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UIMHIR EISIÚNA 2 - 2021 - ISSUE NUMBER 2 REMEMBERING THE 1981 HUNGER STRIKES 40 YEARS ON

crisis in

Palestine

AMBASSADOR WAHBA ABDALMAJID writes for 'An Phoblacht'

'Holding Israel accountable'

AN PHOBLACHT Editor: Robbie Smyth An Phoblacht is published 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

PRODUCTION: MARK DAWSON RUAIRÍ DOYLE MÍCHEÁL Mac DONNCHA

CONTRIBUTORS

Dr Jilan Wahba Abdalmajid Conor Keenan Mairead Farrell Joe Guinan Eoghan Finn Gerry Murphy Ian Marshall Daithí Doolan Lee Hammill Tom Hartley Seán Murray Muireann Dalton Pat Sheahan Chrissie McAuley Síle Darragh Jim Gibney Roy Greenslade Joe Dwyer Mícheál Mac Donncha John Barry Sinéad Ní Bhroin

This edition of An Phoblacht was always going to be anchored around the 40th anniversary of the 1981 hunger strikes. We have some great contributions, including articles from former republican prisoners Sile Darragh, Jim Gibney, Chrissie McAuley and Pat Sheehan. They are powerful first-hand accounts of the events of 1981 inside and outside prison. Pat Sheehan’s recounting

9 &

of his decision to go on hunger strike in 1981 is striking in its stark honesty. We have supplemented these firsthand accounts with a compelling retrospective by Roy Greenslade of how British newspapers reported the hunger strikes in 1981, while Joe Dwyer recounts the significant H-Block campaign in Britain. Mícheál Mac Donncha reviews the best hunger strike and republican prison books published over the last 40 years.

THE POSSIBILITIES OF COMMUNITY WEALTH BUILDING For an Ireland wracked with growing regional inequalities and systemic economic underdevelopment in rural areas, the potential offered by embedding a Community Wealth Building Strategy in society is significant. Sinn Féin TD Mairead Farrell gives a CWB primer, while Joe Guinan explains how CWB has transformed regions in the USA and Britain.

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EDITORIAL

anphoblacht EAGARFHOCAL

THE RISEN PEOPLE

ROBBIE SMYTH editor@anphoblacht.com

1981

was a pivotal year in the history of modern Irish republican struggle. More than a decade after the maelstrom years of the civil rights movement, the

pogroms of 1969, and the collapse of one party unionism, Irish republicans were under siege on many fronts. In the Six Counties, the policy of criminalisation and attempted normalisation of an aggressive and deadly militarised occupation was being borne by nationalist communities. A series of hostile governments in Dublin, indifferent to the causes or costs of the conflict, fixated on a policy of criminalising, censoring, and marginalising republicans. Republicans were barred from TV and radio broadcasts, while the print media’s focus was a fragmented one, concentrated on IRA actions, often ignoring the brutality

Despite the intimidation and isolation they endured, communities across Ireland, like the prisoners, refused to be broken, refused to be corralled and ignored 2

of not just the British and RUC activity, but also that of a police force in the 26 Counties pursuing a campaign of brutality and attempted intimidation of republican activists and their supporters. The emergence of the prisons as a site of struggle and the resulting hunger strikes were pivotal, not just because of a demonstration of an unbreakable resolve by the hundreds of prisoners on protest in the H-Block and Armagh prisons, but also because of the community reaction it triggered. It was clear by the time of Bobby Sands’ election as an MP in April 1981 that hundreds of thousands of people across Ireland supported the hunger strikers. In June 1981, Kieran Doherty and Paddy Agnew were elected to the Dáil demonstrating the resilience of that support. It was local communities throughout Ireland who held black flag vigils for the hunger strikers, who leafleted and canvassed for the prisoners, who travelled from all over the island to attend the ten funerals. Despite the intimidation and isolation they endured, communities across Ireland, like the prisoners, refused to be broken, refused to be corralled and ignored. It was they who elected five Sinn Féin assembly members in 1982, Gerry Adams as an MP for West Belfast in 1983, and Caoimhghín Ó Caoláin in 1997. It was they who slowly built the political organisation that is Sinn Féin today. The main focus of the 40th anniversary of the 1981 hunger strikes is rightly on the prisoners, but across the articles in this edition of An Phoblacht you can’t help but be struck by the role and potency of empowered communities. We need to celebrate the Risen People. ⊟

ISSUE NUMBER 2 – 2021 - UIMHIR EISIÚNA 2  anphoblacht

An inhuman assault on innocent people

g in py cu oc e th ld ho t us m ity un m m co l The internationa el is ra Is e. m gi re d ei th ar ap its r fo e bl ta un co power ac le op pe n ia in st le Pa e th t ns ai ag de ci no committing ge Palestinian Ambassador to Ireland Dr Jilan Wahba Abdalmajid writes for 'An Phoblacht' on Israel’s latest deadly attacks Rawan, Omar, Tala and Tawfeeq Abu Al-Ouf, Deema, Yazan, Ameer, and Meera Al Ifranji were among the 66 children brutally murdered by Israeli occupation forces during the latest assault against Gaza. The children were preparing themselves for the annual Eid celebrations. They were laying out their new clothes, excited to celebrate with their families after Ramadan. That day never came. The aggression against our people in Gaza, in East Jerusalem, and across the Occupied Palestinian Territories

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was amplified in the final week of the holy month of Ramadan. This is a time where Muslims come together to break their fast; it is a time of family, of joy and of peace. Over the last few years, Israel has launched several attacks on Gaza during this holy month – in 2014, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, and in 2021. The people of Gaza have not known a peaceful Ramadan for a number of years. This year, the violence towards the Palestinian people expanded to other parts of Palestine, and extended past

• Several violent invasions occurred at Al Aqsa Mosque

Ramadan and into Eid al Fitr, which is a time for celebration for Muslims around the world. What was meant to be a joyous, happy few days turned into an inhuman assault on innocent people, costing lives, demolishing homes, and destroying livelihoods. The occupying forces and settlers attacked the Palestinians in East Jerusalem and used excessive force to bring about new realities on the ground. This force intensified during Ramadan and was further heightened in the last 10 days, which are considered the holiest days of this month. The brutality was triggered when more than 28 families from Sheikh Jarrah and East Jerusalem neighbourhoods received eviction orders from the East Jerusalem court to empty their homes in favour of settlers and settler-funded organisations. From the beginning of Ramadan, the families were harassed and threatened by settlers, who were backed by the Israeli Occupation Forces. Numerous videos circulated on social media of settlers walking into the homes of the Sheikh Jarrah residents, asking them to leave, claiming that they have ownership of this land. To a person residing outside of Palestine, such an act seems strange – how can a person walk into your home and tell you to get out? Despite the fact that UN resolution 2334 (2016) declared that Israeli settlements in the Occupied Palestinian Territories have no legal validity and are a flagrant violation of international law, Israel continues its colonisation of occupied territories. Palestinians are forcibly expelled from their homes across the Occupied Palestinian Territories by illegal settlers. In 1967, East Jerusalem was occupied and annexed by Israel. In 1980, Israel announced that Jerusalem is the undivided capital of Israel. Sheikh Jarrah, as well as Al Aqsa Mosque, are in East Jerusalem, and are therefore part of the Occupied Palestinian Territories. 28 families were forcibly expelled from their homes in 1948 and found refuge in Sheikh Jarrah. An agreement between the UN and the government of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan was drawn up to settle these families in Sheikh Jarrah. The agreement stated that these families would pay rent for three years, and will then own these homes, in return for giving up their UN refugee status. Israel’s decision to expel Sheikh Jarrah and

• Nakba – more than 750,000 Palestinians were forcibly expelled from their homes in 1948

other East Jerusalem neighbourhood residents is therefore in flagrant violation of international law. Israel did not only focus on harassing and threatening the people of Sheikh Jarrah during Ramadan. Several violent invasions occurred at Al Aqsa Mosque, which is considered the third most holy site for Muslims around the world. The

ISSUE NUMBER 2 – 2021 - UIMHIR EISIÚNA 2  anphoblacht

As of Friday, 21st May, 270 innocent civilians were murdered, including 66 children and 38 women, four of whom were pregnant, with just under 2,000 wounded

Israeli Occupation Forces fired guns and threw bombs at Muslims who were praying outside the Mosque. These forces threw bombs inside the Mosque and locked the doors while people were inside, injuring hundreds of civilians. In retaliation to Israel’s brutality, Hamas, the governing party of Gaza, fired rockets into Israel. Many of these were blocked by Israel’s multimillion dollar Iron Dome.

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On Tuesday, 11th of May, Israel began viciously bombarding Gaza. Over a period of 11 days, the violence and aggression that ensued against innocent Gazan civilians was horrific. As of Friday, 21st May, 270 innocent civilians were murdered, including 66 children and 38 women, four of whom were pregnant, with just under 2,000 wounded. More martyrs are still being searched for amongst the rubble. According to UN Office for the Co-oridnation of Humanitarian Affairs, more than 107,000 people were left unsheltered and displaced, many of whom were in 58 UN Relief and Works Agency schools and installations. Over 500 residential buildings were destroyed. A majority of the casualties were entire families – 13 families were taken off official Palestinian records following these assaults. Medics were attacked while tending to the wounded. Six hospitals and nine primary health care clinics were destroyed. Roads leading to hospitals and other healthcare facilities were bombed. The only COVID-19 testing lab in Gaza was stricken and rendered inoperable. Israeli missiles

The international community are not holding Israel accountable for its actions. The world’s silence is heart-breaking destroyed the headquarters of the Palestinian Ministry of Health and Gaza’s central laboratory services. Civilian infrastructure was destroyed – cafes, restaurants, libraries and even cemeteries. A majority of the buildings housing large media offices were flattened. These include Al Jazeera, Associated Press and Middle East Eye. Palestinians were being silenced from the inside out. The savage Israeli onslaught was in grave breach of every possible international law, including the 4th Geneva Convention. This onslaught coincided with the 15th of May, which marked the 73rd year of the Nakba, when more than 750,000 Palestinians were forcibly expelled from their homes in 1948 by Israeli settler organizations. Palestinians were displaced in different refugee camps, from Gaza and the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, to Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, and many other countries around the world. The destruction caused by the occupying power was harrowing. The loss and pain that was suffered by the Palestinian people cannot be ignored. What happened in the last month is further evidence that Israel is an apartheid state in blatant violation of international laws, committing war crimes right before the world’s eyes, all in the name of their so-called self-defence. Despite this, the U.S. attempted to push through an arms sale to the value of $735 million dollars during these vicious

incidents. The international community are not holding Israel accountable for its actions. The world’s silence is heartbreaking. My parents, my aunts and my cousins live in Gaza. The fear I faced in the two weeks was acute – I wouldn’t wish it on my worst enemy. Gaza is an open-air prison; it has been under a crippling and dehumanising blockade by Israel for 14 years. This has only been amplified during the pandemic, where medical facilities were being destroyed amidst the already dire status of the health system in Gaza. The Israeli military aggression brought a halt to the COVID vaccine campaign in Gaza, where the vaccination rate is only 1.9%. A large number of precious vaccines will soon expire if the vaccination campaign remains suspended due to the Israeli hostility, risking further spread of this deadly virus. Our cause is political. The international community must hold the occupying power accountable for its apartheid regime. Israel is committing genocide against the Palestinian people. The occupation must end. ⊟

Her Excellency Dr Jilan Wahba Abdalmajid is the Palestinian Ambassador to Ireland

• Sinn Féin TDs and Senators show support for Palestine at Leinster House, Dublin 6

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CONOR KEENAN reflects on the changing political landscape in the Six Counties and the challenge for political unionism to embrace positive change

IRREVERSIBLE Lockdown has turned me into a walking addict. My dog Ruadh loves it! In the ten years we have had him, he has never had as much exercise. A favourite place of his, and mine, is down by the Titanic Quarter in Belfast in the shadow of the huge cranes of Harland and Wolff. On a good spring or summer evening by the marina, you could be forgiven for thinking you’re somewhere else with the sun glistening of the edges of Belfast Lough. The area has become extremely popular with walkers, joggers, dog lovers, young people, the not so young and those in between. On a sunny day, you will experience the kaleidoscope of colours and languages, which now make up the myriad of citizens of this wonderful city. For many, this part of the dock where the shipyard was located once represented the discriminatory nature of the Northern state. The gradual change that has taken place now represents the inclusivity and secularism of our future.

There is a big grass area in front of the Titanic signature building where I worked for a few months in 2003. It was being used as a temporary store by liquidators who were sell-

Since the foundation of the northern state, unionism has resisted every potential change or reform ing off the stock of Irish Fertiliser Industries (Richardson’s) after the company went bankrupt, making me and more than 600 other workers redundant in late 2002.

Being made redundant was a major shock for the workers, many of whom had worked in the factory for over 20 years and those like me who expected to be there for the rest of our working lives. Redundancy brings sudden change which turns your life upside down in a heartbeat. You have no choice but to face facts and adapt. Change can be gradual and managed like the transformation of the Titanic Quarter in Belfast or it can be sudden and unexpected. The transformation of wider society in the North has been largely gradual and managed. Of course, for many of us, change has not happened quickly enough. However, in recent months, it would appear that political unionism has suddenly realised the impact of the gradual change as if it has just occurred with the flick of a switch. It is as if it has suddenly woken up to the changed realities in the North. It has subjected itself to self-inflicted defeats as it struggles to come to terms with the new realities.

CHANGE

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Political unionism no longer occupies the position of dominance it once did. The Conservative British Government abandoned unionism once the political capital of DUP votes in Westminster no longer had value. The DUP have suffered repeated loss of votes in the Northern Assembly and now stands to lose its political majority in that institution; Then there are actions such as calling for the resignation of the PSNI Chief Constable and making unreasonable demands from the Public Prosecutions Service. They also point to the inability of political unionism to adapt to change. Of course, this is no surprise. Since the foundation of the Northern state, unionism has resisted every potential change or reform from the moderate demands of the Civil Rights Movement to Acht na Gaeilge. It has been the persistent in trying to hold back the inevitable surge. Since Brexit however, there has been a developing change in thinking. More and more members of the wider unionist community are questioning the benefits of the Union with Britain and looking increasingly to a future quite different from what they would previously have considered. They look South and see many of the

obstacles to full participation in civic life removed. The spectre of ‘Rome Rule’ no longer exists. They see a society having thrown off

That is the biggest selling point of the new Ireland we will create. A chance for the people of this island, all of us who cherish this place as our home, to start anew with a blank canvas the shackles of an oppressive church doctrine, becoming more and more secular. In contrast, they look to the regressive nature of the British Tory administration which delivered Brexit without any regard for the impact

on citizens in the north of Ireland. This development was most recently evidenced in a panel discussion hosted by “Ireland’s Future”. “A Warm House for All” brought together a cross section representative of the wider unionist community to discuss the future and the potential for constitutional change. I for one was deeply impressed by the openness and maturity of the contributions. The main takeaway from that event for me was a feeling of hope and opportunity. That is the biggest selling point of the new Ireland we will create. A chance for the people of this island, all of us who cherish this place as our home, to start anew with a blank canvas. What shape that will take is really for us to decide. We do face hurdles in ensuring that as many citizens as possible, representative of every walk of life and identity in Ireland, come to the table to have their views and vision included. We must stretch ourselves to achieve that. One thing is certain, the change which has already taken place, so evident in Belfast, is irreversible. ⊟ Conor is a Belfast based Sinn Féin activist.

• More and more members of the wider unionist community are looking South and see a society having thrown off the shackles of an oppressive church doctrine, becoming more and more secular 8

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COMMUNITY WEALTH BUILDING A

FIR

ST P R

R E IM

BY MAIRÉAD FARRELL In March, Tánaiste Leo Varadkar celebrated the South’s 3.4% GDP growth, stating that we’re “the only economy in the European Union, and one of the few economies in the world, which actually grew last year”. In fact, we were the fastest growing economy in the world. For many people, this must have seemed bizarre. Wasn’t the economy forecast to contract by 12.4%? Didn’t we have the longest lockdown in Europe? Was there not record unemployment (25% Covid-adjusted)? These don’t sound like the usual hallmarks of what was, statistically speaking anyway, the best performing economy in the entire world. What it did speak to, however, is the unbalanced two-tier nature of the Southern economy. The domestic sector, where the majority of workers are employed, really struggled. But the Dublin centric Foreign Direct Investment sector (think pharma and tech) was in rude health. The same regional imbalance is observed in the North, albeit perhaps not as pronounced. That is why an ambitious and powerful new approach to all-island economic development is required. One that tries to restore regional

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balance and empower local communities by emphasising local development, living standards and democracy. One that tries to rejuvenate this island in the wake of the Covid-19 crisis and the ongoing climate crisis. So, in the same month that Varadkar was citing statistics that seemed to be completely detached from the reality of most

CWB offers an alternative economic model of development. It’s a people centric approach which tries to redirect wealth back into local and regional communities workers’ lives, Brian Stanley TD, Louise O’Reilly TD, Senator Paul Gavan and myself launched our new policy document on Community Wealth Building (hereafter CWB). As Brian said himself, “the current economic model in Ireland isn’t meeting the needs of workers, families, and communities across the island”.

• Paul Gavan, Louise O'Reilly, Brian Stanley and Mairéad Farrell launch Sinn Féin’s Community Wealth Building document

That’s why we believe that a new departure is required. CWB offers an alternative economic model of development. It’s a people centric approach which tries to redirect wealth back into local and regional communities. The standard approach to economic development and developer-led regeneration often extracts value from communities. CWB on the other hand helps to develop indigenous assets and leverage existing local and regional resources to the benefit of workers, families, and communities. It has the potential to fundamentally change how we view wealth creation, how we can bring about a fairer society and a more balancedsustainable economy North and South. It has already proven its success in regions such as Preston in England, North Ayrshire in Scotland, and Cleveland in the United States. These were regions which for reasons like budget cuts, deindustrialisation and depopulation

suffered greatly, but thanks to a CWB approach have managed to quickly turn things around. Currently, both the North and South are characterised by significant regional inequality. Earnings in Belfast are substantially higher than those in many other counties and

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• Community Wealth Building is a success in regions such as Preston in England, North Ayrshire in Scotland, and Cleveland in the United States

regions in the North, and the same goes for Dublin in the South. When we look at levels of productivity, we see similar trends. The economic think tank Nevin Econnomic Research Institute points out that if we take an all-island view and exclude Belfast, then the all-island economy bears a striking resemblance to the famous north/south divide in Britain. Despite commitments by various administrations in both states to address regional imbalance, progress has been very slow. We believe that our CWB proposal is the missing piece of the puzzle. IT RESTS ON FIVE KEY PILLARS: • Make financial power work for people and local towns by retaining as much of that wealth as we can through local supply chains and targeted procurement contracts. • Work with key institutions (commercial, public and semi-state) to create local employment and set a standard for high quality, sustainable jobs.

