SAOIRSE32

Newshound

(Catherine Morrison, Irish News)

A west Belfast family last night (Friday) said police told them that loyalist paramilitaries have been offered a “large sum of money” to kill one of them.

Victor Notarantonio jnr and his father Victor snr said they received the latest – and most sinister – death threat yesterday, the most recent in a series since the murder of Gerard Devlin in February.

Four members of the Notarantonio family have been charged with murder and affray in connection with the fatal stabbing of Mr Devlin.

They claimed that police visited them at their Gortnamona home to pass on the information.

In a new twist, officers told the men they had received intelligence that overtures had been made towards loyalist paramilitaries in a bid to hire a hitman to shoot either man “or a member of his family” dead.

The warning states: “Unknown loyalist paramilitaries have been offered a large amount of money to shoot Victor Notarantonio or a member of his family.

“You are advised to seek advice on and take steps to protect your personal security and that of your family.”

A police spokesman refused to comment on the claims.

“We do not comment on the security of an individual,” he said.

“However, where we believe that someone needs to review their personal security we would always seek to inform them.”

Mr Devlin was stabbed to death in an attack in Whitecliff Parade on February 3 as he arrived at his partner’s home to collect his children.

It is understood his killing was linked to a long-running feud.

In the aftermath of his murder the Devlin family also received death threats.

Following the killing there were more than 100 incidents in the Ballymurphy area including arson attacks and intimidation.

Victor Notarantonio jnr’s business was damaged in a suspected arson attack. He later sold the shop in Ballymurphy.

Mr Devlin’s aunt, Bernadette O’Rawe, appealed for no further trouble and condemned those responsible but the attacks continued.

Numerous properties belonging to the extended Notarantonio family were petrol bombed and slogans were painted on the walls of their homes.

Last night Victor jnr’s wife Kerry said the death threat was the most frightening the family had ever received.

The family have sold their Gortnamona home and are planning to move abroad.

“This is the third [threat] we have received but this is the most serious and specific to date,” she said.

“They said they were going to kill one of the family – it could be me or one of my kids.

“It’s innocent people that are going to get hurt.

“I’ve had to take my kids out of school since this started.

“The police advised us to take steps to try and protect ourselves but how can you?”

April 17, 2006
________________

This article appeared first in the April 15, 2006 edition of the Irish News.

Newshound

(Barry McCaffrey, Irish News)

A “bureaucratic blunder” has led to loyalists accused of involvement in some of the worst rioting of recent years escaping prosecution, The Irish News has learned.

The cases relate to disturbances surrounding a controversial Orange Order parade along the Whiterock Road in west Belfast last September.

The PSNI last night (Friday) confirmed that 13 files connected to the rioting, sent to the Public Prosecution Service (PPS), had been withdrawn.

The prosecutions were dropped because of a failure to obtain an extension to allow police more time to bring people before the courts.

The disturbances were some of the worst witnessed in Belfast in many years, with policing alone costing £3 million in addition to millions of pounds of damage caused to properties across the city.

However, the exact number of loyalists who have escaped prosecution is unclear.

A PSNI spokeswoman was unable to confirm how many people were involved in the 13 cases.

A source close to the West Belfast District Policing Partnership Board claimed the files related to around 200 people but this figure was rejected by the PSNI.

The PPS is understood to have accepted responsibility for the 13 cases but voiced concern that the PSNI had only submitted files seven days before the six-month timeframe elapsed.

The mix-up is understood to have led to the introduction of new guidelines which mean the PSNI has to submit prosecution files to the PPS 20 days in advance of any requirement for a court extension.

This is the second time charges against Whiterock Orangemen have been dropped due to a bureaucratic bungle.

In October 2003, charges were recommended against a senior west Belfast Orangeman after paramilitary flags were carried during the parade.

However, that case collapsed after it emerged the PSNI had not obtained an extension to bring the individual before the court.

The news comes just days after 23 nationalists appeared in court charged with rioting in Ardoyne in north Belfast last July 12.

Sinn Féin assembly member Gerry Kelly said nationalists would view the failure to prosecute with scepticism.

“They will contrast it with the number of nationalists appearing in court in connection with what happened in Ardoyne last July,” he said.

“This is the second time that loyalists involved in the Whiterock parade have escaped prosecution.

“There appears to be one law for nationalists and another for loyalists.”

SDLP assembly member Alban Maginness also expressed concern over the failed cases.

“There appears to have been a serious bureaucratic blunder on behalf of the PPS and the PSNI,” he said.

“It may well be that the PPS was faced with an impossible timescale to try and operate in.

“The reality is that people strongly suspected of involvement in serious offences have escaped justice.”

April 17, 2006
________________

This article appeared first in the April 15, 2006 edition of the Irish News.

