Irish Democrat February - March 2000

Imsh OemocRA 

February/March 2000 Connolly Association: campaigning for a united and independent Ireland ISSN 0021-1125 60p 

Historic court 

victory for 

democracy 

Page 3 

Lighting the 

flame of 

freedom 

Page 7 

The legacy of 

James Flntan 

Lalor 

Page 12 

TIME FOR JUSTICE 

MURDER 

INQUIRY 

Democrat reporter 

FILES BELIEVED to contain the names 

of the six-man loyalist death squad 

alleged to be responsible for the death of 

the prominent Belfast solicitor Pat 

Finucane have been sent to the Director 

of Public Prosecutions (DPP) in 

Northern Ireland. 

This latest development in the 

Finucane murder case raises hopes that 

the truth surrounding the solicitor's 

death, including the exact level of 

collaboration between loyalist 

paramilitaries and British security 

forces, will eventually be revealed. 

It is understood that the evidence sent 

to the DPP, revealed in the Independent 

newspaper, confirms allegations made 

by two loyalists informers that RUC 

intelligence officers ignored a series of 

tip-offs indicating that Pat Finucane was 

to be the target of a loyalist death squad. 

According to one source, selfconfessed 

police informer and Ulster 

Defence Association (UDA) 

quartermaster William Stobie, police 

officers were in a position to prevent 

Finucane's murder. Stobie claims to have 

warned his handlers that a prominent 

republican, which they clearly 

understood to be Finucane, was about to 

be assassinated — including making two 

phone calls on the night of the murder. 

Stobie, one of two men already 

charged with the solicitor's murder, is on 

bail awaiting trial, although there are 

doubts that he will ever be sentenced for 

the crime because of his co-operation 

with the new police investigation under 

Sir John Stevens. 

It is understood that taped evidence 

corroborating Stobie's story is included 

in the evidence collected by the team of 

senior police officers under Stevens and 

passed on to the DPP. Other 

incriminating evidence sent to the DPP is 

believed to include statements of other 

police informers and the testimony of 

former RUC officers. 

This is the third investigation headed 

by Stevens, who is to succeed Sir Paul 

Condon as the chief constable of the 

Metropolitan Police on 1 February. 

Two previous investigations led by 

Stevens into the murder and allegations 

of widespiead collusion between RUC 

officers and loyalist paramilitaries were 

dogged with controversy, despite leading 

to the conviction of Brian Nelson who 

was working as an agent for a secret 

British army intelligence unit while an 

The demand for Justice for those killed on Bloody Sunday, 30 January 1972, remains as loud as ever. This year's march In London, on 22 January, heard 

relatives of the victims call for the new Saville Inquiry, which opens Its public hearings in March, to be monitored closely to avoid another whitewash. 

active member of the UDA. 

Nelson, who was given a ten-year jail 

sentence for a series of offenses, 

including conspiracy to murder, also 

claimed to have warned his handlers of 

the threat to the solicitor's life and that 

his warnings were ignored. 

Crucial documents collected by the 

earlier investigation were destroyed in a 

'mysterious' fire on the night of 10 

January 1990, hours before the Stevens 

team was to move against suspects. No 

satisfactory answer has ever been given 

as to the cause of the fire which many 

believe was started deliberately by a 

secret army unit in order to cover their 

connections with loyalist death gangs. 

Reports of the latest developments in 

the Finucane murder case in the 

Independent reveal the extraordinary 

lengths that the Stevens 3 team is having 

to employ in order to protect evidence 

and to ensure the personal security of 

officers involved in the investigation. 

Key documents, including the 

charred remains of the previous Stevens 

inquiry are housed in a huge fortified 

safe situated within a restricted area set 

aside for the investigation team on the 

top floor of the RUC's Antrim offices in 

Carrickfergus. Member of the team 

either working on the case or at hotel at 

a secret location. Anyone who leaves the 

investigation offices does so 

accompanied by an armed guard. 

Despite the lengths taken by the 

Stevens team the latest revelations 

human-rights campaigners such as 

British Irish Rights Watch and Sinn Fein 

are continuing to call for an independent 

inquiry. 

Speaking after the recent reports in 

the Independent Sinn F6in assembly 

member Gerry Kelly stressed that the 

fact that the Stevens team was ready to 

go press for prosecutions over ten years 

after the Finucane murder raised 

important questions about the 

circumstances about the crime and the 

subsequent RUC investigation. "It is 

clear that the RUC failed to pursue the 

killers of Pat Finucane." 

wm 

to press it was confirmed that General John de 

the Britishand Irish governments with his report 

of paramilitary weapons, 

were not available at the time of going to 

the General was likely to reportthat 

of the Good

iBish Oemociuc 

Founded 1939 Volume 55, Number 1 

Another day, another crisis 

WITH THE imminent publication of De Chastelain's report on 

decommissioning attention switches to the wholly artificial and 

unnecessary crisis generated by the arbitrary deadline for the 

decommissioning of IRA weapons set by David Trimble and his 

Ulster Unionist Party. 

Trimble's threat to collapse the new executive and the bodies 

associated with the workings of the Good Friday deal, thus 

triggering another tortuous review, will neither enhance the overall 

process nor result in the surrender, deactivating or 

decommissioning of a single IRA bullet — a fact as well known to 

Trimble as it is to British and Irish ministers and to every dog on 

the street. 

It is accepted that the decommissioning issue is particularly 

important to unionists, however attempts to separate it from the 

entire Good Friday package are both futile and extremely 

dangerous. But progress on a number of strands of the agreement is 

painfully slow, and the one with the most direct bearing on 

decommissioning, the publication of the British government's 

demilitarisation programme, is now a year overdue. 

It should be remembered that the whole decommissioning issue 

looks very different from places like south Armagh with its six 

fortified British military bases, 33 look-out posts, daily helicopter 

patrols, road blocks and where new fortifications are still being 

built. The return of a couple of thousand troops to bases in Britain 

and the closure of the Castlereagh interrogation centre is obviously 

welcome, but issues such as military bases, confiscated land and the 

remaining 

15,000 British troops will remain central to the 

decommissioning equation. 