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• Utilise all land and assets in our communities to generate wealth and resources for the people who live there. • Develop an inclusive economy with social forms of ownership like co-operatives. • Reduce our carbon footprint by establishing shorter supply chains and greater local employment. The way we do this is by focusing on what are called ‘anchor institutions’. These are sizeable economy actors who have significant spending power, and which are embedded within local communities. For example, these would be the likes of third-level instructions, county councils, hospitals, healthcare centres, ports, airports, museums and arts centres. Their importance is based around the fact

• By encouraging people to spend locally, they support local economic activity, which helps keeps jobs in the community and creates new ones

The old economic model has exacerbated inequality and environmental degradation, hurt regional balance, and depopulated rural communities

that these institutions aren’t likely to suddenly relocate, they own sizeable amounts of local property, physical assets and investments. And, most importantly, they are big spenders. Thus, by encouraging them to spend locally, they support local economic activity, which helps keeps jobs in the community in addition to creating new ones. This can be done through changes to public procurement rules which support SME participation and help raise labour and environmental standards. In those instances where local supply chains aren’t complete, incentives can used to help form local co-operative business which can complete the chain. For those who are sceptical about CWB’s ability to achieve its aims, we need only look to the example of Preston, which

was the region which first created this model. Local spending went from 5% to almost 20% since the introduction of the CWB approach, whilst it rose from 39% to over 72% in the wider Lancashire area. By promoting the use of the living wage in public procurement spending, the numbers of workers earning the living wage increased by 4,000 over a five-year period. So, it’s little wonder that Preston was recently voted Britain’s ‘Most Improved City’. Moreover, in the recent by-election disaster for Britain’s Labour Party, Preston Council bucked the trend where all those Labour councillors who were champions of CWB retained their seats. Their plans for the next 12 months include a worker co-op for taxis, a publicly-owned cinema, and a council-run bank. CWB is no longer a niche issue. Even mainstream figures like New York Times columnist Paul Krugman has pointed out that, “Although we talk a lot these days about globalization, about a world grown small, when you look at the economies of modern cities what you see is a process of localization: A steadily rising share of the work force produces services that are sold only within that same metropolitan area.” The old economic model has exacerbated inequality and environmental degradation, hurt regional balance, and depopulated rural communities. CWB offers the hope of a brighter, more prosperous and inclusive future. It is time we embrace it. ⊟ Mairéad Farrell is the Sinn Féin TD for Galway West/ South Mayo and the party’s spokesperson on Public Expenditure and Reform

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Saying 'No' to the low wage precarious economy Community Wealth Building offers a practical means of transforming local economies BY JOE GUINAN Covid-19 has further exposed what 40 years of neoliberalism has meant for our communities and economies—a debilitated local state struggling to respond to the public health emergency amidst a legacy of increasing inequality, disinvested public services, and decaying community infrastructure. Now, if there is to be anything other than a worsening of these long-running trends in a lopsided and unequal ‘Amazon recovery’, it is essential that we change course. Local economies must be rewired in service of people, place, and planet rather than for the extraction of profits by the wealthy few. There are clear ways in which to do this. Recent years have witnessed an explosion of practical experimentation with alternative approaches capable of fundamentally transforming local economies by redirecting pub-

lic resources to shift patterns of ownership and greatly improve distributional, environmental, and social outcomes. Relying not upon regulatory fixes or ‘after the fact’ redistribution but rather on deep structural changes to the economy, such approaches work through an array of institutions—including worker ownership, co-operatives, municipal enterprise, community land trusts, public banks, social enterprises, and more. They democratise the economy by broadening the ownership and control of capital. These approaches, and the institutional strategies for knitting them all together, have been termed “Community Wealth Building” (CWB). CWB is emerging as a powerful alternative to neoliberal economic development. Offering real on-the-ground solutions for localities

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and regions battered by successive waves of disinvestment, deindustrialisation, and displacement, it is rooted in place-based economics, democratic participation and control, mobilising the untapped power of the local public sector. The original model for CWB is in Cleveland, Ohio, in America’s rustbelt. The Evergreen Cooperatives were created in response to decades of economic destruction visited upon America’s manufacturing heartlands, part of an attempt to turn the tide. Cleveland had previously lost almost half its population and most of its Fortune 500 companies to capital flight, second only to Detroit in terms of poverty. Yet the city still boasted very large quasi-public institutions such as the Cleveland Clinic, Case Western Reserve University and University Hospitals—known as anchor insti-

tutions because they are rooted in place and aren’t likely to up and leave. Together, these institutions boasted a combined spending power of billions of dollars per year, very little of which stayed within the local community. The ‘Cleveland Model’ involved bringing together the anchors in pursuit of a strategy of localising their procurement spending in support of a network of purposely-created green worker-owned businesses tied together by a community corporation. These included an industrial scale ecologically advanced laundry, a large urban greenhouse, and a renewable energy company. A fund has recently been added to pursue employee ownership conversions of existing businesses. The Evergreen companies are structured so they cannot easily be sold outside the network without the permission of the community, and they return a percentage of profits to develop additional worker-owned firms. Unlike conventional corporations, these democratic businesses will not pick up and move their jobs elsewhere. They provide living wage jobs for their worker-owners, who also receive a share of their profits. Such models keep money recirculating locally rather than extracting it. The estimate of the ‘multiplier’ from buying local is eight; this means that if you buy from a large multinational, that money leaves your community

If you buy from a large multinational, that money leaves your community right away, but if you buy from a local business, it stays local and is spent on average a further eight times right away, but if you buy from a local business, it stays local and is spent on average a further eight times. Through such strategies— the opposite of neoliberal extraction—wealth can be kept recirculating, anchoring jobs and reversing long-term economic decline. Today, the Evergreen companies are competing with the giant corporations that had previously provided contract services to the big anchors, even beating out the multinational firm Sodexo for the Cleveland Clinic’s full laundry contract. Evergreen has since acquired the former Sodexo plant, hired the former Sodexo workers, given them a pay raise to the local living wage, and put them on a fast track to employee ownership. No jobs were lost—all that has changed is that former corporate profits are instead recirculating back into Cleveland to the benefit of the local economy rather than leaking away to distant absentee shareholders. Community Wealth Building has since spread far and wide. In the UK, Preston City Council in Lancashire has taken the approach and successfully implemented it at a city-wide scale with the help of the Manchester-based Centre for Local Economic Strategies (CLES). The ‘Preston Model’, as it has become known, 14

• Sinn Féin’s Minister for Communities Deirdre Hargey, has expressed strong support

encompasses a string of public anchors across Preston and Lancashire, to which has been added public pension investment and affordable housing, while laying the groundwork for a community bank. Once a poster child for economic deprivation and ‘left behind’ places, Preston has already seen significant payoffs from its CWB approach, having been named the UK’s most improved urban area. The share of the public procurement budget spent in the city quadrupled between 2013 and 2018, a gain of £75m, while across Lancashire it more than doubled for a gain of £200m. Unemployment has fallen, and Preston has seen better-than-average improvements in health, transport, work-life balance, and youth and adult skills acquisition. Other parts of the UK are now following this lead, from Salford and Wirral to North of Tyne, Newham, Islington, and North Ayrshire. The latter became Scotland’s first local government to adopt a CWB strategy, designed to support its net-zero carbon ambitions and a just transition. What once seemed like a fringe idea is moving fast towards the mainstream, a new way for local governments to shape their local economies. The Covid-19 pandemic and accompanying crisis makes these strategies all the more important. Recent UK local elections show that such approaches also bear electoral dividends, with Preston and other Labour areas pursuing CWB strategies bucking the Conservative national tide. Meanwhile, Scotland’s SNP government will now be taking up a CWB Act, having just announced the first ever government minister for Community Wealth. CWB is in the process of crossing the Irish sea. Few places have a more urgent need for such an approach than does Ireland, the extractive economy par excellence, where communities have been ravaged by neoliberalism and austerity. The Irish economy has been based on low wages, precarious employment, financialised property speculation, and foreign direct in-

vestment, coupled with state subsidies and tax breaks for transnational capital. The North has adopted large parts of this model wholesale. The result is an agglomeration economy that has concentrated power and capital in the urban centres of Dublin and Belfast at the expense of state-led investment, indigenous enterprises, balanced regional development, and the needs of ordinary working people. There is already growing interest in CWB at the local level in Ireland — in Dublin, Belfast, Cork, and elsewhere. Trademark Belfast has taken up CWB, as has the Development Trust of Northern Ireland, while Sinn Féin’s Deirdre Hargey, Minister for Communities in the Northern Ireland Executive, has expressed strong support. The term Tógáil Maoine Pobail is to be submitted to the Irish Dictionary Committee for recognition as the official translation of “Community Wealth Building” in Irish. A highly adaptable approach, CWB could be implemented virtually everywhere, from deindustrialised East Belfast to the decaying communities of Ireland’s western and border regions. As well as providing the basis for a new model of urban development, there are suggestions that CWB could be applied to promote regeneration, tackle inequality, and support transition in rural Ireland. CWB presupposes new levels of community control and the expansion of community power. Ireland has a well-developed community infrastructure, a parallel state that has long supported working-class and marginalised communities when governments have not. These networks and traditions could now come into their own as part of a CWB approach to building a new economy in Ireland, one in which the needs of the community and planet are at long last placed before the prerogatives of private capital. ⊟ Joe Guinan is Vice President of The Democracy Collaborative and co-author, with Martin O’Neill, of The Case for Community Wealth Building (Polity, 2019).

ISSUE NUMBER 2 – 2021 - UIMHIR EISIÚNA 2  anphoblacht

Stát 'dátheangach' nach féidir Bille nua Teanga a achtú i gceart: Béalghrá, áiféal agus moilleadóireacht sa Choiste Gaeilge Dála LE EOGHAN FINN Is i ndiaidh a chéile a thógtar na caisleáin, ach is minic nach mbíonn fágtha ach fothrach. Nuair a thosaigh mé sa phost seo mí Iúil seo caite i mo chúntóir parlaiminte ag Aengus Ó Snodaigh TD, urlabhraí Gaeilge agus Gaeltachta Shinn Féin, caithfidh go raibh mé rud beag soineanta. Thuig mé, dar ndóighe, go mbeadh sé deacair tabhairt faoin obair Dála trí Ghaeilge – níl na tacaíochtaí céanna ar fáil do Ghaeilgeoirí i dTithe an Oireachtais in ainneoin stádas bunreachtúil na teanga – ach níor thuig mé ag an staid sin go bhféadfadh sé a bheith chomh tubaisteach is atá. Ceacht mór foghlamtha domsa mar sin a bhí san obair a bhain le Bille na dTeangacha Oifigiúla (Leasú) 2021 atá ag dul tríd an Dáil fós. Níl mórán tráchta ar an mBille seo sna meáin, go háirithe i gcomparáid leis an streachailt fhuinniúil ar son Acht Gaeilge ó Thuaidh, ach is í an reachtaíocht is tábhachtaí teanga sna 26 Contae ónar reachtaíodh an Bille i 2003. Fógraíodh sa bhliain 2011 go raibh bille nua ag teastáil, toisc gur aithin an rialtas nua go raibh teipthe go hiomlán ag Acht na dTeangacha Oifigiúla 2003, a thug an iomarca solúbthacht do chomhlachtaí poiblí éalú óna ndualgais i leith na teanga agus a d’fhág cearta teanga ar lár. Anuas ar sin, fuair rialtais Fhianna Fáil agus Fhine Gael réidh le riachtanais Gaeilge ina lán postanna stáit (féach sampla na nGardaí), agus

• Aengus Ó Snodaigh TD

anphoblacht  UIMHIR EISIÚNA 2 - 2021 - ISSUE NUMBER 2

rinneadh ciorruithe suntasacha ar mhaoiniú na seirbhísí Gaeilge. Léirigh taighde scanrúil, dá leanfaí rudaí ag dul in olcas, go dtiocfaidh deireadh leis an nGaeilge mar theanga labhartha pobail, go fiú sna ceantair is láidre Gaeltachta, faoin mbliain 2027. D’aithin Teachtaí as gach páirtí go raibh géarghá le hathruithe suntasacha, agus thug siad faoi imscrúdú réamh-reachtaíochta a dhéanamh ar an mbille nua a bhí molta. Rinne dhá choiste oireachtais éagsúla – rud as an gnách – imscrúdú réamh-reachtaíochta ar an mbille, agus tháinig 54 moladh éagsúla ina n-iomlán as an dá choiste sin tar éis comhchomhairle chuimsitheach a dhéanamh ar an phobal. Bhí roinnt daoine ag gearán faoin fad ama ar bhain leis na himscrúduithe go léir, ach dúradh gurb ar mhaithe le moltaí indéanta agus uaillmhianacha a chur chun cinn a bhí an mhoill, agus cuireadh obair go leor isteach sna spriocanna tras-pháirtí seo. Bhí iontas ar gach duine mar sin nuair a d’fhoilsigh an tAire Stáit Seán Kyne Bille na dTeangacha Oifigiúla roimh Nollaig 2019, agus neamhaird déanta inti ar na moltaí seo ar fad. Cháin Fianna Fáil agus

Sheol an Dáil an Bhille go dtí an Coiste mícheart, toisc botún a rinne an Príomh-Aoire... thóg sé mí ar Chambers é a réiteach an Comhaontas Glas an Bille go mór agus gheall siad go gcuirfeadh siad bille i bhfad Éireann níos láidre chun cinn agus iad sa rialtas. Fast-forward mar sin go dtí mí Dheireadh an Fhómhair 2020, beagnach bliain níos déanaí agus toghchán thart, agus ba bheag nár thit an t-anam de phobal na Gaeilge (nó iad siúd a bhí ag léiriú suim sa reachtaíocht ar a laghad!) nuair a tháinig an tAire Stáit nua Gaeltachta de chuid Fhianna Fáil, Jack Chambers, ar ais chun na Dála leis an mBille ceannann céanna. Ní raibh ansin ach tús an áiféala, áfach. Tar éis don díospóireacht ag an Dara Chéim, sheol an Dáil an Bille chuig an gCoiste mícheart, toisc botún a rinne an Príomh-Aoire (cé eile ach an t-Aire Chambers arís – tá roinnt rólanna aige). Is cosúil nár thug sé faoi deara an difríocht idir an coiste a scrúdaíonn obair na Roinne sin go ginearálta – an Coiste um na Meáin, Turasóireacht, Ealaíona, Cultúr, Spórt agus Gaeltacht, nach bhfuil aon duine le Gaeilge acu air fiú – agus Coiste na Gaeilge, na Gaeltachta agus Phobail Labhartha na Gaeilge, a bhí ceaptha an Bille a scrúdú. Botún simplí, áfach, agus ní raibh le déanamh ach rún Dála a chur go sciobtha len é a réiteach, ach bhain sé mí as Chambers a dhéanamh, rud a chur go mór leis an moill (cé go raibh sé tar éis geallúint, nó tar éis a bheith ag maíomh, do phobal na Gaeilge agus Gaeltachta, go mbeadh sé achtaithe roimh Nollaig 2020). Agus muid go léir ag fanacht le Chambers, chuir aíonna saineolacha in iúl don Choiste Gaeilge an méid a bhí de dhíth sa mBille ar fad. Spriocdhátaí daingean, níos mó cumhacht ag an gCoimisinéir Teanga, foclaíocht níos láidre, ionadaíocht don phobal teanga ar an gCoiste Comhairleach molta chun seirbhísí Gaeilge a phleanáil, agus cinnteacht go mbeadh seirbhísí stáit ar fáil as Gaeilge sa Ghaeltacht 15

• Jack Chambers

mar a gealladh beagnach 100 bliain ó shin. Sin a bhí á lorg ag an gCoimisinéir féin, Conradh na Gaeilge, Foras na Gaeilge, agus in aighneachtaí eile ón phobal teanga. Toisc gur Acht dátheangach a raibh á leasú againn, bhí an deis againn leasuithe a chur as Gaeilge nó as Béarla, rud nach dtugtar cead dúinn a dhéanamh de ghnáth. Seachas na billí gairid reifrinn, is i mBéarla amháin a mbíonn billí, agus dá réir is i mBéarla amháin a gceadaítear aon leasuithe. Bhí sé de phribhléid agamsa scata mór leasuithe cuimsitheacha a chur le chéile le hAengus bunaithe ar an méid a bhí curtha chun cinn ag na coistí cheana féin, in aighneachtaí an phobail, trí dheachleachtais i dtíortha dátheangacha eile a scrúdú, agus trí féachaint siar ar dhíospóireachtaí 2003 ina raibh rabhadh tugtha ag Aengus ag an am go dtarlódh fadhbanna mar a thit siad amach ó shin. Thuig muid go mbeadh brú níos mó i gceist don chóras toisc aistriúchán a bheith riachtanach sa chás seo, ach thug Oifig na mBillí spriocdháta dúinn agus bhí siad go léir curtha againn beagnach coicís roimh ré. Baineadh preab asam mar sin nuair a fuair mé glaoch ó Aengus maidin amháin agus mé ag obair sa bhaile, ag rá “A Eoghain, cad atá déanta agat?! Tá an Bille curtha ar ceal agus is ortsa atá an locht!” Ag magadh a bhí, ach ní hábhar gáire a bhí ann i ndáiríre – bhí Céim an Choiste curtha ar athló go dtí deireadh mí Eanáir toisc nach raibh an córas in ann leasuithe na Teachtaí go léir – os 308 ar an iomlán – a phróiseáil in am dá spriocdháta féin. Bhí breis is 200 curtha isteach agam in ainm Aengus agus roinnt de theachtaí eile ag Sinn Féin. Theip ar pharlaimint stáit “dátheangach” bille a reáchtáil toisc é a bheith dátheangach. Léiriú náireach nach bhfuil sa dátheangachas oifigiúil ach béalghrá. Níor tháinig feabhas ar chúrsaí in Eanáir 2021 ach oiread nuair a dícheadaíodh trian de na leasuithe – cinn a bhain le hoideachas, craolachán, comharthaí bóithre, seirbhísí bainc, fónta agus sláinte, srl. – toisc iad a bheith lasmuigh de “scóip” an Bhille – scóip nua nach raibh feicthe againn go dtí sin – nó ag cur an iomarca costais ar an státchiste, fiú cinn nach raibh costas breise i gceist leo. Níor thuig comhaltaí, ó pháirtithe éagsúla, cén fáth, tar éis a lán oibre a chur isteach iontu, nár ceadaíodh na leasuithe seo. Níor ghéill an Ceann Comhairle nuair a ardaíodh raic. Ní sin a rá gur éirigh níos fearr leis na leasuithe a bhí ceadaithe áfach. Ba léir ó thús nach raibh suim dá laghad ag Chambers glacadh 16

le leasú ar bith ón bhfreasúra nó fiú ó chúlbhinseoirí a rialtas féin. Go fiú as na leasuithe a gheall an tAire, níor chuir sé na cinn is suntasaí – ar nós an sprioc fógartha go mbeadh Gaeilge ag 20% dóibh siúd earcaithe don státseirbhís ó 2030 ar aghaidh – agus fiú na cinn a bhí curtha aige, tarraingíodh siar toisc gur léiríodh sa phléchoiste go raibh siad lochtach. Bhain sé trí mhí as Chambers gach leasú a dhiúltú, agus bhí sé

