the European Parliament’s Delegation for Relations with Palestine, also stressed the importance of Palestinian unity. “In any national liberation struggle, division and disunity slices and dices the struggle, damages and weakens it and the people suffer the most,” the Irish MEP told the congress. “When Palestinians speak with one voice you advance international solidarity with your struggle and your message is heard clearly around 5 South African Ambassador to Palestine Ashraf Y Suliman and Secretary General of Kurdistan the world. “Sinn Féin will continue to work to build Democratic National Union Ghafour Makhmouri
ue n i t n o c will n i é F ‘Sinn build o t ty k i r r o a d w i l o o t nal s o i t a n r ort p p inte u s o nue t ople’ i t n o c pe and n a i n i t es the Pal international solidarity and continue to support the Palestinian people.” Unity in the Palestinian struggle was a theme throughout the congress. In a display of reconciliation and co-operation, Hamas sent a spokesperson to address the Fatah congress for the first time. A message read out from Hamas leader Khaled Mashal, indicated that Hamas is prepared to put disagreements aside in order work more closely with Fatah and other Palestinian forces in the national interest. Ayman Odeh, leader of the Joint List (a political alliance of four Arab-dominated parties in Israel), also spoke on the need to work with democratic forces inside Israel as well as Palestine in order to end the conflict and bring a lasting and just peace. Representatives of several other Palestinian organisations (including Islamic Jihad and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine) also attended the conference. The current state and future of the Middle East peace process was also discussed. Secretary General of the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) Saeb Erekat made an appeal for greater Palestinian unity, not only to further the Palestinian cause but also to help defeat ISIS/ Islamic State/Daesh and extremism in the region. “Bad ideas cannot be killed with bullets,” he
said. “They can only be killed with better ideas.” Fadwa Barghouti, wife of imprisoned Palestinian leader Marwan Barghouti, criticised Israel’s human rights abuses against prisoners and its policy of criminalising the Palestinian resistance. She also highlighted the need to involve women more directly in the struggle.
Imprisoned Palestinian leader Marwan Barghouthi was elected to the Central Committee with the highest vote of any candidate Omar Barghouti, co-founder of the Boycott, Divestments, Santions (BDS) campaign, also spoke, outlining some of the challenges facing the movement but also pointing to its many recent successes. The growing success of BDS shows that in showing our international solidarity with Palestine against the Israeli occupation, our purses are power, our wallets are our weapons.
26 January / Eanáir 2017
H
S C I T I L O P OF D O O F
A STONE’S THROW from Juliet’s balcony in the heart of Verona, tucked away in one of the linked squares, Paolo tempts customers with slivers of goat’s and sheep’s cheese. Deep in gothic Germany, in a converted stone building behind the ancestral seat of Hesse in Witzenhausen, Christine serves a tall glass of red cherry juice. At the Nar Restaurant, up the street from the Grand Bazaar in Istanbul’s old town, Banu suggests layered walnut pastries to her guests. These delights share a common denominator. They are artisanal, derived from indigenous produce — cheese from the milk of animals known for their environment, juice from the morello red cherries that characterise Germanic cuisine, including cakes like Black Forest Gâteau and kirschwasser, the schnapps to beat all brandies – made with fruit, walnuts from Anatolia combined with the ancient method of rolling wheat flour dough so thin it becomes transparent. 3 Robert Allen drinking red cherry juice in Witzenhausen, Germany
G A IN S
LONG C
AND L A S N R I A THE
GE
The EU wants food chains that benefit the producer and the consumer, writes ROBERT ALLEN
www.anphoblacht.com
Christmas markets have been a feature of continental Europe since the Dark Ages and continue to thrive in every large city and major town, tempting customers with an array of traditional foods and handicrafts. Biscuits and cakes and sweets, cheeses of all types and shapes, cured and cooked meats, sausages and hot and cold drinks of festive cheer predominate in these markets. Much of this produce is commercial, assembled or cooked or baked on a grand scale – but some is artisanal, made with sweat and tears and a whole lot of love, each cheese different from the other because it is hand-shaped, each batch of juice stronger or weaker than another, each pastry a little uneven.