Yet, while there can be no denying that guns — republican ones 

at least — are silent, and have been for some considerable time 

now, nationalists' communities continue to find themselves under 

physical attack from the more wayward — and armed — elements 

within loyalism. Republicans have made their intentions clear by 

accepting the importance of decommissioning as part of the overall 

package, while the IRA has made contact with the independent 

decommissioning commission. Do unionists really want to give the 

hard-line in the republican movement an opportunity to say "we 

told you so" by collapsing the executive? 

Clearly, David Trimble has problems, both with his own party 

and with the logical implications of where the Good Friday deal is 

taking unionists, rather more one suspects than the republican 

leadership. Perhaps Trimble's biggest problem for Trimble is that 

unionism has lost its way — indeed there is a growing case to 

suggest that the UUP in accepting, albeit reluctantly, the terms of 

the Goood Friday deal has moved into a post-unionist phase. 

However, two things can be said with absolute certainty about 

David Trimble. Firstly, he knows how to dig his party into a hole 

like virtually no-one else involved in the tortuous politics of the 

Irish peace proctss. But secondly, when the chips are down, high, 

unbreachable principle miraculously transforms into everyday 

political pragmatism — following an appropriate delay — a skill 

which allows him to dismount from the highest of horses without 

so much as a guilty backwards glance while being able to maintain 

maximum pomposity. 

Whether these two at times contradictory facets of Trimble's 

makeup will allow him to stumble on to the next stage of the peace 

process or whether the game is finally be up for Trimble's 

leadershipof the UUP and the Good Friday agreement is likely to 

become clear within the next couple of months. The outcome is of 

concern to everyone in Britain and Ireland. Now is not the time to 

look away. 

IBish Oemociuc 

Bi-monthly newspaper of the Connolly Association 

Editorial Board 

Gerard Curran; David Granville (editor); Peter Mulligan 

Production! Derek Kotz 

Published by Connolly Publications Ltd, 244 Gray's Inn Road. London WCIX 

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Kmalll connolly@geo2.poptel.org.uk 

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8JR, 

News 

Page 10 Irish Democrat February/March 2000 

Loyalist rivalry takes bloody turn 

LOYALIST FEUD 


FEARS THAT a bloody feud involving 

members of the ultra-right-wing Loyalist 

Volunteers Force (LVF) and former 

comrades in Ulster Volunteer Force 

(UVF) surfaced in January following the 

killing in mid-January of a Richard 

Jameson in Portadown. 

Despite denials by family members, 

Jameson is understood to have been the 

leader of UVF in mid-Ulster, a fact 

swiftly confirmed by the RUC following 

his assassination. Tension between the 

two loyalist paramilitary groups has 

existed ever since the LVF broke away in 

19% following differences within the 

UVF over the situation at Drumcree. 

In December 1999 Jameson, a former 

RUC reservist and member of the 

Orange Order, was involved in a fight 

with LVF members in Portadown 

marking the second anniversary of the 

death of the group's leader Billy Wright. 

In response to Jameson's killing the 

UVF is reported to have put five leading 

LVF members on a so-called 'death list'. 

Concerns have also been raised about 

Jameson's possible access to files on 

nationalists at a social services office in 

west Belfast where he carried out 

building work. Questions have also been 

asked as to how a known UVF leader 

could have gained security clearance to 

carry out work in the building. 

Meanwhile, human rights groups 

continue to record scores of attacks by 

loyalists against Catholics and 

nationalists throughout the North. 

Concerns are also being raised over 

following suggestions of a growing 

alliance between the LVF and sections of 

the Ulster Defence Association (UDA). 

• Detailed information about loyalist 

attacks can be found on the Pat Finucane 

Centre website: www.serve.com/pfc/ 

1974 bombs Inquiry gets go-ahead 

BOMBING INQUIRY 


THE DUBLIN government confirmed 

that there is to be an official investigation 

into the 1974 Dublin/Monaghan 

bombings in which 33 people were 

killed. 

Taoiseach Bertie Ahern announced in 

December that retiring Irish chief justice 

Liam Hamilton was to be given the task 

of conducting a rigorous investigation 

into all aspects of the bombing and its 

aftermath. Hamiliton's remit also 

includes the bombing of a Dundalk pub 

in 1975 in which one person was killed 

and another 20 injured. 

Evidence pointing to collaboration 

between British intelligence agents and 

loyalist paramilitaries has emerged over 

the years while questions have been 

raised about the adequacy of Garda 

1 J* 

* 

g 

investigations and the level of cooperation 

afforded by the British army 

and the RUC following the bombing. 

The Irish government's decision has 

been welcomed by survivors and 

relatives of the victims, although some 

are continuing to insist on the need for a 

Republicans call for 

demilitarisation moves 

PEACE PROCESS 


SINN FEIN leaders left Peter Mandelson 

in no doubt as to the republican 

dissatisfaction with the pace of 

demilitarisation during a meeting 

between party leaders and the secretary 

of state towards the end of January. 

Demands made by republicans in line 

with the Good Friday agreement include 

the closure of offensive surveillance 

posts in nationalist areas, especially in 

Belfast and south Armagh, the 

withdrawal of Britain's remaining 

15,000 troops and the closure of 

remaining army checkpoints. 

Republicans are also calling for an 

immediate end to the harassment of 

nationalist residents in south Tyrone 

where high levels of security forces force 

activity have been in evidence since the 

signing of the Good Friday deal and the 

return of land confiscated by British 

forces for 'security' purposes. 

Although recent announcements of a 

3,000 cut in British troops stationed in 

the six counties and the closure of a 

number of army bases, including the 

hated Castlereagh interrogation centre, 

have been welcomed, heavily-fortified 

bases continue to be built in south 

Armagh raising questions about the 

British government's commitment to 

demilitarisation. 

tBisti Ocmcmc 

For a united and independent Ireland 

Published continuously since 1939, the Irish Democrat is the bi-monthly journal 

of the Connolly Association, which campaigns for a united and independent 

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full public enquiry as Mr Justice 

Hamilton will not have the powers to call 

witnesses and demand access to 

documents. His report will eventually go 

before a public session of the Justice, 

Equality and Women's Rights 

parliamentary committee. 