Fuair mé glaoch ó Aengus maidin amháin agus mé ag obair sa bhaile, ag rá “A Eoghain, cad atá déanta agat?! Tá an Bille curtha ar cheal agus is ortsa atá an locht!” deacair gan a bheith in ísle brí mar gheall ar an neamhshuim a léirigh sé sa díospóireacht agus é ag iarraidh rudaí a bhrostú. Óna chríochnaíodh Céim an Choiste, ní léir go fóill cathain a thiocfaidh an Bille ar ais os comhar na Dála. Seachas cumhacht amháin breise don Choimisinéir Teanga (ceart faireacháin a dhéanamh ar chomhlíonadh dualgais teanga in achtanna seachas Acht 2003), níl mórán feabhas tagtha ar an mBille ó 2019. Ní léir fós cad atá i gceist sna “Caighdeáin” nua a dtiocfaidh in áit scéimeanna teanga do chomhlachtaí poiblí faoi láthair, in ainneoin gealltanais go mbeadh dréacht-chaighdeán foilsithe roimh thús na Nollag seo caite. Seans go mbeidh comhlachtaí poiblí in ann cibé dualgas atá leagtha síos a sheachaint, mar atá déanta ag an nGarda Síochána le deich mbliana anuas. An dlí atá ann i ndáiríre más féidir é a bhriseadh gan pionós? Seans nach bhfuil sa dlí ach fothrach. ⊟ Eoghan Finn - Cúntóir Parlaiminte i dTeach Laighean ISSUE NUMBER 2 – 2021 - UIMHIR EISIÚNA 2  anphoblacht

Writing in a personal capacity, ICTU president and the Northern Secretary of the Irish National Teachers’ Organisation GERRY MURPHY outlines the mission of Trade Unionists for a New and United Ireland.

The workers’ voice is central in shaping a new Ireland Trade Unionists for a New and United Ireland (TUNUI) is a dynamic and growing pressure group within the broader Irish trade union movement. Its membership is made up of trade unionists from most of the unions affiliated to the Irish Congress of Trade Unions (ICTU). The group’s membership consequently reflects the variety of opinions and ambitions that enrich trade unionism across this island. TUNUI was established to encourage the labour movement to engage actively in the debate around Irish unity, to ensure the workers voice is central in shaping a new Ireland. What sets TUNUI apart from other ginger groups inside the trade union movement is the wealth of campaigning and negotiation experience that its membership possesses. The reservoir of skills, abilities, and network of relationships the group can draw on leave it ideally placed to promote and encourage the active participation of organised labour in the discussion on reunification. The profound social and constitutional changes we have all experienced and witnessed across this island in recent years has re-invigorated this most important of debates. Experienced trade union activists familiar with the economic and social realities on this island can only add to this necessary debate that will shape a new Ireland. The two states that emerged following Partition, allowed conservative interests to shape public policy and practice. Workers were divided along sectarian lines and the interests of workers were subordinated to the interests of big business and ruling classes. Societal change was inhibited and prevented, while sectarianism, homophobia, misogyny and poverty have been allowed to fester for too long. The work of undoing these injustices and their accompanying inequalities was taken up by the trade

unions and other progressive forces with limited success, their efforts frustrated by the by the ruling classes and their allies in industry and business. TUNUI is determined to play its part in encouraging and assisting the trade union movement to involve itself positively and proactively in the refreshed debate for Irish Unity as a pathway to righting these institutionalised wrongs. To this end, TUNUI is actively avoiding becoming an echo chamber; rather, it is reaching out to those both within and without the union movement who see the future of our island differently or who would rather see the status quo maintained. The group has published an initial policy pamphlet setting out its views on the key issues affecting everyone who lives on this island with a particular focus on working people and their families. It lays out a trade union vision for a united Ireland and why every trade unionist should embrace this vision. The pamphlet confirms the Good Friday Agreement as the pathway to delivering the opportunity to build this new Ireland. It articulates how trade union members can involve themselves in achieving this goal. This pamphlet is the first in a series of such publications that TUNUI is currently working on. Issues such as workers’ rights, climate change, health and social care, and education will each be the subjects of future pamphlets. In tandem with these publications, TUNUI has hosted a series of webinars which can be accessed on their web site and social media platforms and plans are advanced for a series of further webinars. The webinars to date have been well attended and the audiences have been reflective of the wider trade union movement and the range of political opinions shared by members. TUNUI has been keen to encourage discussion and questions

TUNUI was established to encourage the labour movement to engage actively in the debate around Irish unity

anphoblacht  UIMHIR EISIÚNA 2 - 2021 - ISSUE NUMBER 2

A Trade Union Vision for a New and United Ireland

You can find the TUNUI website at: www.tu4ui.com To achieve an Ireland 3 which is different, better, and fairer, it is essential that the unity of the working class is maintained

from participants and the experience to date has been valuable. The group intends 2 with future webinars to continue to seek to inform and challenge, while simultaneously maintaining the safe space it has carved out for this most important of discussions. A third string to the TUNUI bow is the availability of TUNUI speakers to address trade unions and trades councils and to participate in forums which other progressive elements are hosting on the issue. Speakers have been sharing TUNUI’s vision of a new and united Ireland and just as importantly providing an opportunity for fellow trade unionists and others to raise directly with the group questions and concerns they have on the potential opportunities and challenges which will arise as more active consideration is given to building a new Ireland with workers and their families at its core. TUNUI is particularly keen to continue and grow this direct engagement and several future activities are already in the pipeline. Those who would like a TUNUI speaker to address a meeting can reach out to the group via their website and social media platforms and every effort will be made to facilitate requests for speakers. To date, these engagements have proved to be positive and encouraging events clearly demonstrating trade unionists of every hue are interested in and wish to be part of the discussion. TUNUI itself has found the events to be useful and helpful in refining and shaping the views of the group itself as it strives to continue the work of raising the profile of the discussion across the trade union movement.

Especially encouraging so far has been the spirit and tone of these engagements. There is a concern in some quarters that the question of Ireland’s future and the discussion that is ongoing around it could be a threat to the unity of the trade union movement. TUNUI is cognisant of these concerns and is determined to avoid this obvious pitfall. To achieve an Ireland which is different, better, and fairer, it is essential that the unity of the working class is maintained. Our trade union movement on this island already serves as a model of the unity TUNUI seeks, encompassing as it does workers in both parts of this island, from both established traditions and none. This has been achieved by carefully building a structure that is accessible to all, permits everyone a voice, where difference is respected, and agreed positions are arrived at via mature debate. This is the same model TUNUI is bringing to the work it is undertaking encouraging the discussion on a new Ireland. Trade unions as the voice of organised labour are best placed to advocate for workers and to contribute more widely on the social and wider economic changes needed to give meaning to the idea of a new Ireland. TUNUI is the only vehicle actively facilitating the trade union voice in the wider discussion on this issue across the island now and it is open to and welcomes trade unionists not already engaged in the discussion to join us. ⊟ Gerry Murphy is ICTU President and the Northern Secretary of the Irish National Teachers’ Organisation.

ISSUE NUMBER 2 – 2021 - UIMHIR EISIÚNA 2  anphoblacht

TIME FOR

CONFIDENT LEADERS AND

PRIDE OF PLACE BY IAN MARSHALL We live in a place unrecognisable from 23 years ago, where the passage of time is only just beginning to heal the hurt and repair the damage. A country where a new generation of young people untainted and often unfamiliar with the past grow up with the same hopes, dreams, and aspirations of their peers in the Republic of Ireland or in Great Britain. A generation of young people who are our greatest asset and our greatest opportunity. As Warren Buffet once said, “the view in the rear-view mirror is often clearer than the windshield”. That being said, 23 years on, and with the benefit of hindsight, I have no doubt we would all do some things differently, better, more informed, and much clearer about the impact and effects of our actions. However, we haven’t the luxury of hindsight and rather than pass judgement on the past it will be more constructive if we try to under-

stand what’s gone before and put our efforts into building for the future. Unfortunately, this complex and complicated narrative may never be truly reconciled or resolved, but one thing for certain is that there is undeniably a responsibility to address the issues and concerns, in order

It is time for listening and learning and time to open minds to new ideas and different perspectives; time to open doors to build new relationships and encourage new connections

to ensure we never repeat the mistakes, in a province once described to me as a place “where it’s always easier to remember than to forget”. Relationships and relationship building has never been more important, especially in the wake of Brexit and the Covid pandemic. Circumstances that have set people apart and divided communities has highlighted how it’s more important than ever for everyone to demonstrate understanding and the ability to listen to the concerns of ‘the others’. This is a time for strong leadership, similar to that demonstrated in 1998 by leaders committed to a peace process, undeterred by criticism and confident in their beliefs to make big decisions in a time where compromise ultimately demonstrated strength. Signing off an agreement to end the violence and unrest whilst setting the foundations for

• 23 years after the signing of the Good Friday Agreement, we all have a responsibility to move on anphoblacht  UIMHIR EISIÚNA 2 - 2021 - ISSUE NUMBER 2

a shared future built on mutual respect and parity of esteem, for all. Our current leaders are at a point where difficult decisions will have to be made and the implementation of legally binding agreements will present challenges that will take renewed commitment from British and Irish Governments, as well as political parties north, south, east, and west. Building relationships across an island, and between two islands with a complete understanding that there are diametrically opposed positions, can only succeed with respect and a capacity to listen to each other and a comprehension that it is okay to ‘agree to disagree’. Indeed, it’s the lack of genuine understanding that potentially presents the biggest challenge, either in Leinster House, in Dublin, or in Westminster, in London, where many well-intentioned individuals provide opinion and commentary on a set of circumstances they simply don’t understand. A position best served by listening to those with lived experience who do. However, it’s important to note that listening is not the same as hearing, and words falling on deaf ears will achieve nothing. It does make me very uncomfortable to listen to some commentators proposing that the Republic need to re-join the Commonwealth or a desire to make the Twelfth of July a holiday in order to ‘appease the unionists’ and make them feel welcome in a New Ireland, and is something that actually demon-

• New flags, anthems and symbols are much less important than actually respecting and valuing each other’s position

strates that they just don’t get it, or comprehend the situation! In addition, the ongoing conversation some pundits are pursuing about a new national flag would probably be best addressed by both sides first agreeing to recognise and approve of each other’s current flag. When all agree that they are comfortable to hang both ensigns together, thereby

demonstrating genuine respect and acceptance of each other, we may have crossed the Rubicon. But is this a bridge too far? However, new flags, anthems and symbols are much less important than actually respecting and valuing each other’s position. Learning about and understanding each other’s values and aspirations rather than accepting the stereotypes portrayed through

• Commentators proposing re-joining the Commonwealth or making the Twelfth of July a holiday in order to ‘appease the unionists’ just don’t comprehend the situation 20

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the media as representations of what northern Catholics, nationalists, and republicans are, or what northern Protestants, unionists, and loyalists are. More often than not, the perception bears no relation to the reality and merely distorts the message or misleads about a particular view or opinion. For much too long, politicians have failed to listen to all the opinions from many different perspectives, not listening to the genuine concerns of citizens or grasping the issues that really matter in order for politics to deliver solutions to their problems. So where now and what about the future? It is time for listening and learning and time to open minds to new ideas and different perspectives; time to open doors to build new relationships and encourage new connections. It is time for republicans to show respect for the union and time for unionists to show respect for the idea of Irish unity even though neither could support the other position. It is time to get rid of the ‘bogeyman’ that has cast a shadow over us for so long in the form of the fear and insecurity created by

This is a period for strong leaders and for transformative leadership, but can only happen if everyone shares the vision of a fair and equitable society with opportunity for all, mutual respect, and parity of esteem the mistrust of the other. The bogeyman for unionists being the legacy of the troubles and the threat that a ‘pan nationalist front’ is intent on erasing their culture and identity thereby forcing them to default into a defensive position and never truly engage with their opposition. The bogeyman for nationalists and republicans being the legacy of oppression at the hands of ‘the empire’, of suppression and inequality in society which for years supported a culture of opposition and abstention, of confrontation and resentment, and hence a lack of sincere engagement. This is not to diminish or down play the importance and significance of these feelings and emotions, often grounded on genuine fears and concerns and fuelled by actions and activities in a toxic situation that supported an environment of mistrust and generated a political culture of fear and insecurity. 23 years after the signing of the Good Friday Agreement, we all have a responsibility to move on. This is a period for strong leaders and for transformative leadership but can only happen if everyone shares the vision of a fair and equitable society with opportunity for all,

• In the wake of Brexit and the Covid pandemic a good relationship across the island and between two islands as neighbours is essential

mutual respect and parity of esteem, and an acknowledgement that the work of building relations across the island and between two islands will continue. A good relationship across the island and between two islands as nearest neighbours will always be essential. This constant will not change. In conclusion, whether you believe in a republican agenda for Irish Unity, or a Loyalist agenda to defend the Union, or whatever your aspiration in between for Northern Ireland, one thing is for certain, your interests are best served by building a peaceful society in a strong vibrant prosperous economy,

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with jobs, houses, healthcare, and opportunity for all. In a place where everyone wants to live, work, and call home. ⊟

Ian Marshall is a former Independent Unionist Senator in Seanad Éireann 21

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ISSUE NUMBER 2 – 2021 - UIMHIR EISIÚNA 2  anphoblacht

A YEAR OF

WORKER RESISTANCE

AT DEBENHAMS BY DAITHÍ DOOLAN One year ago, when many of us were facing into COVID lockdown, Debenhams workers faced a real David and Goliath struggle. Debenhams had split the company in two, moving the profits to the newly established Debenhams UK, and saddling Debenhams Ireland with all the debt. The bold move made 1,000 staff in Ireland redundant. Adding insult to injury in April last year, workers received their redundancy notice in an email. The final sting was that the Debenhams bosses were refusing to pay any redundancy. The 10,000 years of total service counted for nothing. The company, quite legally,

would be absolved from paying one cent of the €20m owed to the workers. MANDATE mounted pickets on Debenhams outlets, but no amount of pickets, protests, lobbying or online meetings would move either Debenhams or the government

The workers only wanted what the company had signed up for as part of a collective agreement

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into taking a just course of action. Debenhams held firm. The Government refused to take any responsibility. Workers and their families were literally thrown to one side by an unholy alliance of the incoming Fianna Fáil/Fine Gael/Green Party Government, KPMG, and Debenhams PLC. There were plenty of statements of support. The great and the good all joined in the chorus of support for the Debenhams workers. Buoyed up by his elevation to the office of An Taoiseach, Micheál Martin said: “I have to say that the treatment of the Debenhams workers has been very, very shabby and 23

tion. The conservative coalition were not in any mood to challenge big business. They did not do it for Clery’s workers and they were certainly not going to do it for the Debenhams workers. In April, it was announced Kieran Wallace and Andrew O’Leary of KPMG would be appointed as joint provisional liquidators to Debenhams Irish operations. Their job was to oversee the liquidation of Debenhams in Ireland and to pay the debts of the company. Unless of course, you were a Debenhams employee. KPMG themselves get paid before the workers receive any payment. In fact, KPMG are well paid to oversee liquidations and redundancies. The company generates tens of billions of dollars in revenue annually. On 12 December 2019, KPMG announced record revenues of $29.75 billion for the financial year ending 30 September 2019. After five months of pickets and protests, KPMG made a redundancy offer to the workers. It was not well received. Responding to the offer, Madeline Whelan, who worked 30 years in Cork’s Patrick Street store, said: “It was a disgrace, not an offer. There are divide and conquer tactics hap-

The pill of workers joining trade unions is just too bitter for either Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael or the Greens to swallow

shoddy and unacceptable”. Martin also asserted that, “The failure to honour collective agreements that these workers had entered into is, in my view, unacceptable and the manner in which they’ve been treated is unacceptable”.