MEET THE CHEESE-MAKERS In the main hall of the Royal Dublin Society, tucked away from the crafts, the stalls bump into each other. This is the food emporium of the now annual National Crafts & Design Fair. At the corner of one junction, where there is ample space to linger or pass, three women offer shavings of cow’s, goat’s and sheep’s cheese to passers-by. Most will take the cheese and move on. Having paid a tenner entrance fee they are eager to sample everything. Only a few exchange notes and coins for cheese. Still, the vendors are happy. They are selling their stock. A sign says “Meet the Cheese Makers” and some of the people are prepared to engage in small talk. Those who know their Irish cheeses are delighted to put a face to the produce they have been eating for years. The small talk becomes large. The cheese-makers among the vendors take the chance to develop a theme that the European Union insists is part of their strategy to bring sustainable food security to its members and anyone else who joins in the research – agri-food chains and value food chains! The cheese makers, however, are interested in only one element of these systems, the one that is known as a short chain. This is where the cheese-maker meets and sells directly to their
target audience, and gets the return they deserve and desire to keep on going on. No distributors, no wholesalers, no supermarkets, no space sellers and no one making a huge profit out of their blood, sweat and tears. Across the European continent, the relationship between the artisan and the customer is commonplace, at fairs and festivals, at market squares and street corners. Demand and supply is met by supply and demand. It is not like a tryst and it does not cost a fortune to arrange the furniture and pay for the allotted space. The politics behind the food supply in most of modern Europe is like everything else: convoluted and corrupt. No one wants to pay €40 a kilo for artisanal cheese, yet that is what it costs in the airport lounges, in the food emporiums and in the specialist shops. To get a fair price, anything between €15 and €20 a kilo, cheese lovers must go to a market stall where they can purchase their choice from the cheese-maker. This is the difference between the long chain and the short chain. It might as well be a log-jam.
PRICE IS KEY Artisans – food producers, food innovators, bakers or chefs – insist that their produce and products (whether breads, cheeses, cured meats, drinks or pastries) are not for those who need low-priced supermarket goods or for those who can afford to pay high prices. They are for those who want to enjoy a food product with organoleptic qualities and that usually means everyone. Price, therefore, is key. The organoleptic qualities of a fruit, herb, legume, oil or vegetable, with a cut of meat or milk from an animal combined with the skill of the baker or the chef can make all the difference between a food that is ordinary and a food that is popular or traditional. There is nothing new about this. Brilliant bakers and clever chefs have always sought good-quality local produce. It is why we talk about “New Nordic Cuisine” and still go on about the “Mediterranean Diet”. These products are based on fresh, local
January / Eanáir 2017
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5 At the Nar Restaurant in Istanbul, the pastry chef makes a layered walnut pastry
ingredients. And they are designed to be served or sold as soon as they are ready. Family farmers, small farmers, artisanal producers, food grocers, food co-ops and distribution co-ops are part of the societal fabric of many European countries. It is not unusual to see shops and stalls in the cities that are run by or served by co-operatives, who share the cost of the premises or space, and can charge competitive prices to their customers, who know that they exist and what they sell. For farmers, including cheese-makers, this also includes farmers’ markets and farm shops, street markets and food-specific fairs. This is generally known as direct marketing but it is not what the EU is talking about.