EVENTS 

6 March-3 April Celtic art and 

design exhibition, Wellingborough 

Library, Pebble Lane, Wellingborough. 

Sponsored by Northampton CA, tel. 

01604 715793; email: pmcelt@cs.com 

18 March A Seam of Gold: exploring 

Ireland's past, 2.30-5pm, Showroom 

Cinema, Paternoster Row, Sheffield 1. 

Two lectures: The Unfilled Fields of Irish 

Histor, Peter Berresford Ellis, and 

Making the Union: the Act of Union in 

History, Ruan O'Donnell. Organised by 

Sheffield and S Yorks CA as part of 

Sheffield Irish Festival. 0114 273 8182 

14-15 April Friends of 

Ireland/Friends of the Good Friday 

Agreement national conference. 

Congress House, London. Details to be 

announced shortly. 

Holiday in traland: BS4| 

setttna. Comeraah 

MWHHI^I WyillVlH^lll 

J H L 

Kilclooney, 

Watertofd. Tel 00 35351 

website: http: 

Donations to the Connolly Association 

and the Irish Democrat 

24 Noember. 1999-20 January 2000 

F. Jennings £10; G.C. Campbell £5; N. 

Green £20; M.Maguire £13.50; D. 

Harrop £2.50; C. Dunne (NZ); £400; B. 

Farrington £15; A. Higgins £25; B. Kelly 

£10; J. Hanna £2.50; D. Chambers £5; T. 

Leonard £10; M. Williams £5; G. Miles 

£10; T. O'Brien £5; M. Donoghue £13; 

L. Bradley £5; M. Kenny £3; P. Walsh 

£15; J. Egan £1; R. ap Thomas £1; R. 

Doyle £15; R. Green £5; B. Feeney 

£5.60; G. Curran £2; J.M. Clarke £5; 

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Total £927.00 

•• 

Irish Democrat February/March 2000 Page 3 

News 

Supreme court rules In 

favour of democracy 

REFERENDUMS 

VERDICT 


The Irish Democrat's Dublin 

correspondent, Anthony Coughlan, and 

democracy camapaigners in the republic 

of Ireland, were last month celebrating 

victory in their campaign for equal 

broadcasting rights during referendums. 

The Irish Supreme Court threw out 

an appeal by state broadcasters RTE 

against a previous High Court ruling that 

the imbalance in free broadcasting time 

in the 1995 divorce referendum was 

unconstitutional. 

The appeal was supported by the 

Attorney General for the government, 

and carried the good wishes of all the 

main political parties, but was rejected 

by four of the five judges in the highest 

court in the land. 

The ruling builds on the 1995 

Coughlan: victory for democracy 

McKenna judgement, which made clear 

that it was unconstitutional for the 

government to spend public money in a 

one-sided fashion in referendums. 

The practice was first introduced by 

Irish to get new 

legislative right 

DISQUALIFICATION 


BILL 

BRITISH MPs at Westminster have 

voted to progress legislation allowing 

members of the Irish Dail to sit in the 

British House of Commons and other 

devolved legislatures within the UK, and 

vice versa. 

MPs voted in favour of the 

government's Disqualification Bill on 25 

January following a mammoth 26-hour 

debate, which caused the cancellation of 

prime minister's question time. 

The Bill will now go before the 

House of Lords where it is likely to 

encounter equally stiff opposition from 

Conservatives and Ulster unionists. 

Speaking in favour of the Bill during 

its second reading, Home Office Minister 

of State Mike O'Brien stressed that the 

legislation would end an anomaly created 

in 1998 permitting a member of the Irish 

Senate to be a member of the Northern 

Ireland Assembly but not any other UK 

legislature. 

"It replaces that provision with 

measures that will bring about a broader 

and closer relationship between the 

United Kingdom as a whole and the Irish 

Republic," he told MPs. 

The new law will allow DSil or senate 

members to sit at Westminster and in the 

Northern Ireland Assembly, the Scottish 

parliament and Welsh assembly, a legal 

right similar to that already afforded to 

former British colonies in the 

Commonwealth. 

The proposed change, which is not 

part of the Good Friday agreement, has 

been strongly criticised by Tories and 

unionists, who see it, somewhat 

bizarrely, as a concession to republicans. 

However, concerns are being raised 

in some quarters that the move is part of 

a softening-up process by the British 

state aimed at gradually 'reintegrating' 

the Republic into the UK, an important 

stage of which could hinge on attempts 

to persuade the 26 counties to rejoin the 

Commonwealth fold. 

the Haughey government in the 1987 

Single European Act referendum, and 

continued until 1995. 

The basis of Anthony Coughlan's 

case is that referendums are different 

from general elections. In an election 

people choose representatives, but in a 

referendum the people legislate directly. 

"In contested referendums political 

party members and supporters arc 

divided between Yes and No, just like 

everyone else," he argued. 

"In these circumstances, for the Irish 

political party leaderships and machines 

to seek public subsidy for themselves, 

either in cash or in publicly funded free 

broadcasting time, so as to push one side 

against the other — or to remain mute 

while the government itself uses public 

money in a one-sided fashion — is a 

comment on the general arrogance and 

lack of sensitivity that a healthy 

democracy requires." 

He went on to stress that the historic 

verdict would not stop political party or 

other uncontested broadcasts. 

"What it does do is require RTE to 

act fairly and constitutionally in 

allocating them on these occasions," he 

said. "If political parties are divided on a 

referendum issue, uncontested party 

broadcastss are clearly permissible, so 

long as they are broadly equal between 

both sides. 

"Uncontested broadcasts involving 

non-party groups could be allocated to 

designated umbrella groups in 

referendums, if such existed, as is 

proposed in the British government's 

Political Parties, Elections and 

Referendums Bill." 

The British legislation provided for 

equal public funding and equal 

uncontested broadcast coverage for 

umbrella groups on both sides in British 

referendums, he pointed out. 