Fine Gael’s Leo Varadkar said, “I do think the Debenhams workers have been very badly treated by their employer throughout this process”. But none of this rhetoric would amount to anything if it was not backed up by ac-

• KPMG were appointed as liquidators to Debenhams to oversee the liquidation in Ireland and to pay the debts of the company - unless of course, you were an employee 24

pening now, trying to insinuate that we are stopping others from considering the offer. It won’t work”. The strikers took immediate action. Debenhams stores in Cork and Dublin were occupied. KPMG responded with bully boy tactics. Issuing a statement, they said: “No further settlement agreements will be negotiated by the liquidators with the former employers”. KPMG had pulled the deal off the table and were refusing to talk to the workers or MANDATE. This amounted to sidelining MANDATE, further isolating the workers during a COVID lockdown that prohibited any marches or public meetings. Undeterred, the pickets continued. There were celebrations in October to mark six months on the picket line, further celebrations in April this year to mark 12 months of an unbroken, 24 hour a day picket line. Mandate’s National Co-ordinator, Brian Forbes, praises the workers’ commitment, he says: “Whilst the global pandemic, level five lockdowns and restricted travel limitations over the past year somewhat inhibited attendance at some pickets, these strikers demonstrated a steely resolve by steadfastly refusing to be ignored or forgotten by the

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company, the government, trade unions, national media and the general public. Our collective trade union admiration for their fighting spirit and example in adversity should be remembered for many years to come”. Shortly after the 12 month milestone, KPMG, with Garda support, broke through picket lines and moved in to the Henry Street store to remove all the remaining stock. This stock was to be sold off to pay the company’s debtors, but not the redundancy owed to workers. Speaking to An Phoblacht, Jane Crowe, MANDATE shop steward in the Henry Street branch, remains unbowed. She said, “the workers remain focused on the Cork, Waterford, and Limerick stores where pickets are still in place”. At a recent shop stewards’ meeting, it was agreed that all ex-Debenhams workers would be balloted on an agreement which could bring to an end one of the longest running industrial disputes in Irish history. The deal includes statutory redundancy and a €3 million training package all funded by the Government. Regardless of the outcome of the ballot, it has been a long, long battle. It should be remembered that the workers only wanted what the company had signed up for as part of a collective agreement. The agreement negotiated and agreed with MANDATE guaranteed an enhanced redundancy package of two weeks wages per year of service plus another two weeks per year of service. This agreement was in line with the Duffy-Cahill report. It might surprise many to know that the Duffy-Cahill report is contained in the current programme for Government and has been for five years. However, sadly, it remains gathering dust on Minister Leo Varadkar’s desk. This report, if implemented, would ensure there would be no more Clery’s disputes or Debenhams strikes, or Connolly’s anphoblacht  UIMHIR EISIÚNA 2 - 2021 - ISSUE NUMBER 2

Shoes strikes, or Paris Bakery occupations. The list is endless and costly. More recently in November 2020, 490 workers were made redundant by Arcadia and Carphone Warehouse let 480 staff go. None of these 970 workers will get redundancy from their employers. To rub salt in their wounds, the bosses at Arcadia demanded that staff continue to sell stock to pay for all debtors but the staff. This all comes at a huge cost to the tax payer. In 2014, the year of the Paris Bakery occupation, the State forked out €58.5 million in redundancy payments, where employers were unable to pay redundancy. The 26 County taxpayer has paid over €500 million in redundancy payments like this since 2010, while the company owing the money gets off Scot free. Every day the Duffy-Cahill report remains on Minister Varadkar’s desk, the Irish tax payer carries the cost. This is bad economics and totally unacceptable. This Government are happy to let the cost of redundancy mount up at the taxpayer’s expense.

A year of struggle has shone a light on government prevarication and deflection when the answer to this dispute was clearly within their gift It appears that the resistance to implementing the Duffy-Cahill report is more than what it seems. Any legislation based on Duffy-Cahill would strengthen the role of trade unions. The agreements that would give employees proper redundancy could only be reached if they are in a union which reaches a collective agreement with their employers. This is a major incentive to join trade unions. The pill of workers joining trade unions is just too bitter for either Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael or the Greens to swallow. Looking to the future, Jane Crowe says, “Going forward, we won’t give up our fight until legislation in introduced to protect all workers during liquidation and to ensure the collective agreements are upheld.” Looking back over the last year, Crowe says she has been hugely impressed by “the strength shown by all the employees over the last 12 months.” Forbes agrees, “Whatever the final outcome of this protracted and unnecessary dispute let no-one attempt to report a defeat against these striking workers. A year of struggle has shone a light on government prevarication and deflection when the answer to this dispute was clearly within their gift. Government deliberately chose to follow Debenhams example by 25

• Mary Lou McDonald at the Debenhams picket

This will amount to many more redundancies. Many more Debenhams disputes unless immediate action is taken. There needs to be a strong, united response from the trade union movement. The campaign must not be left to trade union officals. It needs to be a broadfront campaign involving the trade unions members and progressive political parties, similar to the Right to Water and Right to Change campaigns. These proved to be very effective in mobilising public opinion. A similar, popular campaign can be effective in ensuring workers have proper redundancy paid in full when faced with job losses. Nothing less is acceptable for Irish workers. ⊟

• Micheál Martin

• Leo Varadkar

ignoring the plight of these abandoned workers. Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil offered very little substantive to resolve the dispute other than some tea and sympathy and public pronouncements that these workers had been wronged by the company. The truth of the matter is they have also been wronged by their elected government representatives in Dáil Eireann. Tea and sympathy doesn’t put food on the table.” Sinn Féin spokesperson for Workers’ Rights Louise O’Reilly TD has assured workers that there is an alternative. O’Reilly said, “I can assure all workers that this is a priority for us. In government, we aim to introduce legislation based on the Duffy–Cahill report. The current system has been a disaster for working families. It has been hugely unfair. People should expect their employers to honour redundancy agreements reached in good faith with their unions. Nothing short of this is acceptable in 21st century Ire-

land. It certainly won’t be acceptable under a Sinn Féin government”. In the meantime, workers in Ireland face an uncertain future. Many companies may not survive in to a post-COVID economy.

Cllr. Daithí Doolan is Dublin City Councillor for Ballyfermot-Drimnagh and a member of Unite the Union.

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LEE HAMILL makes the case for the artist as a revolutionary activist who is in a unique position to facilitate the conversation on the nuts and bolts of what unity will look like, addressing the systemic inequalities in Irish society and the transformative impact that unity could have

• 'Tricolour' by Lee Hamill

THE

POWER OF

ART BY LEE HAMILL

So many artists of my generation believe our art to be activism. There are many reasons for this. The history of artists is shaped by revolution and innovation. Consider the Irish context, the 1916 Rising was precipitated by a cultural revival, re-establishing the imagery and spirit of a nation to the point that many of the leaders of the Rising were cultural practitioners, including painters and poets. Then look to the struggle and the role that murals played in spreading the message of republicanism and establishing our heroes and history in the face of oppression. The power of art is well established in republican history. Then consider the past decade and the social change we have seen through marriage equality and abortion rights, two more movements of social change in which young artists played our part in the delivery of a better Ireland. For my part, I believe the defining reason so many of

this generation of artists view their art as activism is that we have grown up in a time of deep societal upheaval as a result of the 2008 financial crash. Our youth has been dominated by austerity, inequality, unfair working conditions, and an increasingly liberalised economy that sees young people getting the rawest deal with increasing college fees, deteriorating mental health, no prospect of owning our own home, and generally being in a worse financial position than the previous generation. In these conditions, it is inevitable that artists will view their work as a way to highlight and become involved in the political issues of the day. My own art to date has been inspired by the border. A piece which I began developing in 2018 was inspired by ideas around Brexit, but also Thatcher’s shelved plan to rePartition the island and ghettoise West Belfast in the 80s.

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Our youth has been dominated by austerity, inequality, unfair working conditions, and an increasingly liberalised economy that sees young people getting the rawest deal

As an artist and a republican, I have also been reflecting on Partition and thinking what role I can play in righting this historic wrong

• 'The Republic Jack Built', and (below) '1987' by Lee Hamill

The border was naturally a focal point of this artwork given its prominence in our country’s history. Partition has been and will be reflected on much this year, the year of its centenary. Many North and South will celebrate this, some of whom will do so while also claiming to be republicans and having stood idly by for 100 years. As an artist and a republican, I have also been reflecting on Partition and thinking what role I can play in righting this historic wrong and prepare for Irish Unity. Artists have always operated on an all-Ireland basis,

both in our practices and on an institutional level. In many ways, it could be argued that institutionally the arts sector is already prepared for Irish Unity. The Arts Council and Visual Artists Ireland for example have never distinguished between those applying to them based on where they come from in the country or limited themselves to applicants from the 26 Counties only. If we look at the National College of Art and Design, it has a long and established history of employing artists from the Six Counties to take up positions as lecturers, heads of departments, and director of the college. For my own part, as a Louth based artist, I have exhibited as much work in Belfast as I have in Dublin. My artistic practice is fundamentally all-Ireland in both mindset and practice. Returning to my role as an activist, what can I do to develop the conversations on Unity? Art is in a unique position to facilitate the conversation, not only on the symbolic level of flags and anthems but on the nuts and bolts of what unity will look like. We can address the systemic inequalities in Irish society and the transformative impact that unity can have on that. We can address the broken housing system and how an all-Ireland social housing programme could give young people a chance to have a home of our own. We can address the underdeveloped public transport network which has long been a detriment of a Partitioned island. We can address the unbalanced regional development that has seen many rural communities left behind. The arts are best placed to facilitate these conversations due to the sector’s open nature that thrives on thoughts and ideas flowing. Change is coming, despite those determined to hold it back, and arts and culture must step up to the plate and play a part in delivering Irish Unity. ⊟ Lee Hamill is an artist and Sinn Féin activist

ISSUE NUMBER 2 – 2021 - UIMHIR EISIÚNA 2  anphoblacht

THE ROAD TO PARTITION

TOM HARTLEY outlines the keys steps in how Partition came to be a dreaded reality in 1921 'The betrayal of the national democracy of Industrial Ulster would mean a carnival of reaction both North and South, would set back the wheels of progress, would destroy the oncoming unity of the Irish Labour movement and paralyse all advanced movements whilst it endured'

The prophetic nature of these words by James Connolly published in the Irish Worker in March 1914, came to pass on the 23 December 1920, with the passing into law of the Government Of Ireland Act. Civil War, repressive legislation, internment, discrimination, misogyny and the mistreatment of women and girls, emigration, gerrymandered electoral boundaries, 100 years of political instability and suffering, and two reactionary states were the children of Partition. To understand where Partition led us, we should understand how it first emerged as a policy objective of the British Government and Ulster Unionists. The genesis of Partition can be traced to the campaigns of opposition waged by Northern Unionist and the Conservative Party in Britain to Gladstone’s first Home Rule Bill in 1886. In these campaigns, four elements of Northern Unionism coalesced under the banner of the Orange Order. They were ‘Big House Unionists’, Protestant Industrialists, political clerics, the industrial working class and tenant farmers. Beginning in 1886, the political conditions generated through their opposition to Home Rule, facilitated the growth and unity of Ulster unionism. What followed was the physical and psychological separation of Ulster Unionism from unionanphoblacht  UIMHIR EISIÚNA 2 - 2021 - ISSUE NUMBER 2

ists throughout the rest of Ireland. Northern Unionists had consciously and deliberately created a defensive line across the map of Ireland based on their numerical, geographical, and religious strength in the nine counties of Ulster. This led in March 1905, to the formation of a powerful centralized political organisation the Ulster Unionist Council (UUC). Between its birth in 1905 and the creation of the Northern State, the UUC would play a dominant and leading role in shaping the road to Partition. From the introduction of the 1886 Home Rule Bill, the position of the nine counties of Ulster was raised in parliamentary debate. In his speech introducing the bill on 8 April, British Prime Minister Gladstone stated that, “various schemes” have been proposed, and that “One scheme is, that Ulster itself, or, perhaps with more appearance of reason, a portion of Ulster, should be excluded from the operation of the Bill we are about to introduce”, adding that, “What we think is that such suggestions deserve careful and unprejudiced consideration”. Unionist opposition to Home Rule, supported by the British Conservative party, defeated the Home Rule Bills of 1886 and 1893. In the 1910 British general election, the Liberal Party in 29

• David Lloyd George and (below) Edward Carson

spite their failure, the exclusion of Ulster was now firmly entrenched in the debate about the future of Ireland. In September 1914, the Home Rule Bill became law, it was suspended until the end of the First World War. On 24 April 1916 when the Irish Republic was proclaimed at the GPO in Dublin, the political centre of gravity ashifted way from London to Ireland. The British Government sought to reclaim the political initiative. On 11 May 1916, Prime Minister Asquith announced Ireland was to get self-government (Home Rule); this an-

Britain having lost their majority were dependent on the 74 seats of Irish Nationalists party to remain in power. Prime Minister Asquith came to an understanding with Redmond that a Home Rule Bill would be introduced if the Irish Nationalist Party supported his move to break the power of the House of Lords and support his budget. This alliance between the Liberal and Irish Nationalist Parties galvanised the UUC and Conservatives. In early 1911 in the process of framing a Home Rule Bill, the British cabinet discussed a proposal by Lloyd George, Chancellor of the Exchequer, to exclude some parts of Ulster from the Bill. On 23 September, Edward Carson declared: “We must be prepared – and the time is precious in these things – the morning Home Rule passes, ourselves to become responsible for the government of the Protestant Province of Ulster.” Two days later, on 25 September, the UUC prepared a constitution for a Provisional Government of Ulster in the event of the imposition of Home Rule by Westminster. In April 1912, the Home Rule Bill was introduced. During its journey through the Westminster parliament various amendments were made proposing opt-out clauses for parts of Ulster, all of which failed due to the difficulty of finding common agreement on the counties to be excluded. De30

Lloyd George sold his proposal to Carson on the basis that Partition would be permanent. To Redmond the proposal was sold on the basis the outcome would be temporary nouncement was followed by a further statement from Asquith, on 25 May that David Lloyd George, the Minister for War in the British Cabinet, was appointed to put the British Cabinet’s decision into operation. After several separate meeting with Carson and Redmond in late May and early June, Lloyd George formulated a set of proposals, which advocated the immediate implementation of Home Rule with the provision that the six north-eastern counties be excluded. Lloyd George sold his proposal to Carson on the basis that Partition would be permanent. To Redmond the proposal was sold on the basis the outcome would be temporary. ISSUE NUMBER 2 – 2021 - UIMHIR EISIÚNA 2  anphoblacht

• British Prime Minister H. H. Asquith came to an understanding with John Redmond that a Home Rule Bill would be introduced for support in his move to break the power of the House of Lords and to support his budget

sion. Ulster’s population contained 900,000 Protestants and 700,000 Catholics; But in the six-county area there would be 825,000 Protestants and 430,000 Catholics. On 23 June 1916, John Redmond and Joe Devlin presented the same proposal to their Ulster supporters at a Convention in St Mary’s Hall Belfast where it was passed by 475 to 265. Redmond and Devlin believed that the Lloyd George proposals advocated ‘temporary’ exclusion of the six north-

'What a fool I was: I was only a puppet and so was Ulster and so was Ireland in the political game that was to get the Conservative Party into Power' – Edward Carson, December 1921

• The 1916 Rising shifted the political centre of gravity away from London to Ireland

Lloyd George had intentionally let the terms of the proposals, particularly the nature of exclusion, remain ambiguous. However, in a letter to Edward Carson on 29 May, Lloyd George wrote: “We must make it clear that at the end of the provisional period Ulster does not, whether she wills it or not, merge in with the rest of Ireland.” On 6 June 1916, Carson spoke at a meeting of the UUC, and advocated acceptance of Lloyd George’s proposal to exclude the six counties. The meeting was adjourned until 12 June to enable Carson to confer with unionists from Cavan, Monaghan, and Donegal. At a reconvened meeting, the UUC accepted the proposition. At this meeting Carson dealt with the demographics which underpinned the decianphoblacht  UIMHIR EISIÚNA 2 - 2021 - ISSUE NUMBER 2

ern counties and therefore Partition of any sort was part of a war emergency act. Eventually the contradictory proposals of Lloyd George were made public resulting in Carson and Redmond withdrawing from negotiations with the British Government. In December 1916, a crisis in the British cabinet led to Asquith’s resignation. Lloyd George became Prime Minister. Lloyd George proposed an Irish Convention which sat in Dublin from July 1917 until March 1918. Sinn Féin boycotted the proceedings. By March 1918, the business of the Convention had halted, unable to reconcile the conflicting demands of its Nationalist and Unionist members. The Convention failure was one of three major political reversals for the British Government in Ireland that year; Conscription was opposed and defeated by a broad spectrum of nationalist opinion, and 73 Sinn Féin candidates were elected in a December General Election, leading to the setting up of Dáil Eireann in January 1919. Despite the clear mandate for Irish self-determination, the 31

• Rioting on the streets of Belfast 1920s

British Government moved ahead with its plans to Partition Ireland. On 25 February 1920, it introduced The Government of Ireland Bill. The Bill proposed the establishment of local parliaments in the Six and 26 Counties. The ‘Act to Provide for the Better Government of Ireland’, became law on 23 December 1920. The date fixed for the establishment of the two parliaments was 3 May 1921. Stormont’s first meeting was 7 June 1921. Prior to the introduction of this new act the political crisis in the Six Counties intensified, underpinned by unionist paramilitary violence directed at the nationalist community. In June 1920, Derry’s nationalist community was subjected

to sustained attacks from unionist paramilitaries, which led to 20 deaths, 15 of whom were from the nationalist community. On 21 July, a meeting organised by the Belfast Protestant Association was held at the gate of the shipbuilders Workman Clark, in Queen’s Island, where unionist workers decided to expel their Catholic workmates from the shipyards. Many Protestant trade unionists were also driven from their employment. The expulsions spread quickly to other factories and mills across the city. In the two-year period between 1920 and 1922, it is estimated that 11,000 Catholics were forcibly expelled from their workplace and 23,000 were driven from their homes. Thousands of Belfast Nationalists fled to the South of Ireland and over a 1,000 fled to Glasgow. Between July 1920 and December 1922, over 500 people were killed in widespread sectarian attacks in the City, including 300 from the nationalist community. All of this in a city where Catholics were 25% of the population. The last word here should be left Edward Carson. On 14 December 1921 speaking in the House of Lords, he said “I was in earnest. I was not playing politics. I believed all this. What a fool I was: I was only a puppet and so was Ulster and so was Ireland in the political game that was to get the Conservative party into power”. ⊟ Tom Hartley is an author, historian and former Sinn Féin councillor.