Daily Ireland

Snapshots of life by acclaimed set of international photographers

Senan Hogan
14/04/2006

Evocative images of the last 60 years in Ireland will go on display next week at a major exhibition by the Magnum group of international photographers.
Dublin’s Irish Museum of Modern Art (Imma) will feature 150 photographs taken by some of Magnum’s best-known photographers including Henri Cartier-Bresson, Eve Arnold and Elliott Erwitt.
A spokesman for worldwide photographic co-operative said: “The exhibition presents an evocative visual history of Ireland, north and south, with particular emphasis on rural life in the 1950s and 1960s and the Troubles of the 1970s and 1980s.
“Also featured will be the rapidly-growing confidence and prosperity of the past decade and, throughout, the hidden lives of ordinary Irish men and women.”
The exhibition will be officially opened by the 2005 Booker-winning novelist John Banville on Tuesday and will run for two month until June 18.
Magnum Ireland is curated by Val Williams, Professor of Photography at the London College of Communications, and Brigitte Lardinois, cultural director at Magnum Photos, London.
The exhibition is organised by the Imma in conjunction with Magnum Photos, London.
An illustrated book, Magnum Ireland, accompanies the exhibition and includes essays by John Banville, Anthony Cronin, Nuala O’Faolain, Eamonn McCann, Fintan O’Toole, Colm Toibin and Anne Enright.
Photographs on show include a 1950s race meeting in Thurles, Co Tipperary and the Puck Fair in Killorglin, Co Kerry, workers in Belfast’s Harland and Wolff shipyard and several photographs of Dublin.
Images from the 1960s show visitors to the Dublin Horse Show and the eagerly-anticipated arrival of Duffy’s Circus and the annual Twelfth celebrations in the North.
Photographs from the 1970s depict the streets of Belfast and Derry thronged with British soldiers as public demonstrations and funeral processions continue around them.
Also striking are pictures of terrified funeral-goers fleeing Michael Stone’s attack in Milltown cemetery in 1988.
Images from the 1990s show burnt-out cars in Darndale, Dublin, an immaculately-dressed young women in a gospel hall in the North and a fashion shoot in Connemara.
Stark photographs from Dublin’s Trinity Ball and a pristine Maze prison feature from the last decade.
Founded in 1947, Magnum Photos is a world-renowned photographic co-operative owned by its photographer members, who chronicle and interpret world’s peoples, events, issues and personalities.
Through its four editorial offices in New York, London, Paris and Tokyo, and a network of 15 sub-agents, it provides photographs to the press, television, publishers, the advertising industry, galleries and museums across the world. Admission to the exhibition is free to the public.

BN.ie

17/04/2006 - 12:59:07

The SDLP has called for the suspension of the police officers involved in yesterday’s fatal shooting in Ballynahinch in Co Down.

A Police Ombudsman’s inquiry has begun and questions are being asked as to why officers opened fire.

The three men and two women arrested at the scene of the shooting have been released on police bail.

The Ombudsman’s office says the checkpoint was set up after reports that a stolen BMW was heading towards Ballynahinch from Ballykinlar, 12 miles away.

The driver was shot dead but his body lay outside the car, suggesting he was not speeding through the checkpoint when he was killed.

A team of 15 investigators from the Police Ombudsman’s office has visited the scene.

SDLP MP Eddie McGrady has also called for an inquiry into the police use of firearms.

BBC

The Apprentice Boys march was due to take place next weekend

Apprentice Boys and bandsmen walked through contentious areas of Belfast’s Ormeau Road and Ardoyne without incident on Monday morning.

There was a low key security presence as the feeder parades passed. At Ardoyne shops in north Belfast, about 100 nationalist residents protested.

The chairman of the Parades Commission, Rodger Poole, monitored the situation.

Up to 5,000 people are expected to attend the annual Apprentice Boys parade in Ballymena.

The government-appointed Parades Commission was set up in 1997 to make decisions on whether controversial parades should be restricted.

**Posted via group email by ‘Stasi’

Last Statement of James Connolly

(given to daughter Nora Connolly on eve of murder by the British)
Transcribed by the James Connolly Society - IRSM/IRSP
Formatted and indexed by Workers’ Web ASCII Pamphlet project

**This is part of a well-organised JAMES CONNOLLY COLLECTION

Belfast Telegraph

On the 90th anniversary of the 1916 Easter Rising, historian Richard Doherty examines why there was so little Northern involvement in the rebellion

17 April 2006

Some 15 years ago, when the Tower Museum was being established, Derry City Council attempted to find a local connection with the 1916 rebellion in Dublin. Their rationale was straightforward: since this was an iconic event in Ireland’s history, they wished to show any local connection in the new museum.

In wishing to show that the city had been involved in the events of April 1916 in Dublin they were also trying to be even-handed in portraying the city’s history. Local men had joined the Army in large numbers and were serving on the Western Front in 16th (Irish) and 36th (Ulster) Divisions. Many of them died in July and September 1916 during the battles of the Somme. It was felt that there ought to be a balance between their stories and that of the rebellion.

But the council faced a difficulty, one that would have faced any local museum in Northern Ireland, and many in the Republic. Had there been any local involvement in the rebellion at all?

The answer to that question was ‘very little’.

While the leader of the Irish Volunteers, Eoin MacNeill, had strong northern connections - brought up in Glenarm, he was educated in Belfast - this did not translate into massive support for the volunteers.

Many Irish Volunteers were also members of the secret Irish Republican Brotherhood, the IRB, and it was IRB men who planned rebellion in Ulster but their plans came to naught. Indeed MacNeill issued a countermanding order when he learned of their intentions.

Those plans were thwarted also by other problems.

Ninety years ago, communications were much more difficult and those who plotted had to rely on the postal service. True, there were some telephones but not many while the telegraph service was not ideal for conspirators.

The principal action planned in Ulster centred on the Tyrone volunteers, principally men from Carrickmore, Donaghmore and Coalisland, who were to move to Belcoo in Fermanagh. There they would link up with Mayo men and await the signal to join in the rebellion.

But that signal never came. The first element of the planned rebellion was the landing of German arms in Kerry. This was the work of the former diplomat Sir Roger Casement whose family had strong connections with Ballymena.

However, the Royal Navy had broken Imperial German Navy ciphers and Casement’s expedition was doomed.

He was arrested and the arms ship was intercepted. This might have brought an end to the plans for insurrection but certain individuals were determined that action would still be taken.

The original plan had been for the rebellion to begin under cover of manoeuvres planned for Dublin on Easter Sunday. (Today there is something surreal, even Pythonesque, in the image of armed marching men being accepted as ‘normal’ but this was the Ireland of almost a century ago.)

MacNeill cancelled the orders but two Ulstermen, Thomas Clarke and Seán MacDermott, were determined to go ahead and decided that the rebellion should begin on the Monday instead.

And so it was. But while Irish Volunteers and James Connolly’s Irish Citizens Army marched through Dublin on the morning of April 24, the would-be rebels in Ulster waited in vain for the signal to send them into action.