Exhibition for a 

'lost' Fenian artist 

ART AND POLITICS 


DETAILED RESEARCH by a lecturer 

at the Irish National College for Art and 

Design has gone some way to restoring 

the artistic reputation of the painter and 

Fenian Aloysius O'Kelly, a selection of 

whose work was recently exhibited at the 

Hugh Lane gallery in Dublin. 

Lecturer Niamh O'Sulljvan, who has 

been researching the painter's life for 

nearly a decade, believes that it was 

O'Kelly's highly clandestine lifestyle 

that was largely responsible for his 

disappearance from history books. 

According to O'Sullivan, O' Kelly 

was bom in Dublin in 1853 into a family 

with strong Fenian connections, grew up 

Assembly says No 

to RUC reforms 

THE NEW Northern Ireland Assembly 

voted to reject proposals for reforming 

the police recommended by the Patten 

commission. 

The vote of 50 to 42 backing 

opposition to the Patten proposals, taken 

on January 24, was widely predicted as 

unionists are in a majority in the 

assembly. Unionists of all persuasions 

are incensed by the plans to transform 

the RUC into the Police Service for 


However, the vote is expected to 

bring little joy to either the No-camp 

rejectionists or Trimble's nominally proagreement 

UUP as policing remains the 

responsibility of the British secretary of 

state under the devolution arrangements. 

Actor sparks row 

WELSH REPUBLICAN, actor and film 

maker Kenneth Griffith sent DUP leader 

Ian Paisley into a fit apoplexy recently 

— simply by wearing a green ribbon 

demonstrating his support for the release 

of political prisoners in the North. 

Paisley wrote to BBC directorgeneral 

John Birt demanding an apology 

after Griffith wore the emblem while 

IN BRIEF 

in London and subsequently travelled 

widely. As an active Fenian O'Kelly 

wisely indulged in subterfuge changing 

his name at least twice, using false travel 

documents and frequently providing 

inaccurate and misleading information 

about his background. Despite this, his 

work was sought after by art collectors at 

the time and admired by none other than 

Van Gogh. 

O'Sullivan has unearthed that 

O'Kelly, who eventually settled in the 

USA, documented the campaigns of the 

Land War in Connemara and once asked 

Clan na Gael to supply arms to the 

Mahdi in Sudan to assist the Sudanese 

leader in his campaign against the 

British. O'Kelly had been working in 

Sudan on an illustrated history of the war 

for Pictorial World, 

presenting the BBC's highly-praised 

documentary on the Boer War, broadcast 

last September. 

BBC bosses rejected the complaint, 

knowing that a ban would have been 

difficult to enforce and would have 

sparked counter calls for the banning of 

all ribbons, badges and stickers, 

including Remembrance Day poppies. 

Nelson inquiry call 

THE ROSEMARY Nelson Campaign 

for Truth and Justice has called for the 

US congress to conduct a thorough 

inquiry after a prominent member of the 

Loyalist Volunteer Force (LVF) was 

arrested in California. 

At the time of his arrest last 

December, William James Fulton, one of 

those suspected of conspiring to plant the 

bomb which killed prominent six-county 

solicitor Rosemary Nelson, was in 

possession of weapons, bomb-making 

materials, anti-tank weaponry and drugs. 

Fulton is believed to have slipped out of 

the six counties last summer. 

Rosemary Nelson was killed six 

months after testifying to a US 

congressional committee about the 

intimidation of nationalist solicitors by 

the RUC. Following her assassination, 

the RUC called on the FBI to assist in 

their investigation into her murder. 

WORLD 

COMMENT 

by Politicus 

Break-up Britain 

IT IS a significant historical moment 

when the 'English question' begins to 

assert itself. In just seven years time, in 

the year 2007, it will be the 300th 

anniversary of England's Act of Union 

with Scotland, which brought the British 

state into being as a political entity. How 

long more will it last? 

Some people think Britain will not 

continue as a state and that in time 

separate Scottish, English and Welsh 

States will join the international 

community. That is possible, though not 

inevitable. 

In 1536 the English monarchy 

absorbed Wales. In 1603 James VI of 

Scotland became James I of England and 

the two countries were linked in a 

personal union of the crowns. In 1707 

the Act of Union abolished the Scottish 

r 

j-liament. For a time Scotland was 

laioA'n as 'North Britain' The railway to 

Scotland was the 'North British 

Railway.' 

Until recently the first thing you'd 

see on emerging from Edinburgh's 

Waverley Station was the 'North British 

Hotel' on Prince's Street. The Empire on 

which the sun proverbially never set was 

called British, not English, although it 

was ruled from England's capital. 

Now the Scots once again have a 

parliament of their own. English people 

ask, justifiably, why Scottish MPs at 

Westminster should vote on English 

matters when English MPs may not vote 

on devolved Scottish ones. Does Tony 

Blair's devolution project mean the end 

of the UK? Will Scotland and Wales 

follow where Ireland led in 1921? 

English football crowds now commonly 

carry the St George's flag of England 

instead of the Union Jack. 

Home Secretary Jack Straw showed a 

sense of all this when he referred to 

England's history of imperialism. 

"We've used that propensity to violence 

to subjugate Ireland, Wales and Scotland 

and then we used it with Europe and with 

our empire. . . The United Kingdom is 

three small nations who have been for 

centuries under the cosh of the English." 

People's sense of Englishness would 

become more articulated, he suggested. 

The Daily Mirror's Brian Reade 

agreed with Straw on Ireland: "When 

you strip history back to the bone, the 

blame for the carnage in Ireland can be 

laid squarely at the door of the 

Englishman's desire to treat that island 

as his own and its people as his slaves." 

A Daily Telegraph leader-writer said: 

"You do not establish your dominion 

over a quarter of the globe without some 

potential for violence." 

The end of the British Empire and the 

rush by the Westminster parliament to 

replace British democracy by rule from 

Brussels and Frankfort are the main 

factors responsible for growing English 

nationalism. It is nationalism which 

gives much of its fervour to 'Euroscepticism', 

as English people, who have 

ruled others for centuries, discover for 

themselves the drawbacks of being ruled 

from abroad. 

There is a progressive tradition of 

English nationalism, interwoven with 

much chauvinism and nostalgia or 

imperialism. 

