An Phoblacht, November 2017

An Phoblacht moves to magazine format – Next issue March 2018

anphoblacht Sraith Nua Iml 40 Uimhir 11

November / Samhain 2017

Price €2 / £2

SPECIAL SUPPLEMENT

Sinn Féin Ard Fheis 2017 Towards a United Ireland I dTreo Éire Aontaithe

A TIME OF CHANGE

2 November / Samhain 2017

www.anphoblacht.com

anphoblacht Editorial

WHAT'S INSIDE 4

Sinister RUC Special Branch relationship with UVF kept hidden in court moves 6

Cath na Catalóine 8

‘6 into 32 – Finding a place for the North in a united Ireland’ 10

Belfast housing still contentious 50 years after civil rights struggle 14 & 15

Workers’ co-operatives plan launched at Oireachtas

anphoblacht Eagarfhocal

anphoblacht

An Phoblacht Abú – Leanfaidh Muid Ar Aghaigh WE ARE in the midst of a truly historic and exciting time of change within Sinn Féin and for our struggle for a united Ireland and an Irish Republic.

The 2017 Ard Fheis was another signpost in that change.

When Gerry Adams took over as President of Sinn Féin the war was raging, censorship was in place and the party was on the margins of the political process. At that time, there were only 10 councillors in the South.

Over the past 34 years, the party has grown to 23 TDs, 7 senators, 27 MLAs, 7 MPs, 4 MEPs and 250 councillors. Everyone in Ireland now has a Sinn Féin representative.

The growth of the party is meaningless unless accompanied by a real change in the lives or people and progress to an Irish Republic.

Gerry Adams, with others, has led the process of change.

The war is over and we now have a peaceful and democratic pathway to Irish unity. The perpetual unionist majority is gone.

The censorship and repression of the past has ended and powersharing and equality must be at the centre of institutions in the North.

Sinn Féin is no longer on the margins. Sinn Féin is at the centre of political developments across the island This was under the leadership of Gerry Adams. As he said at the Ard Fheis, leadership is also about knowing when it is time to pass on the baton to the next generation and that time is now.

Throughout the history of struggle there comes a time for a new generation to step forward. Anyone looking in on the Ard Fheis will be a witness to the ability of a new generation of Sinn Féin leaders. The challenges remain: to continue to build the

Contact

Layout and production: Mark Dawson production@anphoblacht.com

NEWS editor@anphoblacht.com NOTICES notices@anphoblacht.com PHOTOS photos@anphoblacht.com

party, to be in government North and South, to deliver rights and equality, to make a real change in the lives of citizens, and to progress the cause of Irish unity.

We have the leadership to meet these challenges and we look forward with confidence to the election of a new leader of Sinn Féin.

Just as Sinn Féin is in a process of renewal and regeneration, so is An Phoblacht. The print and newspaper environment is changing in a fast-developing world of social media. Our newsprint edition is now only a fraction of our online readership and with a demand for longer, reflective pieces and discussions on articles.

With this in mind, we are ending the monthly print edition with this issue and we will be moving to a new magazine format with the first edition in March 2018.

We will continue to produce online articles and reports with the support of our contributors.

We want to thank all those who have worked on the monthly edition, the contributors, photographers, production staff, sellers and – most importantly – you, the readers.

We especially extend our thanks to outgoing Editor John Hedges and Designer Mark Dawson for their commitment and skills in producing the monthly paper and associated publications over the past seven years while introducing and maintaining our social media platforms.

So onwards to another chapter for Sinn Féin and An Phoblacht.

In the words of Gerry Adams’s Ard Fheis speech: “An Phoblacht Abú – Leanfaidh Muid Ar Aghaigh!”

– Ciarán Quinn, Director of Publicity

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

www.anphoblacht.com

18

IN PICTURES

photos@anphoblacht.com

Danny Morrison: Getting out the republican message 20

Deliberate British policy dictated brutality and medical neglect of POWs 31

5 Galway delegate Naoise Ó Faoláin and South Down Sinn Féin MLA Sinéad Ennis call on unionists to support Acht na Gaeilge

Wicklow Gaol’s 300 years of history SUBSCRIBE ONLINE To get your An Phoblacht delivered direct to your mobile device or computer for just €10 per 12 issues and access to the historic The Irish Volunteer newspaperand An Phoblacht’s/IRIS the republican magazine archives

5 Sound and vision: Family, friends and comrades are captivated by the tribute to Martin McGuinness

5 Sinn Féin MEP Martina Anderson

November / Samhain 2017

www.anphoblacht.com

DECLAN KEARNEY

Sinn Féin National Chairperson

3

The decisions by Gerry, Martin, Pat and Martin McGuinness are a statement of confidence in a new generation of leaders from those who have personified the republican struggle

A NEW CHAPTER BEGINS THE political momentum which has led to over half a million people voting for Sinn Féin in Ireland was clearly in evidence at the 2017 Ard Fheis.

It was a mighty event with delegates and visitors from all over Ireland and all walks of life.

There have been many landmark Ard Fheiseanna, particularly during the last 50 years.

I remember saying to a friend in 1983 I believed that year’s Ard Fheis, which elected Gerry Adams as Uachtarán Shinn Féin, would be historic because of what I thought (from a very youthful perspective) this might mean for the development of the republican struggle.

And so it proved to be – history making.

Gerry – along with Martin McGuinness, Martin Ferris, Pat Doherty and others – emerged as a cadre of leaders which laid the foundations for republican strategy, the Peace Process itself, a collective national leadership, and a growing party organisation and project which is today poised for government in the North and the South of Ireland.

Since our previous Ard Fheis, in 2016, Sinn Féin has been developing a 10-Year Plan to set the strategic, political and organisational direction of the party.

Regeneration and renewal at all levels of the organisation are integral to that.

Gerry’s announcement not to stand again as Uachtarán is another element of Sinn Féin’s planned

IN PICTURES

leadership transition. Much of the public commentary since the Ard Fheis about what this means for our party, whilst predictable, is also completely misplaced.

One of Gerry’s enduring contributions to modern republicanism has been to ensure that political strategy and our national strategic objectives have been hardwired into the operation of the party.

He has always emphasised the importance of and need to take strategic initiatives to make political advances.

His announcement represents a positive strategic initiative.

And that is the real story behind his decision not to stand again as Uachtarán Shinn Féin.

His other decision, alongside Martin Ferris and Pat Doherty, not to contest another parliamentary election is also about opening up new space for further internal change.

The decisions made by Gerry, Martin, Pat and that which had already been made by Martin McGuinness before his death are a statement of confidence in a new generation of leaders from those who have personified the republican struggle for so long.

This emergent generation represents a collective and truly national leadership which is cohesive and strategically focused on the way forward.

So there is not a ‘What’s next?’ crossroads or Rubicon for the Sinn Féin leadership.

The fact is that the national liberation stage of the struggle is still not completed.

Partition remains the central fault line at the heart of Irish politics and society.

Brexit has brought Irish unity centre stage.

Our strategy is geared towards achieving national independence and ultimately ‘An Ireland of Equals’.

Our political priority going forward is to democratically persuade the greater number of citizens throughout the country that an agreed, united Ireland is in their interests.

That will require a political programme based upon real world policies which attract maximum popular support, and a cohesive, united, ideologically-centred party.

We intend to be in government both North and South, to secure and win a unity referendum, and to move towards Irish unity.

Re-establishing the Northern political institutions

Our entry into government in the South will be dictated by the number of TDs we elect and our political strength

on a rights-based framework is an imperative.

If the DUP and British Government pact continues to stop that happening in the short-term, the reality is we will come back to the same point: the absolute requirement for a rights-based government with proper power sharing.

The scourge of sectarianism must also be tackled to pave the way for a truly reconciled, shared future and a new phase of the Peace Process.

Sinn Féin in the Dáil will bring forward a White Paper on Irish unity. We will continue to campaign relentlessly across the 26 Counties to build support for an agenda of sustainable public services, quality housing and equal pay for equal work.

Our entry into government in the South will not be dictated by either Fianna Fáil or Fine Gael but rather by the number of TDs we elect and our future political strength.

This is the future work programme facing the leadership of Sinn Féin.

Gerry Adams’s decision does not represent the end of an era. It represents renewal and heralds the next stage of leadership succession and transition in our party.

History did not stop at the Ard Fheis in Dublin; instead, the next chapter was being written.

Now it falls to a new generation to build and take forward the politics of transformation in Ireland.

The struggle continues.

Beirigí bua!

photos@anphoblacht.com

5 Gerry Adams with US trade union leader Terry O’Sullivan

5 Overwhelming Ard Fheis support for the campaign to repeal the Eighth Amendment

5 The youngest councillor in Ireland: The newly co-opted Orla Nic Bhiorna replaced veteran activist Janice Austin on Belfast City Council, championing the rights of Gaeilgeoirí and urging unionists to support Acht na Gaeilge

4 November / Samhain 2017

www.anphoblacht.com

RUC and UVF members escape prosecution in Mount Vernon murder case

Sinister RUC Special Branch relationship with UVF kept hidden

BY PEADAR WHELAN THE DECISION by the North’s Director of Public Prosecutions not to prosecute two former Royal Ulster Constabulary officers and 11 Ulster Volunteer Force suspects accused of involvement in a series of murders and other serious offences on the word of UVF killer Gary Haggarty has caused anger and dismay amongst relatives of those killed and injured.

The Haggarty case has parallels with that of Brian Nelson, the British Army agent who acted as the Ulster Defence Association’s intelligence chief targeting Catholics for sectarian killings, nationalists and republicans.

British Military Intelligence was pulling Nelson’s strings but it was the RUC Special Branch who controlled Haggarty.

Both state agents literally ‘got away with murder’ with paltry sentences and early releases because of their service to the crown.

Plea bargains ensured that detailed evidence of the exact role and dealings of British Military Intelligence commanders or RUC Special Branch chiefs would not be exposed in open court.

Haggarty pleaded guilty in June to 202 UVF-related offences, including five killings and five attempted killings.

Despite this, there is speculation he could be released in the coming weeks.

The revelation in October that charges would not be pursued against the former RUC police officers and the UVF members provoked understandable anger amongst families who have suffered at the hands of Haggarty’s infamous Mount Vernon UVF gang in north Belfast.

Much of their rage was centred on the DPP’s rationale not to prosecute the loyalists or the ex-RUC members on the questionable grounds that one of Haggarty’s Special Branch handlers “provided a sick line that he was off for four months” and therefore “the very serious allegations against one officer” could not be corroborated as he was “on long-term sick leave”. This officer nevertheless maintained contact with Haggarty despite being “on the sick”.

KRW Law, which is representing some of the families, said the DPP was in effect viewing this Special Branch officer’s sick line as providing an “absolute” alibi against Haggarty’s allegations that the two officers passed the details of a north

A plea bargain meant exact role of RUC Special Branch would not be exposed in open court Belfast man to Gary Haggarty on the understanding that he would be targeted by the UVF. The DPP also cited Haggarty’s “lack of credibility” as another reason for

proceeding with the case before bizarrely saying there was no “independent supporting evidence”.

In other words, the fact that these two seasoned Special Branch officers failed to keep a record of their dealings with the UVF agent meant that there was no corroborating evidence.

Reacting to this curious logic, KRW Law said it was “preposterous” and amounted to asking a criminal to keep records of his criminality.

The law firm stressed the seriousness of this failure to keep records as a breach of undertakings by the PSNI to record information and monitor intelligence in the aftermath of the Operation Ballast report produced in 2007 by the then Police Ombudsman, Nuala O’Loan.

Operation Ballast, which investigated the activities of the UVF in Mount Vernon, exposed the links between Special Branch and their agent Mark Haddock was scathing of the RUC/PSNI and their “contempt

DPP says UVF agent who gave information to RUC ‘lacked credibility’

for the law” due to their systemic negligence regarding keeping records.

In a statement, KRW Law said: “Our clients have requested an emergency consultation with the Public Prosecution Service to consider what, if any, avenues of appeal are open to them in respect of what they consider to be an unacceptable and hurtful decision.”

RUC registered informants in murder ­puzzle

5 UVF killer and police informer Gary Haggarty

GARY HAGGARTY was charged with killing Eamon Fox and Gary Convie at a building site on Belfast’s North Queen Street in May 1994; Seán McDermott was shot dead in his car near Antrim in August 1994; John Harbinson was killed after being handcuffed and beaten by a UVF gang on the Mount Vernon estate in north Belfast in May 1997.

But it’s the murder of Seán McParland (55), a father of four from south Belfast, gunned down while babysitting his grandchildren at a house in Skegoneill Avenue, Belfast, in February 1994 that raises huge questions that will likely never be answered, given Haggarty’s guilty plea.

We know that Haggarty pulled the trigger but what of the role of the two RUC “registered informants” who accompanied Haggarty to Skegoneill Avenue to carry out the killing, and the other RUC “registered informant” who prepared the second getaway car? Or indeed the role of the “registered informant” who selected the house for the murderous attack?

Perhaps most concerningly, what were the exact roles of Haggarty’s RUC Special Branch handlers who, he asserts, were directing him in a sectarian campaign to fulfill Special Branch’s own intelligence interests and security ambitions for the north Belfast UVF?

November / Samhain 2017

www.anphoblacht.com

5

SECTARIANISM

Time to push that elephant out of the room ON 14 OCTOBER, I and other republicans commemorated the execution of William Orr, 220 years ago to the day, at a little graveyard in Templepatrick, County Antrim.

William Orr was a United Irishman from nearby Farranshane. His memory has been immortalised to this day with the refrain “Remember Orr!” – the battle cry used to rally the United Irishmen and women during the 1798 Rebellion.

Orr was one of a group of famous United Irishmen and women with very local associations to County Antrim, including Roddy McCorley, Jemmy Hope, Henry Joy and Anne McCracken.

All of them continue to be remembered to this day in song, poetry and prose.

During the H-Blocks Blanket Protest, Bobby Sands penned a powerful poem Rodaí Mac Corlaí. It is based upon the stories told by local POWs about Roddy and his betrayal two years after the Battle of Antrim in 1798.

For too long, sectarianism has been this society’s ‘elephant in the room’ – to be evaded and avoided, and to never be tackled head-on The United Irish tradition is central to Irish republicanism. It defines the historic mission of modern day Irish republicanism as the unity of Protestant, Catholic and dissenter, and the achievement of an agreed united Ireland.

The United Irishmen and women developed the timeless principles of Irish republicanism – anti-sectarianism, secularism and separatism.

These are as relevant today as they were in the 1790s.

Sectarianism was used by the British state as a colonial strategy in Ireland to divide and dominate since the Plantation.

After partition it became institutionalised within the Northern state and was the glue which held together the unionist one-party state.

Nearly 100 years later, Northern society continues to live with its visceral legacy.

the unionist councillors from the UUP and the DUP voted against it.

Nevertheless, this motion was passed despite the opposition of the unionist parties.

Anti-sectarianism is not a zero-sum concept to be negotiated on a win/ lose basis.

Our starting point should be the Good Friday Agreement, which set out explicitly the rights for all citizens to freely choose their place of residence and to live free from sectarian harassment.

Anti-sectarianism should be at the heart of a rights-based society. It should be embraced as a quality of life issue for us all.

For too long, sectarianism has been this society’s ‘elephant in the room’ – to be evaded and avoided, and to never be tackled head-on.

As a contribution to changing that, Sinn Féin has launched a ‘Stand Up Against Sectarianism’ campaign (SUAS).

Sectarian attitudes are the most incendiary catalyst for violence now and in the future In the Six Counties, sectarianism moulds the daily reality of citizens.

Sectarianism and sectarian segregation influences our approach to educational preference; our choice of sport; how and where to socialise; and, to some extent, our place of employment.

Sectarian attitudes are the most incendiary catalyst for violence now and in the future, and for rationalising ­– even legitimising – continuous communal instability and segregation.

That was graphically illustrated by the recent intimidation of four Catholic families in Cantrell Close in Belfast by the UVF. This was a stark reminder of the pogroms against Catholic families in the same area during the 1970s.

Sectarianism is not a one-way street.

It also exists within nationalism. It sits at the crux of political, social and communal divisions in the North and permeates wider Irish society.

Much important work has been done to address its consequences by grassroots community workers, those active with interface projects, the Community Relations Council, the integrated education and Gaeloideachas sectors, the trade union movement, and many other citizens and sectors in society

committed to the Peace Process.

However, a step-change is urgently needed to encourage a new, popular, sustained momentum against sectarianism.

That will require united political and civic leadership.

Sinn Féin has tabled anti-sectarianism proposals within every forum. We

want anti-sectarianism to be ingrained within our shared political and civic institutions.

Significant figures within political unionism have opposed that approach.

Consistent with that failure in leadership is that when Sinn Féin councillors on Fermanagh & Omagh District Council tabled a motion on anti-sectarianism,

5 Declan Kearney and South Antrim Sinn Féin at the grave of William Orr

The public and political discourse around sectarianism needs to change.

All politicians – but particularly those within political unionism – must start showing real leadership to eradicate the pervasive influence of sectarianism.

Sectarianism should be defined as hate crime in legislation with appropriate legal enforcement and sanction.

A commitment to anti-sectarianism should be incorporated within the pledge of office for all publicly-elected politicians, North and South.

Politicians in our society should be responsible for actively promoting a citizens’ anti-sectarian charter at a community level.

Anti-sectarianism should be common ground for building bridges and integrating society.

Doing nothing means the prospect of a shared, reconciled future is compromised on the rock of recycled sectarian divisions.

Sectarianism is a blight on Irish society. It is unjustifiable and it is the antithesis of progressive change in Ireland.

It’s time we pushed that elephant out of the room; it’s time for all of us to stand up against sectarianism. #SUAS

6 November / Samhain 2017

www.anphoblacht.com

Cogadh na faisnéise faoi lán tseoil cheana féin

Cath na Catalóine

Le Trevor Ó Clochartaigh IS LÉIR go bhfuil Cogadh na Faisnéise idir an Chatalóin agus Rialtas na Spáinne faoi lán tseoil cheana féin. Agus mé dhá scríobh seo, tá rudaí ag athrú in aghaidh an lae agus in amanna in aghaidh an uair a chloig sa gceantar.

Tá gné eile den scéal seo nach bhfuil an oiread aird faighte aige, dár ndóigh. Sin go bhfuil bat agus bóthar tugtha don fhoireann ar fad a oibríonn le Diplocat agus na h-oifigí toscaireachta a bhunaigh Rialtas na Catalóine ar fud an domhan.

Is comhfhiontar poiblí-príobháideach atá in Diplocat, a chuireann eolas ar fáil faoin Chatalóin agus a chothaíonn caidreamh leis an chuid eile den domhan.

Bhí roinnt toscaireachtaí ar bun freisin faoi scáth na Roinne Trédhearcachta & Gnóthaí Eachtracha agus Caidreamh Institiúideach agus iadsan ag feidhmiú thar ceann Rialtas na Catalóine ar fud an domhain agus tá siad sin dúnta síos ag Rialtas na Spáinne anois freisin.

Sa bhreis ar sin, tá smacht glactha ar an Agència Catalana de Notícies – Áisíneacht Nuachta na Catalóine, atá ag iarraidh cothromaíocht a thabhairt ó thaobh feasacháin nuachta maidir lena bhfuil ag tarlú sa réigiúin chomh maith.

Is léir dá bhrí sin, go bhfuil Rialtas na Spáinne ag iarraidh smacht iomlán a bheith acu ar na

IN PICTURES

teachtaireachtaí atá ag teacht amach maidir lena bhfuil ar bun sa Chatalóin agus is fíor dhroch lá don daonlathas idirnáisiúnta atá ansin.

Dár ndóigh, rinne Rialtas na Spáinne iarrachtaí an nuacht agus saoirse cainte a chuir faoi chois sa gCatalóin roimh reifreann an 1ú Deireadh Fómhair chomh maith. Baineadh anuas suíomhanna idirlíon a bhain leis na céadta eagraíocht pobail agus cultúrtha, gan dlí na tíre a leanúint, in ainneoin gan eolas ar bith faoin reifreann a bheith luaite orthu.

Rinneadh cibear-ionsaí chomh maith ar lá an reifrinn ar an suíomh idirlíon a raibh liosta na dtoghthóirí air, in iarracht cur isteach ar an saoirse vótála. Sin gan trácht ar na h-ionsaithe fisiciúla a rinne an Guardia Civil, le beannacht agus spreagadh Rialtas na Spáinne, ar ghnáth dhaoine a bhí ag iarraidh a gcearta faoin dlí idirnáisiúnta a chleachtadh.

Tá cuid mhaith leithscéalta tugtha ag ceannairí na hEorpa, rialtas na hÉireann san áireamh ansin, maidir le reifreann a bhí, dar leo, ‘mídhleathach’.

Ach, is beag cainte atá acu maidir ar na dlíthe atá briste ag Rialtas Rajoy. Is cosúil go bhfuil dlí amháin ann do mhuintir na Catalóine agus dlí eile do Rialtas Mhadrid.

Tá an ceart um féinchinntiúchán sealbhaithe i roinnt comhaontaithe idirnáisiúnta atá glactha mar dhlí ag an Spáinn ó 1977 ar aghaidh. Dearbhaíonn bunreacht na Spáinne in Alt 96 go bhfuil na dlíthe idirnáisiúnta mar chuid de dhlí na tíre sin agus deimhníonn Alt 10.2 go ndéanfar bunchearta agus saoirse pobail a chuir i bhfeidhm faoi threoir dlíthe áirithe idirnáisiúnta chomh maith. Is beag aird atá ag lucht cáinte na Catalóine ar sin.

Ach, gan amhras, tá gné iontach polaitiúil lena bhfuil ag tarlú ar fad chomh maith. Tá sé spéisiúil chomh daingean is atá an Taoiseach Varadkar

agus a chuid Airí, Mícheál Martin agus ceannairí polaitiúla eile ag seasamh le Príomhaire Rajoy na Spáinne, i bhfianaise an chaimiléireacht ar fad atá ar bun ag baill dá pháirtí sin, an Partido Popular.

Tá suas le 835 ball den pháirtí sin luaite le ós cionn 60 cás caimiléireachta atá ós comhair na gcúirteanna faoi láthair.

An réiteach a bhí ag Rajoy agus a chomhghleacaithe ar seo, ná na h-eagrais agus áisíneachtaí a

Is léir go bhfuil Rialtas na Spáinne ag iarraidh smacht iomlán a bheith acu ar na teachtaireachtaí atá ag teacht amach maidir lena bhfuil ar bun sa Chatalóin agus is fíor dhroch lá don daonlathas idirnáisiúnta atá ansin bhí I mbun fiosrúcháin a lagú agus cumhachtaí a bhaint díbh. An-chosúil leis an straitéis ceanna atá ar bun acu anois arís sa Chatalóin le Diplocat agus na Toscaireachtaí Idirnáisiúnta.

Agus, is cosúil go bhfuil an Aontas Eorpach agus formhór ceannairí na hEorpa sásta seasamh le Rajoy agus an cur chuige frith-dhaonlathach seo.

Seans go n-insíonn sin níos mó faoi na ceannairí céanna sin, ná a deir sé faoi muintir na Catalóine.