That the signal never came was due largely to MacDermott’s almost overwhelming obsession with secrecy.

The only Ulstermen to receive the order to take up arms were those from Carrickmore and south Tyrone and, even then, only on the Monday.

Heavy rain in the mountains of Tyrone that day seems to have dampened the spirits of the Carrickmore rebels whose planned rendezvous with Donaghmore and Coalisland men did not take place. The rebellion fizzled out.

Later in the week, police officers, supported by soldiers, raided the homes of Tyrone rebels and seized much of their ammunition.

This resolute Royal Irish Constabulary action wrote ‘finis’ to any further plans the Tyrone volunteers might have had.

Their leader was forced into hiding where he wrote a letter in which he blamed the Dublin leaders for the fiasco in Tyrone.

When the teacher, poet and rebel leader, Patrick Pearse, surrendered on April 29 the rebellion was at an end.

Some 450 people had died, over 2,500 were wounded and some £3m of damage had been inflicted on Dublin.

It was left to another poet, although displeased at being left out of the rebels’ plans, to comment that ‘a terrible beauty’ had been born. But the north had escaped. No shots had been fired in the streets of Belfast, nor in the mountains of Tyrone.

As for Derry City Council, they finally discovered that one Derryman was among the dead in Dublin. But Charles Crockett, a Presbyterian and member of the congregation of Strand (Second Derry) Church, was no rebel.

Second-Lieutenant Crockett was a Royal Inniskilling Fusilier, in Dublin awaiting his move to France and his battalion. Ironically, he was killed by a bullet fired by another soldier.

A nationalist paper in his home city reported this but the circumstances were denied by the city’s two unionist papers which insisted that he had fallen to the rebels.

And so it was that the rebellion remained almost exclusively a Dublin event.

Not until the executions of the leaders did it begin to exert a strong influence throughout the country. Then, truly, did Yeats’ ‘terrible beauty’ begin.

Newshound

**Newshound’s Journal link is not working

(Eamonn McCann, Sunday Journal)

In his brilliant book, Adventures in the Screen Trade, script-writer William Goldman (All the President’s Men, Butch Cassidy etc.) observed that the best way to survive in Hollywood is to operate on the assumption that, “Nobody knows anything.”

Begin to believe that somebody knows what the Next Big Thing will be, and you’ll end up bankrupt.

Similarly, the safest position to adopt as we gaze on the mixum-gatherum of the great and the good assembled on the reviewing stand in O’Connell Street (just along the road from McDonald’s, facing Ann Summers’ Sex Shop) is that nobody believes anything. Or, alternatively, that everybody believes everything.

Maybe Mary McAleese genuinely believes that the men and women of Easter Week died that the Celtic Tiger might live.

Maybe Bertie Ahern and Enda Kenny are honestly convinced that Pearse, Connolly etc. were expressing fellow feeling and a sense of solidarity with Irish soldiers of the British Army being flung to their death along the Somme.

Perhaps Mark Durkan and Gerry Adams are sincerely convinced that Tom Clarke died dreaming of power-sharing in a Six County parliament within the United Kingdom.

An argument can be made for any of these propositions. Nobody knew in 1916 what the world would look like 90 years later or how Ireland might fit within it. People say of 1916 what suits their present-day politics.

It would even be possible for advocates of a Catholic State for a Catholic people to assert their claim to the Easter tradition. The fact that they don’t draw this argument out says something about the decline of their self-confidence. There was far more religious fervour in the GPO than any of the special supplements or feature pieces I’ve read has acknowledged. Throughout the fighting, on the roof of the GPO, the rosary was recited at half-hourly intervals. I havn’t seen this mentioned anywhere in the past week.

My own view is that, as far as Republicanism is concerned, the most authentic claimants to the political legacy of the Rising are Ruairi O Bradaigh and Republican Sinn Féin.

The Proclamation didn’t promise a fight to achieve the Republic. It proclaimed the Republic as an actually-existing entity. It is for this reason that IRA volunteers ever since have pledged not to strive for the achievement of the Republic but to defend the Republic already achieved. In this perspective, a deal which others might see as a step towards the ultimate objective will be seen as contemptible retreat from the struggle.

In detaching himself from the Provisionals in 1986 because they’d accepted the legitimacy of the Leinster House parliament, O Bradaigh stood by the Republic established on Easter Monday. Looked at from this angle – as legitimate an angle as any other – there is no question: Mr. O Bradaigh and his followers stand alone in true succession to Easter Week.

Those of us who stand rights outside the Republican tradition and who take a socialist view also see Easter Week in the perspective of our own politics, see its enduring legacy in the fact that it was a blow against the most powerful Empire on earth at the time, and regard it as self-evident that its spirit is best represented today in the fight against the imperial power of the US ruling class.

In this view, the most egregious betrayal of 1916 lies not in grudgingly taking seats in a partitionist parliament but in cheerfully breaking bread with George W. Bush.

The most fitting symbol of the Rising is not the Easter Lily but the Black Shamrock.

***************************************

Uefa has a point in passing the buck about sectarianism in Scottish football back to SFA and the Scottish Executive.

Outlining the reasons for its decision on Wednesday to acquit Rangers supporters of bigoted chanting at both legs of the Champions League tie against Villarreal, Uefa said it felt unable to take action over “a historical issue in Scotland.”

The charge had referred to the singing of The Billy Boys. Said Uefa: “Supporters have been singing the song Billy Boys for years … without either the Scottish football or governmental authorities being able to intervene. This result is that this song is now somehow tolerated.”

Which was spot on. The authorities in Scotland have for years accepted the mass singing of a fascist anthem at sporting occasions, and it’s they who must deal with it now.