• Crowds gathered outside Belfast City Hall in 7 June 1921 for the first meeting of the ‘Northern Ireland’ Parliament 32

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, d n a l e r I w e n a d il u b o Time t

s l l a w t u o h it one w As we reflect on over 100 years of Partition, the Northern state progresses to a rapid decline. What was meant to be a centenary of celebration has instead become an annus horribilis for the leaders of unionism. The pincer movement that removed Arlene Foster was quickly followed by the sinking of submarine Steve and as we enter another long summer, the growing siege mentality exacerbated by the implementation of the NI Protocol leaves nationalist areas throughout the Six Counties vulnerable once again. With the onset of the marching season and growing discontent from working class loyalists on yet another betrayal by the British government, will we see this outplayed in a summer of sectarian attacks on their nationalist neighbours? My own area, Clonard, has borne the brunt of many of these attacks, much of which increased in the years following Partition. Pogroms against Catholics were a common feature of Belfast during the nineteenth century as unionism sought to entrench its dominant position in the North. Partition in 1920 led to widespread violence and, between July 1920 and December 1922, over 300 Catholics were killed and over 11,000 forcibly forced from their jobs. 23,000 were driven from their homes, including my own great-grandfather’s family who were burnt out of their home in Turin Street, Belfast in 1920. Only months before, he was one of many Catholics forced from the shipyards and beaten by loyalist

Filmmaker SEÁN MURRAY considers the impact of a centenary of Partition from the shadow of Belfast’s ‘Peace Wall’ in Clonard mobs. He suffered a serious head injury and never fully recovered. In a recent documentary, I discussed the upcoming centenary through the prism of my own family tree where I detailed the story of my great-grandfather and the wider effects of Partition on following generations. His story is intertwined with that of my grandmother’s

The events of 1969 politicised a new generation and the struggle that followed saw many local men join the IRA

side of the family who were Protestant unionists from the Shankill Road. The film offers a backdrop to the complexities and trajectory of our individual cultural heritage. My great-great-grandfather, David Clifford, was an Orangeman and member of the British Army who became a full-time police reservist. Both families couldn’t have been more ideologically diverse, a disposition that became increasingly polarized as years went by. The daughter of David Clifford, my great-grandmother Margaret (Maggie), married Geordie Cunningham, a Catholic from Norfolk Street in Belfast, thus ending the family tradition, a move that caused great hostility from locals on the Shankill Road. The family home was no place for a mixed relationship and the move to a Catholic area offered a haven in what was a very turbulent time. After converting to Catholicism, the family set up home and had two daughters and a son, one of whom was Molly Murray – my grandmother. Her own life and that of her own children was to change dramatically when, in August 1969, history was to repeat itself. On 15 August, rampaging loyalist gangs along with B-Specials once again attacked the Clonard area, burning many homes in Bombay Street, Clonard Gardens and Kashmir Road. A number of Catholic families were evicted from Cupar Street and their homes destroyed with two Catholic-owned off-li-

• Catholics forced from their jobs and in the shipyards they were beaten by loyalist mobs

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• August 1969 – the scene from Clonard Monastery

cence premises looted and then burnt. Only for the swift action of locals in repelling the well-armed baying mobs, the towering Catholic Monastery would also have been burnt to the ground. Clonard was irreversibly altered. The mental barriers imposed by the policies of a sectarian state were now manifested by the physical barriers on every street corner. The houses that had been destroyed in Cupar Street were exactly where the peace line lies now. This provided the first separation between both communities that saw the gradual and heightened construction of what is now known as the ‘peace wall’. The events of 1969 politicised a new generation and the struggle that followed saw many local men join the IRA. My own father was one of a number of family members jailed during internment in 1971, a policy that witnessed many young men from the area imprisoned without trial. He was again jailed in 1981. I then spent many years travelling to Long Kesh with the children of other prisoners in the Sinn Féin-organised buses.

The 1980’s was my decade, the decade of my youth. On reflection, we were anesthetised by the conflict. We were the generation born into it and the many sectarian killings that occurred within the community was something we became accustomed to. We mourned for the loved ones of our friends and by the time we attempted to make sense of it there was another funeral or wake to attend. In exploring the trajectory of my own family history, I am reminded of the course it has now

The resistance we now see to requests for historical redress by victims of state violence is one further attempt by unionism to control the narrative of the conflict

taken and the suffering we have all endured to bring us to where we are now. The state that attempted to break the spirit of those before us is now being fractured by their sons and daughters. The Good Friday Agreement paved a new way forward for us all and the sectarian state that was built on undemocratic foundations would always crumble at the equitable demands of its people. The resistance we now see to requests for historical redress by victims of state violence is one further attempt by unionism to control the narrative of the conflict. However, the official narrative is now gone, there aren’t enough buckets for the sinking ship. In April 1934, Prime Minister James Craig declared “All I boast is that we have a Protestant parliament and a Protestant state”. That project is gone, Partition has failed us all. It’s time to build a new Ireland, one without walls. ⊟ Seán Murray is an award winning film/documentary maker from Belfast. His documentary titled The Wall can be viewed at https://seanmurray.tv.

• Seán Murray interviewing people for his documentary 'The Wall' 34

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NEW DUBLIN SINN FÉIN TRADE UNION GROUP FORMED

The power of change is in our hands BY MUIREANN DALTON While we are all aware of the words of the 1916 proclamation, very few of us are aware of the Democratic Programme for the first Dáíl in 1919 – written by Thomas Johnson, a member of Mandate Trade Union’s precursor union. Fewer still know the deleted paragraphs: “It shall be the purpose of the Government to encourage the organisation of people into trade unions and co-operative societies with a view to control and administration of the industries by workers engaged in the industries. “Finally, the Republic will aim at the elimination of the class in society which lives upon the wealth produced by the workers of the Nation but give no useful service in return, and in the

The Republic will aim at the elimination of the class in society which lives upon the wealth produced by the workers of the Nation but give no useful service in return process of accomplishment will bring freedom to all who have hitherto been caught in the toils of economic servitude.” With the long history of trade union and political solidarity in the struggle for a socialist republic, it seemed only natural to form a Dublin Sinn Féin Trade Union group. Myself, as a Mandate trade union activist, and Daithi Doolan, the Trade Union Officer on the Dublin Cúige, spoke at length on how we could strengthen workers’ rights and encourage more people into the movement. The whole ethos of both the trade union movement and Sinn Féin is that they are grassroots movements for the people by the people. We reached out to our comrades to see how many other Sinn Féin activists are members within the trade union movement and who would be interested in learning more about the trade unions. Thus, the group was formed. The vision of the Dublin Sinn Féin Trade Union group is to discuss workers’ rights and to encourage anphoblacht  UIMHIR EISIÚNA 2 - 2021 - ISSUE NUMBER 2

• Trade Union leaders in cluding Thomas Johnson (left facing camera), were among some twenty-five persons arrested in the raid on Libery Hall, 1920

solidarity between all the different trade unions, to ensure we are supporting all struggles that are concerning workers. To encourage trade union membership and to educate people in the trade union movement. To start the conversation about the trade union movement in a United Ireland, how we need to plan for unity and use the opportunity to strengthen workers’ rights across Ireland. To forge that link between politics and the trade union movement that was part of the vison that James Larkin and James Connolly had to build a socialist republic, a workers’ republic. The decline in trade union membership has been to the detriment of workers’ rights. The decline has not happened by chance. Companies and the government have been systematically chipping away at the Trade Union movement. They hire union busting firms to ensure workers are too scared to join the trade union. You have to ask yourself why are • Cllr. Daithi Doolan is the Trade Union Officer on the Dublin Cúige

• Sinn Féin has always been fighting for workers’ rights

They know that when workers come together and stand together, we have the power to control their terms and conditions. We have the knowledge of employment law, health and safety requirements. We are stronger together. Their aim is to divide and conquer; ours is to stand together! Sinn Féin has always been fighting for workers’ rights. We are the party who stands up and defends workers. We listen to workers, we know what they need and strive to introduce legislation to protect workers. The following are just some of the rights we fought for that are a direct result of us listening to workers and their needs. They include the Access Bill, the Provisional Miscellaneous Act and the Banded Hours Contract Bill, collective bargaining rights, amendments to the safety, health and welfare acts,

The decline in trade union membership has been to the detriment of workers’ rights. The decline has not happened by chance

the CEOs, directors, managers, and HR representatives so concerned if you join a trade union? They know that, by not being in a trade union, they can set employment contracts anyway they see fit, make up unlawful rules, decide to cut hours, pay, defy health and safety laws, without anyone standing up. They know most workers would know very little employment law. 36

domestic violence leave, right to disconnect, fair redundancy entitlements, legislation for the Duffy Cahill report, and the provision of a living wage. We, as workers and activists, need to organise and mobilise. We need to demand a fair workers act which would be written by workers with the protection of workers as the main focus. We need to plan for a United Ireland, a socialist republic, a workers’ republic. Now is the time to organise within our cumann and trade union councils. We can achieve great change by organising, uniting, and mobilising. The power of change is in our hands. Together we stand, divided we fall. If you would like more information on the Sinn Féin Trade Union group, please email muireann.dalton@sinnFéin.ie. ⊟ Muireann Dalton is Sinn Féin’s Dublin Regional Administrator as well as a trade union and community activist.

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I joined the hunger strike on 10 August. Nine men had already died and Mickey Devine would die ten days later

PAT SHEEHAN

A united, independent Ireland is within touching distance

It was early August 1981 in H Block 3, Long Kesh. I don’t remember the precise date. Nor do I remember how I came into possession of the small, clingfilm-wrapped comm in my hand, or who gave it to me, but I knew what the comm was about and with my heart in my mouth and shaky hands I unwrapped the tiny letter. It was the most important letter I would ever receive in my life. The comm was handwritten on two or three stuck-together cigarette papers and at the top was addressed to ‘Volunteer Pat Sheehan’. I had always been, and still remain, proud to have been a volunteer in the Irish Republican Army and to have taken up arms to resist the oppressive and malign British occupation of our land. Yet it surprised me to see ‘Volunteer’ in front of my name. For a second or two I felt a fleeting sense of pride that soon passed when it dawned on me that usually the only time you see ‘Volunteer’ in front of anyone’s name is on a headstone in a cemetery or the obituary columns. This was the comm I had been waiting on for many weeks. On the one hand I had wanted it never to come. On the other hand, I had volunteered to go on hunger strike and I was impatient for some certainty around that. I had been expecting confirmation sooner but had heard nothing, so I contacted our O.C. Bik McFarlane to ask for clarity. Bik wrote back to say some people thought that, psychologically, I mightn’t be ready for hunger strike on account of the situation with my sister Louise who had been diagnosed with a terminal illness just a few months earlier. I wrote back to Bik, told him I was psychologically strong, ready to go on hunger strike at any time and that no-one should have any worries about me. Now I had clarity and certainty. The comm began: “You volunteered to go on hunger strike and have been selected to replace Volunteer Kieran Doherty TD. By going on hunger strike you will be bringing the movement into direct confrontation with the enemy,

• Bik McFarlane and Pat Sheehan

so if you have any second thoughts stand aside now and nothing less will be thought of you.” I don’t know what it’s like to be sentenced to death, or to receive a terminal medical diagnosis but I felt I was somewhere in the same ballpark, especially when I read the final lines of the comm: “If you decide to go ahead and embark on this course of action you will be dead in two months.” It was as stark as that and rocked me back on my heels. When I put my name forward for the hunger strike it wasn’t a decision I

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came to rashly or quickly. I thought I had all the angles covered but I hadn’t considered seeing in front of me, in black and white, that I would be dead in two months. Did I have any second thoughts? To have doubts is to be human, and given that I would be going into uncharted territory I was certainly apprehensive about how I would respond as the hunger strike progressed. Nevertheless, I was confident that my own commitment to the struggle, allied to the stubborn streak in my own character, would get me over any bumps in the road. I joined the hunger strike on 10 August. 37

Nine men had already died and Mickey Devine would die ten days later. I remained without food for 55 days until 3 October. By that stage I was very seriously ill. I weighed around seven stone, I was completely yellow with jaundice, practically blind and my liver was enlarged and beginning to shut down. In theory, I would have been the next to die. As fate would have it, the leadership took the decision to end the hunger strike after a

The hunger strike smashed the criminalisation policy that the British government had hoped would lead to the defeat of the IRA and the struggle overall series of family interventions. We didn’t get all our demands in the immediate aftermath of the hunger strike but within a few short years we had achieved all the conditions we had fought for. More importantly, the hunger strike smashed the criminalisation policy that the 38

• The Hunger Strike elections blew the assertion that the IRA and the prisoners had no support out of the water

British government had hoped would lead to the defeat of the IRA and the struggle overall. The objective of the British had been to marginalise and isolate republicans and detach them from the communities in which they operated. Thatcher said the IRA had no support and the prisoners had no support, but Bobby’s election as MP for Fermanagh/South Tyrone, and later the election of Kieran Doherty and Paddy Agnew to the Dáil blew that assertion out of the water. So not only did criminalisation fail in what it was intended to do, it actually had the opposite effect. Many thousands of young people,

inspired by the sacrifice and selflessness of the hunger strikers who died, joined the struggle. Far from being isolated and marginalised our struggle has become more and more popular and our objective of a united, independent Ireland is within touching distance. I have no doubt future generations will look back to 1981 and that dramatic battle in the H Blocks of Long Kesh and pinpoint it as the beginning of the end of British rule in Ireland. ⊟ Pat Sheehan is a former republican prisoner, blanketman, hunger striker and is currently a Sinn Féin MLA for West Belfast

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THE HARVEST BRITAIN HAS SOWN

Former 'An Phoblacht' journalist Chrissie McAuley remembers the 1981 hunger strike “Maggie, Maggie, Maggie, Out, Out, Out.” “What do we want? Political Status. When do we want it? Now!” The deafening sound of voices in protest against British Prime Minister Maggie Thatcher, the clash of steel bin lids bashing the cold grey concrete - our symphony of resistance; a chorus of harsh, shrill whistles piercing your brain; the heart-breaking sounds of collective grief as our hunger strikers died, one by one; the thunderous volley of shots which saluted their courage. These are but some of the flashing sounds and images which instantly course through my body and mind when I have to address the hunger strike memories. But in truth, some 40 years on, it still represents a “no go area” of emotional trauma – a work in progress. Ask anyone who went through that period and it’s a likely similar situation.

The rights we should have had guaranteed under the UN Convention on Human Rights were cast aside by the Tories and others in the British establishment

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By chance, I was listening to the BBC World Service in the early hours of 5 May, the 40th anniversary of Bobby Sands death. The voice sounded familiar; it was former hunger striker Laurence McKeown, describing his own account of the multiple and psychological effects on his body and mind of prolonged hunger strike. It was a harrowing account. It was audible when he dropped his voice describing it as best he could. My heart went out to him, 40 years on, and on the day of Bobby’s 40th anniversary. Still taking its own individual toll. Often during the long years of the prison protests which led to the 1980 and ’81 hunger strike period, we were a handful of voices shouting into the wind, our pain lost amidst the storm of condemnation whipped up by the British propaganda machine. It spouted a toxic narrative that we were a “terrorist com39

munity” who supported “terrorists and criminals”. That labelling, that demonisation of the republican people and our political prisoners fostered a context and atmosphere where Britain’s crown forces inflicted extreme brutality and cruelty against us. In effect, the rights we should have had guaranteed under the UN Convention on Human Rights were cast aside by the Tories and others in the British establishment. The police and army had complete immunity to terrorise and oppress us in whatever way they determined. We were fair game; young, old, women, children, protesting prisoners. Working on AP/RN at the time, I had interviewed hunger striker Sean McKenna’s mother not long before he became close to death on the first hunger strike in 1980. I saw what a heavy toll it was extracting from her so when the second hunger strike was embarked upon by Bobby Sands in March 1981, there was a much stronger foreboding in the air. We could have many deaths ahead. I was among a small team from AP/RN covering the countless street demonstrations popping up in towns and villages across the North as the momentum gathered pace. The awareness that, minute by minute, Bobby and his comrades had no time to spare, weighed heavily on us. Hard-faced, hard-hearted Thatcher dug in and with it so did we. As a community, we faced death and multiple injuries as the RUC and British Army unleash≠ed lethal plastic bullets against peaceful protesters or shot dead little children and young people like Carol Ann Kelly, Paul Whitters, Julie Livingstone from close range as they walked their streets. The RUC shot lovely Nora McCabe, a mother of two wee children as she was going to get some cigarettes. There was a relentless,

savage escalation in the use of plastic bullets. It was, and is, a weapon of political control. In April 1981, a month after Bobby embarked on hunger strike, 1,959 plastic bullets were fired. The May total was a staggering 16,656 rounds fired. By August, seven people had been killed by plastic and rubber bullets*. Countless more sustained horrific, life-changing injuries and to this very day, there is no official record of the total involved as most of

The awareness that, minute by minute, Bobby and his comrades had no time to spare, weighed heavily on us those injured were afraid to attend hospitals in fear of arrest. We would cover the impact of injuries as best we could in order to give voice to the victims but the hardest of all for me personally was covering the funerals of several of our hunger strikers and putting together their personal and political profiles. Often, this meant speaking to their friends, comrades, and sometimes it meant speaking to close relatives. I will never forget their humility and their dignity. We operated out of our Falls Road offices and often did a 24 hour rota to cover the developing situation during the hunger strike as several of them died in the early

hours. Then the bin lids would sound or the women would come onto the street corners and say the rosary, holding black flags. This was a continuous feature of our lives until the hunger strike ended in October that same year. By then, everything had changed, changed utterly. The sacrifices made then put the spotlight on Britain’s evil prison policies and its wider suppression of our people and it paved the way, through Bobby’s election as MP for Fermanagh/South Tyrone, for mass mobilisation and international attention on the North. It was the start of a dynamic election strategy which saw Sinn Féin’s surge of support. I often go up to the grounds of the Roddy McCorley Society here in West Belfast where I once watched the friends, comrades, and families of our hunger strikers plant 12 tender oak whips into the ground in their memory. Tributes to Michael Gaughan, Frank Stagg, and the 1981 hunger strikers. They are growing tall and strong, showing us that from death springs life and that there is a rhythm of time and of growth. Bobby once wrote about “The Harvest Britain has Sown” in Ireland. He was speaking about the fear he had that the prison regime could make good men turn to hatred if it wasn’t for their minds and spirits remaining free. At a time when we have just celebrated with the Ballymurphy families then agonised with them as insult was added to injury by another Tory, Boris Johnston, be assured of this, as Bobby said, “This is the harvest Britain has sown: her actions will eventually seal the fate of her rule in Ireland”. * (Source: They Shoot Children, The use of Rubber and Plastic bullets in the North of Ireland). ⊟ Chrissie McAuley is a former Sinn Féin councillor and An Phoblacht journalist.