MULTI-ACTOR APPROACH
5 Paolo serving at the Bontà Park Farm cheese stall in Lamberti Tower Square in Verona
5 Jérémie Forney
5 Rachael Durrant
The EU wants “more efficient, equitable, sustainable and better performing [food] value chains”. It wants to strengthen the “farmers’ position in value chains through innovative approaches that enhance transparency, information flow and management capacity”. It wants to “limit the negative impacts of agri-food chains on the environment, climate and health”. And it is prepared to fund anyone who can come up a plan to “enhance the capacity of actors within agri-food chains to design new processes leading to new business models”. Jérémie Forney, at the University of Neuchâtel in Switzerland, believes this can only be achieved with collective knowledge, a concept that has been around for a very long time and is now rarely applied in capitalist society. “Collective knowledge creation is not limited to farmers,” he says. “The same attention to knowledge should be given to others with different functions and activities along the food chain.” The EU calls this the “multi-actor approach”. Unfortunately, it is not an approach that is favoured by the majority of its member states, especially here in Ireland where only academics, bureaucrats and big business people are allowed to participate. Forney’s suggestion that countries should encourage the “collective construction of new agri-environmental knowledge and cultures” was rejected in the Ireland of the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s. Ever since the Whittaker/Lemass programme for economic reform was established as the norm for Irish society in the 1960s, Irish bureaucrats and politicians have shunned the idea of community autonomy. They do not want to see new agricultural and
food cultures that are based on Forney’s “three dimensions of food, knowledge and autonomy”. Rachael Durrant of the Science Policy Research Unit at the University of Sussex in England argues that this is the problem, and until the control of governance is resolved sustainable food security will be impossible. She believes that the transitions to sustainability include grassroots innovation, where the provisioning of food responds to “local situations, interests and values”. She argues for “alternative systems of food provision [that] destabilise indus-
The EU calls this the 'multi-actor approach'. Unfortunately, it is not an approach that is favoured by the majority of its member states, especially here in Ireland where only academics, bureaucrats and big business people are allowed to participate trial food regimes, and for regime reform among mainstream businesses and public bodies” to force them to “adopt and embed more sustainable configurations of technologies, practices and organisational arrangements”. Unfortunately, those in academia who advocate sustainable food security as community-led reside in the humanities departments; and those who advocate it as business-led reside in the applied science departments – and those who study the academics’ approach insist that the two are incompatible. The tight relationships between academia, business and bureaucracy are, say critics of the current food systems, the reason why sustainable food security is not going to happen any time soon and why food chains will continue to be long and large.
28 January / Eanáir 2017
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FÓGRAÍ BHÁIS
Phonsie Mac Fhirleigheann County Derry & County Meath PHONSIE Mac FHIRLEIGHEANN, IRA Volunteer and H-Blocks Blanketman – originally from Bellaghy, south Derry but in later years who had settled in Navan, County Meath – died suddenly on 23 December. “No words could ever do justice to the energy and efforts that were invested by Phonsie into the republican project right up until yesterday,” Meath West Sinn Féin TD Peadar Tóibín said on hearing the news of Phonsie’s passing. “He did it all with a smile and tremendous humour.” His funeral in County Meath was attended by many prominent republicans, including South Derry MLA Ian Milne, a comrade of Phonsie’s and the legendary Francis Hughes. Jim Gibney recalled in his Irish News column of 4 January, which he dedicated to Phonsie: “As a teenager, Phonsie spent 13 years in jail. He spent five years on the Blanket Protest for political status. During that
‘No matter what the stresses and strains in the party were over the years, Phonsie saw the big picture and his positive energy and humour would completely ease the atmosphere’ time, he was in the company of the ten men who died on hunger strike and was a friend of first cousins Francis Hughes and Tom McElwee, who were from his area and who died on the Hunger Strike in May and August 1981 respectively. “These were gruelling times. He joined the IRA as a teenager and when released from prison he joined Sinn Féin. “I met Phonsie in prison. He had a rare quality. Whatever was irking you, he calmed you down with his smile and gentle manner. With his witty sense of humour, he made life in jail that much easier to manage. “Phonsie had personal integrity. You knew where you stood with him. He
5 Dale's cortege arrives at the cemetery
could be and was trusted and tried many times over, and in his unassuming way he made family life better and he did the same with community life.” Peadar Tóibín TD, speaking at Phonsie’s funeral in Navan and Castletown, offered the heartfelt sympathies of the republican family to Máire, Ciarán, and the extended McErlean family. “He was a warm, decent and enormously friendly man who, more than most, loved the craic. He had a cheeky smile and a quick joke for everyone and he would lighten the mood wherever he went. “No matter what the stresses and strains in the party were over the years, Phonsie saw the big picture and his positive energy and humour would completely ease the atmosphere. “It was not in Phonsie’s nature to complain, draw attention to himself or seek the tiniest level of recognition for his heroic efforts. When Phonsie joined us here in Meath Sinn Féin he very quickly became one of the most active members. “He took on roles with energy and vigour. Phonsie would never let you down. Whether it was postering in the wind and the rain at 3am in the morning or leading his cumann as Cathaoirleach. “Phonsie was a rock. He will never be replaced and he will never be forgotten.”