I use the word “fascist” not as a generalised insult but as a factual observation. Billy Boys was the marching song of a “razor gang” based in Bridgtown in Glasgow in the late 1920s and ’30s, led by one Billy Fullerton. He wasn’t a run-of-the-mill anti-Catholic bigot but a committed supporter of Oswald Mosely’s British Union of Fascists. The targets of his gang were not only Catholics but “Reds”: they helped smash up trade union and labour meetings when they weren’t hunting “Fenians.” This was one of the reasons they were tolerated by a “respectable” element which combined distaste for Irish Catholics with fear of Scottish socialists, particularly in the aftermath of “Red Clydeside.” This was the context for the tolerance of the song which Uefa found disturbing.

There is sectarianism in Celtic’s support, too, no shortage of yahoos who think themselves licensed to celebrate the Shankill bombers for having killed “huns” just as their rivals celebrate the Shankill butchers for killing “taigs.”. But it’s cowardly to suggest that “one side’s as bad as the other.” There isn’t a song remotely as disgusting as Billy Boys, or as rooted in political evil, on the Celtic side.

What will the SFA do now? If precedent is followed, SFA.

But maybe the international embarrassment of last week will prompt action.

We shall see.

April 17, 2006
________________
This article appeared in the April 16, 2006 edition of the Sunday Journal.

BN.ie

17/04/2006 - 09:05:59

The 90th anniversary of the Easter Rising is being remembered today.

About 10,000 people turned out in Dublin yesterday to watch the parade commemorating the event.

The Rising was aimed at making a stand for Irish independence while Britain was distracted by the First World War.

It was far from an attempted military coup as the leaders wanted full independence from Britain and the establishment of an Irish Republic.

Historian Lorcan Collins said the very clear vision of the type of country they wanted to create was laid out in the Proclamation.

Mr Collins said their Republic guaranteed religious and civil liberties, equal rights and opportunities.

He said the Proclamation was a message to their unionist counterparts that they were not trying to push them out of the country but that they too would be treated as equals.

At the time, thousands of Irishmen were already fighting alongside British soldiers in the trenches of Belgium.

An Phoblacht

Completing the unfinished business of 1916

BY Gerry Adams

The most important thing to state about the 1916 Proclamation of the Irish Republic in 2006 is that it is unfinished business. We don’t have a United Ireland - yet. We don’t have a society where all the children of the nation are cherished equally - yet. But we in Sinn Féin believe that we can achieve those aims and create a better society for everyone on this small island - Catholic, Protestant and Dissenter, people of all religions and none, Irish citizens and new communities in our country alike.

Sinn Féin has paid tribute to the men and women of 1916 every year for the past 90 years, often at times when governments in Leinster House chose to ignore them. At other times governments paid lip service to 1916 while putting in jails and internment camps many of those who took the Proclamation seriously. So Easter is a time of irony and contrasts, as well as a time of celebration and remembrance. Everyone knows that the revival of the state commemoration of 1916 is all to do with the growth of Sinn Féin. That is all to the good. We have called many times for Easter 1916 to be commemorated appropriately by the Irish government.

It is entirely positive that the Irish Government’s revival of its Easter military parade and President Mary McAleese’s speech in February have provoked much debate about 1916 and its legacy. There have been TV, radio and newspaper features, exhibitions and public debates. New books have been published; others have been republished. People are being educated anew on the events of that momentous year, on the men and women who made the Easter Rising possible and on the movements and ideas which led to the Proclamation. It is an opportunity for young people especially to look at the ideas of Pearse and Connolly, the pivotal role of women and the commitment of the 1916 freedom fighters to the Irish language.

In assessing the relevance of the ideas and actions of 1916 to our own time, we need to look at the different strands which made up the Rising and their principles as reflected in the Proclamation. Irish Republicanism began with the United Irish movement of the 1790s when Wolfe Tone set out his aim to break the connection with England, “to abolish the memory of past dissensions, and to substitute the common name of Irishman in place of the denominations of Protestant, Catholic and Dissenter”. Through Young Ireland to the Fenians, the ideas of Irish republicanism evolved. They are distilled in the wrtings of Pádraig Pearse, especially The Sovereign People, the message of which is summed up in the line from the Proclamation which asserts “the right of the people of Ireland to the ownership of Ireland”. Who owns Ireland today? The British government still has jurisdiction over the North East of our country. There can be no final settlement, no real reconciliation and, most certainly, no fulfilment of the Proclamation so long as British jurisdiction remains. Irish unity and the establishment of the Irish Republic as, in the words of the Proclamation, “a Sovereign Independent State” remains our core objective.

Others also contest the ownership of Ireland. North and South, governments pursue a privatisation agenda which puts more of our resources and of our infrastructure in the hands of profiteers. The sell-out of our oil and gas to multinationals, the sale of the national airline Aer Lingus and the privatisation of health services run contrary to the Proclamation’s declaration of the right of the Irish people to “the unfettered control of Irish destinies”.

James Connolly brought to the Easter Rising the militancy of radical trade unionism and the ideas of socialism. The year before the Rising he stated: “In the long run the freedom of a nation is measured by the freedom of its lowest class; every upward step of that class to the possibility of possessing higher things raises the standard of the nation in the scale of civilisation.” The Proclamation guaranteed “religious and civil liberty, equal rights and equal opportunities and declares its resolve to pursue the prosperity of the whole nation and of all its parts, cherishing all the children of the nation equally”. These are the most often quoted words of the Proclamation, yet the Ireland of 2006 falls far short of their guarantee. Inequality abounds amidst previously undreamt-of prosperity. At least one in seven of our children live in poverty, denied the improved educational and employment prospects that all parents want for the next generation.

“A free Ireland with no sex distinction should be the motto of all nationalist women”, said Constance Markievicz who fought in Easter Week. The Proclamation was advanced and progressive for its time as it advocated universal suffrage and addressed men and women equally. Women played a key role in the Rising and in all phases of the struggle for Irish independence. Yet Irish women remain significantly under-represented in Irish political life today - including in our own party. We simply cannot attain our objectives if we do not bring far more women into our party and into elected positions.