• The British Army shot dead (clockwise from top left) Carol Ann Kelly, Paul Whitters, Julie Livingstone from close range as they walked their streets and Nora McCabe as she was going to get some cigarettes 40

ISSUE NUMBER 2 – 2021 - UIMHIR EISIÚNA 2  anphoblacht

AND STILL, THEY COULDN’T BREAK US

BY SILÉ DARRAGH I was released from Armagh Gaol on 5 August 1981, three days before the death on hunger strike of Thomas McElwee. I left behind some of the bravest and best friends and comrades I have met during my long involvement in republicanism. The years leading up to and after the hunger strikes of 1980 and 1981 will forever be a part of me and what shapes me to this day. There has been a lot written by historians and academics about that seminal period of Ireland’s long history of resistance to British rule. But, by far, the most important are the personal, first-hand, stories of those who were there, who lived through and witnessed these historic events in the H-Blocks of Long Kesh and Armagh Gaol and on the streets of Ireland. anphoblacht  UIMHIR EISIÚNA 2 - 2021 - ISSUE NUMBER 2

When the British Government announced in 1976 the removal of political status for Irish republican prisoners in the Six Counties and claimed that from then we were criminals, they, and we, had no idea of the consequences of that move. I honestly don’t think they understood what they were dealing with. Their ambivalence towards the situation in the gerrymandered Six-County statelet and their unwavering support for the undemocratic system of governance exacerbated and prolonged the nationalist community’s desire to see it ended. For too long, discrimination and oppression had been the way of life for Catholics in a predominantly unionist regime. The British and unionist government thought there was

a military solution to an ages old scar that had festered and burned for far too long and they took the nationalist population for granted. Support for the IRA was growing and the British and unionist governments needed to find a way to break that resistance. They devised their ‘normalisation’ policy, the introduction of enhanced RUC patrols backed up by the sectarian UDR and even worse oppression visited upon the nationalist/republican population. They needed to ‘normalise’ the situation; to convince the world that this was a small local dispute and they thought us prisoners were the weak link. They underestimated us. We refused their labels and numbers, their beatings and savagery, the starvation and

They tried to single out those they thought of as weak. We circled around them and kept them strong. They tried everything. We resisted everything cold. We knew the struggle in the prisons were about more than wearing our own clothes and prison work. We knew their intention was to break the spirit of the very people we came from and to give in was to give them a victory, both militarily and psychologically. We spent four long years denied all basic rights afforded to prisoners throughout the world. Very many served their entire sentences on protest after losing remission for refusing to work. We were denied letters, parcels, and visits. The men in the H-Blocks were naked in prison cells twenty-four hours a day because they refused to wear a prison uniform. Beatings were systemic, brutality became

the norm. Physical and mental cruelty was a mark of some individuals, and many took pride in how belittling and cruel they could be. And still, they couldn’t break us. Together, we were one. A slight to one of us was a blow to us all. They tried to single out those they thought of as weak. We circled around them and kept them strong. They tried everything. We resisted everything. Some of the petty things they did demeaned them much more than it did us. They showed us a cruelty and a mind-set that this world has seen too often, one that has seen torturers brought to court. They shamed themselves. We resisted it all. But prisoners have only limited avenues of resistance; the next step was to be the final one. Too many had served full sentences on protest. Far more were facing many more long years in inhuman conditions. It couldn’t go on. We were at stalemate and the decision to hunger strike wasn’t taken lightly. Those were dark days. There were highs when we clung to hope, like the election of Bobby Sands in Fermanagh/South Tyrone, and later Kieran Doherty in Cavan/Monaghan and Paddy Agnew in Louth, and there were many, many lows. We grieved their loss. We felt it as a physical pain, as deep and sore as losing a family member. They were our family. The bond between the POWs during that time was something that never could or will be seen again. We felt we knew them. We knew the names of their parents, brothers, sisters and children. We knew their cellmates and the yarns and craic they told, the stories they told and the songs they sang. They were a part of us, and our hearts broke at the loss of them. • (left to right) Eileen Morgan Sinéad Moore, Maréad Farrell (back) and Síle But, they were also our pride. Darragh, Armagh Jail yard, 1980 42

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• Síle with Caoimhghín Ó Caoláin and Owen Carron at an election rally for Kieran Doherty in Cavan/Monaghan, 1981

What type of bravery is in a man to step forward and embark upon a long and painful death? What does it take to stand alone and to use your own body as a weapon against those who have wronged you? That takes a special kind of person.

The hunger strikers showed the world the strength of Irish resistance and set us on a path to changing the very nature of republican struggle The hunger strikers showed the world the strength of Irish resistance and set us on a path to changing the very nature of republican struggle. No longer could the British anphoblacht  UIMHIR EISIÚNA 2 - 2021 - ISSUE NUMBER 2

Government describe the north of Ireland as some kind of local quarrel between two competing sides. The world knew they were right in the centre of it. The hunger strikers put them directly in the gaze of the world and subsequent events have kept them there. Times have changed. The struggle has changed and it is time to heal that deep scar. I will never forget the period of 1976 to 1981. I will never forget those who died inside and outside the prisons to bring us to this point. I will never deny them and their memories. They are a part of us, a part of our history and we should be proud of them. And I hope to see the day when we can remember them all in a new and unified Ireland that embraces and respects all of its citizens equally. That is what they fought for. That is what they died for. ⊟ Silé Darragh is a Sinn Féin activists and former republican prisoner. 43

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To find out about events to commemorate the 40th Anniversary of the Hunger Strike you just have to go online at the two links below.

anphoblacht.com/contents/28025 bit.ly/30nTrgk 44

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A WATERSHED YEAR IN THE FREEDOM STRUGGLE On the 40th anniversary of the elections of Bobby Sands, Kieran Doherty, Paddy Agnew, and Owen Carron, JIM GIBNEY looks back at the emerging Sinn Féin electoral strategy. 1981 was a watershed year in the freedom struggle. It was the year which saw the incredible and prolonged battle in the H-Blocks and Armagh Women’s prison for political status reach an unimaginable zenith of nobility, heroism, and determination when ten young men died on hunger strike. The deaths of the hunger strikers effectively defeated Margaret Thatcher’s sustained attempt to criminalise the republican struggle and elevated it onto a new moral and political plane. The formidable resources invested by Thatcher in her criminalisation campaign failed to impinge on the political legitimacy of the republican struggle which was embedded in a centuries old resistance movement for national independence – which the protesting prisoners courageously symbolised. For five years, living in the most appalling, inhuman, and brutal conditions, these brave men and women, IRA and INLA volunteers on active service, in the front line of a literally life and death struggle, protected the integrity of that struggle with nothing more than their bodies and unconquerable minds – fortified and imbued with a simple, yet profound idea – the freedom and independence of Ireland. 1981 was also the year which saw for the first time, in this phase of the freedom struggle, the tactical use of elections by republicans to advance the prisoners’ cause.

The significance of this electoral intervention is to be found in the speed with which the leadership of the party decided to embrace elections as a central and key strategy to advance the struggle for a united and independent Ireland. This swift move reflected the realisation at leadership level of the positive impact of the election results, in the first instance on the

• The formidable resources invested by Margaret Thatcher in her criminalisation campaign failed anphoblacht  UIMHIR EISIÚNA 2 - 2021 - ISSUE NUMBER 2

• Dramatic election results peppered the tragedy and sadness of the hunger strikers’ deaths and of those on the streets of the North, where over 60 people died

prisoners’ campaign and secondly on the freedom struggle, nationally and internationally. On the day Bobby was elected, I well recall being in a friend’s house at the same time a senior IRA figure was passing through, whose response to the nine o’clock British news that Bobby was elected was that it ‘was worth ten bombs in London’. As the convoy of ten coffins emerged from the prison hospital, beginning with Bobby Sands on 5 May and ending with Mickey Devine on 21 August, dramatic election results peppered the tragedy and sadness of the hunger strikers’ deaths and of those on the streets of the North, where over 60 people died. The idea to stand Bobby as an election candidate struck me almost instantly when I heard the sad news of the passing of Frank Maguire MP for Fermanagh and South Tyrone. He was a great friend and supporter of the prisoners’ cause. He was a former political prisoner himself in Belfast’s Crumlin Road gaol in the 1950s. I discussed the idea with Gerry Adams and we in turn discussed with Bernadette Devlin McAliskey – out of which the wheels were set in motion to have Bobby nominated as a candidate. Bobby Sands election victory in Fermanagh and South Tyrone on 9 April was followed with election victories on 11 June in CavanMonaghan and Louth when hunger striker Kieran Doherty and Paddy Agnew, a ‘blanketman’ prisoner, were elected TDs. Other political prisoner candidates stood in several constituencies across the south and received significant electoral support. Taken collectively, the intervention by political prisoners in the 26-County election deprived Fianna Fáil of its stated objective of forming a government with an overall majority. Tellingly, this was the start of coalition governments and an end to single-party government. It was ironic that it was support for republican political prisoners at the ballot box that deprived the outgoing Fianna Fáil government, led by Charlie Haughey, of its overall majority objective, given its abysmal 46

failure to prevent the deaths of the hunger strikers or meaningfully intervene on behalf of the prisoners and their relatives. On 20 August, Owen Carron, Bobby Sands’ election agent, won the seat in the by-election held after Bobby’s death with an increased majority – a reflection of the anger nationalists felt at the death of the people’s MP. In May of that year, the Irish Independence Party, Peoples’ Democracy, the IRSP, and a number of independents, standing in the local government elections on a pro-prisoner ticket, achieved significant

The intervention by political prisoners in the south’s election deprived Fianna Fáil of its stated objective of forming a government with an overall majority electoral success. West Belfast MP and SDLP leader Gerry Fitt lost his Belfast Council seat to Fergus O’Hare of People’s Democracy. Oliver Hughes, the brother of Francis Hughes, was elected and, in September, James Mc Creesh, the father of Raymond, was also elected at local government level. Less than a year after the end of the hunger strike, Sinn Féin formally took part in its first election in the Six-Counties since the outbreak of the conflict in the late 1960s. Five Sinn Féin representatives, standing on an abstentionist ticket, were elected to the Stormont assembly, including Gerry Adams and Martin Mc Guinness. ISSUE NUMBER 2 – 2021 - UIMHIR EISIÚNA 2  anphoblacht

In the years immediately before the remarkable events of 1981, Sinn Féin was debating whether to involve itself in elections, particularly in the North. The party had an abstentionist boycott policy with regard to Dáil, Westminster, Stormont, and local elections in the North, but it stood in local elections in the South. The difficulty facing advocates for ending abstentionism on a selective basis, e.g. local government elections and assembly elections in the North, can be gleaned from the opposition to a motion that current MP for Mid-Ulster Francis Molloy put at the Ard Fheis before the 1981 hunger strike. Francis and Jimmy McGivern, on behalf of South Tyrone Comhairle Ceanntair, argued that the party should stand in the north and take their seats in local government elections. Ruairi Ó Brádaigh, then

The deaths of the hunger strikers effectively defeated Margaret Thatcher’s sustained attempt to criminalise the republican struggle and elevated it onto a new moral and political plane president of the party, spoke angrily against the motion saying that he would ensure that a motion of this nature would never again find its way onto the party’s Ard Fheis clár. It was difficult to understand the logic of opposing Sinn Féin standing in local government elections in the North when the party stood in the local government elections in the south and took their seats. But, of course, the difficulty ran much deeper than the motion brought to the Ard Fheis by Francis. It was a fundamental issue enmeshed in the history of the struggle for independence, going back to the 1921 Treaty and Partition, with the predominant outlook suspicious of being involved in elections in case it would ultimately undermine the use of armed struggle. In a previous phase of the struggle, the ‘Border Campaign’ of the 1950s, two prisoners were elected to Westminster from the Mid-Ulster

• Ruairi Ó Brádaigh and Dáithí Ó Conaill at the 1982 Sinn Féin Ard Fheis

and Fermanagh-South Tyrone constituencies in 1955. Republicans won 23.6% of the ballots with 152,310 votes. In 1957, Ó Brádaigh was one of four abstentionist TDs elected in the Dáil elections. It wasn’t a clash over tactics. It was a clash over the strategic development of the struggle which was summed up in the argument presented by Danny Morrison that armed and electoral struggle were complementary, not contradictory and that both should be pursued simultaneously. This was famously characterised by Danny’s colourful phrase at the Ard Fheis in 1981 when he said, “Who here really believes we can win the war through the ballot box? But will anyone here object if, with a ballot paper in this hand and an Armalite in the other, we take power in Ireland?” The evolution of Sinn Féin’s involvement in elections was understandably slow and, at times, one is in awe at the position the party now holds in Ireland – in government in the North, the lead opposition party in the South, and on the cusp of being in government there following the next election. And it all began in Bobby Sands’ cell in the H-Block’s prison hospital, where he agreed to stand as a candidate in Fermanagh-South Tyrone, where he heard the news of his outstanding victory and where he died 40 years ago on 5 May 1981 after 66 days on hunger strike. ⊟ Jim Gibney is a Republican activist, former political prisoner, and parliamentary adviser to Senator Niall Ó Donnghaile

• Sinn Féin’s Joe Austin, Danny Morrison, Cyril Toman, Gerry Adams, Martin McGuinness and Owen Carron at press conference during Stormont Assembly Election 1982 anphoblacht  UIMHIR EISIÚNA 2 - 2021 - ISSUE NUMBER 2

FLEET STREET AND THE HUNGER STRIKES ROY GREENSLADE looks back at the British media newspaper coverage of the 1981 hunger strike In the spring of 1981, Fleet Street, traditional home of the newspapers that helped to set Britain’s political agenda while dominating its national conversation, was all of a flutter at a coming royal wedding. There were more serious distractions. Riots broke out in Brixton, Peter Sutcliffe (aka the Yorkshire Ripper) was on trial, the British Labour Party was in crisis, and Ireland’s greatest-ever footballer, George Best, entered hospital in another vain bid to win his battle with the bottle. As ever, the popular press averted its gaze from the situation in the North of Ireland, the place it chose to call Ulster or, just as infuriatingly and wrongly, the Province. So, the start of a second hunger strike by prisoners in the H Blocks passed with barely a paragraph. On 2 March, The Times, which cast itself as the paper of record, was a model of restrained formality: “Mr Robert Sands, described as leader of the Provisional IRA men at the Maze prison, began his threatened hunger strike yesterday.” The Guardian, servant to the nation’s liberal minority, carried the longest of articles that morning to report that Bobby had refused food for the first time. It was written by its Belfast-based correspondent, David Beresford, 48

who would later become the hunger strike’s most illuminating chronicler with his book, ‘Ten Men Dead’. A couple of paragraphs appeared in the Daily Telegraph. Nothing in the Daily Express or The Sun, a brief in the Daily Mail, 31 words in the Daily Mirror. I was working for one of

Editors blinded themselves, and their readers, to the true situation on the ground in the Six Counties the papers that also ignored the event, the newly-launched, supposedly left-of-centre, red-top tabloid, the Daily Star. At the morning news conference, the hunger strike was not regarded as newsworthy enough to merit a mention. At the time, the joint sales of those eight daily papers amounted to 14.7 million copies a day. Their total readership was estimated at

three times that, about 44 million, a huge slice of the UK’s then population of 56 million. Of course, the national press was not the British people’s only source of news. There were the bulletins across BBC TV and radio channels,

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• Margaret Thatcher and every British newspaper editor agreed on one subject 'the IRA must be defeated'

plus the ITV service. But it was newspapers that dominated the media landscape. What they reported, what they didn’t report, and, most significant of all, how they reported, was of paramount importance. From 1969 onwards, the papers, whatever their political persuasion, had misreported, misinterpreted, and misrepresented the IRA’s struggle. Its members had been marginalized and demonised. In so doing, editors blinded themselves, and their readers, to the true situation on the ground in the Six Counties. As willing allies of successive British governments, Labour and Tory, they believed instead that their own propaganda reflected reality. This denial of the potency of Irish republicanism was evident in their collective reaction to the beginning of the 1981 hunger strike. It was of no real concern. It was “proof” that the IRA was losing the war (although, of course, they pretended it wasn’t a war). Most definitely it was not “news.” For news was what those newspaper editors said it was, and they didn’t regard a prison protest in “Ulster” as news. End of story. Press neglect of Northern Ireland, and the consequent ignorance of its readership, had

After years of being misinformed about the nature of the struggle in Ireland, British people believed in the oft-repeated media myth that the IRA was a small 'terror group' without much support and in the process of being rapidly defeated a long history. From Partition until the Civil Rights protests in 1968, there was no scrutiny of its Stormont government. Unionists, safe

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from inquiring journalists, did as they liked. Once the Troubles arrived, newspapers - acting in concert with the British authorities they were supposed to scrutinise - conveniently overlooked the half century of despotism to portray the resulting complexity of political, economic and social division in the simplest of terms. It was a conflict between two warring tribes, they said. And they chose to side with the tribe that wished to maintain the Union regardless of its previous crimes. That background is essential to understanding not only the lack of support for the IRA within Britain but the lack of knowledge about the conflict, which persists to this day. In 1981, despite Margaret Thatcher’s twoyear-old government becoming ever more unpopular week by week, there was one subject on which she and every British newspaper editor could agree: the IRA must be defeated. Coverage of the hunger strike was a classic example of how a compliant media operated as a propaganda arm of government. First stage: ignore and belittle. Throughout March, the absence of news articles about Bobby’s fast, even when he was joined by other volunteers, was striking. Editorials, 49

• Unionist candidate in the 1981 by-election for Fermanagh/South Tyrone, Harry West

such as there were, backed the government’s line that prisoners should never be granted political status. The message to readers was obvious: the hunger strike was a matter of no consequence. Nothing to see here, move on. A similar silence greeted the decision, on 26 March, by Bobby to stand as a candidate

In 1981, despite Margaret Thatcher’s two-year-old government becoming ever more unpopular week by week, there was one subject on which she and every British newspaper editor could agree: the IRA must be defeated in the parliamentary by-election for Fermanagh/South Tyrone. Once the other potential candidates dropped out, creating a straightforward battle for votes between Bobby and the Unionist, Harry West, only The Times, The 50

• Bobby Sands election victory could not be ignored

Guardian, and Daily Telegraph thought it merited coverage. On 31 March, all three reported that Bobby was likely to win. The mass market titles kept quiet. But, as polling day neared, the Daily Express confidently predicted that “sufficient Catholic voters will abstain” to enable West “to scrape home to victory”, which “will be a major blow for the IRA propaganda machine”. But Bobby’s election victory on the 40th day of his fast could not be ignored. The Express carried the news on its front page, as did the Daily Mirror and Daily Mail. Rightly, the Mirror viewed it as a major boost to the prisoners’ campaign for political status. The other papers refused to admit that truth. So, at this point, we entered stage two of media mendacity: turning reality on its head. Nowhere was this clearer than in The Times, which asserted that the vote had no especial

political significance beyond “expressing sympathy for Sands and concern over conditions at the Maze” and merely amounted to “a rejection” of his opponent, West. It concluded: “The myth of Fermanagh must not be allowed to gain credibility.” When I first read that 40 years ago, I was struck by both its impotence and its arrogance. What convinced the myth-making editorial hierarchy of The Times that anyone in Ireland either cared for its opinion or would take heed of its “advice”? Who did the paper think would stop a unique IRA-inspired electoral victory, soon to be repeated when two prisoners were elected to the Dáil, from gaining credibility? I looked in vain among my colleagues for even a glimmer of sympathy, let alone understanding. For them, for the overwhelming majority of Britons, Northern Ireland