Cogadh salach atá agus a bheidh ann.

photos@anphoblacht.com

5 Sinn Féin MLAs and MPs, including Michelle O’Neill (below), support Acht na Gaeilge protest at Stormont by school students

5 Sinn Féin Senator Trevor Ó Clochartaigh, Mary Lou McDonald TD, Carol Nolan TD and Donnchadh Ó Laoghaire TD support calls for the immediate release of Catalan civil society activists jailed by Spain

November / Samhain 2017

www.anphoblacht.com

BY EOIN Ó MURCHÚ AS WE FACE in to yet another round of scandals, maladministration, a failure to regulate and a general rip-off of the ordinary citizen, it is more and more apparent that the political and economic system isn’t working – at least not for ordinary voters.

The rich and powerful are still doing well and – under this Fine Gael/Fianna Fáil partnership government – can expect to stay doing well.

The latest row about the banks taking people off tracker mortgages – without legal justification – and forcing them to pay much higher repayments on other mortgage schemes just emphasises the point.

This is not a new issue. It has been known for a year and yet nothing has been done. The regulatory authority – the Central Bank – failed to regulate.

In Pearse Doherty’s memorable words, it was a case of the watchdog that didn’t bark.

And the Fine Gael/Independent Government, with no murmur of dissent from Fianna Fáil, was content to let the issue stew. But now that it has burst upon the political scene with a vengeance, they are all huff and puff, threatening dire action against the banks and so on.

But contrast this with the petty vendetta that Leo Varadkar launched against people on social welfare. While his campaign failed to net many ‘fraudsters’ (for the prosaic reason that not many

The regulatory authority – the Central Bank – failed to regulate people were guilty of any fraud), it was still pursued with maximum vigour and a blaze of publicity.

People whose crime was to get a few hundred euro more than they were entitled to have ended up in courts – but bankers responsible for some people losing their homes and for many thousands of others suffering stress and hardship can’t be found on the courts’ rolls.

In the case of the banks, apparently, there are ‘difficulties’ in proving intent and establishing what crime exactly has been committed. And there is another ‘difficulty’, apparently, as to whether there is individual responsibility or whether the banks as institutions should be called to account.

The point is that some individual in the banks instructed that this illegal action be taken; and other individuals, knowingly or otherwise, did it.

Not so hard, surely, to find out who is responsible and charge him or her?

Institutionally, though, there is a bigger problem.

The Roman poet Horace once asked who would police the police. As we contemplate the failure of the Central Bank – yet again – this question comes strongly to the fore.

The Central Bank is responsible for making sure that the banking system is functioning, that the banks have the capital need for investment in the economy, and in our society that means ensuring that the banks make a profit.

Protecting the customer, the consumer of bank services, is a secondary task.

But what happens when ensuring the banks’ profitability means that consumers are ripped off and money is taken from them illegally? The rip-off is a small problem but profitability remains central, especially as the banks are readied for

7

BANKING SCANDAL LATEST TO SHOW THE SYSTEM’S FAILURE

5 The Central Bank is responsible for making sure that the banking system is functioning properly for the banks – but what about for the public?

In Pearse Doherty’s memorable words,

it was a case of the watchdog that didn’t bark

5 Bank chiefs who caused so much hardship for citizens aren’t being carted off to jail by the van-load

reprivatisation, which means making sure that they are profitable enough for a vulture capitalist to buy them.

Don’t worry, though. The Government is determined – yes, determined – that this problem will be resolved by Christmas.

Nothing to see here, so move along, please.

But there is something to see.

This is not just a question of dodgy practices in the banks – all the banks at the same time, apparently. It is a question of the Government’s priorities for the social and economic systems.

Fianna Fáil, from the heights of its pretended opposition, may nitpick on certain issues (for the sake of a bit of publicity and to pretend to be some sort of opposition) but both parties accept the priority of the market – in finance as well as in housing, health and even education.

To put it simply, if you vote for either of these parties you can’t complain when you get the same rip-off policies that they’ve always given us.

The answer is to vote for change. Not just, or

mainly, a change of name of those in charge, but a change of policy to put the needs of ordinary working people to the forefront of all policy positions.

Surely it’s time for all those who claim to speak for working people to set aside personal ambitions

Protecting the customer, the consumer of bank services, is a secondary task for the Central Bank and combine to argue for the policies that will deliver the change that people need.

Sinn Féin is committed to that. Are the other parties, on both the social democratic and Trotskyist Left, willing to do the same?

8 November / Samhain 2017

www.anphoblacht.com

Chris Hazzard MP speaking at the Lighthouse Summer School in Killough, County Down

‘6

into 32 FINDING A PLACE

FOR THE NORTH IN A UNITED IRELAND’ • Antrim | Aontroma • Armagh | Ard Mhacha • Carlow | Ceatharlach • Cavan | An Cabhán • Clare | An Clár • Cork | Corcaigh • Derry | Doire • Donegal | Dún na nGall • Down | Dún • Dublin | Baile Átha Cliath • Fermanagh | Fear Manach • Galway | Gaillimh • Kerry | Ciarraí • Kildare | Cill Dara • Kilkenny | Cill Chainnigh • Laois | Laoise • Leitrim | Liatroma • Limerick | Luimneach • Longford | An Longfort • Louth | Lú • Mayo | Maigh Eo • Meath | An Mhí • Monaghan | Muineachán • Offaly | Uíbh Fhailí • Roscommon | Ros Comáin • Sligo | Sligeach • Tipperary | Tiobraid Árann • Tyrone | Tír Eoghain • Waterford | Port Láirge • Westmeath | Na hIarmhí • Wexford | Loch Garman • Wicklow | Cill Mhantáin EIGHTY YEARS AGO, in 1937, Prime Minister James Craig was in his office in Parliament Buildings at Stormont. A Dubliner by the name of George Duggan was a senior civil servant at the time and was with the unionist leader as he finished up his papers for the night.

Duggan later recalled that Craig was in a particularly sombre mood that evening and that, standing at the window looking south over the Castlereagh Hills, he had remarked: “Duggan, you know that on this island we cannot live always separated from one another.

We are too small to be apart, for the Border to be there for all time. The change will not be in my time but it will come nonetheless.”

Some 80 years after Craig’s somewhat prophetic pondering, another political leader – Guy Verhofstadt, the former Belgian Prime Minister and current EU Parliament Brexit Co-ordinator –

– to both statements.

By the late 1930s, the Northern Irish economy was in serious trouble.

Traditional industries such as linen, and shipbuilding were in decline. With the industrial growth of the Second World War period still a few years away, Craig was obviously worried about the future viability of the Northern state – a state very much still in its infancy.

Verhofstadt’s remarks, of course, are set against the Brexit catastrophe which is currently unfolding all around us.

The prospect of a new European frontier across the island of Ireland makes no sense to the Belgian MEP. As he said, “it is illogical”. He also understands the very real threat that a copper-fastened Border

in Ireland represents to the Good Friday Agreement and the Irish Peace Process.

It is in this context – economically, politically and indeed socially – that Brexit has re-energised and reshaped the debate about Irish reunification.

No longer is it just ‘ourselves’ in Sinn Féin talking about Irish reunification.

Fine Gael are talking about preparing a White Paper; Fianna Fáil too are set to publish their own ideas on ending partition; and here in the North the SDLP called for a post-Brexit unity referendum during the recent Westminster election.

Quite simply, Brexit has swept away the old assumptions about the constitutional, political and economic status quo in Ireland.

There is an obligation now on all political leaders,

We should not be afraid to examine any option

All our people, from all backgrounds and traditions, must be involved in the discussion

also felt it necessary to discuss the future of the Border in Ireland.

Mr Verhofstadt, following a visit to the Border region, addressed the Dáil, saying: “The Border meanders for 310 miles through meadows, forests, farmland, it cannot be securely policed . . . It is an illogical divide, one that, at the very least, should remain invisible.”

For me what makes these two contributions so valuable to today’s debate on Irish reunification is the fact that neither example is motivated by any notion of nationalist sentiment; nor is either contributor a well-known Irish republican – quite the opposite.

With this in mind I think there is much to be gained by considering the political context – and perhaps most specifically the economic context

civic society, and the media here to examine new constitutional, political and economic arrangements that better suit all of our needs going forward.

For our part, Sinn Féin believe wholeheartedly in a new, reunified Ireland – but this must be significantly more than merely submerging the 6 into 32 and creating an extension of the Southern Irish state as it currently exists.

Rather, it is an opportunity to shape a new Irish state in the interests of all of its citizens and finally bring to life the vision at the very heart of the 1916 Proclamation.

For those of us who are persuaders for Irish reunification, this is our task if we are to meet the challenges of building a truly new republic.

A new republic where the rights of citizens are enshrined in every stitch throughout the fabric of the state; where the complaints of the disenfranchised and the downtrodden are no longer ignored but examined and removed.

A new republic where the corrosive boils of sectarianism and division are lanced and a truly, modern, inclusive constitutional republic is built

5 EU Brexit Co-ordinator Guy Verhofstadt meets Martina Anderson MEP, Mary Lou McDonald TD and Michelle O’Neill MLA

in the image of all of its citizens – whether you come from Ballymena, Ballymun or Bangladesh.

There can be no doubt that successive Dublin governments have hollowed out the heart of the 1916 Proclamation. They have stripped away the values embedded in the 1919 Democratic Programme.

Partition and the counter-revolution have achieved nothing but a cycle of economic failure,

November / Samhain 2017

www.anphoblacht.com

9

No longer is it just ‘ourselves’ in Sinn Féin talking about Irish reunification emigration, inequality and two political states weighted against the rights of citizens – against the interests of Irish men, women and children.

We too, the persuaders of Irish self-determination, have much to reflect on if we are to be ultimately successful in the time ahead.

I would suggest that – for all the reasons why nationalist Ireland has had little success in reconciling unionism to Peadar O’Donnell’s assertion that ‘we are the same people’ – the most striking has been a complacency in regards to not only the strength of unionist opposition to the nationalist doctrine but perhaps, more significantly, the legitimacy of such an opposing ideological position.

Unionists have too often been viewed as nothing more than puppets of the British political elite and obstructions to the inevitable march of history.

Unsurprisingly, such perspectives have remained ingrained in the national psyche for the best part of a century. Such suspicions of ‘perfidious Albion’ were not merely confined to political literature and fireside stories but actually became enshrined in the very constitution of the new Irish Free State.

It’s also fair to say that, in recent decades, British identity has been

5 Brexit has swept away the old assumptions about the constitutional, political and economic status quo in Ireland

The Border ‘is an illogical divide’, says EU Brexit Co-ordinator Guy Verhofstadt growing increasingly comfortable in Ireland – not merely as a result of the Peace Process but a reflection of the fact that there are now approximately 150,000 British citizens living in the South – never mind the many more who reside here in the North.

Eighty years after Viscount Craigavon reflected on the long-term viability of the Northern state, many more also

5 Unionist Prime Minister Craig: ‘We are too small to be apart, for the Border to be there for all time’

5 Brexit has more people seeking Irish passports

now think the time has perhaps come to consider such change.

There is no doubt that the unprecedented political situation created by Brexit has transformed the debate on Irish unity for many, and perhaps most markedly for those unionists who are now disillusioned with the trajectory of the British Government.

While there has been virtually no constructive engagement by the unionist political parties on the issue, the appeal of being part of a modern, reconciled Ireland at the heart of Europe is one which will prove ever more attractive to growing numbers of the unionist community.

This includes young, educated, outward-looking people from a unionist background who seek – on a whole range of social and political issues – to cast off received attitudes; attitudes which for many are the product of incorrigible sectarian segregation and the dominance of a deeply conservative unionist ideology.

Many young unionists wish to live in a progressive and outward-looking society, not one limited by ultra-conservative political factions and a trend towards British isolationism.

Those of us who believe in a reunified Ireland must now increase our engagement with unionism and seek to persuade that part of our society to support Irish unity.

The British identity of many citizens in the North can and must be accommodated in any reunited Ireland. Undoubtedly, this will involve constitutional and political safeguards.

It will require protections for the unique identity of Northern unionists and the British cultural identity of a growing number of people throughout the island of Ireland. It may well require

transitional political arrangements, which could mean devolution within an all-Ireland structure.

We should not be afraid to examine any option.

A new, united Ireland will be pluralist, inclusive and accommodating to all our people in all their diversity.

With this in mind it is important to stress that the Orange tradition is an Irish tradition.

The reality is that the history of the Northern, Protestant, Orange community has influenced the development of Ireland as it is today and it must influence its future.

Kevin Meagher, a former adviser to British Secretary of State Shaun Woodward, put it well at a recent conference on a united Ireland when he said: “For unionists, this is not a process where Orangemen are expected to become GAA enthu-

Brexit has swept away the old assumptions about the constitutional, political and economic status quo in Ireland siasts. Remember the Twelfth in a united Ireland.

Wear the sash your father wore. Have a British passport as well as an Irish one. Toast the Queen.”

Let those unionists who are interested in talking to resolve these issues take the mature and necessary approach to overcome these challenges. Let’s talk about building an agreed Ireland together with rights and equality at its core.

All our people, from all backgrounds and traditions, must be involved in the discussion.

Together we can build a future beyond partition, sectarianism and division and a society that serves the interests of all the people who share this island.

It is clear that a greater numbers of unionists are considering if the time has come for constitutional change as outlined by James Craig, for, as Guy Verhofstadt discovered, there is no logic to be found in partition.

But for those of us who are persuaders for Irish reunification – we would do well to remember Georg Lichtenberg’s quip that “for even if professors would join men at the head, nature has joined them at the heart”.

10 November / Samhain 2017

www.anphoblacht.com

BELFAST HOUSING BY PEADAR WHELAN

Housing still contentious 50 years after civil rights struggle HOUSING ALLOCATION was one of the central issues for civil rights campaigners in the 1960s as public housing allocated by local councils – invariably controlled by the Unionist Party – practised widespread discrimination against the Catholic/nationalist community.

Yet, almost two decades after the Good Friday Agreement, housing provision is still a bone of contention.

Threats by the unionist Ulster Volunteer Force that have forced Catholic families to flee their homes in a shared housing initiative in Belfast show sectarianism in its sharpest light. For numerous families living in overcrowded and socially deprived areas of the North, however, the failure of the statutory bodies to provide adequate housing smacks more of the discrimination of the 1960s/1970s unionist regime in Stormont than the bully-boy tactics of the UVF. In recent months, residents of north and south Belfast have taken to the streets to protest at decisions by Belfast

Residents have taken to the streets to protest at decisions by Belfast City Council to refuse to zone land for social housing

5 Sinn Féin Housing spokesperson Carál Ní Chuilín MLA joins residents calling for ‘Homes, Not Car Showrooms’

Launched in 2013 by the then First and Deputy First Ministers Peter Robinson and Martin McGuinness, the T:BUC strategy, as it become known, had as its vision “a united community based on equality of opportunity, the desirability of good relations and reconciliation – one which is strengthened by its diversity, where cultural expression is celebrated and embraced and where everyone can live, learn, work and socialise together, free from prejudice, hate and intolerance”.

In the section on housing, T:BUC quotes Life & Times Surveys which “have consistently shown significant preferences for mixed religion neighbourhoods”.

Yet the surveys go on to say: “Despite this, the majority of social housing estates remain segregated in terms of religion. Evidence from the

Department for Social Development suggests that, when people are given the choice, the vast majority will choose to go on a waiting list in a single identity

Senior DUP members in Lisburn were in a row over housing allocation

that South Belfast DUP MP Emma LittlePengelly was a junior minister when T:BUC was launched, which makes her insipid response to the intimidation all the more reprehensible.

Little-Pengelly chose to take a softlysoftly approach by claiming that some local people support the flags rather than join in the condemnation of the loyalist actions and challenge the UVF directly.

“There were some people who were very supportive of the flags . . . the majority of people said to me ‘We understand that the flags have gone up, but we also understand that they will come back down again.’ Really they didn’t want a public fuss around this matter.”

When it emerged that four Catholic families were forced out, Little-Pengelly proffered the information that she had “offered to remove the flags” herself.

City Council to refuse to zone land for social housing, instead favouring private area in keeping with their own perceived developments as well as commercial identity.” and retail projects.

Given the events in Cantrell Close, Figures published by the Housing it would seem that nationalists stay in Executive as far back 2008 predicted their own districts because it’s safer and that 95% of the projected need for new it’s not just a case of “keeping with their homes in north Belfast would, by 2012, own perceived identity”. be in the Catholic community. It is clear It’s also worth reminding ourselves this is a systemic problem and raises the question as to how much has changed for nationalists since the 1960s when the civil rights movement demanded an end to housing discrimination.

Cantrell Close became a headline name in June of this year when, in a clear demonstration of loyalist intimidation in advance of the ‘marching season’, the mixed neighbourhood development was bedecked with UVF paramilitary and other unionist regalia clearly aimed at marking the area for loyalism.

The PSNI visited four Catholic families in the development on Tuesday night 26 September to inform them they were under threat, leading them to abandon their homes.

What gave the Cantrell Close story an added edge was the fact that it was promoted as a ‘flagship’ (no pun intended), cross-community housing development built as part of the Stormont Executive’s ‘Together: Building a United Communities’ (T:BUC) programme.

5 South Belfast DUP MP Emma Little-Pengelly and DUP Councillors Paul Porter (top right) and Jonathan Craig (bottom right)

Unfortunately for the DUP, news emerged on 21 September that linked senior party members in Lisburn to a row over housing allocation.

Proclaiming he would fight for “local housing for local families”, DUP Councillor Paul Porter was backing a call from the Seymour Hill & Conway Residents’ Association (SHCRA),

‘Locals only’ has become another way of telling people who are not unionist or white to stay out encouraging loyalists to “get yourself on the list and let’s get these houses filled up with people from [the] loyalist/ unionist community”.

The call, posted on social media, was referring to a 98-unit development on the site of the old Dunmurry High School on the outskirts of west Belfast and which could be used to alleviate the housing shortage facing nationalist families in the area.

To compound the DUP’s embarrassment, the post suggested that applicants contact DUP Councillor Jonathan Craig whose wife sits on the board of SHCRA. The real difficulty for the DUP in all this is that the slogans “local houses for local people” and “locals only” have become another way of telling people who are not unionist or white to stay out.

Despite the aspirational promises of T:BUC and its laudable aim to bring the communities in the North together, the unionist leopard seemingly is not for changing its spots.

November / Samhain 2017

www.anphoblacht.com

11

5 Gerard Rice and John Gormley of the Lower Ormeau Residents’ Action Group (LORAG) carry a clear message

5 Sinn Féin representatives join with residents protesting at decisions by Belfast City Council to ignore the needs of people in housing distress and instead support private developers

Belfast communities accuse council 5 ‘Social Housing, Not Social Cleansing’

WHILE the blatant sectarianism of loyalist thugs grabs the headlines, the underlying problems in housing are building into a crisis.

Campaigners argue that it is already at crisis point in north Belfast and south Belfast and recent protests opposing Belfast City Council’s decisions to support private commercial developers rather than opt for social housing in areas of acute housing stress are an indication of people’s anger.

And that anger was apparent when Sinn Féin north Belfast Councillor J. J. Magee accused unionist members of Belfast City

Catholic families likely to wait longer to be housed than Protestant counterparts – Equality Commission

5 Sinn Féin Councillor Deirdre Hargey stands with the residents

Council’s planning committee of “sectarianism” over a decision to support private and commercial plans for the Market and Hillview sites rather than have the lands for social housing.

As the council met to debate the issue, residents and campaigners from the Market and north Belfast held a protest outside City Hall, accusing the council of a “land-grab”.

Speaking at the meeting, Sinn Féin Councillor Gerard McCabe described the Hillview site, located on Crumlin Road, as “a failed retail site” that should be used for housing.

McCabe also pointed out to An Phoblacht:

“Since the closure of Dunnes Stores in 2007 and the collapse of plans by ASDA to locate there in 2011, the complex has lain largely vacant.”

Unsurprisingly, unionist politicians – particularly the DUP’s north Belfast representatives – have been most vociferous in supporting the commercial proposals for the disused site, echoing claims by owners Killultagh that it has “the potential to bring more than 300 jobs to the area”.

The investment, speculated to be worth more than £3million, centres on extensive construction work on the centre’s buildings as well as the creation of several food and drink outlets with the possibility that a major supermarket and a

large multinational retailer will take up a tenancy.

No less a body than the United Nations Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights in its report dated 24 June 2016 says it is “concerned about the persistent [my emphasis] inequality in the access to adequate housing in north Belfast, affecting in particular Catholic families”.

The North’s Equality Commission, in findings published in April this year, disclosed that Catholic families across the North were likely to wait longer to be housed that their Protestant counterparts, thus adding to pressure on areas with an already low social housing stock.

In south Belfast, the waiting time for a Catholic family to be housed is 27 months and so the demand in areas such as the Market area is steadily building as is the housing stress.

In an angry response to the recent decision by Belfast City Council, Sinn Féin Councillor Deirdre Hargey accused the Planning Committee of reneging on commitments to build social housing on the “northern fringes” of the area, instead opting to build a 14-storey office block and hotels “to the detriment of the residents, the community and an area of extreme social deprivation”.

According to Hargey” “This area was zoned as one block for housing in the Belfast Metropolitan Plan in 2014. However, while office blocks, business units and hotels have gone up – and been welcomed by local people – there has been no sign of the promised housing.”

Fionntán Hargey of the ‘Housing Now’ campaign said the Market area had historically been chipped away over the years: “For sustainability it needs more social housing. There’s currently 106 families on the waiting list; 86 of those families are designated as being in acute housing stress.”

12 November / Samhain 2017

www.anphoblacht.com

Gerry Adams

Giving his life to leadership

BY SEÁN MAGUIDHIR I FIRST met Gerry Adams when, as a 19-year-old, I travelled the well-worn path from the Crumlin Road Courthouse to Cage 11 of Long Kesh. Gerry was there on the last lap of a five-year sentence for attempting to escape from internment without charge or trial.

He was well-known by repute. He was with Martin McGuinness on the republican delegation flown to England in a Royal Air Force plane to meet British Secretary of State William Whitelaw in London during the truce between the IRA and the British Government in 1972.

I knew too that the British Government had released him from internment to take part in those talks at the request of the republican leadership, which was a big deal in itself.

Gerry had been a republican and civil rights activist and a member of the Anti-Apartheid Movement before the split in Sinn Féin in January 1970. He had attended the meeting in the International Hotel in Belfast to discuss the setting up of the Civil Rights Movement.

He made it clear in the regular debates and meetings in Cage 11 that he was implacably opposed to the institutionalised discrimination and inequality which characterised the Orange apartheid state run by the Ulster Unionist Party and facilitated by successive British governments.

And he vehemently opposed all forms of sectarianism, no matter what its source, as well as the internecine feuding which had taken place in 1975 between the IRA and the ‘Sticks’, the so-called ‘Official IRA’.

He listened intently to other views in the room and his contributions were usually measured and thought provoking.

He often based himself in the study hut, writing for the Republican News or

with his team drafting political lectures and discussion papers.

He also had a grá for An Ghaeilge. He and Patsy Fields from Armagh attended a class regularly with one of the múinteoirí in the Cage.

PRISON PROTESTS Gerry Adams’s key quality was leadership – someone who could listen to the arguments, test the strength of feeling on an issue but who was then prepared to be decisive.

It came as no surprise to anyone in Cage 11 that Gerry immediately set about the task of reorganising and building the Sinn Féin and support for its republican objectives on his release in 1977.

But Gerry’s freedom was to be short-lived.

He was arrested in February 1978 and charged with IRA membership and held in Crumlin Road Gaol and the H-Blocks of Long Kesh. The case collapsed within months.

Inside the H-Blocks, Gerry joined protesters on the remand wings and also met some of the ‘Blanket Men’ who had been in the Cages with him.