Dale Moore Derry City THE RESPECT with which IRA Volunteer Dale Moore is held was obvious in the ‘send off’ the Derryman was given by the republican family as he was laid to rest in the City Cemetery on Thursday 15 December. Dale (52) was a Senior Press Officer with Sinn Féin at Stormont and in Derry City. He also wrote for An Phoblacht. In 1999, he was diagnosed with sarcoidosis, a hardening on the lining of the lungs. He underwent a lung transplant in 2007 in the Freeman Hospital in Newcastle, England. Derry MLA and Sinn Féin deputy First Minister Martin McGuinness tweeted on 11 December on hearing of Dale’s passing: “Seeing Dale hooked up to oxygen at a desk in Stormont or Derry Sinn Féin office was a moving experience. A courageous and gentle soul.” Dale was well-known and respected throughout Ireland. His work in the Sinn Féin Press Office at Stormont brought him into contact with activists from all corners of the country and their presence in Derry was testament to the impact he had on them.
However, it was his involvement in the republican struggle down the decades as an IRA Volunteer and later as a Sinn Féin activist that earned him the respect of so many. At his funeral, a guard of honour flanked the coffin which was draped in the national flag and on which rested Dale’s beret and gloves. Dale’s final journey took him from his family home and Free Derry Corner, followed by his family and a large number of mourners. When the cortege arrived at the Long Tower Chapel for Requiem Mass, a guard of honour made up of scores of former prisoners, Sinn Féin activists
and members of Derry’s republican youth organisation lined the street leading to the church. After Mass, the funeral procession made its way to the City Cemetery where Dale was laid to rest close to his friend and comrade, Jim Kelly, who died earlier this year. Amongst the mourners were editorial staff and former colleagues from An Phoblacht, where Dale used to be a columnist, another voluntary commitment that he cheerfully gave to the cause he believed so much in. In his graveside oration, Sinn Féin stalwart Mitchel McLaughlin said that Dale, like many of his peers, stood up with courage and determination for what they believed in. Mitchel praised Dale who, despite his failing health, turned up for work in the Sinn Féin Press Office with his portable oxygen machine. “He didn’t complain, he got on with what needed done,” said Mitchel McLaughlin in a sentence that summed up the life and character of this courageous, dedicated, good-natured, lifelong republican activist. PEADAR WHELAN
Eilish Ní Bhriain South Australia
5 Mattie Casey of Comhairle Cuimhneacháin an Mhí removing the national flag from Phonsie's coffin before presenting it with the IRA Volunteer's beret and gloves to Phonsie's son Kieran and wife Marie
IT WAS with great sadness that republicans learned of the death in South Australia of Eilish Ní Bhriain (Elizabeth Joan O’Brien). Eilish lived in Rostrevor, a suburb of Adelaide, for many years and after a long illness she passed away at the age of 83. In Adelaide she was President of Australian Aid for Ireland and through those many busy and difficult years she was constantly on the go, gathering support for our prisoners and organising collections, etc. She was also constantly in touch with republican prisoners by post wherever they might be around the world. Eilish will be sadly missed by all who knew her. EX-POW GABRIEL ‘GAY’ CLERY 5 Eilish Ní Bhriain with Gay Clery and his son Brian
January / Eanáir 2017
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FÓGRAÍ BHÁIS
Owen Caraher Crossmaglen THE Morris/Harvey Sinn Féin Cumann, Crossmaglen, County Armagh, has paid tribute to founder member and lifelong Irish republican Owen Caraher, who passed away in December. Owen was a lifelong republican who fought in ‘Operation Harvest’, the Border campaign of the 1950s and 1960s. Not disheartened by the order to dump arms in 1962, Owen remained true to the cause, getting involved in community work and providing advice and inspiration to the people of the area who famously continued to resist British rule. In 1972, along with Brian Keenan and Joe Cahill, he helped form the Barney Morris Sinn Féin Cumann in Crossmaglen, later to become the Morris/Harvey Cumann. Also present at that meeting was another founder member, Steve Reel, who passed away earlier this year. While both Owen and Steve fought for their community through the harsh days of the Border Campaign and into the long street battles of the civil rights campaign and through the darkest days of the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s, they were also aware that a strong political