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was a mystery they could not understand, a riddle they didn’t wish to solve. There were honourable exceptions, however, such as the 500 people who decided to defy a government ban on marches by planning to march on Downing Street. They were set upon by police as they gathered outside Kilburn tube station. Thirty two of them were arrested. Some managed to get to Westminster, but were foiled by police cordons. Meanwhile, newspaper editors, apparently oblivious to their own propagandistic role, were obsessed with the possibility of republicans securing a publicity coup in the event of Bobby’s death, which was the fervent wish of the Sunday Express editor John Junor who wrote: “I will shed no tears when Sands dies. My only hope is that if and when he does every other IRA terrorist will go on the same sort of hunger strike in sympathy. And stay on it until they are all in wooden suits.” This belligerent, bloodyminded point of view wasn’t regarded as the least bit controversial among his audience. And I heard many a journalistic colleague say much the same, often worse. Irish republicans were The Other. After years of being misinformed about the nature of the struggle in Ireland, British people believed in the oft-repeated media myth that the IRA was a small “terror group” without much support and in the process of being rapidly defeated. In Fleet Street, as in Britain, there was no grasp of the implications of a government allowing the hunger strikers to die. Thatcher’s soundbite rebuke to prisoners demanding political status - “a crime is a crime is a crime” - was accepted as a reasonable response. The Express told its readers that “decent Irish people revile them [the hunger strikers] as a stain on their country’s honour.” When Bobby finally succumbed on 5 May, the third stage kicked in: derision and denial. “Blackmail has failed,” said the right-wing Sun. “The society which has stood firm against violence in long blood-stained years will remain unshaken.” Its left-of-centre rival, the Mirror, agreed. A hunger striker’s death “advances no cause.” And so said the Express: “Sands will find no victory in the grave… The shadow of Bobby Sands will pass.” A Guardian writer was unsympathetic, seeing Bobby’s self-sacrifice as “a bizarre mixture of heroism, idealism, criminality and black comedy.” In conceding Bobby’s bravery, the

Telegraph regarded it as “the courage of the ruthless and corrupted sort that holds human life in contempt.” For the Express, he was simply “a fanatic.” In their London offices, the editorial executives of Britain’s press preached the gospel

‘Sands will find no victory in the grave… The shadow of Bobby Sands will pass’ Daily Express editorial after the death of Bobby Sands

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according to prime minister Margaret Thatcher. They danced on the graves of Bobby and the other nine hunger strikers who followed him to their deaths. They were convinced that their words counted. Of all the papers, it was The Times, by relying on the reports of its Belfast correspondent, that was able to perceive the real effects of the hunger strike, noting that it had stimulated “a measure of active sympathy with the Provisionals that has not been seen since the army shot thirteen men dead in Londonderry in January 1972.” How different from the Daily Telegraph leader writer who so confidently pronounced that hunger striking “normally fails to procure lasting fame for those who employ it.” Really? Forty years’ on, whose iconic portrait stares down from the walls of Belfast and Derry? Whose name is synonymous with the hunger strike that proved to be the starting point for the Peace Process? Who defeated the propaganda perpetrated by Britain’s mighty national press? ⊟

The 1980 and 1981 hunger-strikes were international events with expressions of support for the republican prisoners carried out around the world. JOE DWYER looks at how the support for the Hunger Strikers in Britain interacted with the London Marathon, the Brixton Riots, People’s March for Jobs, a Royal Wedding, a Deputy Leadership Contest, and a proposed Papal visit.

The impact of the

hunger strike in Britain “I just knew it was all so wrong. And I couldn’t believe how little people cared.”

uch is my Mum’s usual refrain when asked about her own memories of the H-Block hunger strikes. As a first year nursing student, she struggled to understand how those around her weren’t as outraged as she was that an elected MP was dying on hunger-strike for five basic demands. Or indeed, that they weren’t as appalled when, once the deaths started, republican prisoners were still putting themselves forward to join the hunger-strike and replace fallen comrades. The whole situation just felt surreal. As the daughter of Irish emigrants to Britain, she felt compelled to write to Owen Carron – who had been Bobby Sands’ election agent before becoming the successor MP for Fermanagh & South Tyrone – to share her disbelief, sympathy, and support for the prisoners’ demands. She felt a need to somehow convey that there were, in fact, people in Britain following what was happening. That there were people who did care. This sense of disbelief and helplessness towards what was unfolding in 1981 is a familiar sentiment related by those who lived through that historic year. Perhaps, it was an emotional response that was further compounded for those living outside of Ireland. To find oneself in Britain, America or Australia and removed from Ireland during such a pivotal chapter of Irish history was difficult. To feel like a spectator watching from the side-lines. However, despite the distance, Irish republicans and other progressive allies in Britain mobilised to demonstrate their solidarity for the hunger strikers and other protesting prisoners in the H-Blocks of Long Kesh and Armagh Women’s Gaol. When the hunger strike commenced on 1st March 1981, with Bobby 52

• London Marathon protest

Sands refusing food, London was under a temporary total ban on all street marches, introduced by the Home Secretary Willie Whitelaw. This initial hurdle stymied a lot of the early momentum of the Anti H-Block/Armagh campaign in the capital. The first break-through public meeting on the hunger strike took place in Kilburn Square on Saturday 7 March and was hosted by Sinn Féin in Britain. A notable early high-profile propaganda coup for the campaign took place on 29 March at the inaugural ‘London Marathon’. Largely remembered today for the image of two winning athletes crossing the finishing line together holding hands (America’s Dick Beardsley and Norway’s Inge Simonsen). What is often not recalled is that both men were initially overtaken towards the finish-line by two late entries, on behalf of the ‘Smash the Prevention of Terrorism Act Campaign’, who between them held aloft a banner reading: “Victory to the Irish Hunger Strikers”. In full view of the world’s media glare. On Friday, 10 April, following the election of Bobby Sands as MP ISSUE NUMBER 2 – 2021 - UIMHIR EISIÚNA 2  anphoblacht

• Manchester shows support for the Hunger Strikers

• Troops Out Movement, Easter commemoration, 1981

• Solidarty with the IRA prisoners in Wormwood Scrubs

for Fermanagh & South Tyrone, a packed Sinn Féin public meeting was held in London’s Conway Hall, addressed by Mary McDermott of Belfast Sinn Féin, whose son Seán had been killed on active service in 1976. The following day, 11 April, a street meeting organised by Sinn Féin in Brixton attracted considerable interest and attendance. The increased police presence in the area - a consequence of mounting local tensions between Brixton’s black community and the police resulted in the manhandling of many demonstrators off the streets and several arrests. That same day saw the outbreak of the so-called ‘Brixton Riots’.

the Kilburn High Road. Hundreds chanted “Bobby Sands MP” as they attempted to break the police cordon. In the event, forty were arrested in resultant scuffles and an impromptu sit down was held outside Brondesbury railway station. Also on Sunday 26 April, three IRA prisoners managed to reach the outside roof of Wormwood Scrubs and stage an overnight rooftop protest in support of the hunger strikers, much to the embarrassment of prison authorities. While, on 4 May, on the eve of Bobby Sands’ death, five IRA prisoners made it onto the roof of Long Lartin Prison, carrying banners in support of Sands and plastic sheeting to shelter from the rain, in a similarly well planned protest. In Birmingham, a week after the death of Bobby Sands, a memorial vigil was held in the Sparkhill area on 12 May. The following day, the headquarters of the AUEW in Birmingham was occupied and the annual general meeting of the Birmingham Labour Party was picketed. On 16 and 18 May, hunger strike rallies were organised to coincide with the continuing ‘People’s March for Jobs’, an unemployment march from the North West of England to London, as it passed through Smethwick and Birmingham respectively. In Manchester, it was reported that vigils of up to 100 people were held following the death of each hunger-striker. On 18 May, eight protestors occupied the Aer Lingus offices on London’s Regent Street.

s the weeks progressed, further meetings, pickets, and marches took place throughout Britain in support of the hunger strikers. In Oxford, a local ‘Ireland Solidarity Group’ unfurled a large banner reading “Save Bobby Sands MP” over the local Carfax Tower landmark. The annual conference of the National Council for Civil Liberties, although rejecting a direct motion in support of political status, endorsed a motion approximating to the five demands for all prisoners. In the north of England, a Leeds Hunger-Strike Committee held a public meeting on 15 April. Over Easter 1981, the Troops Out Movement organised 24 hour fasts in support of the hunger strike. One group took up a position on the steps of Westminster Cathedral, a second group at an Easter Fair in Finsbury Park, and the third group, after being removed from Brixton Town Hall by police, relocated to the steps of Westminster Abbey. On Easter Sunday, Sinn Féin in Britain held its annual Easter Commemoration in London, with a parade procession from Speakers’ Corner at Hyde Park to Kilburn Square. Several hundred took part in the march, including two bands which had travelled down from Glasgow. The Commemoration was addressed by Eddie Caughey of Sinn Féin’s POW Department in Britain and Seán Crowe. A London H-Block/Armagh Committee protest march took place on 26 April, despite a renewed 28 day ban on all processions in the city. This contravention resulted in a street melee as police used their vehicles and commandeered buses to block oncoming marchers on anphoblacht  UIMHIR EISIÚNA 2 - 2021 - ISSUE NUMBER 2

n Wednesday, 27 May, campaigners again met and leafletted the ‘People’s March for Jobs’ with Anti H-Block flyers as it finally reached London. While, on Sunday 31 May, in Merthyr Tydfil in Wales, hunger strike campaigners took to the stage and raised the prisoners’ plight at a commemoration of the 150th anniversary of the Merthyr Rising. A key highlight of the hunger-strike protests was a large scale demonstration organised by the Labour Committee on Ireland in Mansfield, in the English Midlands, on 4 July. Mansfield was deliberately selected as it was the constituency of the Labour Party MP, and spokesperson on the North, Don Concannon. On May Day 1981, Concannon had been dispatched to the North, 53

• Labour Party leader, Michael Foot’s home in Hampstead was repeatedly picketed throughout the hunger strike

for a hurried visit with Bobby Sands on his deathbed to tell him that the British Labour Party would be supporting the British Government and opposing political status. A former Coldstream Guards lance-corporal, Concannon had previously served as a Junior Minister in the NIO and had helped oversee the withdrawal of special category status in March 1976. Owen Carron later told reporters that Bobby Sands had not been asked if he wished to see Concannon, Carron relayed that, “Bobby put it to Concannon that he [Bobby] was involved in a political struggle, Concannon agreed. Bobby then asked him why he did not support the five demands. Concannon replied that the five demands equalled political status. He gave Concannon a dirty look and Concannon left.” The visit was widely condemned as a callous and offensive publicity stunt. It earned Concannon the animosity of many, and the July Mansfield demonstration began with a picket of his constituency clinic. In total, approximately 600 members of Labour Party branches, local trade union groups, and hunger strike committees marched through the town centre of Mansfield. On their route, they were met with a sizeable National Front counter-demonstration, reportedly chanting “Paisley is our leader; Maggie Thatcher is our Queen.” Protests, mobilisations, and pickets continued throughout the summer. On 23 August, Sinn Féin held a series of simultaneous parallel pickets at prisons holding Republican prisoners, including Wakefield, Durham, Leicester, Parkhurst, and Albany. The hunger strike solidarity campaigning in Britain did have the effect of chipping away at the so-called bipartisan approach within Westminster. The change was nothing seismic, but it did mark an initial chink in the armour of conventional wisdom and political consensus on the so-called ‘Irish Question’. On 8 April, a little over a month into the hunger strike, an adhoc ‘Don’t let the Irish Prisoners Die’ Committee was launched in Westminster. At their inaugural meeting, British Labour MP Ernie Roberts announced that 14 fellow Labour MPs had signed an appeal seeking “an imaginative breakthrough” on the hunger strike. Among them Frank Allaun, Patrick Duffy, Willie McKelvey, Stanley Newens, Christopher Price, Ernie Ross, Dennis Skinner, and Clive Soley. 27 lawyers were also listed among the Committee’s first signatories. Another breakthrough for the campaign arrived in May with Ken Livingstone’s election to leadership of the Greater London Council. 54

The new GLC leader was a firm supporter of the Anti H-Block/Armagh campaign and, on 21 July, hosted Alice McElwee, the mother of Thomas McElwee – then on his 44th day of hunger strike, at County Hall. Speaking to the Standard, Livingstone said “The H-Block protest is part of the struggle to bring about a free united Ireland. They have my support, and they have the support of the majority of the Labour Party rank and file.”

n 29 July, Livingstone sponsored an eight-person token 48 hour fast and black flag demonstration on the steps of County Hall. The protest was timed to coincide with the British Royal wedding taking place on the same day. As Livingstone observed, “I can’t think of a more appalling contrast between this wedding beanfeast and what is happening in Ireland.” As the wedding procession passed Waterloo station that evening, one thousand black balloons were released over London from the nearby County Hall. The British Labour Party’s Deputy Leadership contest, over the summer of 1981, also provided an opportunity to bring the prison protest to the attention of the British labour movement. Tony Benn, the left’s candidate for Deputy Leader, was clear in setting out his stall in support of a just resolution to the hunger strike and prison protest and for the withdrawal of British Troops. In a BBC radio interview on 12 May, Benn stated that, “Britain’s military presence in Northern Ireland is a major part of the problem. We have got to find a way of allowing a solution to be found in Ireland itself.” In the interview Tony Benn called Partition “a crime against the Irish people” and suggested that British troops be withdrawn and replaced by UN peace-keeping forces. These remarks, particularly given the British Labour Party leader Michael Foot’s close alignment to Thatcher’s handling the hunger strike, drew the ire of Benn’s shadow cabinet colleagues. However, it wasn’t just the Labour-left that began questioning Britain’s role in Ireland. Speaking at a conference of the Labour Party in Wales on 30 May, the right-wing Labour MP for Pontypool, Leo Abse, openly criticised Britain’s “swashbuckling” role in Ireland and suggested, “We must prevent Northern Ireland becoming our Vietnam. We must make it clear that a future Labour Government is prepared to get troops out of Ireland.” The following morning, in an interview with RTÉ Radio, he stood over his remarks, reiterating, “The fact is that ISSUE NUMBER 2 – 2021 - UIMHIR EISIÚNA 2  anphoblacht

• April, Kilburn, London

• July, County Hall, London

• September, 3 day march to TUC Conference in Blackpool

more and more we have to accept that Ulster is our last colony and the process of decolonisation has to go on.” The Labour Party leader, Michael Foot, came under particular focus from grassroot-Labour activists and Anti H-Block/Armagh Campaigners. His effusive support for the Thatcher Government’s handling of the situation was clearly demonstrated in the Commons when, following the death of Bobby Sands, he argued that any

measures approaching political status would “aid to the recruitment of terrorists.” Foot’s home in Hampstead was repeatedly picketed throughout the hunger strike. On 17 May, he dismissed those protesting outside and told them that Gerry Fitt ably represented the nationalist people of the North of Ireland, an analysis which became highly questionable only three days later, when Fitt lost his seat in Belfast

• September, Owen Carron addressing a press conference, Conway Hall, London

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City Council at the local elections. Ultimately, Fitt would be unseated as MP for West Belfast in the 1983 Westminster election by Sinn Féin’s Gerry Adams. By the end of July, ten backbench Labour MPs alongside the Plaid Cymru MP Dafydd Thomas, who moved the Fermanagh and South Tyrone by-election writ, handed in a letter to Number Ten, Downing Street, calling on the British Government to immediately abolish prison clothing and work and to “show flexibility over the other points at issue.”