There were hundreds of republican prisoners on the ‘Blanket Protest’, refusing to wear prison uniforms.

They were locked up 24 hours a day and subjected to a system of routine brutality.

Their plight worsened after the ‘No Wash Protest’ started in March 1978 following attacks on Blanket prisoners on their way to the bathrooms by prison warders.

There were also more than 30 women in Armagh Gaol refusing to do prison work and locked up most of the day.

The authorities’ vicious repression provoked the 1980 and 1981 Hunger Strikes.

The courage of the Hunger Strikers and the results of the ‘H-Blocks elections’

smashed the British Government’s criminalisation policy.

BOYCOTTS AND ABSTENTIONISM The 1981 Sinn Féin Ard Fheis that followed saw the endorsement of calls

by Gerry Adams, Martin McGuinness and Danny Morrison for an end to Sinn Féin’s boycott of elections in the North.

The following year’s Assembly elections saw Gerry, Danny Morrison, Martin McGuinness, Jim McAllister and Owen Carron elected on an abstentionist basis to the 1982-86 Assembly.

In 1983, Gerry was elected MP for West Belfast for the first time.

1983 was also the year which saw Gerry elected as President of Sinn Féin, having been joint Vice-President since 1979.

Just months later, in March 1984, Gerry and three colleagues (Seán Keenan, Kevin Rooney and Joe Keenan) were shot and wounded while travelling from a Belfast court by a UDA gang which was immediately arrested by a British Army undercover team.

Gerry was seriously injured, being hit a number of times, but returned quickly to political activity.

By 1985, Sinn Féin had 59 councillors elected across the North. Attacks on Sinn Féin members by loyalist death squads colluding with the British Intelligence services continued to rise from this period, claiming the lives of Sinn Féin elected representatives and party activists.

‘SCENARIO FOR PEACE’ 1985 also brought the Anglo-Irish Agreement, which gave the Irish Government a limited say in the affairs of the North. It infuriated unionists while providing little comfort to nationalists.

During this period, Gerry Adams had been grappling with how republicans could take initiatives which could break

the stalemate that had developed in the war between the IRA and British state forces.

He started to meet with SDLP leader John Hume.

Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness argued for an end to Sinn Féin’s policy of abstentionism from Leinster House. The move was overwhelmingly supported

by Ard Fheis delegates.

He retained the West Belfast seat in May 1987 and at the start of that month Sinn Féin also published its ‘Scenario for Peace’ document.

This sought “to create conditions which will lead to a permanent cessation of hostilities, an end to our long war and the development of a peaceful, united and independent Irish society”.

It was one of a series of initiatives which would be taken by Gerry Adams in the development of the Peace Process.

In 1988, the British Government emulated the Irish state’s Section 31 broadcasting ban on Sinn Féin spokespersons or even elected representatives.

Despite being elected as an MP, Gerry Adams’s words could only be heard on TV or radio if read by an actor.

The broadcasting ban coincided with an increase in gun, bomb and rocket attacks on Sinn Féin party offices and activists and the intensification of attacks by the UVF and UDA on nationalist civilians.

Loyalist death squads had been rearmed by the British Intelligence services with a consignment of weapons and explosives from apartheid South Africa.

HUME/ADAMS PROPOSALS The conflict continued but Gerry was increasingly convinced of the need for an alliance of Irish political parties pursuing objectives which looked at the interests and well-being of the people of this island and normalising relations between the people of Ireland and Britain.

November / Samhain 2017

www.anphoblacht.com

It had also become clear that the Irish Government had a key role to play in any peace strategy.

In 1992, Sinn Féin set out in some detail how it proposed that the conflict could be brought to an end in the document ‘Towards a Lasting Peace’: “A peace process, leading to a lasting peace, must address the root causes of the conflict. A genuine and sustainable peace process must be grounded on democracy and self-determination.”

In 1993, Gerry Adams and SDLP leader John Hume published their proposals as to how the conflict could be ended and a democratic path to Irish unity and national self-determination could be established.

The contacts between Gerry and John Hume – as well as contacts with the British and Irish governments – led to the IRA cessation of 1994.

In a statement issued on 31 August, the IRA said: “We believe that an opportunity to create a just and lasting settlement has been created.”

When the IRA cessation broke down in February 1996, Gerry Adams worked tirelessly to recreate the conditions for a lasting peace.

A new IRA cessation was called in July 1997 after the elections of Tony Blair and Bertie Ahern paved the way at last for all-party talks which led to the Good Friday Agreement.

This was an internationally-binding agreement setting up a power-sharing administration in the North based on parity of esteem, equality and mutual respect. It provided for all-Ireland bodies and a referendum on Irish unity as well as the release of all political prisoners within two years together with reform of the justice system and the Royal Ulster Constabulary paramilitary police.

The roles of Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness in achieving the support of the IRA and the wider republican base to embrace the path presented by the agreement for Irish unity were pivotal.

Support for Sinn Féin grew and the party achieved a creditable 18 MLAs in the first Assembly election, with Gerry nominating Martin to the post of Education Minister for the North.

OVERTAKING THE SDLP By 2003, Sinn Féin had become the largest nationalist party in the state, overtaking the SDLP for the first time in its history. The following year, Mary

Lou McDonald and Bairbre de Brún were elected to the European Parliament for Sinn Féin.

In April 2005, Gerry made a public call on the IRA to embrace and accept the democratic alternative to the armed struggle.

The IRA responded on 28 July: “The leadership of Óglaigh na hÉireann has formally ordered an end to the armed campaign . . .

“All IRA units have been ordered to dump arms.

“All Volunteers have been instructed to assist the development of purely political and democratic programmes through exclusively peaceful means.”

MARTIN McGUINNESS In 2006, Sinn Féin engaged in talks with the British and Irish governments and the DUP. The St Andrews Agreement paved the way for the restoration of the political institutions in the North after a five-year hiatus.

Gerry nominated Martin McGuinness as deputy First Minister. In the Assembly election that followed, Sinn Féin took 28 seats.

In November 2010, Gerry convened a meeting in west Belfast and announced

he was going to stand down from his seat as Westminster MP and resign from the Northern Assembly to stand for election in County Louth in the next general election.

The experts were confounded when Sinn Féin returned 14 TDs, including Pearse Doherty and Mary Lou McDonald along with Gerry.

Martin McGuinness ran for election as President of Ireland later that year, securing 243,000 votes (more than 13%) and taking the Sinn Féin message the length and breadth of the state.

The return of a dynamic team of new Sinn Féin TDs paved the way for the election of four MEPs, one in each province of the national territory, in 2014 with almost half a million votes across the island.

Gerry then led the Oireachtas team into another general election in 2016, this time advancing to 23 TDs and seven seanadóirí.

He has also played a leading role over the last year attempting to restore the political institutions in the North that had collapsed after Martin McGuinness resigned as deputy First Minister over the DUP’s failure to deal with their RHI financial scandal and their refusal to

13

implement agreements on equality and legacy issues.

Gerry lost his very close friend and comrade Martin McGuinness in March this year after a short illness.

Speaking at his graveside, Gerry said: “Martin will continue to inspire and encourage us in the time ahead. Martin believed that a better Ireland, a genuinely new Ireland, is possible.”

CAGE 11 TO TODAY Gerry has worked closely with Michelle O’Neill in the negotiations to restore the political institutions in the North on the basis established under the Good Friday Agreement on rights and equality for all.

In February 1977, Gerry Adams set off on a mission from Cage 11 in Long Kesh.

Today, in 2017, Sinn Féin has more than half a million votes, 27 MLAs, 23 TDs, more than 250 councillors, seven MPs, seven seanadóirí and four MEPs representing every person in Ireland.

It is a new, strong, all-Ireland collective leadership and a party now looking to go into government North and South.

Gerry Adams’s central role in building a relevant, all-island political party capable of securing ‘An Ireland of Equals’ is an immense, historic achievement.

14 November / Samhain 2017

www.anphoblacht.com

Sinn Féin proposals to promote worker co-operatives launched at Oireachtas

It’s all at the co-op SEPTEMBER 2017

SEPTEMBER 2017

Sweden it’s 13%. In Finland, it’s a massive 21%. Ireland, however, continues to languish bottom of the league when it comes to developing our worker co-operative sector.

DEV E

DEVE

WORKER WORKER CO-OPERATIVCEOS-OPERATIVES Senator

Two years ago I visited Bologna, a beautiful city in northern Italy. The atmosphere of Bologna was vibrant. The streets were alive with thousands of tourists and locals from the region. urice MarestauThe city had everything from top-quality an TD inliv Qu rants, wine bars and fashion boutiques right down 1 SINN FÉIN to supermarkets and day-to-day necessities.

It SPOKESPERSON ENTERPRISE ON was everything you would expect fromAND a popular INNOVATION city in central Europe – except for that fact that 40% of the region’s GDP is generated by worker co-operatives. And two out of every three citizens is a member of a co-operative.

At the time, I was not aware that this was a worker co-operative city because, on the surface, not a lot appears any different – behind the scenes, though, the economy and society is radically different.

In Emilia Romagna, the region of Italy in which Bologna is the largest city, the GDP per capita is

OM

Y

OM

GE

I

FANCY A PINT? Going shopping for some freshly-baked bread? Need your business professionally cleaned to a high standard?

Why not do it with a worker co-operative?

EN N N O US ECO O US ECON

IG

SINN FÉIN SPOKESPERSON ON WORKER’S RIGHTS & COLLECTIVE BARGAINING

SINN FÉIN SPOKESPERSON ON WORKER’S RIGHTS & COLLECTIVE BARGAINING

IND

Senator

Paul Gavan

Y

Paul Gavan

IND

PAUL GAVAN

’S ND

SENATOR

NG IREL I P A LO

’S ND

NG IRELA I P LO

So what is a worker co-operative anyway?

It’s a business that is owned and democratically managed by its workers. They can take many forms: from community-owned pubs and shops which sustain economic life in rural towns and villages to massive

In France, 10% of the total workforce is now employed through co-operatives; in Finland, it’s a massive 21%

Maurice Quinlivan TD SINN FÉIN SPOKESPERSON ON ENTERPRISE AND INNOVATION

40% of the region’s GDP is generated by worker co-operatives

MONDRAGON The Mondragon Corporation is a federation of worker co-operatives based in the Basque region, founded in 1956.

Mondragon was created by a group of graduates from a local technical college who began producing paraffin heaters to be sold in the local economy. Today, it employs 74,335 workers and has global sales of $15billion per annum.

The workers decide what the wages should be. The consensus is a 5:1 ratio between the highest and lowest earner.

The workers hire and fire the managers based upon their performances. It has its own university of 4,000 students.

And 20% of its turnover comes from products that did not exist five years ago – such is their innovation and research.

Despite the significant impact which the 2008 crash had on many European businesses, not one single worker was fired in Mondragon. Workers transitioned between sectors within the corporation and the business’s ‘rainy day funds’ were used for salaries in an act of worker solidarity.

25% higher than that of Italy’s overall average, the rate of employment for women is higher in the region than anywhere else in Italy, and its inequality rating is statistically half that of the EU average.

The success of worker co-operative is not confined to Italy.

In France, 10% of the total workforce is now employed through worker co-operatives. In

manufacturing and service industries in our cities that employ tens of thousands of people (see below).

In the North of Ireland, we have begun to witness the development of a number of worker co-operatives due to progress made at local level.

Examples of successful businesses that have developed into sustainable enterprises include the Belfast Cleaning Society, the Creative Workers’ Co-operative, and Boundary Brewing. They all

BELFAST CLEANING CO-OP The Belfast Cleaning Society Co-op was established in 2012.

Within the workers’ co-operative all decisions are made democratically. The workers decide what contracts to accept, what hours they will do and what to do with the businesses profits.

The Belfast Cleaning Society Co-op is an accredited ‘Living Wage Employer’.

They have won major contracts such as the MTV Awards and the Belfast Vital Music Festival.

November / Samhain 2017

www.anphoblacht.com

follow the principles of democracy, equality and worker ownership and have been proven to be highly productive.

In the South, Ireland proudly supports the achievements of our credit unions (essentially financial co-operatives) and we also celebrated the early development of the agricultural co-operative sector. But we have yet to develop our worker co-operative sector, and this is to the detriment of our indigenous economy.

This is why Sinn Féin launched its new policy document in September, ‘Worker Co-operatives – Developing Ireland’s Indigenous Economy’, which provides a road map to building sustainable enterprises in the form of worker co-operatives.

How will we achieve this?

In 2014, France introduced new legislation entitled the Social and Solidarity Economy Law which essentially provided a legal route for workers to buy out the enterprise in which they work and then turn that business into a worker co-operative. This includes government and legal support for the workers as well as a number of finance plans which the workers can avail of as capital for the investment.

SINN FÉIN PLANS TO: ➤ Recognise worker co-operatives as a distinct legal entity; ➤ Give workers the statutory right to request employee ownership during business succession; ➤ Update business transfer law, amend insolvency proceedings

in order to strengthen workers as preferential creditors, and give employees the right to be informed in advance of any intention by the owner to sell; ➤ Introduce legislation to protect mandatory indivisible reserve funds with an asset lock to prevent the company from being bought out; ➤ Re-establish the Co-operative Development Unit (CDU) as a Worker Co-operative Development Unit (WCDU) to co-ordinate the existing worker co-operative network.

Worker co-ops can both challenge existing economic models and provide a real route to decent jobs and community wealth building.

They can be a means of ensuring that ordinary people have power over decisions and services that affect their daily lives by introducing economic democracy at local level.

The next time you fancy a pint, we want that pint to be a workers’ co-operative pint. We want the next taxi you get to be from a workers’ co-operative taxi rank. And we want the workers to have the choice to own and run these businesses.

There’s no reason why this cannot happen.

It’s already the reality in France, Spain, Italy, Finland, Iceland and Norway – why can’t we see more of it in Ireland?

THE PLUNKETT FOUNDATION The Plunkett Foundation was established by the great Irish co-operative pioneer Sir Horace Plunkett in 1919.

Today they actively represent a network of over 500 rural community co-ops trading across Britain. They have been instrumental in the growing network of community-owned shops and pubs, including one recent new venture in Loughmore, County Tipperary.

They employ a network of advisers, mentors and specialists to help and support local communities in starting up sustainable, democratic forms of local businesses rooted in villages and small-town communities.

The Plunkett Foundation offers a working template to halt the decline of rural Ireland through a community-owned enterprise model that is proven to work.

5 Belfast Cleaning Society Co-op workers putting things right after the city’s Vital Music Festival

15

16 November / Samhain 2017

www.anphoblacht.com

anphoblacht

End of the monthly print run (but we haven’t gone away, y’know)

AN PHOBLACHT has had an important role in the republican struggle down the decades.

It will continue to do so. This is not the end of the story.

Political and technological advances – the massive growth and influence of Sinn Féin, the ending of state censorship, almost universal access to instant news on an all-embracing social media – however, have brought us to move from a monthly print edition to an online service.

IN PRINT The print edition of the paper had been a key component in weekly republican activity across 5 ‘An Phoblacht’ – In the footsteps of Samuel Neilson’s ‘Northern Star’ and Thomas Davis’s ‘The Nation’ Ireland for decades. In the past it was a vital tool of political organisation through advertising mobilisations, events and political activity.

Through its distribution network within Sinn Féin activism over the years it became a focus for weekly political activity. Times have changed.

An Phoblacht follows in a proud tradition of republican journals over 200 years since the United Irishmen’s Northern Star, edited by Samuel Neilson in the 1790s; the Young Irelanders’ Nation of the 1840s, edited by Thomas Davis; the Fenians’ Irish People newspaper 1863-65, edited by Thomas Clarke Luby, John O’Leary and Charles J. Kickham; and the numerous republican papers in each decade of the 20th century.

Although relaunched in 1970, the title An Phoblacht has a long and historic association with Irish republicanism. It was used for the first time in its English form (‘The Republic’) by the Dungannon 5 ‘An Phoblacht’ provided uncensored news of the conflict and the republican viewpoint Clubs. But the title An Phoblacht became better known in the 1920s and 1930s through its use by a newspaper of those decades which became, in effect, the voice of the Irish Republican Army.

Following the upheavals within Irish republicanism in 1969/70, one of the tasks of the new leadership was the publication of a new republican newspaper.

The first issue of the new monthly paper, An Phoblacht, under the editorship of Seán Ó Brádaigh, appeared on 31 January 1970.

DEVELOPING WITH THE STRUGGLE From its inception in the turbulent political events of the late 1960s and early 1970s, An Phoblacht continued to develop with the wider republican struggle. In 1972, after a move to Parnell Square in Dublin city centre, An Phoblacht went fortnightly.

When Éamonn Mac Thomáis took over as Editor from Coleman Moynihan, major changes were made to the paper and it eventually went weekly in 1973.

An Phoblacht was a target for state repression 5 Éamonn Mac Thomáis – jailed as Editor of ‘An Phoblacht’ North and South over three decades. Its offices of distribution throughout most of the 1970s H-Blocks at Long Kesh, the late Bobby Sands, using in Belfast and Dublin were regularly subjected to remained the 26 Counties. The republican paper the pen-name ‘Marcella’, became a contributor to raids and Special Branch surveillance. Several of most widely read in the North at that time was Republican News, describing in detail the appallits editors were arrested. In July 1973, Éamon Mac the Belfast-based Republican News, founded in ing conditions in the H-Blocks.

Throughout 1978, Republican News staff came Thomáis was sentenced to 15 months’ imprison- July 1970 by veteran republican Jimmy Steele.

A four-page monthly, Republican News was in for increased harassment by the RUC and British ment for IRA membership. Within two months of his release and after resuming editorial duties at An edited and almost exclusively written by Steele. It Army. Its offices were regularly raided and issues Phoblacht, he was again arrested and sentenced had a circulation of 15,000 copies a month. Jimmy of the paper seized. Editorial staff and delivery Steele was succeeded as Republican News Editor drivers were arrested by British forces. to a further 15 months in jail.

by Proinsias Mac Airt.

AMALGAMATION In mid-1975, Danny Morrison took over as Editor ‘REPUBLICAN NEWS’ In the autumn of 1978, following years of debate, Since 1970, An Phoblacht was the official newspa- and the paper was reorganised.

In 1978, following his imprisonment in the republicans agreed to amalgamate An Phoblacht per of the Republican Movement but its main

my future husband (then editor Martin Spain) and father of my two children! Apparently, Martin’s reaction when he spoke to Mícheál was ‘a Darndale graduate in politics from Trinity wants to write for the paper?’ He

www.anphoblacht.com

Future Taoiseach’s policies being hidden by tittle-tattle

POLITICAL GOSSIP DISTRACTION

(RESCHEDULED)

National 1981 Hunger Strike MARCH & RALLY BELFAST 12 August 2001 Casement Park

REPUBLICAN NEWS

Déardaoin 14 Meitheamh 2001

Sraith Nua Iml 24 Uimhir 23

Sraith Nua Iml 40 Uimhir 3

4 MPs 108 Councillors No to Nice

10

● Pat Doherty, Michelle Gildernew and Martin McGuinness celebrate

of

anphoblacht HISTORY MAKERS

70p

ENGLAND, SCOTLAND, WALES 75p

THREE MANDATES FOR CHANGE Honour their sacrifice

Conway’s the Flowing the time. or I remember theTide. move Black Belfast humour was to 58.

I remember some very supplied by thethelate Robin funny moments, pranks we Dunwoody, a superb sub-editor, regularly played on each other, chain-smoking, pint-drinking, but my abiding memory was the ageing hippy, our Mackin modern equivday that Dessie came into smiled!

Yeah, alentthe of office Jemmyand Hope, a red-hot radical from a Protestant backPAT FINUCANE ANNIVERSARY LECTURE The legacy I WANT TO KNOW WHY.ground. He used to bet on his Charles J I WANT TO KNOW HOW. Haughey racing jockey namesake whom WHO. KNOW TO I WANT he claimed was a relative.

Our new monthly’s editor was then known as ‘John the Brit’ (Hedges) while the now world famous muralist Price €2 / £2 Danny Devenney was head of layout.

When you gave Danny some vital piece of information or an illustration for an article you never knew whether he had taken in what you said as he hunched over his light-box, scalpel in hand, but the thing

to all those involved, which is a typical republican problem. Just let it be said that we are so grateful to all of you and you know who you are.

All that’s left to say is good luck John - you might be John

March / Márta 2017

2 Meitheamh/June 2010

SINN FÉIN ELECTION SURGE UNIONIST MAJORITY GONE

and a few It pens. no Mountjoy. was There doublywere coincitypewriters for the journalists, dental as it was Gerry’s ex-mislet sus,alone Rita laptops.

O’Hare, who hired me was a sizeable in as aThere cub reporter back instaff 1989. /those Samhain 2017 more my labour-intensive pubMoreover, own wife, acting lishing journalists, editor fordays. this The last weekly issue sub-editor proof-readers (and who I and as editor hired as a reporter some years back) asked me to write this piece. How incestuous is that!

My own budding journalistic career was almost cut short at the outset, as Rita could not read my scrawl and I couldn’t type to save my life. Luckily, within a couple of weeks the first computers appeared in the office, Apple Macintoshes that appear prehistoric by today’s standards REMARKABLE PEOPLE but were a massive step forward As I sat down to write this for us at the time. piece, coincidentally, Gerry One unfortunate outcome of O’Hare, another former editor, this technological miracle for

apprentice, sincebyturned twisted and long distorted commaster, Mark Dawson, also startmercial media reporting and ed hiswas odyssey 25 yearsabout ago. this there us writing this floor Leinster andOn everything frominlast night’s House where INovember write noweconare TV to Nicaragua, Iraq, the three history, former politics An Phoblacht staff omy, and always more politics. members - Aengus Ó Snodaigh TD (journalist, sub-editor, proofreader), Caoimhghín Ó Caoláin TD (general manager) and myself (journalist, editor). The old paper has a lot to answer for.

Rita, of course, went on to much greater things, going from her editor’s lair to the White House and beyond. And I’m still afraid of her. – Mícheál Mac Donncha, Editor/Writer

Annual

COUNTY KILDARE

Sun 17 June 2001

Assemble: 2.30pm Sallins Speaker:

MARTIN FERRIS

5 ‘An Phoblacht’ also reported on the strategic advances and victories by republicans

Following Mick Timothy’s sudden death on 26 January 1985, Rita O’Hare took up the post of Editor.

The paper was extremely important during this period in combating the fog of censorship against Sinn Féin on both sides of the Border.

In the face of Section 31 and the British Government’s broadcasting ban under Margaret Thatcher, An Phoblacht gave a republican analysis of what was really happening in the North and why.

An Phoblacht consistently exposed British military and RUC collusion with unionist death squads.

During the 1980s several shopkeepers in the Six Counties were murdered just for stocking the paper. In the South, paper sellers faced regular and severe Garda harassment by the Special Branch.

British state forces in the North harassed An

LAST WEEK, this paper ran a front-page exclusive story, revealing that the IRA had made an historic move that would advance the Peace Process. The mood of that report was upbeat — republicans had once again taken a major initiative to secure progress. The ball, as so many times before, was in the British court.

That statement, following on a positive statement from the Independent International Commission on Decommissioning, was enthusiastically welcomed by both governments but, ominously, the Ulster Unionists immediately found fault and even added a new precondition. David Trimble’s game plan was still to achieve a suspension of the institutions and renegotiate the Good Friday Agreement.

At the weekend, British Secretary of State John Reid confounded the hopes of those who believed the British were at last ready to put the Peace Process first.