It is expressed best perhaps in some 

of England's great writers: Milton, 

Blake, Shelley, Morris. A genuine 

English patriotism that is compatible 

with nationalism in the best sense of that 

word, and is therefore internationalist, 

will draw from the critical, radical and 

democratic spirit of such as these. We 

are likely to hear much from it during 

our new century.

Page 10 

News/letters 

DPP delivers blow to Nelson family 

Rosemary Nelson Campaign spokesperson Robbie 

McVeigh argues that the British prime minister must 

take political responsibility for the behaviour of the 

RUC and criminal justice system in the wake of the 

decision by the Director of Public Prosecutions not to 

prosecute RUC officers accused of harassing the 

solicitor and of issuing death threats through clients 

SHORTLY AFTER Xmas and the New 

Year, as most people in Britain and 

Ireland were with their families and still 

celebrating the new millennium, Paul 

Nelson phoned the Director of Public 

Prosecutions. He was informed that the 

DPP was not going to prosecute RUC 

officers who had been involved in 

abusing, harassing and threatening with 

death, his wife, Rosemary Nelson. 

Rosemary was an ordinary solicitor 

running a busy practice in Lurgan. She 

was also a human-rights defender of the 

highest calibre — associated with highprofile 

cases like the murder of Robert 

Hamill and the residents of the Garvaghy 

Road. Rosemary was also a person of 

immense bravery, continuing to 

represent clients in the face of 

continuous abuse, harassment and death 

threats. 

Before she was murdered in a car 

bomb on 15 March 1999, Rosemary had 

been involved in three separate 

complaints against the RUC. (A further 

case of assault by RUC on Rosemary on 

the Garvaghy Road remains with the 

Independent Commission for Police 

Complaints.) 

One of these complaints, made on 

Rosemary's behalf by the US-based 

Lawyers Alliance for Justice, 

documented in great detail both the 

Absentee landlords 

CONGRATULATIONS TO Jim Savage 

on his excellent article on the control of 

the Blackwater riverbed and valuable 

salmon fishery by the absentee landlord, 

the Duke of Devonshire (ID Oct/Nov 

1999). The Duke's malevolent influence 

in Munster is preventing the good people 

of Youghal developing a natural resource 

for the benefit of the local economy. 

The Duke's latest 'in yer face' insult 

to the Youghal townsfolk is just one of a 

long series of confrontations with the 

Irish people which stretch back to the 

17th century and beyond. 

The Irish National Library and the 

Northern Ireland Records Office have 

published guides to certain of the Duke's 

Lismore Castle estate records. These 

indexes chronicle, from the standpoint of 

the landlord, the many challenges 

mounted by the local people to the 

Devonshire's control of the rich salmon 

fishery and a pattern of disturbances on 

the estate as the people struggled to roll 

back the Penal Laws and win basic 

tenant rights in the 19th century Irish 

Land League campaigns. 

Separatists are rightly now 

concentrating their best efforts on 

ensuring the implementation of the 

provisions of the Good Friday agreement 

which will break the impasse of the 

imposed 1921 Treaty settlement and 

advance the democratic struggle in 

Ireland. 

However, the recent reprehensible 

process of harassment suffered by 

Rosemary Nelson and the process of 

raising concerns about this harassment 

by the Lawyers Alliance and others. 

Names and descriptions of officers 

who had threatened Rosemary Nelson 

with death were included along with 

detailed times and dates. A list of British 

Government representatives with whom 

Rosemary's safety had been raised was 

also included. This list includes Jack 

Straw, Louis Blom-Cooper and Ronnie 

Flanagan, Chief Constable of the RUC. 

This decision by the DPP marks yet 

another shameful episode in the failure 

of the criminal justice system to deliver 

truth and justice to Rosemary Nelson. If 

those who threatened Rosemary are not 

prosecuted, how can we have any 

confidence that the current murder 

investigation under Colin Port, which 

will go to the DPP if it ever identifies 

responsibility for her murder, will deliver 

justice? 

The DPP and the British government 

have failed to learn a very basic lesson: if 

you allow people to demonise lawyers 

and threaten them with murder, lawyers 

will be murdered. 

In the aftermath of the decision, Paul 

Nelson spoke out: 

"This decision by the DPP is another 

body blow for our family. Nearly ten 

Letters to the Editor 

action of the Duke of Devonshire in 

Youghal is a timely reminder that even as 

republicans win considerable advances 

which undermine unionism in the North, 

much work remains to be done to reverse 

the conquest. 

Absentee landlords such as the Duke 

of Devonshire, Lord Lucan and Lord 

Pembroke retain their Irish property 

holdings. Dublin Castle, the heart of the 

government administrative machine in 

Ireland, is a leasehold property — the 

British Crown retaining ownership of the 

freehold. The Lismore estate was part of 

Raleigh's landholdings stolen from the 

Irish during Queen Elizabeth I's Munster 

plantation. These land passed to the 

Boyle family and subsequently into the 

control of the Devonshire family. 

I have compiled a list of Lismore 

Estate records relevant to the disputed 

ownership of the Blackwater river and 

would welcome an opportunity to work 

with fellow separatists towards a 'reconquest' 

of the McCarthy lands 

occupied by the Devonshires. 

Frank Small 

38 Park Ave, Barking, Essex 

Author questioned 

WHEN ANGUS Mitchell's Amazon 

Journal (Anaconda Press 1997) was 

published two reviews appeared in the 

Irish Democrat*. 

This was sensible since the 

controversy about the authenticity of the 

'Black Diaries' still rages. It was 

Nelson's memory lives on: what is 

needed now is truth and justice 

months after her death, there is no sign of 

any commitment to truth or justice for 

Rosemary. It is bad. of course, that police 

officers were involved in harassing 

Rosemary and threatening her with 

death. It is much worse, however, that 

the DPP has colluded in allowing these 

officers to continue to serve without any 

sanction. 

"What kind of message does this 

send to human rights defenders in 

Northern Ireland? What kind of message 

does it send to police officers, or others, 

who might be considering threatening 

lawyers they do not like? 