I • May, Birmingham

• September, Birmingham

• September, Downing Street, London

• September, Relatives picket, Westminister Cathedral, London 56

n mid-September, 91 prisoners’ relatives travelled to London for a series of public meetings and engagements. On 26 September, a march organised by Sinn Féin due to take place in Luton was banned following threats of a counter-demonstration by the neo-Nazi ‘British Movement’. Instead, a rally was held in a local park, addressed by Sinn Féin’s Eddie Caughey and hunger strike relatives Malachy McCreesh, Maurice McMullan, and Nora McElwee. Meanwhile, an Anti H-Block/Armagh march planned for the same day in Glasgow was also banned by a special order targeting marches relating to Ireland. Scottish loyalists in Glasgow, who were then marching every Saturday to protest the recently proposed Papal visit Britain for the following year, were not subject to the same ban. At the Labour Party’s 80th Annual Conference, held at Brighton from 27 September to 2 October, there were an extraordinary 53 motions on Ireland. The mood of many attending was well captured when Don Concannon was met with loud boos and hisses from party activists as he took to the conference stage. The newly elected MP for Fermanagh & South Tyrone, Owen Carron, was in attendance for much of the debate on Ireland. Afterwards, he told waiting reporters that what he heard had been entirely from a pro-British perspective and while talk of working-class unity was admirable, “until we remove the border, we will never have working-class unity or socialist politics”. Carron also expressed his disappointment that the trade union block votes had been used to defeat many of the tabled motions on Ireland. On the Tuesday of conference, Carron addressed a packed conference ‘fringe meeting’ on Ireland where he received two standing ovations. There was also prolonged applause for a statement from protesting republican prisoners within the H-blocks. In the minds of many, 1981 was indelibly marked by memories of leafleting, postering, canvassing, marching, picketing, occupying, and disrupting. Motions supporting the hunger strikers and their demands were passed throughout the summer by various organisations and bodies; constituency Labour Parties, student unions, Trades Councils, socialist groups, foreign solidarity networks, and other activist-led bodies. A new generation of activists were politicised, both amongst the Irish community in Britain and within the wider British left. As it happens, on 21 April 1982, Owen Carron replied to the letter that my Mum had sent him the previous year. He offered her his thanks for her support and solidarity. Also included in the envelope a booklet of ‘The Writings of Bobby Sands’. In his reply, the Fermanagh & South Tyrone MP reassured her: “For those of us over here closely involved in the struggle, it is very uplifting to hear from someone like yourself who has become aware of what is happening in Ireland. It is good to know that people of Irish descent like yourself are proud to identify with the struggle for a free Ireland and have not forgotten their kith and kin who are fighting for their rights and liberty in the North of Ireland. Last year was a particularly sad year in Irish history. It was very sad for us who were close to the hunger-strikers and who saw them suffer and die and we must bring about what they died for – a free united Ireland.” It is a letter that today hangs framed in the Sinn Féin London Office. For it carries a message that is still relevant. Four decades on. I read over it often myself. For inspiration and motivation. Because, while times and tactics have changed – and thankfully so - the struggle remains the same. The work carries on and, 40 years on, it falls on us today to bring about what those ten brave hunger strikers died for - a free united Ireland. ⊟ Joe Dwyer is the Sinn Féin Political Organiser for Britain ISSUE NUMBER 2 – 2021 - UIMHIR EISIÚNA 2  anphoblacht

BY MÍCHEÁL MAC DONNCHA The struggle in the H-Blocks of Long Kesh and in Armagh Women’s Prison, culminating in the Hunger Strikes of 1980 and 1981, has produced a library that, 40 years on, continues to grow. This article takes a look at just some of those books and is not intended to be a comprehensive survey but is a personal perspective. Top of the list must be Bobby Sands’ own writings. First published in pamphlet form in April, June, and October 1981 respectively: ‘The Writings of Bobby Sands’, ‘The Diary of Bobby Sands’ and ‘Prison Poems’. The writings of Bobby Sands were a revelation to me and to many of my generation. They cut through all the hostile propaganda against Republicans and were read avidly throughout tragic ’81 and well beyond. They have seldom been out of print since. Much of the material was first published in Republican News and from 1979 in the amalgamated An Phoblacht/Republican News. They were followed in 1982 by Bobby’s ‘One Day in My Life’ with an introduction by Seán Mac Bride. This was published by Mercier Press of Dublin and Cork whose founder and director John M. Feehan in 1983 wrote and published ‘Bobby Sands and the Tragedy of Northern Ireland’, an impassioned account of the political context of Bobby’s life and the war then raging. Feehan deserved credit for such work in the face of the prevailing censorship and demonization of republicans. With wonderful irony, he placed on the title page of his own book Margaret Thatcher’s words: “You have to be prepared to defend the things in which you believe and be prepared to use force to secure the future of liberty and self-determination.” Bobby’s writings have been translated into many languages. While I do not (yet?) read Italian, I do possess a copy of ‘Un Giorno Della Mia Vita’, the translation of ‘One Day in My Life’ by Silvia Calamati, first published in 1996. Generally regarded as the best journalistic account of the 1981 Hunger Strike, ‘Ten Men Dead’ by the late David Beresford is another classic which must be read, with even The Observer describing it as “possibly the best book to emerge from the past 20 years of conflict in Northern Ireland” when it was published in 1987. It uses the ‘comms’, secret written communications between the prisoners and the Movement outside, to give a gripping and moving account of the crisis. anphoblacht  UIMHIR EISIÚNA 2 - 2021 - ISSUE NUMBER 2

The British government’s criminalisation strategy was broken by the hunger strikers and, after 1981, the H-Blocks became a university of freedom and an engine of struggle. This included reflection by the prisoners on their own experience. One of the outcomes of this was the excellent ‘Nor Meekly Serve My Time – the H-Block Struggle 19761981’, first-hand accounts of the prison struggle by those who fought it, compiled by the late Brian Campbell, former editor of An Phoblacht, and published in 1994. ‘Out of Time – Irish Republican Prisoners, Long Kesh 1972-2000’, a comprehensive account by former hunger striker Laurence McKeown, followed this in 2001. Sadly, there are not too many books on Armagh Women’s Prison, but recently published was ‘John Lennon’s Dead – Stories of Protest, Hunger Strikes and Resistance’ by former POW Síle Darragh. Gerry Adams has said that it “goes a long way in redressing the imbalance in the prison history which for many reasons had focused on the H-Blocks”. An earlier work, published in 1998, was ‘Hard Time – Armagh Gaol 1971-1986’ by Raymond Murray who served as Catholic chaplain in the prison during those years. The 25th anniversary of 1981 saw the publication of ‘Hunger Strike’, a series of reflections by a variety of writers in prose and some poetry, edited by Danny Morrison. This is excellent for getting different perspectives and it was republished in 2019 with additional material. Also first published in 2006 was Denis O’Hearn’s biography ‘Bobby Sands – Nothing but an Unfinished Song’, which Laurence McKeown said has Bobby Sands “alive and vibrant on every page”. Just published this year is ‘6000 days’ by Jim (Jaz) McCann which covers his time on the blanket protest, as a prisoner during the Hunger Strikes and as a recaptured participant in the Great Escape from the H-Blocks in 1983. Finally, ‘Ireland’s Hunger for Justice – the Story of our 22 Hunger Striker Martyrs’ published in 2017 by the Tomás Aghas Centenary Memorial Committee in Tralee, tells the stories of the ten of 1981 alongside the previous 12 republicans who died on hunger strike since 1917. It is safe to say of the Irish that no people has a longer history of struggle by political prisoners or a more comprehensive literature to record and reflect on it. ⊟ 57

Ó Donnghaile

Constitutional and climate challenges for the Island Senator Niall

n Seanad Éirean Leinster House Kildare Street Dublin 2

8 3092 Tel: +353 (1) 61 le@oir.ie ai gh nn Email: niall.odo

Professor and Co-Director of the Centre for Sustainability, Equality and Climate Action at Queen’s University Belfast, and former Green Party councillor JOHN BARRY, writes on the democratic and constitutional challenges of tackling the climate emergency. Climate change, extreme weather, and the sea rising do not respect borders. The climate and biodiversity crisis does not give a monkey’s if you’re Catholic, Protestant or Dissenter. Biophysical science is no respecter of humanmade, non-natural, artificial lines on a map. Indeed, from a pure scientific or earth-based point of view, the map is definitely not the territory, and natural systems and processes operate within and on territories, not abstract human creations such as maps, nation-states, and contested histories. And Mother Nature does not do bailouts. From the point of view of evolution of life on this planet, these artificial lines on the map, or border posts on land can also be viewed as very recent, and therefore contingent and always temporary. Much like the nation-state itself which is of course inextricably linked with human-made borders and sovereignty, we need always be mindful of the recent short history of these human creations when placed against the deep history of the planet. What nature cares about, if it can be said to care at all, are the flows of energy, of materials, pollution and greenhouse gas emissions. So, from a purely ecological science of climate change point of view, a reunified Ireland makes perfect sense, not least since it is an island. But then so might an authoritarian ecoausterity regime in terms of non-democratically demanding and implementing changes to the economy, our societies and ways of life. While climate action and ecological sustainability are absolutely vital, we of course 58

want to thrive and not simply survive, so there always has to be a balance between ensuring the conditions for life on the planet with the quality of that life. However, by the same token, narrow sustainability or ecological reasons for Scottish independence would also be problematic. While there is a common argument for Scottish independence based around how an independent Scotland would be green, clean, and much more sustainable, this might

The 12.5% corporate tax rate should perhaps be stitched into the tricolour as the more accurate flag of that neoliberal nation run counter to ecological and bioregional arguments. If Ireland being an island underpins an ecological reason for reunification, how can Great Britain, also being an island, justify Scottish independence? Here, an ecological argument for unification and Ireland runs in the opposite direction. How can both be true? Or rather it’s not that they are true or not, but it all depends upon context and the ends and objectives we want and seek to achieve between people, planet and place. Perhaps we can say that sometimes it makes

sense from an ecological point of view to unify politically and sometimes to divide and separate. After all science, by itself, cannot nor should not determine these complex decisions, ultimately non-scientific concerns and aims determine politics. For example, while the climate science is pretty clear that we need to see a rapid and at scale transition away from fossil fuel energy (coal, oil and gas), science itself does not tell us whether that transition should be a ‘just transition’. Having justice, fairness, and democracy in climate action is a political, not scientific, issue. Ideally, science should inform, but not undermine, politics; this is something we’ve seen in the context of the pandemic. As such, judged on a purely scientific point view, there is no automatic alignment of humanmade territories with the biophysical realities of life on this planet. So, what does this tell us about arguments for a reunified Ireland, a shared island, or the prospects of and for a reunified people on the island of Ireland? It’s always good to be guided by the insights of science, but the issue before us should be approached as, at heart a political one. Wherein we seek to integrate scientific insights around the planetary emergency, the multiple ecological problems associated, for example, with extractivism on this island, and the exploitation and degradation of lives and communities (human and more than human) in the pursuit of carbon fuelled capitalist economic growth. So, the question could be posed thus: Will

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planet and our island, just as Brexit, the rightwing populist position for the UK leaving the UK, is proving much worse for people than Lexit, the left wing version. So, one might posit that reunification or the ending of Partition is, at best, a necessary but insufficient condition for the creation of a just, green, regenerative and equitable economy and society for all the peoples of this island, and the more the human communities and ecosystems with whom we share it. A question we need to ask ourselves is whether a reunified Ireland would be much better placed to be a more regenerative and ecologically sustainable economy? Here we cannot be definitive, since it depends (like Brexit) on the political content of any constitutional change. Having one single all island political jurisdiction would not automatically deliver anything, whether that is a socialised health care system such as the NHS rolled across the island, or communityowned renewable energy from Ballymena to Ballydehob. However, with all that said I cannot see many ecological or climate benefits of the border on the island of Ireland. And I note in passing

A just transition away from a high carbon economy is a key issue that is common to both parts of the island

getting rid of Partition somehow automatically challenge this ecocidal, capitalist system of accumulation without benefit to the majority? And let us not forget that the imposition of Partition did not do much to overturn capitalism, and in particular we observe a rampant form of neoliberalism dominant in the Republic of Ireland. The latter has achieved almost full spectrum ideological domination from the boardroom to the bar room. Given the popular support even amongst ordinary people for the low corporate, low tax regime, the 12.5% corporate tax rate should perhaps be stitched into the tricolour as the more accurate flag of that neoliberal nation. Just at the wise Yorkshire saying has it “where there’s muck, there’s brass”, we can equally say where there are borders, there is crime and smuggling. The border in Ireland has created the conditions for a thriving environmental crime scene. What people with a particular skill set learned during the long decades of the conflict are often put to profiting from degrading the environment, especially in relation to waste management. Whether it is burying toxic waste by shipping it across borders, the laundering of red diesel or the existence of Europe’s largest illegal landfill in Mobouy just outside Derry. I think

here we can see the environmental downsides about the border, intertwined as it is with the toxic, and in this case ecological, legacy of the conflict. But on the other hand, if there were progressive eco-socialists in government in both jurisdictions, committed to tackling the planetary crisis we could see policies and initiatives that could ensure a just transition right across the island even as the island remained divided. Once again from a scientific ecological and earth point of view, it’s not borders or indeed even policies that matter, but the material conditions of the water quality of our rivers, carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, and ammonia poisoning our soils and so on. So, from this point of view, border or no border, what matters is action to move away from ecocidal capitalist growth and accumulation. And of course, there is no necessary reason to think that a reunified island of Ireland would automatically deliver this. And I neither think this is a controversial statement nor one that any reasonable and self-critical person reading this would disagree with: it’s the politics stupid. A reunified Ireland under a neoliberal regime would of course be disastrous for the

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here in relation to the debate around the NI Protocol: there has always been a border in the Irish Sea.... it is a natural border called the Irish Sea, and it separates this island and the rest of the world. We can point to all island positive sustainable developments such as the creation of an all-island electricity market in 2007, but this was done in spite of, not because of, the border. And we also see two climate change bills with similarly, in my view, inadequate aims and ambitions, progressing through the Dáil and the Assembly. But it does show ecologically rational decisions can be implemented even within the current constitutional settlement. There are advantages of removing the border in terms of savings and efficiencies and effectiveness in terms of having one all island independent environmental protection agency for example and this would overcome the fact that currently Northern Ireland does not have one. Public transportation would obviously be better managed coordinated and developed on an all-island basis. And a more geographically and regionally balanced all island economy, involving a transition away from the east of the island and the BelfastDublin corridor hoovering up investment, infrastructure and wealth creation, would be better managed on an all-island basis. And a just transition away from a high 59

• Ireland’s corporate tax rate should perhaps be stitched into the tricolour as the more accurate flag of that neoliberal nation

• ‘Let us plant millions of trees across the island, and particularly along the border and turn it into a natural peace park’

carbon economy is a key issue that is common to both parts of the island, and in particular this is important for our farming communities and agricultural system right across this island to move away from an industrialized chemicalised carbon intensive system. The challenges facing farmers in North Antrim are similar to those in Cork and from that point of view it makes sense to have an all-island strategy for the just transition in agriculture. Brendan Behan once stated that there was never a situation that the presence of a policeman couldn’t make worse. Perhaps an exaggeration, but then exaggeration is when the truth loses its temper, and with all the caveats I’ve outlined already, there was probably never an ecological context 60

in which a human-made artificial border did not make things worse, at least more difficult to coordinate and manage resources, transportation, nature conservation and climate action and energy transitions more effectively. One idea I have always taken a shine to

Border or no border what matters is action to move away from ecocidal capitalist growth and accumulation

is this. If there is to be a reunification and an ending of Partition, then let us make the border green again. Let us plant millions of trees across the island, and particularly along the border and turn it into a natural peace park, of which there are other examples around the world. Turn what was once both the symbol and the physical embodiment of division, reaction, and suspicion into something different as a symbol of reconciliation between people, place, and planet. Ultimately, while vitally important to factor into any discussion around a reunified Ireland, my own view is that ecological and climate arguments cannot and should not be the main drivers. It will be politics not science that determines our constitutional and indeed our climate futures. And that is how it should be. Perhaps the best way to think of the overlap between the more dominant political and ideological debates around the constitutional future for Ireland and ecological considerations is to consider it in the context of democratic politics, which I view as a non-violent way of dealing with disagreements. Constitutional changes should not be confused with politics and ecology or science cannot and should not determine either. A constitutional framework can be viewed as a house, but it is democratic politics that determines how warm or cold it is, and for whom, and equally if its warmth is from community or state-owned renewable energy sources, or corporate fossil fuel… or privatised renewables under and all-island RHI scheme. ⊟ John Barry is Professor of Green Political Economy at Queens University and a former Green Party councillor.

ISSUE NUMBER 2 – 2021 - UIMHIR EISIÚNA 2  anphoblacht

New Republic’ The ‘Postcards from the itish designer, artist, series is a hat tip to Br cialist William Morris’s entrepreneur, and so 1890 series of articles from News from Nowhere r onweal, the newspape published in the Comm ure and set in a distant fut of the Socialist League s ha t and romantic utopia where Morris’s socialis been secured. ists are Willa Ní Our story’s protagon by Byrne accompanied Chuairteoir and Lucy d mes, Afric, Banba, an their four children Ja uity joy and endure the eq Alroy who together en ure’s New Republic. and exigency of the fut family, visit To check in with the

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“He’s here” roars young Alroy as he races down the stairs. “Nana…… Doctor Cal is HEEERRREE!!!” Eileen already has the front door open and her arms outstretched to welcome her old friend Dr Calvin Quince. In a flash, Alroy is out the door and swinging out of his granduncle before the bus has even pulled away from the house, Eileen is right him and quickly wraps her arms around the pair of them. “Oh Cal, let me get a good look at you” Eileen says as she reaches up to cup his face in her hands. Calvin Quince is Willa’s uncle and Eileen’s best friend in the world. Willa and Lucy grew up in the same estate and Willa’s parents, who died some time ago, were very close to Eileen. It was through them that she got to know Cal, although he lived in Europe and the US for most of his working life. Cal spent the first half of his adult life working for multinational private pharmaceuticals. By the time he finished his PhD, the sector was already in decay, having never recovered from the rise of antimicrobial resistance in populations across the developed world. For decades, the World Health Organisation had warned of a postantibiotic era. Governments failed to develop national antibiotic plans and pharmaceuticals active antibiotic discovery programmes dwindled. Shareholders and bigpharma leaders had no interest in investing in drugs whose widespread use was discouraged. States tried to step in through

funding new research partnerships but ultimately, they couldn’t shift private pharma’s focus away from blockbuster drugs and to research and development critical to public health. Ireland’s PHS is held up across Europe as the gold standard of public care, but it hadn’t always been that way. It had taken time to rebuild the island’s health service after the Great Struggle. Nationalisation of the pharmaceutical industry was to be the last bastion of the profiteers and it was Dr Calvin Quince who led this final charge against them. Alroy is dragging his granduncle’s bag into the bright messy hallway while yelling at Eileen and Cal to hurry up. As if on autopilot, they all head into the kitchen and plonk themselves down at the big wooden kitchen table laden with sandwiches, tea and Eileen’s muchloved lemon drizzle cake. “So Dr Cal, what did you bring me?” asks Alroy with a cheeky grin. Calvin has managed in sneak in a brown paper bag and hands it to Alroy. “Here you go kiddo, I hope you like it.” It’s a white lab coat with the words ‘Dr. Alroy’ stitched on

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in big bright blue letters. “Sweet Mother of Devine Jesus!” the young fella roars whilst the two oldie goldies crack up. “Now I can come work with you!! I can be your assistant” he adds excitedly. When Alroy was about three years old, his Mums brought him to visit Cal at the National Drug Innovation Centre that he was central to setting up when nationalisation was underway. It was the first time he had seen his elderly granduncle in his white coat, “like the doctors on the telly” and from that day since he has called granduncle Dr Cal. “Wait till my Mams’ sees me in this!” Alroy exclaims as he hops up on a chair to make sure Cal and Eileen can get a good look at him in his crisp white lab coat. “And the others are going to be so jealous” he adds mischievously. Eileen squeezes Cal’s hand and kisses him on the cheek. There is not a bad bone in that man’s body she thinks to herself. He pioneered the world’s first public pharmaceutical model, and where he led so many have followed now guaranteeing universal access across the world to first world drugs. Calvin has literally saved millions of lives and reinvigorated a sector now bursting at the seams with innovation and cutting-edge technology. Alroy plonks himself in between Cal and Eileen. He straightens out the collars of his lab coat, brushes back his fringe and with a comically serious face begins to explain how chemical elements and compounds work together. At that moment, every sadness, every loss, every sacrifice is washed away for the two old friends. ⊟