Despite the tremendous opportunity on offer, the British Government chose to revert to type, using

Despite atrocious weather, thousands of republicans from across the country and abroad marched through Belfast to the national rally in Casement Park last Sunday to mark the 20th anniversary of the 1981 Hunger Strike — FULL REPORT, PAGES 10&11

oblacht.com

PLASTIC BULLET OUTRAGE — SEE PAGE 5

powers outside the terms of the Agreement to suspend the political institutions at the behest of the Ulster Unionists.

No one should be surprised that the IRA this week, just days after making “a very difficult decision”, withdrew its proposal in disgust, reminding us in its statement that “peacekeeping is a collective effort”.

Speaking at the National hunger Strike rally in Casement Park on Sunday, Gerry Adams warned that “behind the soft words, really what is being opened up is a six-week period in which the British Government and unionists are going to try to put pressure on republicans to move to resolve issues on British or unionist terms”.

He said that republicans would

not be fooled by ‘Humpty Dumpty’ politics or allow those resisting change to pocket initiatives and expect republicans to go along with it.

“I hear also the patronising tone that the institutions have only been stood down for just one day and now it’s okay. Well, it’s not okay.”

Let us all remember that the present crisis has been caused by the failure of the British Government to implement the Agreement. They have failed to meet their own commitments or to take on unionistimposed obstacles — such as the exclusion of Sinn Féin Ministers from cross-border meetings. That failure has created the space from which unionists are attempting to subvert the Agreement.

This is no way to run a Peace Process.

IRA STATEMENT AND REACTION, PAGE 3

EDITORIAL AND POLITICAL ANALYSIS, PAGES 8&9

2 Meitheamh/Jun

JOE CAHILL

FUNERAL REPORT SEE PAGES 2, 3 & 24

REPUBLICAN NEWS Sraith Nua Iml 25 Uimhir 20

70p/89c ENGLAND, SCOTLAND, WALES 75p

Déardaoin 23 Bealtaine 2002

JOE CAHILL

€1.10

REPUBLICAN NEWS

LIFE & TIMES 8 PAGE SPECIAL STARTS ON PAGE 9

90p

IN STERLING AREAS ENGLAND, SCOTLAND, WALES £1

Sraith Nua Iml 27 Uimhir 29

Déardaoin 29 Íuil 2004

‘Carry ‘Carry on, my comrades, until that certain day’ day’ that

Gerry Adams writes of a realignment of Irish politics in this week’s editorial

— PAGE 8

SINN FÉIN PRESIDENT Gerry Adams has praised the party’s 37 candidates, their families and election teams who worked round the clock to achieve last week’s historic breakthrough in the 26-County elections.

He said that while the focus is inevitably on the five new Sinn Féin TDs, “the reality is that we now have a solid foun-

dation from Cobh to Carrickmore, from Louth to Larne, from Wexford to Waterfoot, from Kerry to Derry,

to continue to build political strength right across the island”.

He also thanked all of those who voted for Sinn Féin and promised that “we will honour the commitments we made and will use wisely the mandate that your votes have given us”.

FULL ELECTION COVERAGE, PAGES 2/3/9/10/11/12/13/14

JOE CAHILL 1920 1920-— 2004 2004 Sraith Nua Iml 29 Uimhir 4

IRA - the people’s army

Déardaoin/Thursday 26 January/Eanair 2006

€1.10/90p

(£1 England, Scotland and Wales)

SEE PAGE 4

ARMED STRUGGLE AND THE REPUBLICAN PEACE STRATEGY SEE PAGE 8

11 years of IRA support for process

REPUBLICAN NEWS

SEE PAGE 10

€1.10

90p

IN STERLING AREAS ENGLAND, SCOTLAND, WALES £1

STALEMATE CANNOT CONTINUE - McGuinness, page 2

IRA Phoblacht van drivers over the years and they were often endangered by being identified to unionist paramilitaries.

MOVING WITH THE TIMES An Phoblacht has continually moved with the times.

In 1988, An Phoblacht moved to new, customised offices at 58 Parnell Square. The move to the new building (dedicated to the memory of former Editor Mick Timothy) added to the paper’s efficiency and professionalism.

The paper eventually expanded again from 16 to 20 pages and introduced colour before much of the mainstream Irish print media.

An Phoblacht’s offices in Dublin and Belfast later became fully computerised and the paper was one of the first in Ireland to go online.

In August 2003, An Phoblacht modernised its operations further with the launch of a new website.

An Phoblacht formally became part of the Sinn Féin structure following a meeting in Wynn’s Hotel, Dublin in 2004.

For the past seven years, since August 2010, An Phoblacht began publishing monthly.

Today, moving with the times, An Phoblacht will be published from 2018 as special issues and our focus will shift to online platforms for communicating the republican message.

The monthly print edition is folding, but An Phoblacht isn’t going away, y’know.

Sham investigations will not seek the truth

leads the way

5 Former Editors Rita O’Hare and Danny Morrison

IMC report: Rejectionist uncertainty — See Page 3

Spin, confusion and uncertainty precedes spook report

Collusion cover-up continues SEE PAGE 3

Sraith Nua Iml 28 Uimhir 29 Déardaoin 28 Lúil 2005

COUNTERING CENSORSHIP

Déardaoin 16 Lúnasa 2001

RAIN FAILS TO DAMPEN SPIRITS

CHAIRPERSON: MICHELLE GILDERNEW

and Republican News. The first issue of the merged paper, under the title An Phoblacht/Republican News, edited by Danny Morrison, appeared on 27 January 1979.

During the early 1980s, An Phoblacht was to the fore in reporting many issues and the only uncensored source of news on the struggle in the streets and in the prisons.

These included the appalling conditions in the H-Blocks of Long Kesh, the torture of prisoners in the interrogation centres of Castlereagh and Gough Barracks, the H-Block/Armagh Prison Hunger Strike of 1980, the seven-month Hunger Strike in Long Kesh from March to October 1981, during which ten republican prisoners died and numerous other political, social and economic issues throughout the 32 Counties.

In the week of Bobby Sands’s death in May 1981, An Phoblacht sold 60,000 copies.

Under the Editorship of Mick Timothy (who succeeded Danny Morrison as Editor) the paper was expanded from 12 to 16 pages, allowing greater coverage of social, economic and political issues throughout the 32 Counties.

ENGLAND, SCOTLAND, WALES 75p

FURY AT BRITISH SUSPENSION Sraith Nua Iml 24 Uimhir 32

“I hear also the patronising tone that the institutions have only been stood down for just one day and now it’s okay.

Well, it’s not okay”

Bodenstown

Comóradh Bliaintiúil Wolfe Tone

70p

REPUBLICAN NEWS

— SEE PAGE 5

their victories at the count centre in Omagh last Friday

Commemoration

www.anphoblacht.c

BELLAGHY PAYS TRIBUTE TO TOM McELWEE

FULL ELECTION COVERAGE INSIDE

Coiste Cuimneacháin na Phoblachta

17

Sraith Nua Iml 30 Uimhir 15 Déardaoin/Thursday 12 April/Aibreán 2007

€1.10/90p

SEE PAGE 2 AND EDITORIAL PAGE 8

(£1 England, Scotland and Wales)

Sraith Nua Iml 31 Uimhir 1 Déardaoin/Thursday 10 January/Eanair 2008

DÁIL GENERAL ELECTION PROFILE: Jonathan O’Brien, Cork North Central

‘WE BREED HEROES DOWN HERE IN CORK’

—9

DÁIL GENERAL ELECTION PROFILE: Dessie Ellis, Dublin North-West

Dwyer exposes Wexford waste scandal

—2

McEntee Report: “Dark hand” involved in bombings

—3

1858-2008 Irish Republican Brotherhood 150th Anniversary — 4 & 5

The Little Captain from Cincinnatti

GARDAÍ FAILED TO INVESTIGATE 1974 BOMB ATTACKS

AN UNCOMPROMISING, COMMITTED WORKER — 7

Building the Republic 1916 — 2007 Easter commemoration reports & pictures pages 10 — 14 & 19

ap032-001.qxd

27/11/2013

10:25

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

FR ALEC REID

CHAPLAIN TO THE PEACE PROCESS

NEW YEAR’S MESSAGE (SEE PAGE 2)

Hypocrisy and denial over state’s role in conflict

See Page 3 and Editorial

December / Nollaig 2013

anphoblacht

Sraith Nua Iml 37 Uimhir 6

PRICE €2/£2

LITCO ENILCLE K

MRF

SPECIAL

June / Meitheamh 2014

PRICE €2/£2

LARGEST PARTY IN IRELAND

‘SEISMIC SHIFT’ GERRY ADAMS

‘‘ Stunning results see all-Ireland team of 4 MEPs, surge of councillors, by-election breakthroughs

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

Wolfe Tone Commemoration Bodenstown, Sunday 15 June Assemble Sallins at 2.15pm Speaker: Gerry Adams

anphoblacht ASSEMBLY ELECTIONS

IRA

(£1 England, Scotland and Wales)

Britain waged war in Ireland 40 PAGE ELECTIONS

Bord Gáis privatisation

anphoblacht

Sraith Nua Iml 39 Uimhir 4

€1.10/90p

ap040-001.qxd 28/05/2014 12:38 Page 2

Page 2

Sraith Nua Iml 36 Uimhir 12

April / Aibreán 2016

CAPPAGH KILLINGS

VOTE SINN FÉIN

MARCH & PAGEANT

Fuair siad bás ar son saoirse na hÉireann | They died for Irish freedom

Price €2 / £2

2pmMERRION SQUARE

HONOURED anphoblacht MAY 5th MAKE SURE YOU ARE REGISTERED TO VOTE

State collusion exposed

Wear an Easter Lily and attend your local commemoration

THIS IS A FAMILY-FRIENDLY EVENT

ALL WELCOME!

Sraith Nua Iml 40 Uimhir 4

OUR TASK NOW IS TO COMPLETE THEIR VISION

Price €2 / £2

April / Aibreán 2017

Don't Mourn Mobilise Our Martin

An Phoblacht, April 2017 – Special supplement

PHOTO: AIDAN McFAUL

SPECIAL SUPPLEMENT INSIDE

5 2016 ‘An Phoblacht/Republican News’ reunion of many of the staff who saw the paper through the conflict from the 1970s up to today

It is many of cans cut Rita had ed youn teacher, or bawl required. you’re a more fla with our when we My a time in t many tru placed i rades I w myriad across th who insp mitment similar world.

Gerry Adams’s funeral oration ‘We are forever thankful to Martin McGuinness’

www.anphoblacht.com

Michelle O’Neill MLA, Leader of Sinn Féin in the North

‘A worker for reconciliation, a champion of peace’ Mary Lou McDonald TD, Sinn Féin deputy leader

FREEDOM FIGHTER NEGOTIATOR PEACEMAKER

18 November / Samhain 2017

Ex-Editor Danny Morrison looks back at An Phoblacht and Republican News WE NERVOUSLY sold the first edition of Republican News from underneath our jackets after Mass outside St Paul’s Chapel on the Falls Road in west Belfast.

The title had been published before, in the 1940s, but had gone out of print as that phase of the republican struggle had petered out. It was now 1970, the British Army was once again killing civilians and in the back streets the IRA was being reorganised and readied.

If I try to capture the atmosphere back then it is one of communal fear and insecurity; a deep sense of dread; searching for answers and explanations; looking to the South for help.

Nationalists were overwhelmingly peaceful – felt powerless, were intimidated by authority and had a mindset conditioned and pummelled by the supremacy of unassailable unionist rule. We were led by an obeisant Catholic Church, viewed the world largely through the prism of the conservative Irish News and were about to be politically led by Gerry Fitt, MP for West Belfast, and his new SDLP. That said, there was a new awakening, particularly among the youth, manifested for us in the simple fact that we sold out every copy of the paper – and people wanted more!

The nationalist Establishment (for want of a better word) were forever deferential to the British Government, indebted for the least crumb. Repub-

www.anphoblacht.com

DANNY MORRISON

Getting out the republican message

1970 – The British Army was once again killing civilians and in the back streets the IRA was being reorganised and readied lican News’s objective was to offer an alternative analysis which used history to explain our predicament and from which to draw lessons: we were not going to get our civil rights or our national rights without a struggle, and unionism and British rule was now reinforced by the physical presence of British arms.

The first editor back then was Jimmy Steele, who had been interned in 1923, aged just 16. Jimmy died suddenly in August 1970.

I wrote my first article for the paper in October 1972 after the death of my IRA comrade Paddy (Maguire) Pendleton. Paddy wasn’t given a republican funeral. I wrote about going into St Paul’s Chapel, when no one was around, and quietly paying my respects at his coffin.

A few weeks later I was arrested and interned in Long Kesh.

After my release, and during the 1975 ceasefire, I was asked by Billy McKee if I thought I could edit the paper. Being a brat I said, “Of course!” though I hadn’t a clue. I was 23 and with the help (and guidance) of the manager of the Republican Press Centre, Tom Hartley, we set out to develop the paper – progressive and challenging – with new writers and, of course, Brian Moore’s famous and hugely popular ‘Cormac’ cartoons.

Our office at 170a Falls Road was in a derelict and damp building above a doctor’s surgery. But it represented us putting a public face on republicanism and a place where the media could find a spokesman (yes, the women were spokesmen back then!). It was regularly raided by the British

Army and the RUC. Loyalists tried to car-bomb it. Hand grenades were thrown at the windows and staff were shot at. Billy Kennedy, one of our delivery men, was wounded (as was a member of the production staff at An Phoblacht/Republican News at Parnell Square in 1981). Tom Hartley and I were lifted from 170a and brought to Castlereagh while old ‘Bingo’ Campbell (who was the office runner) lifted the refuse bin, put it to his shoulder and loudly saying, “Excuse me,” made his way past the soldiers on the stairs and away to freedom!

Bobby Sands, upon his release from Long Kesh, would come in looking for paper and Gestetner ink for a new community paper he was bringing out in Twinbrook and we would chat about how things were going and what we thought was happening.

Nationalists felt powerless, were intimidated by authority and had a mindset conditioned and pummelled by the supremacy of unassailable unionist rule

British direct ruler Roy Mason particularly took umbrage at the paper and ordered its closure.

Soldiers smashed their way into the office and threw the Telex machine out the first-floor window, not realising that it didn’t belong to us but was rented from the Post Office! Twenty homes were raided and charges were concocted against Republican News staff and the executive of Belfast Sinn Féin, including Danny Devenny (now a famous muralist) and Marie Moore (later Deputy Mayor of Belfast).

Our archives were seized and to complete the intimidation and ensure that no business in the North would take our work they imprisoned the printer, Gary Kennedy, a member of the SDLP, and charged him with IRA membership. We eventually got bail and by February 1979 the case fell apart.

November / Samhain 2017

www.anphoblacht.com

19

5 Staff worked around the clock the old-fashioned way, covering every demonstration, protest, vigil, picket, press conference and election campaign

5 Tom Hartley in the offices that housed ‘Republican News’ and the Republican Press Centre, late 1970s

5 Marie Moore

5 Danny Devenny, former lay-out/production chief

5 RUC armoured vehicles outside 51/53 Falls Road during the 1981 H-Blocks Hunger Strike

The largely Northern-based Republican News and An Phoblacht had been in healthy competition but we in the North had an advantage of getting many stories first and exclusively, so it made sense that a pooling of resources would result in a much more professional paper and so both were merged in 1979, I becoming its first editor.

Against a background of official and unofficial censorship, and a largely compliant media, AP/RN (as it is still referred to by many ‘old hands’) singularly countered the black propaganda of the state and the demonisation of republicanism. We exposed torture in the jails and in the RUC interrogation centres. We interviewed IRA spokespersons. We

opened up the paper to columnists critical of Sinn Féin to encourage discussion and debate around a range of social and economic issues. I remember once covering a story about cattle rustling in County Leitrim!

The toughest time, it probably doesn’t need said, was the seven long, heart-breaking months of the 1981 Hunger Strike when friends and comrades died defying the criminalisation of not just themselves but of Ireland’s centuries-old fight for freedom. And yet the staff at 44 Parnell Square and at our new office at 51/53 Falls Road (years before the advent of mobile phones, desk-top publishing and computerised layout) worked around the clock, reporting the old-fashioned way on every demonstration, protest, vigil, picket, press conference, election campaign – and then each death, each funeral.

As I was writing the obituary for Joe McDonnell, a few hours after he had died, we could hear the sound of plastic bullets being fired outside.

‘Bingo’ Campbell shouted up the stairs that the RUC had just shot a woman. I ran to Linden Street

corner to see a woman lying unconscious, dying, her head twice its normal size. Nora McCabe was a childhood friend and neighbour of mine, a mother-of three, who had gone to the corner shop for cigarettes when the cops shot her for no reason.

In October 1982 I reluctantly had to give up the editorship when I was elected as a Sinn Féin Assembly Member for Mid Ulster, though I continued in an oversight role as Sinn Féin Director of Publicity until my arrest in 1990 where from prison I wrote a column for the paper.

There is an old biblical expression, “All Things Must Come To Pass” (which Bobby Sands paraphrased in his poem The Rhythm of Time­),

We sold out every copy of the first issue of Republican News and which means that nothing stands still, things change, evolve, and often for the better.

In former times, print editions of Irish republican newspapers ceased publication for a variety of reasons but usually associated with a downturn in the struggle, with exhaustion or a shortage of ideas.

These are modern times, with ever-improving methods of digital communication, in word, sound and vision, instantaneously worldwide, and unimaginable just 20-odd years ago. What we could have done and achieved had we those means back in those years of oppression!

In 1970, those teenagers sold republican newspapers from underneath their jackets, hiding from the Brits and the RUC. In 2017, the Irish republican message, particularly articulated by the young, is open, confident, mainstream, developing and progressing.

The ‘old new’ An Phoblacht still fits into your jacket!

20 November / Samhain 2017

www.anphoblacht.com

INDEPENDENT TRIBUNAL ON PRISON PROTESTS 1976-1981 IN H-BLOCKS AND ARMAGH

Deliberate British policy dictated brutality and medical neglect of POWs

BY PEADAR WHELAN THE HARROWING TREATMENT of protesting republican POWs in the H-Blocks of Long Kesh and Armagh women’s prison was laid bare to an audience of republicans in Belfast on Friday 6 October as the initial findings of the Independent Tribunal on Prison Protests 1976-1981 were made public.

Not only has the tribunal revealed that prison warders were involved in systematic violence against the prisoners but that their actions were sanctioned at the highest level of the British Government’s Northern Ireland Office and the prison regime and that, under instructions from the Prison Service, prisoners were to be deprived of medical treatment.

The tribunal paid particular attention to the ‘mirror search’ which was introduced at the height of the ‘No-Wash’ protest in late 1978 to replace the so-called ‘table search’. Used to carry out anal searches, the procedure was described by clinical psychiatrist Dr Oscar Daly as “akin to rape”.

An NIO document, sent by a J. P. Irvine to then British Secretary of State Roy Mason in January 1978 as the prison protests were escalating was published as part of the report. It states: “Something should be done to put more pressure on the protesters to abandon their protest.”

Other documents reveal how the NIO was aware of a threatening approach to republicans among prison officers, with one boasting that they had adopted a “We are the masters now attitude”.

OFFICIAL CULPABILITY The evening centred on a series video interviews from former POWs detailing their treatment while on protest for political status as well as a slide show detailing British Government, NIO and Prison Service documents exposing official culpability for the treatment of the prisoners.

Speaking at the event, Séanna Walsh of Coiste na nIarchimí, the republican ex-prisoners’ organisation behind the initiative, paid tribute to the many ex-prisoners who overcame their own extremely trying and emotional difficulties and testified to the panel of international jurors who oversaw the process of evidence gathering.

Walsh paid tribute to the late Peggy Friel of north Belfast, who died from cancer in December 2016 just months after recording her testimony.

Walsh also praised the role of the late Warren Allmand, a former Canadian Solicitor General who chaired the hearings and who, by sad coincidence,

5 A section of the crowd

who also died in December 2016.

A legal mind with a reputation for defending human rights, Allmand visited the North on many occasions, witnessing the brutality of the Orange state on the Garvaghy Road and Ormeau Road during the unionist marching season in the late 1990s.

“His contribution to not only this tribunal but to human rights internationally has been invaluable,” Séanna Walsh said.

for the restoration of political status.

Clearly distressed when testifying, Kearney relived what can only be described as a vicious sexual assault during a ‘table search’.

Kearney told An Phoblacht of the horror he was faced with a group of six warders and was ordered to “Get on to that table, you whore!”

He refused and the search squad forced the struggling, naked man onto the table and pinned him down, arms GRATUITOUS BRUTALITY akimbo. They then prised his legs apart Despite the fact that many of those in to allow a so-called medical officer carry the audience had, while in the H-Blocks out an ‘internal examination’. and Armagh women’s prison experi“You’ll enjoy this, Kearney,” said the enced the brutality of the prison regime ‘medic’ as he inserted his gloved fingers first-hand, they were still shocked at into the prone man’s anus. the accounts of gratuitous violence The west Belfast man recalled how and emotional distress of the witnesses he said to himself: “I will never surrenwhose testimony was broadcast. der to you!”

Among those was Belfast man Seamus Contrary to NIO claims that “when Kearney’s graphic description of the ‘table a prisoner is searched only an extersearch’ he was subjected to in 1978, just nal visual examination of the rectum 5 Warren Allmand, former Canadian months into the ‘No Wash’ protest when 5 British Secretary of State Roy Mason, is made by prison officers using a floor Solicitor General – praised by ex-POWs the ‘Blanketmen’ escalated their protest January 1978 – reviled during his reign mirror”, the tribunal found that “not only did prison officers perform extremely intrusive cavity searches, these searches invariably led to further physical abuse inflicted on the prisoner”.

Likewise, Peggy Friel and a number of other protesting women prisoners recounted their experiences of searches that were clearly designed to humiliate.

One woman prisoner complained about an “obtrusive search” and outlined how she was physically hurt by a prison officer who “groped” between her legs under her underclothes, causing such distress that she “burst into tears and wept for ten minutes afterwards”.

Clearly the body of evidence that is emerging from the initial findings of the tribunal and the witness evidence of male and female prisoners is that this type of intrusive search had a sexual 5 Some of those who attended the launch: Gerry Moore (Derry), Michael Culbert, Director of Coiste (Belfast), Pius McNaught (Der- element to it with Anne Marie Quinn described how ry), Seamus Brown (Derry), Peter McGowan (Derry), Peadar Whelan (Derry), Liam Whelan (Derry), John Devine (Belfast), Charmaine Pickering ( whose brother John was on the H-Blocks Hunger Strike in 1981), Liam Friel (Derry), Jim McCann (Belfast), Antoin de Brún she was beaten by male prison officers (Derry), Kevin Quigley (Derry), Frankie Doherty (Derry), John Hunter (Belfast), and Eamonn O’Donnell (Derry) who were drafted into Armagh Prison.

November / Samhain 2017

www.anphoblacht.com

5 Séanna Walsh outlines the work of the tribunal

5 Former POW Peggy Friel (who has since passed away) outlines the brutality she and her women comrades faced in jail

physically and mentally.

In a letter written before the ‘No-Wash’ protest began to Secretary of State Roy Mason, Amnesty International’s General Secretary said: “If the allegations as to the deprivation of exercise, of reading materials, of suffering a ‘restricted diet’, a refusal to allow for slopping out and the removal of bedding during the day were to be confirmed then it would amount to cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment bringing such treatment of prisoners within the remit of Amnesty.”