"This kind of impunity can only 

corrupt the rule of law and undermine 

the protection of human rights. Tony 

Blair must recognise his responsibility in 

Write to: The Editor, Irish Democrat, c/o 244 Gray's Inn Road, London WC1X 8JR 

or email at: connolly@geo2.poptel.org.uk 

assumed by one reviewer that since 

Mitchell asserted that the 'Black Diaries' 

were forged he accepted that there was 

no evidence that Casement was 

homosexual. 

It now appears from an article in the 

Irish edition of the Sunday Times 

(26.12.99.) that this was not so. Mitchell 

is reported as saying that the British 

"knew" Casement was homosexual but, 

lacking positive proof, used Casement's 

genuine papers, which they seized in 

1914, to concoct the forgeries. This 

Mitchell asserts was "a dirty trick". 

If the article is accurate it appears that 

Mitchell is now playing his own dirty 

trick for he had led us all in the Roger 

Casement Foundation to believe that he 

did not accept Casement's 

homosexuality. As the London 

representative of the Foundation I would 

ask Mitchell a question: 

Why, if the British knew of his 

homosexuality, did they not use due 

process of law to discredit him? There 

had been no hesitation in so attacking 

Oscar Wilde or in driving the gallant Sir 

Hector MacDonald, the Boer War hero, 

to commit suicide. What scruples 

persuaded them against charging 

Casement with what in those 

unenlightened days was a criminal 

offence? 

Since the days of Walsingham, the 

English spy service and bureau of 

misinformation has been the most 

efficient in the world and still performs 

effectively, as has been amply 

relation to truth and justice for Rosemary 

and establish an independent 

international judicial inquiry into all the 

circumstances surrounding her murder." 

The British government must move 

quickly to take responsibility for the 

behaviour of its police force and criminal 

justice system in the north of Ireland. 

Political responsibility in this case rests 

with Tony Blair — not the RUC or the 

DPP. 

The Rosemary Nelson Campaign has 

always supported the Nelson and Magee 

families' call for an independent 

investigation and inquiry into the 

circumstances surrounding Rosemary's 

murder. The role of the DPP in failing to 

sanction officers who harassed and 

threatened Rosemary Nelson with death 

must form part of that inquiry. 

We are now clearly in a situation 

similar to the family of Stephen 

Lawrence. The 'normal' processes of law 

have singularly failed to both protect 

someone when they were alive and 

deliver them truth and justice after they 

have been murdered. The sooner we 

move to an independent, international 

judicial inquiry into the entire 

circumstances surrounding Rosemary's 

murder the better. 

This is fundamental to the peace 

process, to human rights and to the rule 

of law. There has been much talk of a 

new beginning for policing in the north 

of Ireland in the wake of the Patten 

Report. This new police service threatens 

to be fundamentally corrupted from the 

start if there is not swift movement 

towards truth and justice for Rosemary 

Nelson. 

• Further details available from: 

RNC, PO Box 1251, Belfast BT126DN, 

or e-mail: 

www.rosemarynelsoncampaign.com 

demonstrated in recent conflicts in 

Northern Ireland and Yugoslavia, among 

others. 

While the main issue is still the 

authenticity or otherwise of the diaries, it 

is still incumbent upon Mitchell to 

explain his change of tactics and give his 

evidence. 

John Garten 

Wanstead, London 

* Two separate books dealing with 

Casement's Amazon experiences were 

reviewed. See Not everything in black 

and white makes sense (ID 

February/March 1998). 

IN BRIEF 

Graves vandalised 

DISGRUNTLED RUC officers are 

widely thought to have been involved in 

vandalising republican graves in 

Belfast's Milltown cemetery towards the 

end of January. 

The attack, which resulted in 

thousands of pounds worth of damage, 

came within 48 hours of the British 

secretary of state's announcement that 

the government was planning to go ahead 

with most of the reforms recommended 

by the Patten commission. 

Among the graves vandalised was 

that of IRA hunger striker Bobbie Sands 

and those of Mair6ad Farrell, Se4n 

Savage and Danny McCann, the three 

republicans gunned down by the SAS in 

Gibraltar in March 1988. 

Local Sinn F6in councillor Tom 

Hartley has pointed out that the attack 

took place within the range of CCTV 

cameras at the Andersonstown RUC 

station. 

Irish Democrat February/March 2000 

A Fenian episode 

in Cork City 

Jim Savage 

recalls the 

connection 

between the 

recent death 

of a local 

woman and 

the Fenian 

rebellion 

I 

I 

I 

H 

I 

I 

I 

I 

I 

of 1867 M H ^ H H 

THE DEATH last year of Mrs Dawson 

of Birch Hill House, Grenagh, Co. Cork, 

brought to mind an earlier period when 

the house was owned by Francis Wise. 

At the time of the 1867 rising, Cork 

Fenians marched to Limerick junction, 

the rallying point for the new 'Army of 

the Irish Republic', where they were to 

join up in the neighbourhood of Mallow 

with Fenians from Kerry and elsewhere. 

Around 200 of the assembled 

Corkmen had no arms and were 

expected to raid army barracks and 

private houses for weapons. 

Setting off from Prayer Hill* at the 

top of Shanakiel in a blinding blizzard, 

they marched down Faggott Hill, out 

along the southern road to Blarney, 

skirting the village, before heading up 

the Martin River valley past Waterloo 

and on to Rathduff. 

In the early hours of the morning they 

halted near an isolated house at Birch 

Hill, the residence of the brewery owner, 

Francis M. Wise. 

Recounting the events which 

followed for the benefit of the Special 

Commission, Mr Wise told the court 

how he had been woken by knocking at 

the door and that shortly afterwards a 

man had come into his room and 

demanded arms, in the name of the Irish 

Republic. 

The man demanding arms was 

wearing a short, dark coat, a sash around 

his waist and had brandished a pistol, 

explained Wise, who estimated that there 

had been around 50 to 60 men in the hall 

of the house with a further 500 to 600 

outside in the avenue. 

The rewards for the raid were 

meagre, with the intruders securing a 

solitary pistol, a fowling piece, a handful 

of hay pikes, spades, shovels and iron 

bars, although they duly gave the owner 

a receipt for what they taken. 