One key line in the Proclamation refers to “the differences carefully fostered by an alien government, which have divided a minority from the majority in the past”. This refers to the British government’s policy of divide and conquer which kept Irish people separated by using sectarianism to maintain its rule in Ireland. Like the men and women of 1916 Sinn Féin today rejects all forms of sectarianism and bigotry. We are committed to a process of national reconciliation and have entered a long-term dialogue with representatives of unionism in our country.

The 90th anniversary of the Rising is a time to celebrate and commemorate. It is also a time of challenges as we move the republican project forward in the Ireland of 2006. So let us all make the Proclamation more than a framed document on the wall. Let us work towards the day when we will live in the type of Republic it promises, an Irish Republic worthy of the name.

Seven Stars Republican Socialist News

Easter 1916- Easter 2006: 90 Years on and the struggle not yet over

(delivered by Willie Gallagher)

Comrades and friends,

Let us first remember why every year we gather, as thousands do all over this island, at grave -yards and memorials. We stand here to pay homage to and remember all those who died in the struggle for national independence.

Since the first stirrings of the separatist movement in the latter part of the 18th century, many men and women have lost their lives in the pursuit of Irish freedom. In the 18th, 19th 20th and 21st century Irish republicans have died in the struggle for freedom.

We honour them all, regardless of which republican organisation they belonged to. No one holds the rights and deeds to the legacy of those who died. No one can claim that they can interpret the thoughts of the dead or claim that they and they alone are the sole heirs and followers of the republican dead.

Of course on this special occasion we as members or supporters of the Republican Socialist Movement and family representatives of dead volunteers remember in particular our own dead comrades and friends who devoted their lives to republican socialism. The reading out of their names on our roll of honour cannot do full justice to the lives they led nor ease the pain of their families. No one knows what they would have become or what they could have achieved if born in a different time and place.

Unfortunately, they grew up in a country partitioned and with its nearest neighbour claiming jurisdiction over part of this island. That neighbour, Britain, was and is an imperialist power.

Some might find the use of that word, imperialist, archaic, outdated, or old fashioned. After all, we live in a world of instant communications and where shopping in super and hypermarkets is the new religion. Celebrities and fashion dominate the main news. There is a rising standard of living for many of us in the European Union. Those who denigrate the Easter Rising and revise history to suit their current political direction, these revisionists and reformists, say “move on, look at the bigger picture. Forget 1916 it was a mistake anyway.”

Well here is the bigger picture. Britain and the USA, two major imperialist powers, one junior and one senior, are bogged down in an imperialist war in Iraq. They threaten Iran, refuse to recognise the democratic mandate of Hamas in the occupied Palestine land, try to undermine the Bolivarian revolution taking place in Venezuela. They gave aid and arms to the King of Nepal to suppress a popular uprising. They torture political prisoners; force-feed hunger strikers and support corrupt dictators in Africa. They turn a blind eye to multi national companies using goons and murder squads to assassinate trade union leaders. They have blockaded Cuba for over forty years, and are destroying the very planet we live in.

That is imperialism and that is the enemy. Our enemy is not the British working class. Our enemy is not the protestant or loyalist or unionist working class. Our enemy is most certainly not other republicans. No comrades and friends, never, never, never fall into the trap that so many on the left fall into, of seeing those closest to us in outlook as being our main rivals and therefore our main enemy. Of course, we have differences with others. That is why we exist. We place our movement firmly within the working class and have a socialist analysis. We categorically state no socialism without national liberation and no national liberation without socialism.

But our differences we must be able to state, without rancour, without bitterness, in an open honest fashion and treating those, with whom we disagree, with respect. That is the republican socialist way. Those who lie, slander, spread gossip as fact, back bite, bitch, and try to turn republican against republican, socialist against socialist, are objectively the agents of Imperialism.

In recent times, there has been a sustained campaign to undermine and subvert Irish Republicanism by linking Republicanism with criminality. That same tactic was used 25 years. The deaths of ten hunger strikers put paid to that fallacy. No republican is involved in criminality, for no republican joined the struggle to make money.

However, an intelligence led media black operation has tried to link our own movement and in particular key members of our movement with criminality. This has allowed the PSNI to carry out a range of raids on republican socialists in an attempt to blacken denigrate and slander this movement. We utterly refute those allegations. Maggie Thatcher tried to foster the badge of criminality 25 years ago on us and failed. Republicans stood firm and united then. We are steadfast today against any effort to criminalise our struggle.

The current political impasse in the North confirms our original analysis of the Good Friday Agreement. Eight years on and the Good Friday Agreement has still not been implemented. All that has happened has been some tinkering with the system. Sadly a small return for years of struggle sacrifice and death. Some republicans now must bitterly regret going down that road-a road that increased sectarianism, solidified partition and legitimised British interference in Irish affairs.

Currently we now have far more direct British rule than we have ever had. As the British overlords prepare to introduce a wide range of punitive charges on us, privatise public companies and assets and reward the RIR with millions they must have a strong sense of satisfaction with a job well done. British right to rule in the North is now recognised internationally. Articles 2 and 3 are gone. The armed struggle is over, complete, gone.

And a good thing to. Let us be honest. In the current local national and international context, the continuation of armed struggle is not merely futile but is counter-productive to the aims and objectives that republicans seek. To those republicans who sincerely believe that armed struggle is the only way forward at this time we say; look at the meagre gains that the struggle from 69 to 98 achieved, when it had the full backing of many working class nationalists. Do you really think that you can achieve more especially without the support of working class nationalists?

It is time for republicans and socialists to sit down together without grandstanding and chart a new way forward for radical democratic republicanism. We don’t care who convenes such talks or where they are, or if its in a forum, a federation, a congress, a seminar, a conference, a workshop or a summer school. We are prepared to play our part in a politically non-sectarian way without pre-conditions.