Amnesty was clearly alarmed by the fact that the ‘Blanketmen’ in the H-Blocks were denied exercise and what they called ‘occupational materials’ except religious magazines (although even these were subsequently stopped).

Nor did it stop there.

An internal Prison Service memo stated that prisoners’ health would intentionally be put at risk by authorities and with the clear knowledge of the British administration. According to the memo: “Prison staff and medical doctors will allow the deterioration of the prisoners unless they ask for specific medical intervention.”

This instruction is contrary to British Home Office regulations which state: “A doctor’s obligation is to the ethics of his profession and to his duty at common law.”

NEEDS TO BE TOLD 5 Ex-POWs Colm Scullion (South Derry) and Robert ‘Dinker’ McClenaghan (Belfast)

5 A group of ex-POWs from Newry travelled to Belfast for the launch

While being lifted and dragged from the canteen, she said she was dropped on a flight of stairs and had her head deliberately bumped on each one as she was pulled along by the ankles.

AMNESTY: ‘CRUEL, INHUMAN’ While the focus of the physical

violence inflicted on the prisoners, particularly with the escalation of the ‘No-Wash Protest’, is paramount, the tribunal also delved into the violations of Article 3 of the European Court of Human Rights.

The regime imposed on the protesting prisoners was designed to break them

Summarising the night, Séanna Walsh said: “It is Coiste’s intention to hold similar launches throughout the country to ensure that the protesting prisoners, their families and friends are aware of the work that has been done so far and our plans to hold the British state accountable for the torture of prisoners in the H-Blocks and Armagh Prison.”

‘Blanketman’ Seamus Finucane put the event in context when he told An Phoblacht it was: “A powerful presentation which will influence the narrative of the conflict in the forthcoming consultation process on how we deal with legacy of the British/Irish war.

“Systemic human rights abuses were carried out by the prison administration as part of Britain’s counter-insurgency policy.

“The truth needs to be told at home and abroad.”

21

‘Abuse akin to rape’ PROTESTING prisoners who refused to comply with searches saw half a dozen prison guards grab the naked prisoner by his arms and twist them behind his back, forcing him to bend over.

Any resistance was met with repeated punches to the stomach, forcing the prisoner to double up.

Prison officers standing behind the prisoner would kick the prisoner behind the knees, causing him to collapse over the mirror which was about 12 inches by 10 inches and fitted into a bed of foam.

A prison officer would insert his fingers into the prisoner’s anus. Some prisoners have given statements

accusing those involved in the search of using such force as to have left them bleeding from torn skin tissue.

It wasn’t unusual for the prison officer carrying out the anal search to then force his fingers into the prisoner’s mouth under the guise of a further search.

The process was often accompanied by crude sexual commentary from those in the search team.

Clinical psychiatrist Dr Oscar Daly expressed his view to the tribunal that “the excessive and unjustified use of mirror searches could potentially constitute an abuse to prisoners akin to rape”.

22 November / Samhain 2017

www.anphoblacht.com

ANOTHER EUROPE IS POSSIBLE |TREO EILE DON EORAIP

FUNDED BY THE EUROPEAN UNITED LEFT/NORDIC GREEN LEFT (GUE/NGL)

Tracking tobacco giants’ influence THE biggest tobacco firms have come together to produce a tracking and tracing system to replace the outdated tax authentication stickers throughout the EU but, by subcontracting the work, they could potentially bypass the independence criteria laid out in the Tobacco Products Directive, Dublin MEP Lynn Boylan has warned.

“This situation is unacceptable, so I have requested that Health & Food Safety Commissioner Vytenis Andriukaitis closes this loophole to ensure our citizens and governments are not hoodwinked by this notorious and powerful industry.

“I will continue to insist on the complete separation of the tobacco industry and EU tobacco regulation.”

Commissioner Andriukaitis and has attached the letter calling for a clause prohibiting subcontracting to be added to the independence criteria.

Speaking from Brussels, the Dublin MEP said that tobacco is one of the most extensively smuggled substances in the world with 1 in 10 cigarettes sold in the EU coming from illicit trade.

This means that governments – and the public – are robbed of millions in potential revenue that could be used to invest in housing, health, education, transport and infrastructure.

“Tobacco contraband is a lucrative criminal business.

“Along with public health reasons, this illicit trade is why the Tobacco Products Directive was introduced. It laid down the rules for an EU-wide tracking and tracing system to detect contraband.”

She warned: “The big tobacco companies have been determined to have their sway on tobacco regulation for years in the EU, especially on this tracking and tracing system which is to be rolled out in 2019.

“There is clearly a need for complete separation from the problem and the solution ­­– no influence from the tobacco industry on putting in place an effective tracking and tracing system.”

PALESTINIAN WOMEN CELEBRATED IN EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT

Murder of Maltese anti-corruption investigator condemned THE MURDER of a Maltese investigative journalist who gave evidence to the European Parliament’s ‘Panama Papers’ probe into worldwide tax evasion and corruption has been condemned by MEP Matt Carthy.

He described it as “an attack against freedom of expression and anti-corruption activists everywhere”.

Daphne Caruana Galizia was killed by a car bomb as she drove away from her home in Malta on 16 October.

Irish MEP Matt Carthy is a member of the European Parliament’s ‘Panama Papers’ inquiry committee which is probing tax avoidance and evasion by political and business figures around

the world through offshore companies and tax haven accounts.

The inquiry takes its name from the leak of 11million documents held by the Panama-based law firm Mossack Fonseca.

MEPs from the European Parliament’s Panama Papers inquiry held meetings with Ms Caruana Galizia in the capital Valletta in February this year during a fact-finding mission to Malta.

European Parliament President Tajani said that Europol should join the investigation into the murder and the European Parliament Press Room in Strasbourg will be named after Caruana Galizia in tribute to her.

#MeToo

Parliament moves to tackle sexual harassment

5 Border Communities Against Brexit delegation at the European Parliament to brief MEPs

MEP Martina Anderson has met with renowned Palestinian revolutionary activist Leila Khaled in the European Parliament in Brussels and paid tribute to the role of women in the Palestinian struggle.

The pair met at an event held in the European Parliament in Brussels to recognise the role of women in the Palestinian struggle for freedom.

Other speakers at the event included Sahar Francis, lawyer for Khalida Jarrar, a Palestinian activist and politician currently imprisoned

by Israel.

The Venezuelan Ambassador to the EU, Claudia Salerno, was among the guests who attended the event.

Speaking later, Martina Anderson paid tribute to the role of women in the Palestinian struggle.

“Palestinian women stand dignified in defiance of all that Israel can throw at them. We must stand beside them.”

5 The famous Palestinian revolutionary activist Leila Khaled with Martina Anderson MEP

MEPs voted on 26 October for the establishment of a task force of independent experts with a mandate to examine the situation of sexual harassment and abuse in the Parliament.

They also called for a Directive against violence against women and for mandatory training for all staff and MEPs on respect and dignity at work.

Asked by RTÉ if she was surprised by reports that described the European Parliament as “a hotbed for sexual harassment”, Dublin MEP Lynn Boylan said: “It certainly doesn’t surprise me in the slightest.

“I have heard first-hand accounts of interns who have been approached and offered jobs in return for sexual favours.

“This idea of sexual harassment, it doesn’t recognise cultural backgrounds, it doesn’t recognise religion and creed. It just seems to be something that is completely systemic in society.”

Swedish GUE/NGL MEP Malin Björk declared her wholehearted support for the wave of popular mobilisation and that #MeToo is about recognising that there is a structural problem.

“There are not just a few isolated cases and it is not – as some racists in this house like to believe – only men from a particular culture or religion,” Malin said. “It’s about all men. It is about the macho culture in our societies.”

Calling on men to assume responsibility for sexual harassment and join efforts to combat it with a zero-tolerance approach, she added: “#MeToo is about requiring men to take responsibility. You have to take a stand against misogyny and have courage. If you are not part of the solution by opposing sexism and this macho culture, you are part of the problem. “#MeToo is a campaign for change. We have to start cleaning our own house. As policy-makers, we need to take action for change and start in this Parliament.”

November / Samhain 2017

www.anphoblacht.com

EU silence on police violence in Catalonia lambasted EU leaders were fiercely criticised by Matt Carthy MEP in the European Parliament for their widespread silence on Spanish police violence against voters in the Catalan independence referendum on 1 October.

The Ireland North West MEP called them “a shower of utter hypocrites”.

Speaking during a key debate in the European Parliament regarding the preparation of the next European Council meeting, Matt Carthy said: “I see the Council intends to discuss the EU’s external relations at its next meeting.

“You guys have some nerve.

“You plan to lecture others on human rights while you sit on your hands when witnessing a vicious assault on peaceful EU citizens in Catalonia because they have the audacity to vote.”

The Spanish Government in Madrid had declared the referendum illegal and Guardia Civil police used batons against voters and punched and kicked them. Police also broke up some polling stations and stole ballot boxes. Local police and firefighters stepped in to stop the Guardia violence against citiens.

Matt Carthy told the European Parliament: “Let’s be clear: not an unelected Spanish king, not an unelected European Commission, not even a minority government in Madrid has the right to declare illegal the democratic exercise of self-determination by a people.

“We are told that the EU stands for peace, democracy and human rights.

“Where were these values on Sunday?

23

ANOTHER EUROPE IS POSSIBLE

5 MEPs Matt Carthy and Liadh Ní Riada join GUE/NGL colleagues in a ‘Solidarity with Catalonia’ protest

“If you dare to use the Council meeting to talk peace or democracy without standing clearly for these values in Catalonia then the people of Europe, the people of the world, will rightly consider you to be nothing more than a shower of utter hypocrites.”

Colleague Martina Anderson MEP was an international observer of the referendum in Barcelona.

She said:

“I witnessed at first-hand the actions of the Spanish police. It was reminiscent of the actions of the RUC in the worst days of the conflict in Ireland.

“The EU has a responsibility to stand up for democratic rights and to protect citizens,” she said. “It is now up to the international community to respect the outcome of the referendum in Catalonia and ensure scenes like we witnessed on Sunday are not repeated.”

'It was reminiscent of the actions of the RUC in the worst days of the conflict in Ireland'

Martina Anderson

Matt Carthy

Lynn Boylan

Martina Anderson MEP

MEP champions Rosslare Europort

IRELAND SOUTH MEP Liadh Ní Riada has met with management from Rosslare Europort to discuss plans for the port’s future, including the possibility of EU funding.

“In Europe I put a number of questions to the Parliamentary Research Service about possible lines of funding for the port,” Liadh said. “They sent me a lengthy reply which I have given to management to digest and to see if it contains anything of use.

“I have also assured them of my office’s full support if they require help setting up meetings or accessing funding from Europe.

“As Dublin becomes ever more crowded there is huge potential for Rosslare and the South East to benefit and I will be on hand to help that in any way I can.”

Irish fishermen prepare for European Parliament delegation AN OFFICIAL European Parliament delegation will meet with Irish fishermen in Cork next year after a successful proposal by Ireland South MEP in the European Parliament.

The European Parliament delegation will speak with local fishermen, local authorities, researchers, coastal communities, co-operatives, SMEs and other stakeholders in Cork “to highlight the woeful impact Irish Government and EU policy has had in Ireland”, Liadh Ní Riada said.

“I will raise the lack of funding for ordinary fishermen to avail of when gears and equipment

are damaged or destroyed by other vessels and other factors, such as the recent storms.

“It is a situation that cannot continue.

“Ordinary fishermen are facing enormous losses, on a bankrupting scale in some

instances.”

Detailing the restrictions that the European Maritime Fisheries Fund places on applicants, the Ireland South MEP said she hopes the visit in 2018 “will open the European Union’s and Irish Government’s eyes to what is happening to our fishermen and communities on the ground”.

Liadh Ní Riada

are MEPs and members of the GUE/NGL Group in the European Parliament

www.guengl.eu

TREO EILE DON EORAIP

24 November / Samhain 2017

www.anphoblacht.com

LIAM COSGRAVE (13 April 1920 to 4 October 2017),

Taoiseach 1973 to 1977, Leader of Fine Gael 1965 to 1977

We need to talk about Liam

BY ROBBIE SMYTH “TODAY a grateful country thanks and honours him for always putting our nation first.” I wonder just what Fine Gael leader and new Taoiseach Leo Varadkar meant in his endorsement of the deceased Fine Gael leader and former Taoiseach, Liam Cosgrave.

And how could the Irish Daily Mail and Irish Independent respectively describe Cosgrave as a “real” or “true” patriot when his record in power was one of conservative repression, undermining the office of the President, endorsing Garda brutality, standing over political censorship and practising a denial of social justice.

Liam Cosgrave, son of William, first President of the Free State, grew up in a life of privilege that few Irish people would recognise as being relevant to their daily experiences. Cosgrave’s political record is one of failure to remove the political, social and economic conditions that created conflict on this island during his time as Taoiseach.

With Cosgrave’s passing, all of the Taoisigh elected during the conflict years are now dead.

Lynch, Cosgrave, FitzGerald, Haughey and Reynolds were in power from 1969 when British troops were deployed on to the streets of the North up until the 1994 IRA cessation. It was Reynolds alone that had the vision and ability to support a peace process in Ireland, to not go down the road of more repression.

Cosgrave’s political career was a very different one to Reynolds.

As Fine Gael leader in 1970, members of the Garda leaked information to him on the alleged role of then Fianna Fáil ministers Charles Haughey and Neil Blaney in enabling weapons be sent to defend Northern nationalist communities under attack from unionist sectarian mobs aided and abetted by the Stormont

state’s paramilitary police forces in the Royal Ulster Constabulary.

Cosgrave tried to have the Sunday Independent publish the story but ultimately he met with then Fianna Fail Taoiseach Jack Lynch, who sacked Blaney and Haughey. The two were brought to court but eventually acquitted of all charges.

In December 1972, just weeks after the Offences Against the State Act had been passed, a British MI6 (Secret Intelligence Service) officer, John Wyman, and 5 Newspaper headlines eulogised Cosgrave Garda Detective Sergeant Peter Crinnion were arrested. Crinnion had been a civil rights in our ‘nation’. A key measure British spy. In the subsequent years of was to create the non-jury Special Criminal Court, used almost exclusvely to jail republicans.

In 1976, Cosgrave’s Government – in coalition with Brendan Corish’s Labour Party from 14 March 1973 to 5 July 1977 – passed an Emergency Powers Act which allowed the Garda to hold suspects for seven days before being charged with an offence.

News media commentators have talked of Cosgrave’s support for “constitutional Cosgrave’s government there was no nationalism”. It was a trait missing when attempt to follow up and question the he allowed Defence Minister Paddy role of British Intelligence in Ireland and Donegan to describe President Cearbhall 5 The investigation into the Dublin/Monaghan bombings was appallingly poor their penetration of Garda headquarters. Ó Dálaigh as “a thundering disgrace” at he didn’t toe the Cosgrave regime’s and which the British Government In 1972, Cosgrave defied his own party a Defence Forces function in Mullingar. hardline. continues to withhold its files on. in supporting a new Offences Against the The office of the President was not part Like his father (who introduced the Cosgrave’s 1974 response was that State Act, legislation that would erode of Cosgrave’s constitutional Ireland when 1923 Censorship of Films Act and the “everyone who has practised or preached

Cosgrave stood over people being beaten and tortured in police custody by the notorious Garda ‘Heavy Gang’

1929 Censorship of Publications Act) Cosgrave actively supported censorship. An Phoblacht editor Éamonn Mac Thomais was jailed during Cosgrave’s premiership.

The notorious Conor Cruise O’Brien, a Labour Party TD, was the Minister for Posts and Telegraphs in the Cosgrave Government who relentlessly imposed broadcasting censorship, keeping files on

An Phoblacht editor Éamonn Mac Thomais was jailed during Cosgrave’s premiership critics of the unionist Stormont regime’s as well as his own administration and was ever-eager to suppress free speech.

There were vicious loyalist bombings in Dublin in 1972 and in Dublin and Monaghan in 1974, which clearly had the aid and approval of British Intelligence

violence or condoned violence must bear a share of responsibility for today’s outrages”.

A foreign government was interfering in and manipulating Irish state politics – as well as murdering its citizens – yet Cosgrave did nothing. Could he not see that the same forces undermining the failed Sunningdale Agreement were active in destabilising the Southern state? The only enemy Cosgrave saw was the IRA. Cosgrave stood over people being beaten and tortured in police custody by the notorious Garda ‘Heavy Gang’ in what even the Irish Times headlined in one report as “Gardaí using North-style brutality in interrogation techniques”.

In his last ard fheis address as Fine Gael leader, in 1977, Cosgrave attacked critics, thundering that “Not for the first time has this party stood between the people of this country and anarchy”.

He went on to attack public detractors, crying that “Some of them aren’t even Irish!”, going on to call them “blow-ins” who could “blow out or blow up”.

Leo, we need to talk about Liam.

November / Samhain 2017

www.anphoblacht.com

25

BOOK REVIEW

The bitter fruits of the British Empire Inglorious Empire: What the British Did to India Shashi Tharoor Hurst & Company €18

REVIEW BY SEÁN SHEEHAN

EVEN IF this book about Britain’s Indian empire is by an author named by the World Economic Forum in Davos in 1998 as a “Global Leader of Tomorrow” (scary), his study of how the British Empire damaged India is a damning indictment of imperial rule and its economic imperatives.

Fifty years before the British East India Company began its conquest of India, the country’s share of the world economy was 23%, as large as all of Europe put together; by the time the British left in 1947, it had dropped to just over 3%. Statistics can lie but this one points to an unvarnished truth.

Inglorious Empire explains how this happened, beginning with the emblematic case of the destruction of India’s textile manufacturing by the imposition of tariffs and the flooding of the Indian market with cheap cotton imports from Britain, a part of what Tharoor calls the East India Company’s “schlock and awe” policy.

Underlying the conquest and maintenance of the empire were assumptions of racial and cultural superiority (an enduring after-effect of such attitudes played a role in the Brexit vote) which fuelled the illusionary notion that it was for the betterment of those being ruled.

Brute force was used when necessary – India’s Bloody Sunday occurred in 1919 at Amritsar when at least 379 peaceful protesters were shot dead – but the passivity of the governed allowed the British in India to never exceed 0.05% of the population.

The arguments that would justify Britain’s role in India’s history are rationally exposed as defending the indefensible.

The rule of law, of incontestable value, was introduced but its application was distorted by racial bias and it served as an instrument of colonial control.

The crime of “sedition” (used against nationalists like Gandhi) the outlawing of homosexuality and the criminalising of adultery for married women – but not men! – have been retained by the modern Indian state and used in its courts.

Britain, alarmed by Hindu and Muslim soldiers rebelling in unison in 1857, adopted a policy of divide and rule.

Tharoor recognises the origins of such

5 (From top): Taoiseach Liam Cosgrave, Posts and Telegraphs Minister Conor Cruise O’Brien, and Defence Minister Paddy Donegan

a policy “evidenced in the only alreadywhite country the British colonised, Ireland”.

The formation of the Muslim League was instigated by the British as a response to the growing influence of the nationalist and secular Indian National Congress party and it was declared a Hindu-dominated organisation. Pitting Muslims against Hindus was, of course, to have disastrous consequences – eventually leading to partition and the creation of Pakistan – and it discredits the idea that the political unity of India was a British achievement.

Another aspect of Irish history reverberates in Britain’s policy towards India: famine.

No large-scale famine has taken place in India since independence but some 30million Indians needlessly died of starvation during the Raj. Market forces were sacrosanct and unbudgeted money was not to be imprudently allocated to relief measures, echoing the ‘reasoning’ that allowed a million Irish to perish during An Gorta Mór.

Just as grain continued to be exported during Ireland’s famine, foodgrains from India were exported to Ceylon (now Sri

Lanka) during the 1943 Bengal famine.

Churchill blamed that catastrophe on Indians for “breeding like rabbits” and when the scale of the tragedy was brought to his attention he peevishly asked: “Why hasn’t Gandhi died yet?”

Shashi Tharoor does not deny the benefits that accrued to Britain’s jewel in the imperial crown: law and order was important, newspapers were introduced and, at the risk of seeming frivolous, he singles out cricket, tea and the English language. But the myth that bringing railways to India was a noble achievement is effectively deconstructed, as is the argument of Empire apologist Niall Ferguson that Britain in India served as a benign avatar of globalisation.

Inglorious Empire is a book worth reading and remembering. It is not a hand-held view of history but one that pans back to present its case in a carefully-reasoned and lucidly written manner.

In the long run, India has flourished but, as the author concludes, human beings do not live in the long run; “they live, and suffer, in the here and now” and India has suffered terribly from British colonial rule.

5 Gandhi was charged with sedition; British hero Churchill blamed famine on ‘Indians breeding like rabbits’

26 November / Samhain 2017

www.anphoblacht.com

Guests of thenation

‘The traditional tasks also remain: to challenge and unmask illegitimate authority, and to work with others to undermine it and to extend the scope of freedom and justice’ NOAM CHOMSKY

IT’S ALMOST TIME to add another star to the flag. The cloth, needle and thread are ready.

Shannon became a warport while people slept; American corporate business arrived unseen; Irish industry adopted American methodology; and huge chunks of the media have swung so far to the right, they’ve nearly fallen off the edge. The Americanisation of Ireland is spreading, ROBERT ALLEN believes.

THE late industrialisation and subsequent globalisation of Ireland brought a reaction from the population, with the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s seeing opposition to virtually everything that was considered ill-thought-out, toxic, undesirable or plain wrong.

This was manifest in emotional responses to the failure of the state to control the flood of hard drugs in workingclass communities, its health service cuts regime, plans to close sub-post offices, and the continuous issues about child and elderly care, educational cost and equality, gender rights, public infrastructure and transport, road deaths, and taxation.

And not forgetting all the single-issue campaigns and protests involving electronic masts, fish farming, pirate radio, the rod licence, toxic development, the extraction industry and the dramas about farming inequality, genetically engineered crops, land use and abuse, meitheal systems, organic farming, pot holes, the EU, water charges, water quality . . .

The events of the past half-century provide evidence that Ireland has still not broken free of the chains that

The events of the past half-century provide evidence that Ireland has still not broken free of the chains have bound it since the arrival of the Anglo-Normans, Saxons, English and others during the period between the mid-1100s and the turbulent years through the 1200s and 1600s.

There is a dominant paradigm in Irish society and the names of those who control modern Ireland are faceless.

It does not resonate with the ideals of those who have fought and died for an Ireland where apathy, greed and selfishness are not the driving forces in society.

On the counter side we know the names of the other people and we give them labels that stigmatise – anarchist, blow-in, tree hugger, hippy, loony left, neo-Marxist, rebel, agitator, wrecker!

Are they not citizens – men and women, mothers and fathers, sons and daughters, aunts and uncles, nephews and nieces – people with hopes and fears, desires and dreams, people with intelligence and humanity?

Apparently not. They are alien ‘others’, people who

should be marginalised because they want a different Ireland. The strange aspect of this stigmatisation is that it cannot apply to those who challenge, protest and resist because this is usually everyone, at some stage of their lives!

Anyone taking the time to see what is happening in modern Ireland will witness a people who are generally not cynical or selfish or fascistic, who are altruistic and caring and sharing. They are the dispossessed but they are not weak.