Afterwards, the insurgents headed on 

to Rathduff railway station where they 

proceeded to rip up lengths of rail, cut 

telegraph wires and - with the aid of 

some of the newly acquired picks and 

shovels - sent parts of two bridges 

tumbling down on to the track. This 

blocking of the track between Cork and 

Mallow - both British garrison centres - 

was part of a prepared plan. 

Some of the rebels visited Curtains 

public house in Rathduff before going on 

to raid Ballyknockane constabulary 

barracks, located between Rathduff and 

Mourneabbey and just a short distance 

from the farm where Tomls McCurtain 

would be bom in 1884. 

Although the barracks were partially 

destroyed in the attack, the building was 

later renovated as a private house and in 

1967 a plaque was unveiled 

commemorating the capture of the police 

barracks on 6 March 1867 by Fenians 

under the command of J.F. O'Brien and 

captain Mackey. 

Tomas McCurtain went on to become 

the Lord Mayor of Cork only to be 

murdered in his home by members of the 

royal Irish Constabulaiy. 

* During the time of the Penal Laws 

Catholic priests were outlawed. Unable 

to attend mass local Catholics would 

gather each Sunday on the hill at 

Shanakiel to pray. 


News/analysis 

Moving beyond aspirations 

Irish Democrat northern correspondent Bobbie Heatley 

sees more rough water ahead for the Irish peace process 

as a result of unionist attitudes to decommissioning and 

the Patten Commission proposals for policing reform 

FOR EIGHTEEN years the 

British government under 

Thatcher and Major and 

their Northern Ireland 

dependants refused to 

embark on a political peace 

process in the full expectation that 

republicanism could be defeated 

militarily and politically. 

By way of contrast, those on whom 

they could have applied successful 

pressure, the loyalist paramilitaries, were 

— and still are — only occasionally 

rebuked. 

The precondition of a surrender of 

republican arms (decommissioning) was 

originally imposed at the very start of 

attempts to get 'inclusive' negotiations 

off the ground back in the early 1970s. 

Talks of this kind usually aim to 

bring warring parties together in search 

of a tolerable accommodation. Judging 

by their behaviour, this was not what the 

Tories and the unionists had in mind. 

By dealing only with the SDLP, the 

voice of Catholic community could be 

rendered ineffectual and disregarded, as 

had been the case hitherto. 

Talks inclusive of Sinn Fein were 

shunned even if the possibility of an IRA 

ceasefire could have been the dividend. 

When this ploy failed and what was 

dubbed a 'pan-nationalist front' of the 

SDLP, SF and the Dublin government, 

supported by American-Irish who could 

influence the White House emerged, the 

'decommissioning' implement was put 

to other uses — initially to hold up an 

accord and then to forestall its 

implementation. 

Although the Good Friday deal dates 

from 1 April 1998 it was not until 30 

November 1999 that a New Labour 

government, after considerable unionist 

opposition, was able to activate the 

'Northern Ireland Devolution Order' and 

get the Stormont institutions into place. 

Unfortunately, this did not signify an 

end to a British government's 

mollycoddling of unionism, although an 

important step forward had been 

obtained. Ignoring the fact that for four 

of the past five years prolonged IRA 

ceasefires had been in existence, the 

unionists have been allowed to continue 

flaunting their obstructive 

decommissioning banner. 

It was only after the debacle in the 

summer of 1999 that strains appeared in 

the British government's patience with 

the UUP. London and Dublin had cosigned 

the Hillsborough Declaration, in 

an effort to move matters forward, only 

to see it flung back in their faces by 

Trimble and co. 

Estrangement seemed to be further 

developing when the two governments 

could not satisfy the unionists with a 

jointly produced 'Way Forward' 

document even though its terms were 

altered to provide 'fail safe' guarantees 

for unionists. 

Present developments point to any 

friction being nothing more than a mild 

lovers tiff. The decommissioning issue is 

still with us threatening to prolong 

unionist stalling. 

What has changed is the finesse of 

Labour's spin-doctoring as it attempts to 

convince the nationalist community that, 

with its intentions on the Patten reforms, 

it will be getting more than it will in 

reality. 

Meanwhile, the UUP is threatening 

to bring down the Stormont institutions 

by withdrawing from the executive if 

their arbitrary date for IRA 

decommissioning has not occurred by 

the end of January, when General de 

Chastelain is due to deliver his report. 

If they carry out this threat what will 

Mr Mandelson do to preserve the peace 

process? The UUP, having thrown in the 

towel in favour of unionist rejectionism, 

wants him to collaborate in their stalling 

tactics by mothballing the institutions 

and thereby enabling Trimble to avoid 

having to be seen resigning as 'first 

minister' on 12 February at the Ulster 

Unionist Council meeting. 

LAST JUNE the UUP caused 

a similar crises by boycotting 

the new assembly. The 

SDLP's Seamus Mallon was 

then reluctantly forced to 

hand in his resignation as 

'joint first minister' — a situation which 

took some card-sharping to retrieve. 

At the time, Mo Mowlam was 

frustrated in her efforts to set up the 

executive and move on. That particular 

crisis was surmounted but it required 

George Mitchell's recall to conduct a 

review of the Good Friday agreement's 

non-implementation. Who will be the 

Good Fairy if there is a next time ? 

It has become clear that unionists, as 

opposed to the Protestants, are 

increasingly uncomfortable with the 

Good Friday agreement. 

They know that the Patten proposals, 

Who are the Irish? 

THE ROYAL Irish Academy expects to 

complete its genetic map of Ireland's 

population next year. Thousands of DNA 

samples will be taken from people in 

different parts of the country and 

analysed and compared v.ith those of 

skeletons found by archaeo.ogists. 

Modern Irish genes will also be 

compared with samples in other 

countries to show how the Irish are 

related to other populations. 

The fact that Ireland is an island 

means that the people living there are 

descended from those who once came 

across the sea from outside. 