For friends and comrades be in no doubt there is a growing sense of frustration especially among young people at the direction mainstream politics is going. There is still a place for those who still have beliefs, not interests, integrity not opportunism, principles not pragmatism.

We must reach out to channel that frustration into positives politics. In the language of the business world there is a market out there for republican politics but only if we adapt.

For Irish Republicanism itself is in crisis notwithstanding the electoral gains of Sinn Fein. If anyone doubts that then ask yourself how many organisations now exist claiming to be republican and how closer to the republican ideal have those organisations brought us? We say this not in bitterness but in a spirit of realism. Claiming to be the true, the real inheritors of 1916 and carrying on as if nothing has changed from say 1916, or 1969, or 1974, or 1986, or 1997 is plainly not on. It ignores not only reality but also shows some contempt for the mass of the Irish people.

If that is the case then it is unfortunate for it is the mass of the people who we need to win over to the struggle for our Republic. And comrades and friends that mass of people include those brought up to consider themselves British or Unionist.

If republicanism is to be relevant, it has to renew itself and adapt to the times that are changing. And in changed times we also change. If republicans are not involved in the everyday struggles of the people, in the struggles of the tenants, of the trade unionists of the political prisoners of the migrant population, of the low paid exploited worker, of the old, of the sick, of oppressed women and oppressed gays and don¹t fight for the dignity and liberty of all, then republicans are irrelevant to our society.

We are republican socialists. We see the relevance of the class struggle and the importance of taking an internationalist perspective on issues. Daily Irish neutrality is whittled away while USA planes use Irish airspace to move weapons of war and tortured prisoners around the world. Meanwhile the EU continues to move towards a centralised bureaucracy, undemocratic in reality while on the face of it answerable to the people. It is the bureaucrats who rule and who push forward economic liberalism that will see the selling off ofnational and publicly owned assets to the private sector.

1916 kick started the struggle for national independence and sovereignty. In 2006 90 years on we see that independence, limited as it is, and that sovereignty, limited as it is, handed lock stock and barrel over to the bureaucrats of Brussels who act not in the interests of the people but in the interests of the multinationals or corporate world.

Was it for this that the greatest of the men and women of 1916 James Connolly gave his life?

We abhor and condemn attempts by mainstream political parties to use the names of the hunger strikers for strictly party political purposes. They did not die for political parties. They died for political status; for the right to be regarded as political combatants and not criminals. No one but no one had the right to bargain away gains made by their deaths. We call on all republicans no matter from which organisation to support the continuing struggle for political status.

It is sometimes argued that Republicans are obsessed with the North and ignore what goes on in the 26 counties. If that is so then that attitude is wrong. Republican and socialists should be actively involved in the many struggles going on. Not because it will win kudos for republicanism but because it is right.

It is right to stand with the migrant workers exploited in both fields and factories by the modern day gombeen men who pay low wages and treat migrants as no better than slaves.

It is right to expose and highlight the brutality, lies and corruption that are part of the culture of the Garda. They needed no lessons from the RUC. We need to channel the resentment of working class youth towards the Garda into a positive political direction.

It is right to campaign against partnership deals with employers that tie the vast majority of trade unionists to relatively low wage increases, while profits continue to rise.

In short, it is right to stand with the weak against the strong with the protester against the multinationals, and with all those who strive to save our planet from destruction.

In honouring the men and women of 1916, we must remember they had no mandate. Wolfe Tone had no mandate. Robert Emmet had no mandate. Liam Mellows had no mandate. Seamus Costello had no mandate when he helped set up our own organisation.

However, what they all had was a burning sense of indignation against injustice and oppression. And friends they acted on it. Their actions covered the full gambit of political action from the party meeting; the committee room.; the picket line; the handing out of leaflets; the mass meetings; the political discussion to convince ; and ultimately the taking up of arms when no other alternative was available to them.

Today friends and comrades we are building the alternative. Over the last 10 years, this movement has gone from strength to strength. Our politics have matured, our membership has increased and our commitment is as strong today as when Seamus Costello founded this movement. Republican socialism is on the up and although much work has still to be done, we walk away today firm in the belief that each and everyone of us will renew our commitment to the revolutionary struggle for the socialist republic. Down with Imperialism. Up the Republic.

Irish Independent

**I am including this article not for the sentiments expressed, but for its description of yesterday’s commemoration

More than 120,000 turn out to honour 1916 heroes

IT took some of us by surprise, this communal catch in the throat, when drums rolled and the Tricolour fluttered to the top of its flagpole above the GPO.

For a time on this special Easter Sunday, eyes misted over and the tens of thousands of people who lined the streets of Dublin found a common bond, united in a sense of national pride and belonging.

Photo: Bertie Ahern at Kilmainham Gaol - from the Telegraph

Outside of all the pomp and political posturing, an extraordinary groundswell of public emotion cut to the core of yesterday’s 1916 parade in Dublin.

The atmosphere along the route was celebratory, yet reverential, good-natured and good-humoured, patriotic but not triumphalist.

This uncomplicated and confident response to what could have been a very controversial event will remain in the memory longer than any display of military hardware or any high-powered mustering of establishment big guns. Yesterday was about reinstating a ‘pilfered’ past to all the people of Ireland, allowing the nation to slip back in step with history again.

The size and the conduct of the crowd showed that we have recovered our appetite for looking back.

And we’ve always liked a day out.

The ceremony in O’Connell Street began just before midday, after the preliminaries of seating the VIPs had been accomplished.

Diplomats were placed on one viewing stand, relatives of 1916 and Defence Forces veterans in another and politicians had one all to themselves.

The politicians arrived by motorcade from their first reception of the day, and included the entire Cabinet, opposition leaders, and a motley collection of backbenchers and senators. Bringing up the rear was the sole Sinn Fein representative at the commemoration.