Tom Collins sees the nature of the society that is emerging amongst the dispossessed on the fringes of Irish society as “one which has a renewed interest in traditional Irish society but has rejected its caricature; it equates personal growth with social commitment; it espouses spirituality but discards religiosity; it is committed to democracy but distrusts politicians; it has fundamental commitment to work but is likely to be unemployed; it is locally committed but globally oriented; it is coming from the outside in rather from the inside out”.

During the 1990s, several ‘expert’ commentators noticed this activity, this seemingly invisible energy arising from community resistance and struggle. Much of this energy was quickly dissipated and the focus became blurred as the country went mad for money.

The consequence of people working and living and

6 West of Ireland – a place out of step with the socalled modern world?

creating in their own communities received no external affirmation; their activity was given little or no credence.

Those who understood what was happening blamed the centralised power held by faceless bureaucrats and compliant politicians in Belfast and Dublin.

Bureaucrat Tom Barrington was not alone in his optimistic 1960s view that a new Ireland would only emerge with the unbinding of local authorities and the release

We give challengers labels that stigmatise – anarchist, blow-in, tree hugger, loony left, neoMarxist, agitator, wrecker of the energy pent up in the ‘new social movements’ that emerge with each generation. An Ireland unbound is not an idealistic notion. It is just naïve.

Writing in the 1980s, Michel Peillon, the Maynoothbased French sociologist, challenged the assertion that Ireland was going through a transition during the latter half of the 20th century: “It is not so much transition as a profound mutation.

And it is this that makes difficult the task of describing and giving an overall picture of Irish society.”

Since the mid-19th century, Ireland – significantly, the west of Ireland – has been caricatured by anthropologists, sociologists and other commentators as a place out of

November / Samhain 2017

www.anphoblacht.com

step with the so-called modern world. Anthropologists, as Adrian Peace and Michael Viney in particular have stressed, have been among the worst culprits, portraying Ireland, Peace noted, “as a dying society, a culture in demise, a social system characterised by pathogenic tendencies”.

The problem these academics faced was the changing society around them. They could either ignore it or involve it. And they had a tendency to do both, usually with an agenda.

This has been seen in the studies by ethnographers in the west of Ireland, who travelled and made assumptions that travel and observation was an elite activity. Travel

5 Environmental activists: Challenging authority and fighting to preserve the land

Ireland remains in the top three of the most globalised countries but it is no longer as attractive as it once was to global capital was not only for the ethnographers, as anthropology’s harshest critic James Clifford would confirm, it was also for those being studied in their native environments. They too had a commentary on the world.

Unfortunately in modern Ireland, the liberals hold the high moral ground and, because they are usually thirdlevel educated and in well-paid influential jobs, they are actively able to articulate their biased views. The mainstream media reflects their world and their world of commerce and entertainment dominates the media.

The problem is that their worldview is flawed.

6 US armed forces: Using Shannon to impose their authority in other people's lands

An example of this took place when the American linguist Noam Chomsky lectured in Ireland in the spring of 1993.

Chomsky placed Ireland’s struggles in a global context when he discussed the rules of world order. These rules, he argued, dictated neo-liberalism for the weak, state power and intervention for the strong.

“Within the culture of respectability, the traditional tasks remain: to reshape past and current history in the interests of power, to exalt the high principles to which we and our leaders are dedicated and to file away the unfortunate flaws in the record as misguided good intentions, harsh choices inflicted on us by some evil enemy, or the other categories familiar to the properly educated.

“For those who are unwilling to accept this role, the traditional tasks also remain: to challenge and unmask illegitimate authority, and to work with others to undermine it and to extend the scope of freedom and justice.”

Would those who turned up to listen to Chomsky have made the same effort to listen to an Irish commentator of the same ilk, one who could have told them the impact of the rules of global power on their community?

And did any of the people who heard Chomsky attempt to go away and unmask illegitimate authority, and to work with others to undermine it and to extend the scope of freedom and justice?

If they did, there is little evidence of it in Irish society today.

The people who might have benefited from Chomsky’s wise words are those in the ‘live’ schools, down among the dispossessed, and they are always being shunned by those who hold the power, in Dublin and in Belfast, people who probably heard ‘the great man’ back in 1993.

Ireland remains in the top three of the most globalised countries (after Hong Kong and ahead of Singapore!) but it is no longer as attractive as it once was to global capital.

27

Since the early 2000s, investment has been heading eastwards and to Russia. Foreign investment in this new century has come from the corporations who make money from web activity, and so far this industry has not attracted unwanted attention despite the flight of their profits.

There are those who claim this profound mutation is about Ireland’s membership of the EU and about an over-protective state with a bureaucratic mentality that stifles and fails to support Irish enterprise and industry. The success of global capital (the import-export

Chomsky placed Ireland’s struggles in a global context when he discussed the rules of world order nexus) in Ireland must be compared with the failure of local capital, and the blame for that lies with the state, especially the bureaucrats who have shown they are a law onto themselves and care little for mandates given to politicians by the electorate.

A protester who was told by a senior official with the IDA that he “would have a referendum for everything” had to laugh because the Constitution is now the last defence against the total globalisation of the country.

Ireland has been in the midst of a fire-sale for several decades and now it is over. The former guests of the nation have become the new rulers; just like before.

Welcome to America.

28 November / Samhain 2017

www.anphoblacht.com

The Manchester Martyrs 150th ANNIVERSARY

150 YEARS AGO this month, the trial, conviction and execution of three young Irishmen in Manchester caused a sensation throughout Ireland and Britain. The political reverberations were to continue for decades. The three men were William Philip Allen, Michael Larkin and Michael O’Brien – the Manchester Martyrs.

The framing and show-trial of these men, their dignity in the face of death and their defiance of British rule in Ireland re-inspired the Fenian movement, helped to push Charles Stuart Parnell into politics and pushed future British Prime Minister W. E. Gladstone into prioritising ‘The Irish Question’.

On 18 September 1867, Fenian leaders Colonel Thomas Kelly and Captain Timothy Deasy were being transported in a horse-drawn prison van through Manchester. A large group of Fenians attacked the van and succeeded in rescuing the two men.

During the rescue, police Sergeant Charles Brett who was inside the van, was accidentally killed when Dublin Fenian Peter Rice fired a shot through the keyhole just as Brett was looking through it.

There was a general outcry against the Irish in England. In Manchester, scores of Irish people were rounded up, many being assaulted in custody.

Five Irishmen were charged with the murder of Brett and were put on trial by a Special Commission of two judges at the end of October. Along with Allen, Larkin and O’Brien, the others charged were Edward O’Meaghar Condon, an Irish-American Fenian and an Irish Royal Marine Thomas Maguire, who had no connection with Fenianism.

The trial was conducted amid the highest security, with British military guarding the prisoners in transit and in the court, making it clear that this

IN PICTURES

BY MÍCHEÁL Mac DONNCHA

Remembering the Past

was a show-trial and these were to be regarded as highly dangerous men.

All five were found guilty of the murder of Brett and sentenced to death.

Michael Larkin told the court: “I am dying a patriot for my country and Larkin will be remembered in time to come by the sons and daughters of Erin.”

Edward O’Meaghar Condon told the judges: “You will soon send us before our God and I am perfectly prepared to go. I have nothing to regret, to retract or take back. I can only say: God Save Ireland!”

The cry “God save Ireland” was taken up by the other prisoners in the dock and it inspired a popular ballad that for many years was regarded as the national anthem and is still sung to this day.

Allen said in a written statement before his execution: “It is well-known what my poor country has to suffer and how her sons are exiles the world over; then tell me where is the Irishman who could look unmoved and see his countrymen taken prisoner and treated like murderers and robbers in British dungeons?

“May the Lord have mercy on our souls and deliver Ireland from her sufferings.

God save Ireland.”

Thirty-five journalists who had attended the trial wrote a petition to the British Government, calling for a reprieve for Thomas Maguire. They challenged the tainted evidence on which he was convicted. Thomas Maguire was reprieved – yet it was the same evidence that convicted the other four.

O’Meaghar Condon was also reprieved because he was a United States citizen and the British Government commuted his death sentence for purely political reasons.

That left Allen, Larkin and O’Brien for whom there was to be no reprieve.

On the night of 22 November, the three men in their cells in Salford Prison awaited execution the following

There were mass demonstrations in honour of the Manchester Martyrs in Ireland, the USA and wherever the Irish were exiles morning. Outside, a mob of thousands gathered. Fuelled by drink and anti-Irish hysteria stirred up by the British press and politicians, they chanted and howled for vengeance. In stark contrast, the next morning Allen, Larkin and O’Brien walked with dignity to their deaths by hanging on the scaffold outside the walls of the jail.

It was one of the last public executions in Britain. It was also one of the worst.

The executioner, William Calcraft, botched the hangings. Allen died instantly but, unknown to the crowd, after the three fell out of sight through

photos@anphoblacht.com

5 Manchester Martyrs Commemoration in Cork City Centre on Saturday 28 October heard an oration by Councillor Toiréasa Ferris

the trap door, O’Brien and Larkin were not dead. Calcraft ‘finished off’ Larkin and was about to do the same to O’Brien when the priest, Fr Gadd, stopped him.

O’Brien died in the priest’s arms.

There were mass demonstrations in honour of the Manchester Martyrs in Ireland, the USA and wherever the Irish were exiles. Many monuments to their memory were erected in the following decades.

They also inspired poets. Perhaps the best tribute was written by a Fenian journalist and poet, John Francis O’Donnell, who actually witnessed the executions. Part of it reads: There are three graves in England newly dug In England there are three men less today – Allen, O’Brien and Larkin – their brief sun has set, To rise in God’s clear day.

I saw them, the unconquerable three, Mount the black gallows for their

country’s faith, As with high heroic scorn for life they kissed The frozen lips of death.

The thin, pale face of Allen, O’Brien’s gaze And Larkin, fainting from the press of doom, Seemed like the Trinity of Ireland’s trust In that foul morning gloom. ’Twas over and they fell; one little pause And the sun, battling with the mist, broke out, And with a glory to November new, He hemmed them round about.

The worst was done that vengeance could achieve Or centuries of hatred fashion forth; And England glared down from the scaffold rail – The Hangman of the Earth!

November / Samhain 2017

www.anphoblacht.com

I nDíl Chuimhne 6 November 1969: Volunteer Liam McPARLAND, Belfast Brigade, 2nd Battalion 6 November 1974: Volunteer Hugh CONEY, Long Kesh 6 November 1975: Fian Kevin McAULEY, Fianna Éireann 8 November 1974: Volunteer Gerard FENNELL, Belfast Brigade, 1st Battalion 8 November 1982: Jeff McKENNA, Sinn Féin 11 November 1982: Volunteer Eugene TOMAN, Volunteer Gervase McKERR, Volunteer Seán BURNS, North Armagh Brigade 13 November 1972: Volunteer Stan CARBERRY, Belfast Brigade, 2nd Battalion

29

Comhbhrón

Life springs from death and from the graves of patriot men and women spring living nations

Always remembered by the Republican Movement.

PÁDRAIG PEARSE

DUGGAN, Michael. In proud and loving memory of my uncle Michael who was murdered by Workers’ Party gunmen on 12 November 1975 at St Paul’s Snooker Hall, Hawthorn Street.

“Everyone, republican or otherwise, has their own particular part to play. No part is too great or too small; no one is too old or too young to do something.”

– Bobby Sands. Always remembered by his nephew Pip, County Louth.

O’MAHONEY, Liam. In memory of my dear friend and comrade on the 13th anniversary of his passing. Always remembered by Noel Harrington of Kinsale Sinn Féin.

14 November 1974: Volunteer James McDADE, England 15 November 1973: Volunteer Michael McVERRY, South Armagh Brigade 15 November 1974: Volunteer John ROONEY, Belfast Brigade, 1st Battalion 15 November 1991: Volunteer Frankie RYAN, Volunteer Patricia BLACK, Belfast Brigade, 1st Battalion 16 November 1984: Paddy BRADY, Sinn Féin 22 November 1971: Volunteer Michael

CROSSEY, Belfast Brigade, 1st Battalion 24 November 1978: Volunteer Patrick DUFFY, Derry Brigade 25 November 1992: Volunteer Pearse JORDAN, Belfast Brigade, 1st Battalion 26 November 1973: Volunteer Desmond MORGAN, Tyrone Brigade 28 November 1972: Volunteer James CARR, Volunteer John BRADY, Derry Brigade 29 November 1989: Volunteer Liam RYAN, Tyrone Brigade

MARLEY: Deepest condolences and sympathy are extended to the family of Kate Marley who passed recently. From all the members of the Vol. Logue/Marley Sinn Féin cumann, Cromghlinn, Baile Átha Cliath.

QUEENAN. Deepest sympathies from the Gaighan, Lynn Stagg Sinn Fein Cumann to Liz and Pat on the passing of Frank Queenan of River Forest, Leixlip, County Kildare, and formerly of Ballymayock, Castle Hill, Ballina, County Mayo.

notices@anphoblacht.com

FÓGRAÍ BHÁIS

Dermot Moran Woodford, Galway THE south Galway village of Woodford came to a standstill on 12 October as hundreds of republicans attended the funeral of the late Dermot Moran who was laid to rest in the Cemetery beside St John the Baptist Church, Woodford.

Dermot, a local republican community activist and spokesperson for the Boroughter/Clonmoylan Bog Action Group, was born in Coose, Whitegate, County Clare, and in later years lived in Duniry, Kylebrack, Loughrea, County Galway.

Dermot was a keen athlete who competed all over Ireland and ran his own garden and lawn maintenance business. He was also involved in training the Clare camogie team, who had a guard of honour at Woodford Church beside the cemetery.

Dermot became an active republican from a young age and was always available, day or night, to help his comrades.

He put in many hard hours canvassing for Senator Trevor Ó Clochartaigh, Carol Nolan TD, Noeleen Moran and Annmarie Roche.

Dermot’s final journey was accompanied from the Tommy Larkin GAA grounds to the Woodford Cemetery by a 60-strong republican guard of honour.

Other guard of honour were provided by the turf cutters, Clare Harriers Athletic Club, Woodford Community Group and Woodford Youth Club, showing the level

of esteem and respect that Dermot was held in by the people across his own community.

Seán McGettigan delivered the graveside oration, describing Dermot as “a freedom fighter, a tireless worker for his community and the turf cutters; a true friend who, like his forebears, flew the flag for Irish freedom and a united Ireland”.

The ceremonies concluded with Irish tunes played at his graveside followed by a rousing rendition of Amhrán na bhFiann.

Betty Anderson (nee McCaul) Derry City BETTY ANDERSON, my mother, was born in Derry’s Bogside in 1925 and lived her entire 92 years within less than a mile from her McCaul family home. From a staunchly republican family Betty married Billy ‘Dinky’ Anderson and they had ten children, seven girls and three boys.

Sadly, Betty was widowed in her early 1940s when my father died following a short illness in 1973. Despite the hardships, Betty ensured that we were given the best upbringing possible.

Even though she struggled with rearing ten children on her own she never shied away from defending others and she always found time to get involved in community activity.

Living in an area blighted by unionist discrimination and gerrymandering, she became prominently involved in civil rights campaigning in Derry and as the conflict intensified she became centrally involved in the prison campaigns including the H-Blocks protests.

Although she spent much of her time in the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s visiting myself and my sister Martina (in Mountjoy, the Curragh, Portlaoise, Brixton and Durham high-security prisons and finally, before her release under the terms of the Good Friday Agreement, Martina in Maghaberry) she always found time to involve herself in other civil rights issues.

She was delighted when I was elected to Derry City Council but it was nothing

to her pride and joy when Martina went on to be elected Assembly member for Foyle and subsequently Junior Minister to her hero Martin McGuinness and subsequently as MEP for the Six Counties.

For the last 17 years my mother suffered from Alzheimer’s and was confined to bed for the majority of that time. The family will always be grateful for the support and assistance provided by the health carers, nurses and doctors who gave unstinting support to the family during my mother’s long illness.

Our only regret is that due to the advanced stage of her illness she was unable to share in the pride and joy felt by us and the people of Foyle when her granddaughter Elisha McCallion following a very successful term as the

Feargal Ó Cuilinn Baile Átha Cliath

Patsy ‘Skin’ Burns Belfast

TÁ LAOCH don Ghaeilge agus don Phoblacht ar lár san Ard Chathair.

Fuair Feargal Ó Cuilinn (1966 -2017) ó Baile Bhailcín bás rionnt seachtainí tar éis taom croí maidin Cluiche Cheannais Peile na hÉireann.

Oibrí le Glór na nGael, Comhluadar, RÁS agus cathaoirleach roinnt Gaelscoileanna ina measc Ghaelscoil Barra i Cabhrach, bhí Feargal gafa leis an Ghaeilge a chuir chun cinn go bríomhar le blianta, agus dá réir bhí aithne air ar fud na tíre.

Ag a shochraid bhí an Brat Náisiúnta ar a chónra agus léigh a chomráid scoile an Comhairleoir Críona Ní Dhálaigh ó ráiteas Aengus Ó Snodaigh TD nach raibh i láthair toisc Stoirm Ophelia: “Ón aithne a bhí agam air ó meánscoil i leith, tá’s agam go raibh fíor bhród air faoin a phoblachtánachas.

Aon uair a bhuail mé leis bhíodh plé againn faoi chúrsaí an tsaoil

PATSY BURNS – ‘Skin’ – was a patriot.

He was a staunch republican. Skin was a rebel all day long.

He was born in 1935 and witnessed many decades of injustice and brutality. He often spoke with great passion about the hardship that people endured.

As a young boy, Patsy witnessed our communities being attacked by loyalist mobs throughout different times, throughout the many decades and the families that were bereaved as a result, including his own.

Skin knew generations of Carrickhill families, he knew their hardships, their struggles and he was proud to be part of the change that came from the 1960’s right through to present day.

Patsy was involved in the Pearse’s GAC from the 1960s, along with others from ‘The Hill’.

Locally he was instrumental in the promotion of Irish Culture, through the GAA and the craobh for the Irish

5 Feargal Ó Cuilinn, an tSeanadóir Trevor Ó Clochartaigh, Ard Mhéara Bhaile Átha Cliath ag an am Críona Ní Dhálaigh, Aengus Ó Snodaigh TD agus Lorcán Mac Gabhainn ag seoladh Líofa i Páirc an Chrócaigh i Meán Fómhair 2015

poblachtánach agus cad a bhí ag titim amach maidir leis an Proiséas Síochána le tamaill de bhlianta anuas.”

Comhbhrón lena chlann agus a chairde uilig. I measc laochra na nGael go raibh sé.

language, but he will be best remembered by many for his role in the IRA. For anyone aged in their late 50s and beyond who served in the ranks of Óglaigh na hÉireann, Patsy probably swore half of them in.

He was interned in the 1970s and he saw the impact that political imprisonment had in our areas.

Skin was involved to the Prisoners Dependants Fund/Green Cross and looked after the welfare of political prisoners, their families and the families of our fallen comrades.

Patsy and others from this area were responsible for the memorial garden because they wanted to have a fitting tribute to all the people who died from Carrick Hill.

Patsy was tuned in big time, he put me through my paces and put all different scenarios to me and wanted to talk about strategy and reminded me that it wasn’t just about uniting a country, it

first Mayor of the new Derry City and Strabane ‘super council’ was elected not only the first female but the first Sinn Féin MP for the Foyle constituency in the recent Westminster election.

Betty Anderson will always be remembered by her family, the Republican Movement and the people of Derry as a staunchly proud republican who never flinched from doing the right thing by the people that she loved.

On behalf of the Anderson family I express heartfelt thanks to the republican family and all of those from near and far who sent cards, condolences or visited the home, attended the Mass and funeral.

Suaimhneas síoraí dá anam

By Peter Anderson

was “getting the right type of a united Ireland”.

Skin reminded us all that we have to make a difference to people’s lives. For him, that’s what it’s all about.

Blue Kelly so aptly described in his insertion in one newspaper as “the great disagreer”; he was also the great debater, the great friend and then some.

Our children and grandchildren must be told about the many who came before us, the people like Skin and what they all did for us.

I’ll finish with these words Some died by the glenside, some died mid the stranger, And wise men have told us, their cause was a failure, But they stood by old Ireland and never feared danger, Glory O, Glory O, to the bold Fenian men Suaimhneas síoraí dá anam uasal, Skin

By Carál Ní Chuilín

Thomas Ashe

D’Arcy MacSwiney Michael Gaughan Seán Joseph McCaughey Seán MacNeela Andrew O’Sullivan Michael Fitzgerald Tony Terence Whitty Joseph M 22nd 1923 17thNovember October 1920

(died) 25th September 1917

30 November / Samhain 2017

11th2nd MayAugust 1946 1923 3rd June 1974 25th Octob www.anphoblacht.com

Thomas Ashe AN STAILC OCRAIS (died) 25th September 1917 BOOK REVIEWS BY MICHAEL MANNION

Frank Bobby Sands sy Sands Bobby Stagg Sands

12th February 1976 May 1981 5th May 1981 5th May 1981

Mich

Ireland's Hunger Strike Ir Fuair siad bás ar son saoirse na hÉirean

Bobby Sands

22nd November 1923 20th November 1923

MICHAEL FITZGERALD

17

Francis HughesFrancisFrancis HughesH

5th May 1981

Andrew O’Sullivan Denis Barry THOMAS ASHE

16th April25th 1940 October 19th 1920 April 1940

12th May 1981

Seán MacNeela 19th April 1940

TERENCE MacSWINEY

Frank Stagg Michael Gaughan Seán McCaughey

3rd June 1974 12th February 1976

11th May 1946

JOSEPH MURPHY

JOSEPH WHITTY

DENIS BARRY

F

12th May 12th 1981May

Bobby Sands 5th May 1981

ANDY O’SULLIVAN

Thomas Ashe Michael Fitzgerald Terence MacSwiney Joseph Whitty Joseph Murphy De Thomas Ashe Michael Fitzgerald Terence MacSwiney Joseph Whitty Joseph Murphy Denis Barr Andrew O’Sullivan Ashe Michael Fitzgerald Terence MacSwiney Joseph Whitty Joseph ald Terence MacSwiney Joseph Whitty Joseph Murphy Denis BarryMurphy Terence MacSwiney Joseph Whitty Joseph Murphy Denis Barry

25th 1917October October 1920 25th October 1920 August 1923 25th October 19231923 20th N (died)September 25th September 1917 17th 2nd October 1920 25th25th October 1920 2nd August 1923 25th October 192320th November 22nd November ember 1917 17th October 1920 25th 1923 October 1920 2nd August 1923 25th October 1923 25th 192017th 2nd August 25th October 1923 2nd 20th November 1923 25th October 1920 August 1923 October 1923 20th November 1923

‘Ithe may die the1916 Repuw ‘They branded methe asRepublic ‘Ibut may die Republic of 1916but will ‘Ia may but Republic of 1916 will ‘Idie may of 1916 will have branded as a have ‘Ithe may but the Republic of the 1916 will ‘They have me as a‘They ‘They have branded me as adieme ‘Iabut may die but Republic of ‘They have branded me as ‘They have branded me as adie AN STAILC OCRAIS AN STAILC OCRAIS AN STAILC OCRAIS AN STAILC OCRAIS ANbranded STAILC OCRAIS never die.

Onward to th criminal.

Even though never Onward toand that Republic and never die.

Onward to that Republic andnever never die.

Onward to thatdie.

Republic and criminal.

Even though never die.

Onward to die. that Republic criminal. Evencriminal. though criminal.

Even though Onward to that Republic a Even though criminal.