movement was just as crucial to that fight for freedom. When the time came to talk peace they used their considerable influence to rally support for the Peace Process and were stalwart defenders of that strategy ever since. Without the courage, determination and guidance offered by men like Owen and Steve, our people would not have emerged from the last century as the confident, determined and strong communities they are today. Their comrades in the local Sinn Féin cumann spoke for the republican family when they said of Owen and Steve: “It is not possible to sum up 100 combined years of struggle in a few words, nor the immense respect and esteem these men are held in, not just here in their native south Armagh but across Ireland. So let us simply say that their loss is keenly felt, not only by their friends and comrades but by the wider community across south Armagh and indeed the rest of Ireland. “The Ireland they dreamed of is the only fitting tribute worthy of patriots of their stature.” TERRY HEARTY
I nDíl Chuimhne Life springs from death and from the graves of patriot men and women spring living nations PÁDRAIG PEARSE
5 Owen Caraher
5 Steve Reel
Donaill Ó Shea Skibbereen, Cork THE unexpected death of Donaill Ó Shea (54), Droma’dúin, Skibbereen, County Cork, was received with great sadness by his relations and wide circle of friends from all over County Cork. Donaill had an idyllic childhood at Dromadúin (near Loughine) between farming, threshing, fishing and bowling. He had a lovely style as a road bowler and won several under-age west Cork competitions. As a 17-year-old in 1979 he took up his first job as a trainee telecoms technician at Churchfield Exchange in Cork. Donaill was one of a new generation inspired to become republican activists by the heroic Hunger Strikers of 1981. During the 1980s he worked in several election campaigns and the attention of the Garda Special Branch did not deter him from doing what was right. When he was home at weekends he was pivotal in the rebuilding of Sinn
Féin in west Cork with the founding of a cumann in Skibbereen in 1981, the first in the west Cork area for many years . For several years during the 1980s he drove one of two cars that left Skibbereen every weekend to sell An Phoblacht across wide swathes of west Cork. He
29
had a great way with people and in inspiring them to help out he endeared himself to everybody. He spearheaded his brother Donnchadh’s election campaigns and could turn his hand to anything and everything: publicity, postering, canvassing and fundraising. In 2004, he staged a solo picket of Sunday Independent columnist Eoghan Harris at Baltimore because of his repeated attacks on the Peace Process and Gerry Adams. He was never one to look for praise or recognition but he would have been humbled by the huge turn-out at his funeral and the guards of honour by Sinn Féin comrades and former work colleagues who came from all over to march with him on his last journey in his beloved Cork. He will be sorely missed by all his friends, relations and comrades.
2 January 1991: Volunteer Patrick SHEEHY, Limerick Brigade. 5 January 1979: Volunteer Frankie DONNELLY, Volunteer Laurence MONTGOMERY, Belfast Brigade, 3rd Battalion. 7 January 1972: Volunteer Danny O’NEILL, Belfast Brigade, 2nd Battalion. 8 January 1992: Volunteer Proinsias Mac AIRT, Belfast Brigade, 2nd Battalion. 10 January 1975: Volunteer John Francis GREEN, North Armagh Brigade. 11 January 1972: Fian Michael SLOAN, Fianna Éireann. 13 January 1975: Volunteer James MOYNE, Long Kesh. 13 January 1976: Volunteer Martin McDONAGH, Belfast Brigade, 3rd Battalion; Volunteer Rosemary BLEAKLEY, Cumann na mBan, Belfast. 15 January 1983: Volunteer Colm DALTUN, Dublin Brigade. 16 January 1972: Fian Eamon McCORMICK, Fianna Éireann. 16 January 1977: Volunteer Seamus HARVEY, South Armagh Brigade. 17 January 1980: Volunteer Kevin DELANEY, Belfast Brigade, 2nd Battalion.