Louth TD Arthur Morgan, Easter lily stuck on his lapel, was the Shinner who drew the short straw.

The British Ambassador, Stewart Eldon, sat in the middle of the front row of the diplomatic stand and he looked happy to be out.

Thankfully, these are changed times, when a 1916 commemoration can be held outside the GPO and Her Majesty’s representative in Eire is a welcome and honoured guest.

First of the big guns not to arrive attached to a jeep’s tow-bar was Defence Minister Willie O’Dea.

According to the army announcer, he was “arriving on parade”. We had to take him at his word, as Willie was escorted to his spot by two very large officers, and we couldn’t see him.

The Lord Mayor, Catherine Byrne, was next, and she got a round of applause, which must have been a bit disconcerting for the minister.

As midday approached, Taoiseach Bertie Ahern marched purposefully towards the stand, followed soon after by President Mary McAleese, who wore a stunning military-style coat in an unusual shade of sage green.

President Mary McAleese - photo from Gulf Times

So far, so humdrum. But the mood was to change. With Her Excellency, the Taoiseach and Willie O’Dea standing opposite the GPO, the national flag was lowered, to a piper’s lament, from above the portico.

Then Captain Tom Byrne stepped forward from behind the columns and read the Proclamation aloud in a strong, unwavering voice. When he finished, the crowd applauded.

After the Proclamation, the Restoration.

Thanks to Bertie’s plan, 1916 was no longer the sole preserve of self-appointed “republicans”.

The clock had turned midday. With the evocative strains of ‘Mise Eire’ lingering on the air, President McAleese stepped forward and placed a wreath in front of the historic building. There followed a one-minute silence - impeccably observed by the huge crowd and then the trumpeters sounded ‘The Last Post’.

Among the relatives and veterans, old soldiers took off their spectacles and wiped away the tears.

There were tears, too, in the Taoiseach’s eyes. He wasn’t alone.

Interestingly, many in the crowd were too young to have heard the 1916 arguments rehearsed over the years, or to bother about stuff like revisionism, or the ownership of the struggle. But they were in their city for this Easter Sunday morning.

In the stillness, the President stepped back and the national flag was raised from half mast to full mast. When that happened, you could hear the applause swell from streets away.

On O’Connell Street, the crowd cheered - something they didn’t do in 1916. Those discommoded masses of 90 years ago were replaced yesterday by a more comfortable and contented citizenry.

Dublin’s 21st century response to the Easter Rising was warm and heartfelt.

After all the years of wrangling, the mythologising and the propagandising, it remains their history.

The band sounded Reveille before the familiar opening notes of the National Anthem struck up. Along the street, there was touching sight - scores of elderly men removing their hats for Amhran na bhFiann. A throwback to another era.

And people sang their hearts out. Among the politicians, Justice Minister Michael McDowell belted out the words, but getting a good run for his money from Education Minister Mary Hanafin. Sinn Fein’s Arthur Morgan wasn’t singing.

Arthur excepted, this was one of the most joyous and enthusiastic renditions of the National Anthem heard in recent years - outside of a football stadium.

And when this full-throated expression of the anthem finished, the crowd gave themselves another big cheer.

Time for the parade. Military parades don’t float everybody’s boat. Or in yesterday’s case, they don’t float everybody’s rigid inflatable boats.

The Naval Service had three of these large dinghy-type vessels in the parade, stuffed to the gunnels with fully kitted-out officers, trying to imagine they were skimming the ocean waves instead of being pulled behind trucks down O’Connell Street. First past the main reviewing stand was a brigadier general standing up in the front seat of an open jeep and saluting.

The first of many big guns rolled by. Twenty-five pounder artillery pieces, towed by more jeep-type vehicles with officers standing up through the sunroof and saluting.

A bomb disposal display rumbled past, complete with a plastic figure of a soldier preparing to dismantle what appeared to be a rocket suspended from a frame. Arthur Morgan took great interest in this, while behind, Tony Gregory smirked at him.

There were lots of camouflage jackets and alarmingly large backpacks.

More big guns and a large number of armoured personnel carriers called Mowags of which the Defence Forces appear inordinately proud.

See one Mowag and you see them all, so we turned our thoughts to Sinn Fein’s flag carrier, the amiable Arthur, and wondered what he was making of the parade, and whether he was having difficulty recognising the real Oglaigh na hEireann marching past.

Perhaps he was ruminating on the blood sacrifice made by the men and women of 1916 - although the emphasis for the parade commentary was very much on the accomplishments of today’s armed forces, particularly in the area of peacekeeping duties overseas.

The passing pomp was being recorded for posterity by a battalion of photographers, perched on the roof the the Ann Summers shop, an emporium promoting a type of freedom the men and women of 1916 could never have contemplated.

A number of flypasts punctuated the occasion. The Air Corps might have a case for a few more planes, considering that the Government Jet was pressed into action to take the bare look off things.

And the gardai pitched in too with their two helicopters flying low over O’Connell Street. A bit late, granted, for the riots in February, but they meant well.

The might of the Defence Forces took an hour to rumble by. Then the politicians repaired to an exclusive reception in the GPO, while the relatives went for cocktail sausages and sandwiches in the Gresham Hotel.

However, mindful of how this might look, Taoiseach Ahern led a Cabinet charge across to the hotel a few minutes later.

Willie O’Dea and the de Valera political double act of Sile Dev and Eamon O’Cuiv were all in great demand for signing commemorative programmes, while we knew it was time to scarper when Minister McDowell declared the exercise “a spectacular success” and then began to reminisce about his days in the FCA. He confessed afterwards that he still has the coat from those halcyon days in 1971.

Then the Taoiseach put the fear of God in everyone, except people who call themselves consultants, when he ventured the opinion that every single day of the next decade still wouldn’t be enough time to plan for the centenary commemoration in 2016.

Still, by anybody’s yardstick, yesterday’s parade was a success, touching a chord among the most cynical among us.