Even though the liberation I in do Iofdie in a liberation goodofthe cause’ of our people’ our people’ the of ourthe people’ do die, Igood a the good cause’ the liberation ourliberation people’ do die, I dieI in good cause’ I doI die die, in a cause’ cause’ liberation of our people’of o doadie, inI die a good Idie do in die, I dieliberation adie, good cause’

Ireland's Hunger Strikes Ireland's Hunger Strikes Hunger Strikes and'sIreland's Hunger Strikes nd's Hunger Strikes

BOBBY SANDS BOBBY THOMAS SANDS ASHE BOBBY SANDS THOMAS ASHE BOBBY SANDS THOMAS ASHE THOMASTHOMAS BOBBY SANDS BOBBY SAN ASHE ASHE THOMAS ASHE Raymond McCreesh Francis Hughes Raymond McCreesh deesh McCreesh Patsy O’Hara Patsy Hun O’H Leader of theO’Hara H-Blocks Patsy Raymond McCreesh 1916 leader and the first republican to die on hunger strike, 1917 Leader of the H-Blocks Hunger Strike, 1981 Leader of the H-Blocks Hunger Strike, 1981 Leader of the H-Blocks Hunger Strike, 1981 1916 leader and the first republican to die on hunger strike, 1917 Leader of the H-Blocks Hunger Strike, 1981 eader and the first 1916 republican to die on hunger strike, 1917 1916 leader and the first republican to die on hunger strike, 1917 Leader of the H-Blocks Hunger Strike, 1981 leader and the first republican to die on hunger strike,and 1917 1916 leader the first republican to die on hunger strike, 1917

Fuair siad arar son saoirse nana hÉireann Fuair siad bás son saoirse hÉireann Fuair siad bás ar son saoirse na hÉireann siad bás son saoirse na hÉireann ad bás ar ar son saoirse nabás hÉireann Raymond McCreesh Bobby Sands Michael Gaughan Frank Stagg Francis Hughes Tony D’ArcySeán MacNeela

21st May 1981 May 1981 May 1981 12th May 1981 21st TONY 1981 D’ARCY 21st MaySEÁN McNEELA SEÁN McCAUGHEY 16th April 1940

19th April 1940

MICHAEL GAUGHAN

3rd June 1974

FRANK STAGG

BOBBY SANDS

12th February 1976

5th May 1981

drew O’Sullivan Andrew O’Sullivan Sullivan

21st May RAYMOND 1981 21st May 21st 1981May McCREESH

FRANCIS HUGHES

12th May 1981

21st May 1981

Ton Tony D’A rc

D’Arcy Seán MacNeela Tony Tony D’Arcy

2nd 1923 1923 22nd berNovember 1923 November

16th April 1940 16th April 1940

16t 16th April 194

19th April 1940

6 will c and ‘I may die but the Republic of 1916 will have branded me as a ‘They have branded neverMARTIN die.HURSON Onward KEVIN to that and THOMAS McELWEE MICHAEL DEVINEcriminal. Even th minal. Even though PATSY O’HARA JOE McDONNELL LYNCH Republic KIERAN DOHERTY Joe McDonnell Martin Hurson KevinThomas Lynch Kieran Doherty Patsy O’Hara McDonnell Martin Hurson Kevinof Lynch Kieran Doherty Thomas McElwee rtin Hurson Kevin Lynch Kieran Doherty Thomas McElwee Michael Donnell Martin Hurson Kevin Lynch Kieran Doherty Thomas McElwee Michael ll Hurson Kevin Lynch Kieran Doherty McElwee Michael Devine Joe McDonnell Martin Hurson Lynch Kieran Doherty Thomas the liberation ourKevin people’ e, I Joe die in aMartin good cause’ IDevine do die, I die inMcElw a goD Superb little volume that every republican should have 8th July 1981 13th July 1981 1st August8th 1981 2nd August 1981 1981 8th July 1981 August 1981August 2nd August 1981 8th August 1981 13th1981 July 1981 1st 1981 2nd August 1981 8th August 1981 20th August 1981 uly 13th JulyAugust 1981 13th August 19811st 2nd August 1981 8th August 1981 20th Augus 13th21st JulyMay 1981 1st August 1981 2nd 1981 August 1981 20th August 1981 8th July 1981 13th 1st July 1981 1st August 1981 2nd August 1981 8th August 1981

Ireland’s Hunger for Justice – Available from: BOBBY SANDS THOMAS ASHE THOMAS ASHE Ashe’s death from force-feeding whilst would be hard-pressed to name any The Story of Our » Sinn Fein office, 2 Moyderwell, Joe McDonnell Raymond McCreesh Patsy O’Hara Francis Hughes Michael Gaughan Leader of the H-Blocks Hunger Strike, 1981 Seán Bobby Sands on hunger strike.

He was the first of 22 of the other eight H-Blocks martyrs, let HungerMcCaughey Strike the first 22 republican to die Martyrs on hunger strike, 1917 1916 leader and the first republican to die o Tralee, Co. Kerry.

Ciarraí, to mark the centenary of Thomas

Price €20

11th May 1946

though, that many people nowadays

hunger strikers to die over alone all of them. » Mahonys bookshop, Castle 21st May 1981 12th May 1981 3rd June 1974 5th Mayrepublican 1981

21st May 1981

8th July 1981

This book, hopefully, will rectify that situation and reacquaint a wider public SeánS Michael GaughanSeán McCaug Seánheroes.

McCaughey Seán McCaughey with these forgotten Terence MacSwiney, although the 11 11th May 194 3rd June 1974 11th May 1946 11th May 1946 most famous of the 1920 hunger strikers, was not the first Corkman to die.

He was preceded eight days earlier by Michael Fitzgerald, whose death did not receive the same publicity as an Irish elected official – the Lord Mayor of Cork no less – in a prison in London.

Similarly, Joseph Murphy from the USA has been all but written out of history Butchers is presented in a condensed owing to the fact that he died on the ElweeCrossing the Line: Michael Devine My Life on the Edge form where he states: “British Military same day as Terence MacSwiney, whose Martin Dillon 981 Irish Academic Press €18.99 20th August 1981 Intelligence and Special Branch hid own death dominated the international BOBBY SANDS critical information . . . and engaged in headlines.

THERE’S LITTLE DOUBT that Martin THOMAS ASHE ursonDillonFrank Kevin Lynch Kieran Doherty Thomas McElwee Michael Joe McDonnell Martin a dirty war in which they used loyalis a technically-accomplished Patsy O’Hara Stagg Raymond McCreesh next three hunger to dieDevine Leader of the H-Blocks 1981 Bobby SandsHunger Strike, The last death Hurson to occur prior to the Lea 1916 leader andThe the first republican to strikers die on hunger strike, 1917 ist gunmen to target republicans for writer.

His prose is pithy and engaging were not prisoners of Britain but of the ‘modern’ era of hunger strikes was that of 1981 1st August 1981 2nd August 1981 8th August 1981 20th August 1981 8th July 1981 13th July 1981 21st May 1981 12th February 1976 21st May 1981 May 1981 assassination.” Fair enough but he then Free State. All three died in1923: Joseph Seán McCaughey, from Tyrone, who died and makes for a free-flowing5th reading flatly denies the likelihood that the Whitty from Wexford, and Denis Barry in May 1946 in Portlaoise Prison, again experience. The problem is not the chael Gaughan Fra Michael Gaughan aughan Frank Stag authorities knew the identities of the from Cork style but some of the content.

Frank Frank Stagg both died in the Stagg Curragh under Bobby Sands de Valera’s Fianna Fáil government.

Shankill Butchers and describes “such Unsubstantiated opinions are interCamp; Andy O’Sullivan from Cavan died book records the lives of 12th1 3rd June 3rd1974 June 1974 1974 February 12th February 12th February 1976 1976 This 5th May 1981in detail 12th woven with a factual journalistic narrain Mountjoy Prison. these forgotten martyrs, as well as those tive, and the whole thing portrayed It was another 17 years before the of Michael Gaughan, Frank Stagg and as incontrovertible truth. The phrase next hunger strike deaths and this time the ten H-Blocks Hunger Strikers. There “in my opinion” is used throughout the regime in power was de Valera’s is also a commentary preceding each sections of the book but the followFianna Fáil government who, despite phase of hunger strike activity which a theory as dangerous [and with] no paying lip-service to a republican tradi- contextualises the protests and explains ing text is generally presented as fact basis in fact”. Presumably his “trusted tion, pursued a strict line of repression. the prevailing politics of the time. There rather than speculation. The introducsources” informed him of this as well. tory qualification is not an absolution Tony D’Arcy from Galway and Seán is such a wealth of information that this There are some illuminating passages. McNeela from Mayo both died in Mount- is a book that will be read and re-read for unsubstantiated theories, and to The vitriol he heaps upon British Prime joy in April 1940 but, due to intense press constantly with new facts and insights cite “a trusted source” or “I have seen Minister Edward Heath makes inter- censorship and implementation of the becoming apparent on each reading. documents” is not good enough. historic provinces of Ireland”.

One has to question much of what is This book is an odd mixture of esting reading. Overall, though, the Emergency Powers Act, news of their This is a stunningly good book that memoir and specula- deaths was not widely disseminated and should be inBOBBY presented as fact, when we are confi- personal and family reminiscence and mix of personal SANDS the possession of every THOMAS ASHE tive journalism Michael makes for aMartin curiously dently informed (pageRaymond 135) that “nation-McCreesh h Kieran Doherty Thomas McElwee Devine Joewritings.

McDonnell Hurson Kevin Lynch Kieran D much of the public remained unaware of republican. a rehash of some of his earlier It’sH-Blocks not too Hunger early to start 1981 Francis Hughes Leader of the Strike, 1916 leader and the first republican to die on hunger strike, 1917 unsatisfying read. alists regarded Ulster as one of the nine the hunger strike and subsequent deaths.

His seminal work The Shankill dropping hints about Christmas presents.

1 2nd August 1981 8th August 1981 20th August13th 1981July 1981 8th July 1981 1st August 1981 2nd Augus

IT SEEMS such an obvious concept but it is really surprising that no one has eánSeán MacNeela MacNeela cNeela produced a book like this before now.

This superb little volume is lavishly 19th April April 1940 l 1940 19th 1940 produced and packed full of informative text and stunning photographs.

The book is published by the Tomás Ághas Centenary Memorial Committee,

Street, Tralee, Co. Kerry. » Polymaths bookstore, 2 Courthouse Lane, Tralee, Co. Kerry. or contact: John Buckley 086 843 5028 and buckleyjohn99@gmail.com and www.sinnfeinbookshop.com

the following 64 years.

All republicans are aware of the ten H-Blocks hunger strikers of 1981, and most would remember Michael Gaughan and Frank Stagg in 1974 and 1976 respectively. Similarly, the majority would also remember Thomas Ashe and Terence MacSwiney. I would strongly suspect,

‘I may die but the Republic of 1916 will Personal speculative journalism never memoir, die. Onward to that Republic and the liberation of our people’

‘They have branded me as a criminal. Even though I do die, I die in a good cause’

‘I may die never die. the l

This book is an odd mixture

‘They have branded me as a criminal. Even though I do die, I die in a good cause’

12th May 1981

Bobby Sands Bobby Sands Sands

21st May 1981

‘I may die but the Republic of 19 never die. Onward to that Repub the liberation of our peopl

I

FrancisFran Hug Raymond McCreesh Francis Hughes

November / Samhain 2017

www.anphoblacht.com

31

Wicklow Gaol 300 YEARS OF HISTORY

BY MARK MOLONEY THE IMPOSING BASTION of the historic Wicklow Gaol dominates the picturesque coastal settlement of Wicklow town.

Before the 1700s, the British considered the ‘The Garden County’ to be one of the safest places in Ireland, so heavily was it planted with their settlers.

But the town itself and the surrounding countryside have a history of rebellion and resistance to foreign invasions.

A short distance away from the gaol, partially crumbling into the ocean, stand the remnants of the Normans’ Black Castle. The building and its defences, which controlled the north Wicklow coast, was overrun and destroyed by local Gaelic chiefs from the O’Toole and O’Byrne clans in 1301.

A prison has stood on the site of Wicklow Gaol since the early 1700s, but it was the 1798 Rebellion

WICKLOW TOWN AND THE SURROUNDING COUNTRYSIDE HAVE A HISTORY OF REBELLION AND RESISTANCE TO FOREIGN INVASIONS which forced the British Government to hugely upgrade the site into the extensive stone building that sits there today.

During the 1798 Rebellion, Wicklow was a stronghold of the rebels.

Even after the major defeat at the Battle of Vinegar Hill, the rebels continued to hold out in the hills, forests and valleys of Wicklow with the support of a sympathetic local population. Leading a guerrilla campaign, Michael ‘The Wicklow Chief’ Dwyer and his men harried the British Army, conducting devastating ambushes and even forced them to

A mural in Dublin to patriot Anne Devlin who was held in Wicklow Gaol

Wicklow Gaol with gallows still visible above the main entrance

begin construction on the now famous Military Road to allow British troops based in Dublin access to the mountains.

Dwyer would eventually become one of the most famous of the 1798 rebels to be held in Wicklow Gaol after his forces negotiated surrender in December 1803 and before his deportation to Australia. His surrender came following the defeat of Robert Emmet’s rebellion in Dublin.

Emmet’s confidante, Anne Devlin, who faced brutal torture at the hand of British forces, was also imprisoned in the gaol, as was James ‘Napper’ Tandy. Tandy was held there reportedly out of fear that holding him in a major city could lead to large protests in the locality, such was his popularity.

Other rebels were not as lucky as Dwyer and Tandy.

On the street outside the prison stands a monument to rebel leader Billy Byrne. Originally a member of the pro-British loyalist yeomanry, Byrne was expelled from the organisation for refusing to swear a blatantly anti-Catholic oath. He went on to join the United Irishmen and played a leading role in the Battle

During An Gorta Mór almost 780 people were held in the prison

of Arklow and the Battle of Vinegar Hill.

Betrayed by an informer, Byrne was arrested in Dublin in 1799 and conveyed to Wicklow Gaol for trial.

It turned out that the evidence used to convict the 24-year-old of treason came from a British prisoner whose life he had saved on the slopes of Mount Pleasant. The prisoner, Thomas Dowse, believed his testimony recalling how Byrne ensured no prisoners of war were executed would be viewed favourably. The British court, however, stated that if Byrne could exercise such authority on the treatment of prisoners then “he must have been one of the leaders”.

The decision to execute him sparked revulsion across Wicklow. He was dragged from Wicklow Gaol shortly after the sentence and, with his comrade Patrick Grant, he was hanged on nearby Gallows Lane, now Friar’s Hill.

During An Gorta Mór, the number of prisoners in the 77 cells of Wicklow Gaol swelled to almost 800 people (many imprisoned for stealing food for their starving families), resulting in a spread of disease and deaths. Many bodies were buried in quicklime within the prison walls.

There were multiple executions during the 1800s using the still-visible gallows above the main entrance.

The last person to be executed in Wicklow Gaol was James Askins, convicted of murder in 1843.

The prison closed in 1900 but, a few years later, it was back in use during the Tan War. The heavily-fortified prison served a new purpose – as a stronghold for British forces in the county and a place to hold suspected republicans. Most of the nearby RIC barracks had been wiped A monument commemorates 1798 out in an effective IRA guerrilla rebel leader Billy Byrne who was campaign, forcing British troops executed in Wicklow Town and RIC into the larger towns

A sign on the cell door where Anne Devlin and her father Bryan were held

like Wicklow. Wicklow Gaol itself became the headquarters for the Cheshire Regiment, whose graffiti is still visible around the prison.

During the Civil War it served as a base for the Free State forces. There were several successful escape attempts by IRA prisoners. In February

DURING AN GORTA MÓR, THE NUMBER OF PRISONERS IN THE 77 CELLS OF WICKLOW GAOL SWELLED TO ALMOST 800 PEOPLE 1923, seven IRA prisoners escaped custody by using bedding to scale the walls into the prison exercise yard from where a hole was blown in the wall and you can still see the scorch marks. Two more successfully escaped that July by breaking down the door of the official underground tunnel that leads to the adjacent courthouse.

The most famous prisoner of this time was Erskine Childers.

The man who had landed weapons for the Irish Volunteers in 1913 and had been a leading member of the Republican Movement throughout the Tan War, Childers was arrested at his Glendalough home in November 1923 and held in Wicklow Gaol before his execution at Beggar’s Bush barracks in Dublin.

Wicklow Gaol closed its doors for the final time in 1924 and was partially demolished 20 years later. It sat idle until the 1990s, when renovation took place and it opened to visitors at the turn of the century. » Wicklow Gaol is open every day from 10:30am to 4:30pm. Kilmantin Hill, Wicklow Town, County Wicklow. Phone +353 (0) 404 61599. Email: info@ wicklowshistoricgaol.com

Contact phoblacht.com NEWS editor@an @anphoblacht.com NOTICES notices phoblacht.com OTOS photos@an

PH

anphoblacht

32

IN PICTURES

Sraith Nua Iml 40 Uimhir 11 – November / Samhain 2017

photos@anphoblacht.com

5 Mandate trade union press conference for the ‘Secure Hours, Better Future’ 5 Sinn Féin Dublin Ardmhéara Mícheál Mac Donncha hosts the launch of the ‘Life charter calling on Government to ban zero hours and ‘If and When’ contracts in Palestine’ calendar for the Ireland Palestine Solidarity Campaign

5 Family members and former comrades at the Falls Road Volunteers Commemoration

5 Sinn Féin Councillor Edel Corrigan presents the Seán & Eileen Kenna Cup to the Shamrocks FC team

5 The Martin McGuinness photo exhibition at the Sinn Féin Ard Fheis in Dublin prompted deep reflection among the many visitors

5 New mural on the Falls Road ‘International Wall’ in Belfast supporting the people of Catalonia

anphoblacht SPECIAL SUPPLEMENT Towards a United Ireland | Sinn Féin Ard Fheis 2017 | I dTreo Éire Aontaithe

‘This is my last Ard Fheis as Uachtarán Shinn Féin’ GERRY ADAMS announced during his Ard Fheis Presidential address live on RTÉ TV on Saturday night that he is to stand down as leader of Sinn Féin.

The move is his initiative “as part of the process of regeneration and renewal” within Sinn Féin that he had discussed with the late Martin McGuinness to build on the growing strength of the republican party that he has led since 1983.

It comes as part of a long-considered strategy

worked out with the late Martin McGuinness and fits into the 10-year development plan that Sinn Féin has devised to be in Government North and South and its goal of the reunification of Ireland.

Gerry Adams (69), a TD for Louth, also announced that he will not contest the next Dáil election.

He told Sinn Féin members attending the closing

session of the Ard Fheis in Dublin that he will be asking the incoming Ard Chomhairle to convene a special Ard Fheis in the New Year to elect a new leader.

Martin McGuinness and Gerry Adams had deep discussions about when they would both step back from their leadership positions. These were

GERRY ADAMS INTERVIEW INSIDE

overshadowed, however, by the unexpected serious illness that struck Martin McGuinness late last year and the former deputy First Minister’s death on 21 March this year.

This came after Martin’s resignation from the post in January over the DUP’s involvement in the financial scandal engulfing the green energy RHI scheme and the roles of high-ranking DUP figures, including First Minister Arlene Foster, and DUP opposition to equality and legacy issues.

2 anphoblacht

Towards a United Ireland | Sinn Féin Ard Fheis 2017 | I dTreo Éire Aontaithe

Mary Lou McDonald, Sinn Féin Deputy Leader, at Ard Fheis 2017

Join us in the journey to a new Ireland IT IS ALWAYS a particular pleasure for me to welcome one and all to my home city – the rebel city of Dublin, the city that fought an Empire.

At our last Ard Fheis we celebrated the centenary of the Easter Rising and the heroism of the women and men who took a stand for Ireland, for liberty, for social justice at that time.

In commemorating those momentous events we recommitted ourselves to the pursuit and achievement of the Republic, to an Ireland where every child is cherished.

A republic where women and men, young and old, rural and urban, ettled and Traveller, gay and straight, black and white, Orange and Green can live in a free and reconciled Ireland.

Our last Ard Fheis was very special also for a reason that none of us could have foreseen.

It was our last Ard Fheis with Martin.

We feel the loss of him.

We miss him, not least this weekend.

But Martin’s legacy, his passion and his guiding hand is with us yet.

At this Ard Fheis we, the women and men of Sinn Féin, drawn from every corner of Ireland,

Economic stability and social justice are not competing demands – they are complementary reaffirm our absolute commitment to a peaceful, reconciled Ireland.

We state again our absolute determination to make peace, to build respect, to agree a new Ireland where all our people are at home.

We will be true to the legacy of Martin McGuinness.

We will keep faith with all who have gone before us as we build our future together.

We remain committed to full power-sharing in

You see, Mícheál is not ‘cranky’.

In fact he is very accommodating. Obliging.

Docile, even.

The occasional sham fight, a bit of political horseplay between Leo’s lads and Mícheál’s lads, that’s all just a necessary part of the game of make-believe that Fianna Fáil is a party of opposition.

None of the contrived political drama of so-called ‘new politics’ can hide the fact that Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil between them have failed in Govern-

We will be true to the legacy of Martin McGuinness

5 Leaders: Gerry Adams, Michelle O’Neill and Mary Lou McDonald

the North, to shared democratic institutions, to achieving an agreement on the basis of respect, equality and integrity.

And we say again that agreement can only be secured and the institutions re-established on a sustainable basis when agreements previously entered into are honoured.

Unionism has lost its majority in the Stormont Assembly.

People in the North voted to remain with the EU. Brexit looms with all the grave threats it poses to the Irish economy, to our well-being and to the Good Friday Agreement.

Against this backdrop, the debate on Irish unity has developed real momentum.

We are ‘United Irelanders’.

We will work hard to end partition and division.

We will work hard for new understandings, new relationships in a New Ireland In the Dáil, the so-called Confidence & Supply coalition arrangement serves only to confirm the

5 A standing ovation follows the audio-visual and musical tribute to Martin McGuinness

political establishment’s indifference and inability to act in the interests of the many ordinary citizens.

All the talk of new politics only emphasises that there is nothing new in Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil monopolising power.

They’ve been of that for almost one hundred years, Our new Taoiseach, Leo Varadkar, presides over a housing emergency which has left thousands homeless, which has moved home ownership beyond the reach of an entire generation.

He is a Taoiseach who tries to deny and minimise the scale of this emergency.

He is the same Taoiseach who fights the corner of Corporate Tax avoidance, who defends a sweetheart deal with banks to avoid paying Corporation Tax for decades.

This Taoiseach says that I’m ‘Cranky’.

Leo, you haven’t seen ‘cranky’ – not yet.

Of course, Leo couldn’t get away with all of this but for Mícheál Martin and Fianna Fáil.

ment or that they continue together to fail in government.

Unlike them, we are committed to ending family homelessness and to delivering social and affordable homes for working families.

Sinn Féin wants to invest in bricks and mortar, delivering social and affordable homes for families.

Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael want to line the pockets of private landlords.

Unlike them, we are not afraid to take on the vested interests, the insiders’ culture or white-collar crime.

We represent real new politics: change; ambition; new beginnings.

Beimid ag obair go dian.

We believe in getting things done.

We have the policies and people to deliver political decisions that will transform Ireland’s future and deliver economic stability that lasts.

We understand that economic stability and social justice are not competing demands.

They are complementary.

Equal opportunities deliver economic stability.

To those watching in at home, this is our pledge to you . . .

Táimid ar do thaobhsa.

We are on your side.

Join with us in the journey to a new Ireland.