18 January 1973: Volunteer Francis LIGGETT, Belfast Brigade, 2nd Battalion. 18 January 1978: Volunteer Jackie McMAHON, Belfast Brigade, 3rd Battalion. 20 January 1975: Volunteer Kevin COEN, Sligo Brigade. 21 January 1975: Volunteer John KELLY, Volunteer John STONE, Belfast Brigade, 2nd Battalion. 26 January 1972: Volunteer Peter McNULTY, South Down Command. 26 January 1985: Volunteer Mick TIMOTHY, Dublin Brigade. 30 January 1972: Fian Gerry DONAGHY, Fianna Éireann. Always remembered by the Republican Movement.
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KENNA. In proud and loving memory of Seán and Eileen Kenna. Always remembered by the Halpenny, Worhtington, Watters Sinn Féin Cumann, Dundalk. REGAN. In fond memory of Seán Regan, former councilor in north Antrim, who passed away on 31 December 2015. Always in our thoughts. From his friends and comrades in the Patrick Conry Sinn Féin Cumann, Castlerea, County Roscommon.
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5 Members of the Galway-based Mulvoy, Campbell, McGirr Sinn Féin Cumann travelled to Tyrone to honour the memory of Brian Campbell and Colm McGirr – executed by undercover SAS operatives on 4 December 1983 – and were presented with republican plaques by the Campbell and McGirr families
‘Forgotten’ 1916 Volunteer remembered in east Galway GALWAY SINN FÉIN held a wreath-laying ceremony at the grave of Volunteer Martin ‘Mattie’ Reney in the Old Cemetery at the Weir, Kilcolgan, on Saturday 17 December. They were joined by members of the O’Dea, Van Strien and Ó Ráinne families from across Galway and Connemara, all with close family links to the fallen Volunteer. Martin’s nephew, Colga O’Dea of Claregalway, laid a wreath on behalf of the families. ‘Mattie’ Reney has not been a household name in County Galway but his omission from many of the official commemorative events that took place across the county and city in the 1916 centenary year is to be regretted.
Martin ‘Mattie’ Reney was born in the Weir, Kilcolgan, in 1893 to parents Michael and Margaret Reney. He was the second-youngest of 10 children and he worked with his father, who was a boat-builder and small farmer originally from Leitir Caladh in the south Connemara Gaeltacht. Martin was among those who rose with the Clarinbridge Company during the 1916 Easter Rising in east Galway under the command of Liam Mellows. He took part in ambushes on both the Clarinbridge and Oranmore barracks on Tuesday 25 April 1916 but was badly wounded in an exchange of fire with members of the Royal Irish Constabulary. He died some weeks later as a result
of the wounds he received in battle. His epitaph reads defiantly: “I nDíl Chuimhne Mháirtín Uí Ríoghna a fuair bás i seirbhíseacht na hÉireann fé bhealtaine cúigeadh lá déag 1916 in aois cúig bliana ar fhichid. Saighdúir do Phoblacht na hÉireann. “In memory of Martin Reney who died in the service of Ireland, May 15th 1916, age 25 years. Member of the Irish Republican Army.” Some local activists have recently done Trojan work in cleaning up Martin’s grave and endeavouring to raise awareness about the role he played in the fight for Irish freedom. They plan to hold a major commemorative event in May 2017 to mark the date of his death.
5 Relatives of Martin ‘Mattie’ Reney from across Galway and Connemara in the Old Cemetery at the Weir, Kilcolgan Anyone interested in working on this project or has information regarding Martin ‘Mattie’ Reney is asked to e-mail galway1916@gmail.com.
30 January / Eanáir 2017
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Getting organised labour involved in political struggle is a vital task
Do we really need another new party on the Left?