Some things never change, though.

Overheard coming through on a garda radio to officers in O’Connell Street: “We have a volunteer under the influence of alcohol, with a head injury . . . ”

http://saoirse.info

THE Leadership of the Republican Movement extends fraternal greetings to members, supporters and friends throughout the world on this the historic 90th anniversary of the 1916 Proclamation of the Irish Republic. We send special greetings to our imprisoned comrades in Ireland and to prisoners throughout the world who are incarcerated because of their struggle for freedom and justice.

Since we last assembled twelve months ago we have witnessed the final act of treason by those who would have described themselves as Republicans. Irish Republicans throughout the world watched with total dismay at the declaration that their war was over for all time and at the destruction of all arms under their control which had been given to them to wage a war for the freedom of Ireland. The effect that these so-called Republicans were attempting to imply was that the struggle for national liberation was over permanently and that the IRA had been killed by its own leadership.

We have a message in response to this act of treason. The Irish Republican Army has declared that it is still very much alive in the form of the Continuity Irish Republican Army which remains active and dedicated to the achievement of Irish independence for however long this may take.

This Easter the Free Staters have attempted to hijack the Easter commemoration ceremonies, having ignored them for the past 35 years. It should be remembered that the heritage of 1916 belongs to all the people of Ireland. For their part, faithful Republicans have marked Easter each year in good times and in bad. Other elements, including some members of the media, have allied themselves completely with British Imperialism, saying that 1916 was unnecessary and condemning outright everything associated with the national struggle. Many politicians seek to besmirch the Republican Movement and rob it of its good name. The emergence of tiny groupings as rivals to the Movement only cause confusion and obscure the supreme issue facing the people, the unity and freedom of Ireland.

On the international scene we continue to see the mighty world powers, through sheer force and intimidation, take over weaker countries and terrorise their people. We send solidarity greetings to oppressed people throughout the world who are suffering from these superpowers.

We have noted with regret the public announcement that the struggle over so many decades of the Basque people for national liberation is at a permanent end. The involvement of the same forces that have been at work in Ireland, and especially of the Provisional leadership, in bringing about this outcome for a friendly people is to be deplored.

Ireland’s national struggle, particularly since the 1916 Rising, has been admired and looked up to by subject peoples throughout the world who have been and are fighting colonialism. Now they receive the news of the collapse of the active struggle in Ireland, the acceptance of British rule and the voluntary destruction of arms. But the fight goes on.

On the home front we send greetings to the Rossport Five and to their families and supporters. We salute your courage in confronting this multinational company who have little regard for the welfare of local communities.

In recent weeks we have seen on the streets of Dublin how far removed those who profess to be in power are from the communities at local level. We saw how Free State ministers were so readily available to meet leaders of a loyalist organisation while refusing to meet with representatives of the Dublin and Monaghan bombings or the relatives of the Stardust tragedy. The Free Staters got their answer when the local community showed their resentment at what only could be described as an exercise of appeasement of their British masters. We urge Republicans throughout Ireland to start now and prepare for the next act of appeasement - the visit of the foreign Queen of England who claims jurisdiction over part of our country.

Faithful Republicans throughout Ireland have continued to feel the jackboot tactics of so-called forces of law and order on both sides of the Border and we urge our members to be at all times vigilant.

Now for the fourth time the English government is seeking to resurrect Stormont which was brought crashing down in 1972 by the people’s struggle under the leadership of the Republican Movement. Of course they now have the collaboration of former Republicans who have already administered English rule here and are prepared to police it by joining the British forces.

For eight years since the 1998 Agreement sought to copper-fasten Partition and British rule, they have failed in their efforts. Whether as ’shadow, interim or transitional’, Stormont must be rejected.

The men and women of 1916, whose deed we honour today and every Easter ever since their Rising, set out clearly in the Proclamation of the Irish Republic what their objectives were. That noble document was read to you here. It required “a permanent National Government representative of the whole people of Ireland and elected by the suffrages of all her men and women”.

Such a government was indeed elected in an act of self-determination by the whole Irish people acting as a unit in 1918 and established by the All-Ireland Dáil in 1919. A combination of British brutality and force and Irish weakness and treachery overthrew that 32-County government and suppressed it by the creations of a British Act of Parliament, Stormont and Leinster House. Any new-style Stormont must be brought down and replaced by an All-Ireland parliament. A new federation of the four provinces can best implement this and provide a just solution for minorities and majorities alike.

To secure the “civil and religious liberty, equal rights and equal opportunities” guaranteed in the Proclamation and sealed by the blood of the leaders and martyrs of the 1916 Rising, a Democratic Socialist Republic must be instituted.

Ninety years to the day since that momentous event in Irish history we renew these guarantees and pledge to strive might and main for those objectives. No collaboration with Imperialism and with British rule here - but straight through to Irish freedom and Irish national independence. An Phoblacht Abú!

- Issued by the Leadership of the Republican Movement
Easter 2006.

IRRB

An Ard Choiste of Na Fianna Eireann sends Easter greetings to members and supporters at home and abroad.

As this is the 90th year since the Rising we have Free staters jumping on the republican band wagon for their own gains. The men and women who took part in the Rising didn’t do so for a 26 county country but for a full 32 county Irish Republic.

Na Fianna Eireann also sends Easter greetings to Continuity I.R.A. POWs in Portlaoise and Maghaberry. It is these men and women who resist British rule in Ireland and they will continue to receive our support until our goal of a free Ireland is achieved.

An Ard Choiste would also like to lay to rest the rumours of Fianna Eireann being disbanded; this is far from the truth. Na Fianna Eireann is still running on a daily basis and this will continue until An Ard Choiste states otherwise.

We hope the people of Ireland take the example of the Easter Rising to further the Republican cause, and maybe in our life time we will have a free IRELAND.

Fianna abu
Ard Choiste
Na Fianna Eireann