Towards a United Ireland | Sinn Féin Ard Fheis 2017 | I dTreo Éire Aontaithe

anphoblacht 3

Michelle O’Neill, Sinn Féin Leader in the North, at Ard Fheis 2017

Republicanism and unionism must reach a sustainable compromise through respectful dialogue THE BREXIT REFERENDUM result a year ago has swept away many of the previous political assumptions about the constitutional, political and economic status quo of the Six Counties.

Ireland’s political landscape, North and South, is set to change dramatically over the next number of years.

Added to this has been the recent Assembly and Westminster election results which show that the electorate and the wider nationalist population are once again re-engaged in the political process.

These elections have activated a transformation unimaginable to the founders of the Northern state almost a century ago.

For Sinn Féin this is all about defending people’s rights and interests and shaping our constitutional,

This is all about defending people’s rights and interests – not for republicans but for everyone political and economic future on this island – not for republicans but for everyone.

There is a strong sense across the island that we are now entering into a new political era and that a new conversation about the future is underway outside and beyond the political classes.

People understand that this is all about our future.

The old certainties are gone.

The unionist majority has ended.

Europe is in a state of flux.

People know that Brexit will be a disaster for our economy.

That is why a cross-community majority of citizens in the North voted against it last June.

It will be a disaster for local business, for farmers and the wider agri-food industry, for the health

service, for workers’ rights, Border communities and our Peace Process.

Brexit and the Good Friday Agreement are incompatible.

It undermines the constitutional, institutional and political framework. It is an act of political vandalism. It is not in our economic interests.

And it is being forced upon us by a reckless and dangerous self-serving Tory government in London, propped up by the DUP who do not care if we become collateral damage.

The Good Friday Agreement political institutions, human rights guarantees, all-Ireland bodies and the constitutional and legal right of the people to exercise their right to self-determination and a united Ireland through consent, by referendum North and South, must all be protected and respected.

I am not arguing that we try and reform unionism to fit our republican ideology because that is, frankly, not going to happen.

However, political unionism seems to view the process of change from a position of if nationalists want it (even if it will better the lives of the

unionist people as well), then it is nevertheless bad for unionism.

Brexit is a case in point.

But I am confident that as the economic consequences of Brexit become clearer and hit home, more and more people from a unionist background will be open to at least exploring a scenario new relationships on this island which does not threaten their Britishness.

Republicanism and unionism must reach a sustainable compromise through respectful dialogue, premised on anti-sectarianism, that will move us beyond the impasse of the present into a brighter future.

To achieve that, we must explore how we can accommodate each other’s aspirations in a manner that does not demand the surrender of cultural or traditional identity.

I believe that Irish unity, on the basis of equality, offers the best future for all the people of this island.

Therefore it is my responsibility to spell out to unionists what sort of united Ireland we as republicans seek and to reassure the unionist people of their place in an Ireland of equals.

5 ‘Veteran republicans’ Jim and Damien Gibney with Tom Hartley

Whilst we demand the entitlement to persuade for our vision of a united Ireland, we are also open to engage with unionism on their vision for the future too.

I believe that now is the time to plan a new, agreed and united Ireland – a progressive, prosperous and inclusive Ireland, one in which all identities and traditions have a place and the opportunity to contribute to our shared nation, unionist and nationalist together.

New accommodations and political arrangements could serve to transcend old communal,

New political arrangements could give us an opportunity to look at a future beyond partition, sectarianism and suspicion cultural and sectarian battles and give us an opportunity to look again at a future beyond partition, sectarianism and suspicion.

There is an onus and responsibility on republicans and ‘united Irelanders’ to persuade others and win hearts and minds to the merits of reunification and how it is in all our best longer-term interests.

We must advocate for it, campaign for it and win the debate for it.

I want to demonstrate that the debate and dialogue doesn’t have to be divisive.

It doesn’t have to be rancorous.

It can be mature, rational and respectful.

It is time for us all to work in our collective interests, beyond the next election, and rather than invent political drawbacks think our way through and make farther-reaching preparations for a shared future.

4 anphoblacht

Towards a United Ireland | Sinn Féin Ard Fheis 2017 | I dTreo Éire Aontaithe

Gerry Adams, Sinn Féin President, at Ard Fheis 2017

‘Doing our best, moving forward, united, strong and together’ In his speech, delivered to Sinn Féin members (the full version can be read online at anphoblacht.com), Gerry Adams said at the RDS in Dublin: I was first elected Uachtarán Shinn Féin in 1983.

The war in the North was raging but the hunger strikes two years before and the deaths of Bobby Sands and his nine comrades had dramatically altered the political landscape.

Bobby’s election in Fermanagh/South Tyrone, Kieran Doherty’s in Cavan/Monaghan, Paddy Agnew in Louth, and anti-H-Block/Armagh candidates elsewhere brought us into a new phase of struggle.

In 1982, Sinn Féin won five seats in the shortlived Assembly.

In June 1983, I was elected as MP for west Belfast.

There were then 10 Sinn Féin councillors in this state.

But 1983 also saw the first two Sinn Féin councillors elected in Belfast and Omagh.

These were modest but important advances.

A CULTURE OF CHANGE Republicans had been at the heart of a culture of resistance – correctly standing strong against the brutality of the British state.

Our leadership set about transforming that into a culture of change.

In my first Ard Fheis speech as Uachtarán Shinn Féin I said that we had to develop radical and practical alternatives to the militarism and oppression of the British in the North, and to the Tweedledum-Tweedledee policies of Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil in this state.

We needed an all-island struggle.

I warned against Sinn Féin activists standing on the sidelines ‘separate from and isolated from the people’.

That imperative holds true today.

I told the1983 Ard Fheis: ‘Sinn Féin’s policies are not just pleasant aims for some future hoped-for united Ireland but are tough practical policies which can give leadership now and provide results.’

I reiterated our goals – the unity of the people and the end of partition This had to – and has to ­– include our unionist neighbours who, I told the Ard Fheis, ‘have as much right to a full and equal involvement . . . in the shaping of the future of this island’.

I contended then, as I do today, that the economy should serve the people – not the other way round.

That struggle for equality and fairness continues.

And Sinn Féin is now in the leadership of that battle.

5 Republican legend Martin Ferris TD joins Gerry Adams on stage after Gerry’s Presidential Address

That is what Sinn Féin is – the republican party for positive change and equality for the people.

TRANSFORMING SOCIETY Leo Varadkar’s republic is limited to 26 counties and extends only to those who get up early to go to the gym, on thess way to a highly-paid job, with big expenses and a gold-plated pension.

Good luck to them.

But Sinn Féin makes no apologies for also standing with those who get up early to commute into cities where they cannot afford to live.

We stand with those who get up early to drop their children to school or the child minder (if they can get childcare).

We stand with those who care for sick friends, neighbours or family.

For those living in rural Ireland without proper services and opportunities.

For those unable to work Sinn Féin stands with those who work long hours for low pay.

Or struggling to pay health costs.

GROWTH OF SINN FÉIN Twenty years ago, Caoimhghín Ó Caoláin was our sole Teachta Dála in Leinster House.

Now we have 23 TDs, 7 Seanadóirí, four MEPs representing all parts of this island, 27 MLAs, 7 MPs, and over 250 councillors.

Today, over half a million people vote for Sinn Féin.

The perpetual unionist majority built into the gerrymandered Northern state is gone.

Ba mhaith liom sibh uilig a thréaslú as cuidiú chun seo a bhaint amach.

If I was asked to measure the successes of Sinn Féin, I would say judge us on the changes we bring about.

Taoiseach Varadkar’s ‘Republic of Opportunity’ is a ‘Mé Féin’ republic. A contradiction.

How can Micheál Martin say he is for an Ireland for all when he is propping up a government for the few?

Their conservative mé féinism is a million miles away from the vision of the 1916 Proclamation.

A genuine republic would not allow over 3,000 children to be homeless.

It would not allow patients, many of them elderly, some of them vulnerable children, to be left lying on hospital trolleys.

Or the six hundred thousand people on growing hospital waiting lists.

A genuine republic would support citizens with intellectual or physical disabilities, and their families.

A genuine republic would not tolerate disadvantage and inequality. Or corruption and scandals.

A RIGHTS-BASED SOCIETY Sinn Féin has a different set of core values.

We believe in rights. We believe in freedom. We believe in equality and solidarity.

Sinn Féin believes that society must be shaped so that all citizens can achieve their full potential.

That includes citizens in rural Ireland.

Our party makes no apologies for supporting public services, including a genuine public health service across this island.

We believe in everyone’s right to a home.

We also want to extend the vote in Presidential elections to the North and the Diaspora.

Sinn Féin fully supports the repeal of the Eighth Amendment.

Women and their doctors need legal protections. Women deserve and are entitled to be trusted and respected.

BREXIT Brexit is the single greatest threat to the Irish people in generations.

That is why Sinn Féin opposed it in the referendum and why we have consistently called for ‘Special Status for the North Within the EU’.

I commend our spokespersons on the issue and especially our team of MEPs who, unlike the Irish Government, have shown real leadership.

The Government has only recently wakened up to the reality that Brexit on British Government terms is not acceptable.

It will be disastrous for Irish business and farming in every part of this island.

It will destroy the rights of Irish citizens in the North.

It is not compatible with the Good Friday Agreement.

Leo Varadkar needs to stand up for the interests of all the people of the island.

He has a veto. He must use it.

He needs to be more like Michael Collins and less like Hugh Grant.

DENIAL OF RIGHTS WON’T BE TOLERATED

5 Gerry Adams surrounded by well-wishers

Since March, Sinn Féin, led by Michelle O’Neill, has been working hard to restore the political institutions.

We want to deliver for everyone in the North

Towards a United Ireland | Sinn Féin Ard Fheis 2017 | I dTreo Éire Aontaithe

5 Mary Lou McDonald applauds as Gerry Adams stands with Martin McGuinness’s wife Bernadette after the emotional tribute to Martin

5 Stalwart comrades: Joe Reilly and Pat Doherty

on the basis of respect, tolerance and equality.

The denial of modest rights would not be tolerated in Dublin and London.

And it won’t be tolerated in the North.

The DUP’s opposition to these basic rights means there is no Executive. The British Government has been complicit in this.

Through her pact with the DUP, Theresa May has prioritised her own political survival.

We met the Taoiseach this week and we will meet the British Prime Minister next week.

We told Taoiseach Varadkar that it is now time for the governments to act.

If the Executive is to be re-established the role of the Irish Government will be decisive.

It can be neither neutral or neutered on this matter.

These issues aren’t going away.

The only way forward is through honouring agreements, not breaking them.

5 Queuing to speak: East Derry MLA Caoimhe Archibald and Caoimhghín Ó Caoláin TD

5 Councillor Sarah Holland and Daisy Mules in the queue to address the Ard Fheis and call for support for the removal of the Eighth Amendment 5 Senator Trevor Ó Clochartaigh sorts through the motions

The Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil leaderships, the Dublin establishment, including the Independent Media Group, don’t want Sinn Féin in government because they and their cronies have run this state for nearly 100 years in their own interests.

They know we will bring an end to corruption, cronyism and gombeenism.

They know a government with Sinn Féin leading it will be an accountable government.

It will be a government grounded in basic, common decency. A government of equality and fairness.

REPUBLICANISM HAS NEVER BEEN STRONGER I am very proud to have served Sinn Féin as Uachtarán since 1983.

We are also very conscious that 20 of our members were murdered during the conflict. We are indebted to them and their families.

Last year, Martin McGuinness and I said that there was a plan for change in the party leadership as part of the process of regeneration and renewal.

Ten years after entering government with Ian Paisley, Martin’s intention was to step down as deputy First Minister on May 8th.

Then life punched us in the face.

Martin’s illness and the ‘Cash for Ash’ scandal brought that date forward.

Martin was a leading member of our leadership team.

I have been enormously privileged to be part of an amazing and evolving collective leadership.

One of our great achievements has been, with John Hume and others, to build a peace process.

We have also recast Sinn Féin into an effective all-Ireland republican party, with clear policy and political objectives and the means to achieve them through democratic and peaceful forms of struggle where none existed before.

A UNITED IRELAND Those of us who want a united Ireland must articulate that view clearly, and in the context of the Good Friday Agreement.

And we have to persuade our unionist neighbours to support a new and agreed Ireland in which Orange and Green can live together in prosperity and harmony.

We have much in common.

An agreed Ireland has to guarantee unionists their rights.

The future is for the people to decide – peacefully and democratically.

SINN FÉIN IN GOVERNMENT Sinn Féin will be in government in the North if and when there is agreement.

We need to prepare also for being in government on republican terms in Dublin.

Go cinnte, braitheann seo ar an méid Teachtaí Dála a bheidh tofa againn.

anphoblacht 5

5 Up front: Gerry Adams. Pádraig Hegarty and Dublin Mayor Mícheál Mac Donncha

This is our time.

Republicanism has never been stronger.

We will grow even stronger in the time ahead.

But leadership means knowing when it is time for change.

That time is now.

I will not be standing for the Dáil in the next election.

Neither will my friend and comrade Martin Ferris.

This is also my last Ard Fheis as Uachtarán Shinn Féin.

I will ask the incoming Ard Chomhairle to agree a date in 2018 for a special Ard Fheis to elect our next Uachtarán.

A TEAM PLAYER I have always seen myself as a team player and a team builder.

I have complete confidence in the leaders we elected this weekend and in the next generation of leaders.

I firmly believe that one person can make a difference.

The first step in making a difference is believing that you can be that person.

One woman – one man – doing their best.

That’s what it takes.

You don’t have to do as much as Martin McGuinness did but we all have to do our best – and we have to do it together.

That is the key to our successes so far.

Doing our best, moving forward, united, strong and together.

Na habair é – dean é.

You are the makers of the future.

You are the nation builders.

You are important.

Never forget that.

Míle buíochas, a chairde An Phoblacht Abú.

Leanfaidh muid ar aghaigh.

Le chéile.

6 anphoblacht

Towards a United Ireland | Sinn Féin Ard Fheis 2017 | I dTreo Éire Aontaithe

GERRY ADAMS talks to An Phoblacht Editor JOHN HEDGES after he tells the 2017 Ard Fheis it’s his last as President of Sinn Féin

‘This is the time for change’ IT’S less than 24 hours after his big Ard Fheis announcement and still on a relentless schedule but Gerry Adams looks fresh and cheery when he meets An Phoblacht in Dublin on a Sunday afternoon.

He’s just finished a string of TV and radio interviews.

Coping from jet-lag after being in America the previous week has led to sleepless nights. On top of that, there was the intense build-up to the Ard Fheis and writing his speech that would tell people live on RTÉ TV that this was his last Ard Fheis as President of Sinn Féin.

When he’s finished talking to An Phoblacht, Gerry’s back on the road again and preparing with Michelle O’Neill and Mary Lou McDonald to meet British Prime Minister Theresa May in Downing Street as a followon to Sinn Féin’s meeting with Taoiseach Leo Varadkar on restoring the Executive at Stormont and the threats posed by Brexit.

There’s still lots of work to be done before Gerry Adams hands over to someone new.

How was it preparing for the Ard Fheis without Martin McGuinness?

“I naturally missed him at the Ard Fheis where we were to make announcements about standing down but I missed him at the All-Ireland, at the hurling and the football, and I missed him at the talks. I was up in Donegal the other weekend for a couple of days and I couldn’t get him out of my head.

“I miss him very, very much – personally as well as politically.”

Is this a generational change in Sinn Féin?

“I think it’s got more to do with regeneration. It’s not that we’re getting rid of one generation in favour of another but any human organisation – be it a football or hurling team or community group – you’ve got to regenerate and go through a process of change.

“I think Sinn Féin is blessed with a cadre of young people but also a huge number of people who have a lot of experience, who live in the real world, who know what it’s like to have lived through the conflict and experienced the awfulness of all that, have raised families, built careers, worked a small farm, have families scattered across the world by emigration.

“There’s a lot of experience people can draw upon.

“The process of change is ongoing for everyone.

“You have to know when the time for change is, and this is the time for change.”

Are you anxious about the change?

“Change does naturally raise questions but I’m actually quite relaxed about it.

“We’re working to a very thorough, grounded plan.

“People will get used to me exiting from this position and the Ard Chomhairle will put in place a process for the election of the next Uachtarán.

“I’ll be relieved to be released from the formal responsibilities as leader ­but, like you and every other republican, I have the responsibility to remain an activist and to make sure the issues people are faced with are dealt with in a republican way.

“I don’t actually see it, apart from that, as being a huge change in terms of my own personal life.

“Martin said that Bogside republicans don’t retire; neither do Ballymurphy republicans.”

You’ve said you’re not contesting the next Dáil general election, whenever that comes.

“I want to stress how honoured I am to have been elected to represent the people of Louth and Meath East in the Dáil and then doubled the number of TDs we had in that constituency but I think coming out of Leinster House will make a huge change.

“With respect to those who do their level best to make it work, I find the Dáil to be a stultifying, cosy little club aimed more towards theatre rather than dealing with people’s issues.

“Our Teachtaí Dála and Seanadóirí are working hard and doing their best but the system has adopted all the worst aspects of the British parliamentary set-up and any attempt to change it has met with great resistance from those in power.

“That said, some reforms have been achieved.

Perhaps the system in Stormont doesn’t have some of the more oppressive elements of Leinster House because it’s newer.

“Even the best-intentioned people from the other parties can sometimes get sucked into a bubble in Leinster House. There’s no other explanation as to why we’re sitting here today and there’s 3,000

kids in emergency accommodation but there isn’t emergency legislation and emergency funds to build real houses for them and their families and many other people who need accommodation.”

Is it a frustration to you that the mainstream media has almost untrammeled power?

“That isn’t an issue for me. You have to have a free press and they have the right to pledge editorial support to this party or that party or have hostility to others. It’s when they don’t deal fairly with the big issues that it gets to me.

“When I was in South Africa after Nelson Mandela became President, one journalist said it was so huge for the media because, he said: ‘We had been depicting Mandela as a communist terrorist, a bandit, a gangster, a criminal for all of these years and then, all of a sudden, the whole thing changed.’

“After apartheid, they had to rethink how they dealt with all these issues.

“The big change in Ireland in our lives has been the Good Friday Agreement yet that has not affected some of the media’s coverage of current affairs – they’re still on the old agenda.

“There are some journalists who do their job as fairly as they can but the likes of the Irish Independent group are on the same agenda as when they vilified John Hume for even talking to me as one MP to another MP about peace!

“But let’s not get mesmerised by that – Sinn Féin is still growing despite them.”

Do you think that the media and politicians in the South have absorbed the essence of the Good Friday Agreement and the agreements that followed?

“No, I don’t. I think for a lot of the Southern media

Towards a United Ireland | Sinn Féin Ard Fheis 2017 | I dTreo Éire Aontaithe

anphoblacht 7

5 1985: Ard Fheis salute by Gerry Adams with Joe Cahill, Martin McGuinness and Denise Cregan

5 1994: Gerry Adams gives the first live radio interview after the Irish state censorship law was lapsed

5 Gerry Adams leaps into action on the canvass trail with Caoimhghín Ó Caoláin

5 1999: Sinn Féin delegation addresses the media at the end of talks in Castle Buildings

the Good Friday Agreement is ‘a Northern thing’ as opposed to being an all-Ireland agreement.

“I think, like any sensible person, they appreciate the Peace Process and the Good Friday Agreement in its broad sense as a pathway out of conflict but what they don’t appreciate is that they have also have a responsibility.

“For example, the Irish Government is obliged under the Good Friday Agreement to bring in a Charter of Rights for citizens here but there’s not a word about it.”

and East Meath as a TD until the next election.

“I will support the new Uachtarán and the Sinn Féin leadership and I will be available to do whatever they want me to do. The media talk of me having an influence over Sinn Féin is another one of those stories. I don’t want or expect to have more influence than you or any other member of the party.”

You met Nelson Mandela several times and you had a special place at his funeral.

“Myself and Richard McAuley were chosen to be in the guard of honour, the only Irish people granted that very historic privilege.

“Mandela was very loyal to the people who had made a stand during the apartheid era. It was a personal honour for us but it was also a mark of appreciation by the ANC for the work that Irish republicans had done in the battle against apartheid.”

The H-Block/Armagh Hunger Strikes and prison protests campaign were a crucible for many activists.

“It’s almost 40 years since Bobby Sands and his comrades made their sacrifice behind prison bars but it’s still a matter of deep emotions.

“I’ve said this before, many times, that if our ego gets the better of us or we get frustrated or annoyed by comrades or events, the generosity, commitment and self-sacrifice of the Hunger Strikers should be a reminder of the enormity of what some people and their families have given in the past and also that we don’t have to go through that again.

“We’re all human and we can all occasionally forget what this struggle and making change is about but it’s bigger than each us.”

What’s next for you in Sinn Féin?

“I’m here to serve the party and the people of Louth

5 With Nelson Mandela: ANC leaders appreciated all that Irish republicans did to help end apartheid rule

You are upbeat about the prospects for Sinn Féin.

“Sinn Féin is a growing party with a growing membership and growing influence. I believe politics is about empowering people. I don’t believe it’s worth getting up in the morning to be involved in political struggle unless it empowers citizens and communities, unless it empowers comrades and yourself.

“It’s about people taking responsibility for their lives but also having the power, the education, the information, the resources and the will and the confidence to make changes. That’s what a true revolutionary spirit is about.

“I firmly believe that one person can make a difference and the first step is believing that you can be that person.

“My initiative is part of Sinn Féin’s 10-Year-Plan to grow the party and prepare for government North and South as well as the reunification of Ireland.

“But individual Sinn Féin activists, cumainn and comhairli ceantair don’t need to be overawed by the 10-year objectives. Plan for them but also ask yourselves where you want Sinn Féin to be locally this time next year, in 2018, in terms of your membership, in terms of your alliances with others of a like mind, fund-raising, publicity, getting the republican message to people.

“The clue to building a strong national movement for Irish unity and positive change leading to a real republic is in your activism. That leads to a tipping point where a critical mass of people embrace the changes that are required and we move into a new phase in our history.

“You have to act locally and think nationally.”

8 anphoblacht

Towards a United Ireland | Sinn Féin Ard Fheis 2017 | I dTreo Éire Aontaithe

5 Louise O’Reilly TD 5 Bangor Sinn Féin delegates vote on motions

5 Gerry Adams TD, Catalan MEP Jordi Solé, Mary Lou McDonald TD and Michelle O’Neill MLA stand together after Jordi’s speech gets a standing ovation at the Ard Fheis

5 Eoin Ó Broin TD

5 Newry/Armagh MP Mickey Brady looks on as Martin Ferris TD is greeted by an old friend

5 Rosie Ní Laoghaire

5 Martin McGuinness’s image and spirit was ever-present at the Sinn Fein Ard Fheis

5 South Armagh MLA Megan Fearon and Michelle O’Neill share a Twitter moment with Senator Niall Ó Donnghaile

5 Pearse Doherty TD

5 Palestine Ambassador to Ireland Ahmad Abdelrazek takes to the podium where he delivered a highly-charged, emotional speech commending Sinn Féin’s steadfast support for Palestine

5 Gerry Adams gets a hug from Toiréasa Ferris during his Presidential Address

5 Martin McGuinness’s family ahead of the heartfelt tribute to the late Sinn Féín leader by the Sinn Féin Ard Fheis

5 Thinking it all over

5 Michelle O’Neill in the Press Office

5 Martina Anderson MEP

5 Ciarán Mac Giolla Bhéin