Breakaways from the Labour Party seem to have little to offer. The Trotskyists play their traditional opportunist and divisive games while the Social Democrats seem to have no clear purpose or policy (even though there are good, genuine people in both tendencies). Arising from the Right2Change movement, some trade union activists are now floating the idea of a new party of organised labour to take up the reins which the discredited Labour Party abandoned. Talk of yet another new party brings forth a chorus of groans but a new initiative is needed to take the labour movement out of the doldrums in
BY EOIN Ó MURCHÚ THE GROSS BETRAYAL of the interests of the organised labour movement by the Labour Party has rightly led thousands of trade unionists to reject the abject posturing of this personal-pension-hungry rabble. But where does the rejection of the Labour Party by so many leave organised labour itself? The Labour Party was originally founded to be the political voice of Irish trade unionism and, under the guidance of James Connolly, Labour earned the right to take its place in the leadership of the national struggle. Tragically, the labour leadership after Connolly stood aside from that struggle, waiting for others
Some trade union activists are now floating the idea of a new party of organised labour to complete the task and so made organised labour peripheral to Irish politics. The veteran socialist republican, George Gilmore, showed back in 1966 how the organised trade union struggle forced the pace that led to the Rising and the Tan War. He also showed how the militant nationalists who took part in the Rising and the Tan War leaned naturally towards labour’s side on social and industrial issues. For Gilmore, and for republicans like him, the eventual defeat of the Republic was due to a large extent to the fact that labour had abandoned its role in the leadership. Sinn Féin today recognises the need to bring the labour and republican traditions together, for without that unity we cannot establish a united,
Sinn Féin recognises the need to bring the labour and republican traditions together 5 Today we march, tomorrow we vote – and Fine Gael/Fianna Fáil still rule until we get our act together
independent republic. Nor can we create a fair and equal society in which all the resources of our country are at the disposal of all of our people. The problem, of course, is that the labour component is missing. The trade unions are – politically – all over the shop. SIPTU still officially maintains support for and a link with the Labour Party, even though SIPTU General President Jack O’Connor (who continues to argue for that link) also wants to reach out to Sinn Féin and bring labour and republican together. Other trade unions have formally broken with the Labour Party and are no longer affiliated, leaving individual members to paddle their own canoes and work out their own political allegiances. That’s fine but it means that organised labour
has no united political voice, does not intervene in any powerful way in the political life of the country, and deprives progressive politics of a vital link in the chain.
5 SIPTU's Jack O'Connor: Reaching out
which it is rotting while the Irish people endure more and more attacks on their living standards and political rights. For this idea to have any value, from the start it must take on Connolly’s mantle and aim to work not as a single party, eschewing all others, but as a component of a broad labour republican alliance, working particularly in alliance with Sinn Féin, the voice of Irish republicanism.. Right2Change set out some principles and Sinn Fein was to the fore in advancing these. It might be difficult to get the Trotskyists or Social Democrats to commit themselves genuinely to developing these principles but the effort should still be made. Getting organised labour involved in political struggle is a vital task but the first step is to begin serious debate on these principles and on the need for a republican labour alliance.
January / Eanáir 2017
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Féiniúlacht agus Cothromas á bplé ag an Slógadh
Ní mór don DUP tabhairt faoin dúshlán 5 Thug Gerry Adams TD príomhóráid an lae
5 TIarchimí poblachtach an Comhairleoir Séanna Walsh ag caint
AN FHÉINIÚLACHT agus an cothromas i leith na Gaeilge, sa phobal agus sa chóras scolaíochta, is iad sin na hábhair is mó a bhí faoi thrácht ag Slógadh Shinn Féin i nDún Richmond (Richmond Barracks), Baile Atha Cliath, le déanaí. Bhí scaifte maith Gael i láthair ag an imeacht bhliantúil Gaeilge ag tús mhí na Nollag. Ba é Uachtarán Shinn Féin Gerry Adams TD príomhchainteoir an lae agus bhí teachtaireacht láidir aige maidir le stádas na Gaeilge, ó thuaidh go háirithe, "Glacaim leis go bhfuil daoine buartha nach bhfuil Straitéis Gaeilge sa dhréachtchlár Rialtais sa Tuaisceart. Faroar géar, is é an fhírinne nár aontaigh an DUP leis seo a chur isteach,” a dúirt an Teachta Adams. Lean sé leis, "Agus Sinn Féin sa rialtas ó thuaidh, thacaigh muid le hAcht na Gaeilge agus d'iarr muid go rialta ar Rialtas na Breataine agus Rialtas na hÉireann a gcuid dualgaisí faoi Chomhaontú Chill Rímhinn a chomhlíonadh ina n-iomlán. Thacaigh muid fosta leis an straitéis Gaeilge a thug an tAire Carál Ní Chuilín os comhair an fheidhmeannais. Is é an DUP agus an UUP a dhiúltaigh an straitéis. “Anois, tá tréimhse comhairliúcháin ann agus cé gur beag an seans go n-athróidh an DUP a ndearcadh, tá sé ríthábhachtach go mbeidh glór ag pobal na Gaeilge sa phróiséas comhairliúcháin.” Bhí roinnt aoi-chainteoirí i láthair don chéad díospóireacht painéil a chlúdaigh téama na féiniúlachta; Paula Melvin (Pobal Gaeilge 15), Séanna Walsh (iarchimí), Mairéad Farrell (SF) ina measc. Tugadh dhá óráid shuntasacha eile sa
5 Carol Nolan TD agus Barry McElduff CTR le Pilib O Ruanaí agus Séamas Ó Donnghaile ag plé an Ghaeloideachais
chuid sin den lá nuair a labhair ball de Shinn Féin Seán Oliver faoina chúlra Presipitéireach agus faoina aistear cultúrtha agus polaitiúla. Ba shuimiúil, fosta, an chaint a thug Norman Uprichard (East Belfast Mission) maidir lena thaithí mar Phrotastúnach ag foghlaim na Gaeilge le Linda Ervine agus an togra ‘Turas’. Cúrsaí Gaelscolaíochta a bhí á bplé tráthnóna ag an Slógadh, sa seisiún ar a ndearna an Comhalta Barry McElduff an cathaoirleacht. Chuir sé fáilte roimh chur isteach suimiúil ó Clare Spáinneach (Gaeloideachas), Carol Nolan TD (SF), Pilib Ó Ruanaí (Iontaobhas) agus ón Dr Séamas Ó Donnghaile, príomhoide bunscoile i mBéal Feirste atá i ndiaidh staidéar a chríochnú faoin 5 Ball de Shinn Féin Seán Oliver ag caint téama ‘Tábhacht an Phiarsaigh don 5 Paula Melvin ón eagraíocht Pobal Gaeilge 15 faoina thaithí féin Ghaeloideachas san 21ú hAois.’ Bhí an t-ábhar sin tráthúil go leor, mar a mhínigh an Teachta Dála Aengus Ó Snodaigh agus é ag caint ar thábhacht Dhún Richmond go díreach i ndiaidh na hÉirí Amach. Gabhadh níos mó na 3,000 duine sa bhearaic, ceannairí na reabhlóide san áireamh. Tógadh roinnt mháith ceisteanna tábhachtacha maidir le cur chun cinn na teanga san am atá romhainn agus an easpa reachtaíochta éifeachtaí go háirithe i gcomhthéacs na 6 chontae. Le linn an lae, treisíodh leis an méid a dúirt Gerry Adams, “Ní mór don DUP glacadh leis an dúshlán agus meas a thabhairt don fhéiniúlacht Gaelach agus don Ghaeilge; mar nithe chomh cothrom agus bailí le cúlra ar bith eile. Ní foláir dóibh a aithint 5 Séamas Ó Donnghaile ag caint ar nach bhfuil an Ghaeilge ina bagairt ar thábhacht an Phiarsaigh aon duine.” 5 Norman Uprichard ó East Belfast Mission
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IN PICTURES
Sraith Nua Iml 40 Uimhir 1 – January / Eanáir 2017
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5 'Towards a United Ireland' document launch in Dublin with Sinn Féín's Máirtín Ó Muilleoir MLA, Mary Lou McDonald TD and Matt Carthy MEP
5 Sinn Féin Oireachtas members Niall Ó Donnghaile, Gerry Adams, Maurice Quinlivan, David Cullinane and Imelda Munster at the call by 'We Are Citizens Too' at Leinster House for voting rights to be extended to all Irish citizens
5 'Towards an Agreed and Reconciled Future' Sinn Féin policy launch at Clifton House, Derry, 5 In one of her first acts as the new Sinn Féin MLA for West Belfast, Orlaithí Flynn signs a Christmas card for a Basque with Declan Kearney MLA, Canon David Porter and Martin McGuinness MLA leading the way political prisoner with Caoimhín Mac Giolla Mhín and Basque former political prisoner Itziar Martinez
» IRA prisoners come home » First election victories » Death of Thomas Ashe » Keeping Connolly’s flag flying » 1867 Fenian Rising and the Manchester Martyrs » 1916 Centenary remembered
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