The same goes for the inhabitants of 

Britain. The people known as Celts, 

whose language constituted the Celtic 

sub-group of the Indo-European family 

of languages, spread from south 

Germany and central Europe to both 

Ireland and Britain in the six centuries or 

so before Christ and the century or so 

after. 

But Ireland and Britain had been 

inhabited for 7000 years before that, the 

last 3000 years of that time by the pre- 

Celtic people who built New Grange and 

Stonehenge. 

While the Celtic languages — Irish, 

Scots Gallic, Welsh, Cornish etc. — 

became the predominant languages in 

both islands in the centuries around the 

birth of Christ, no one knows for certain 

what the relative numbers of Celts and 

pre-Celts were. 

Trimble and Mandelson do not see eye to eye on RUC reform 

for one thing, derive from it, while not 

being dependent upon it. 

Many unionists have openly admitted 

that they are seeking the collapse of the 

agreement triggering a further stalling 

review. Outright rejectionists openly 

admit that they are seeking a renegotiation 

of the agreement. If they are 

not persuaded otherwise we could be 

back to something worse than square 

one. 

Senior IRA sources are reported as 

having made it clear that 

decommissioning on their part, when it 

debacle in the 

summer of 1999 

did strains appear 

in the British 

government's 

patience with 

the UUP 

comes, will be a voluntary act within the 

terms of the Belfast agreement. It will 

not be done according to arbitrary 

deadlines dictated unilaterally by 

unionism. All the parties to the 

agreement are obligated to create the 

political conditions which will make 

possible the decommissioning of all 

paramilitary weapons by the target date 

of May 2000. Unionist tactics have 

achieved nothing more than prejudicing 

that target. 

What the nationalist community is 

now looking for are sweeping changes in 

policing. Spin-doctoring alone will not 

suffice while the British government's 

stated intentions are being 'justified' on 

the grounds that 'pain' is being offered to 

'both sides'. 

Then the Vikings came from 

Scandinavia, followed by the Normans 

and English. In the 16th and 17th 

centuries Ireland saw further English and 

Scottish plantations. 

The English language became 

predominant in both islands, but again 

we do not know what was the relative 

population ratio of English-speakers and 

their descendants to the non-English 

people there before them. 

A genetic map should throw light on 

the relative contribution of pre-Celts, 

Celts, Vikings and English to the 

population-mix of modern Ireland. 

Politically of course it does not matter a 

whit. 

People's nationality is the national 

community with which people identify 

in the here-and-now, irrespective of past 

ethnic contributions to their genetic pool. 

True, tinkering with the RUC will 

cause pain to unionists who, by their 

livid reaction, have substantiated that 

they view the force as their legal 

'paramilitary' wing. It must be 

democratised nevertheless while pain for 

nationalists lies in the fact that key Patten 

proposals will not be implemented while 

others are put on the long-finger. In order 

to get their rights, they will be required to 

ease unionist pain. 

Thankful, Trimble has vowed to 

ambush the Pattern reforms at 

Westminster — something which his 

previous track record indicates that he is 

highly capable of. Some calculations 

suggest that it could take up to 30 years 

to achieve a fair balance of Protestants 

and Catholics in the new Police Service 

of Northern Ireland. 

However, Mandelson's intention to 

retain, contrary to the Patten proposals. 

Special Branch and CID, rankles with 

many nationalists. Plastic bullets remain 

despite the mainly Catholic deaths which 

they have caused, including children. 

The new oath with its pledge relating to 

human rights applies only to new 

entrants. The Royalist insignia change 

must wait until November while what 

will replace it is unknown. 

The highly-respected Belfast-based 

Committee on the Administration of 

Justice, while welcoming the statement 

from the Secretary of State, has 

expressed disappointment that he has not 

addressed the need to "repeal emergency 

legislation, strengthen the accountability 

of policing and deal with 'bad apples' 

within the RUC". 

Clearly, there is much to be 

welcomed in the reforms, but as the 

prominent Dublin journalist, Frank 

Connolly, has commented, much of 

Mandelson's intentions are 'aspirational' 

— every bit as much so as the Good 

Friday agreement. There is one major 

difference, the unionists are not 

screaming to have the latter 

implemented. 

O'Neill inquiry opens 

AFTER A delay of three years, the 

inquest into the killing of Diarmuid 

O'Neill by the Metropolitan Police 

finally got underway on 31 January. 

O'Neill, an IRA volunteer, was shot 

and killed while attempting to surrender 

to a special armed police combat unit on 

23 September 19%. 

The inquiry, which is expected to last 

a month, will be presided over by 

Hammersmith coroner Dr John Burton. 

Last year Dr Burton, who has postponed 

retirement to conduct what he sees as a 

highly complex case, wrote to the Home 

Secretary supporting the setting up of a 

full judicial inquiry. 

The O'Neill family is being 

represented by solicitor Gareth Pierce 

and barrister Michael Mansfield. 

EUROWATCH 

by JOHN BOYD 

Unions key to 

Euro struggle 

THE POPULAR feeling against Britain 

joining the single currency or economic 

and monetary union has widespread 

support. Polls, for what they are worth, 

indicate support for the Euro is only 17 

per cent. 

EU Commission president Romano 

Prodi stated recently that the trade 

unions are key to winning support for the 

Euro. This applies to Britain, Denmark, 

Greece and Sweden. The attempt by 

Tony Blair, Gordon Brown and Robin 

Cook to launch a campaign for the Euro 

with former Tory ministers Michael 

Heseltine, Ken Clarke and Lib-Dem 

leader Charles Kennedy did not work. 

Largely because Britain in Europe 

fell flat, leaders in six trade unions set 

up, without any reference to their 

members, a body called Trade Unionists 

for Europe. They could not bring 

themselves to be associated with 

Heseltine and Clark. 

These moves are to counter directly 

the work in the labour movement of the 

Campaign against Euro-federalism 

(CAEF) and Trade Unionists against the 

Single Currency (TASC) — both of 

which have recently published 

pamphlets on the Euro. 

The CAEF pamphlet, Euro Fallout 

starts with the assumption that most 

people do not care what they are paid in. 

As long as they can pay their bills, have 

some money over for entertainment and 

holidays that is all they are directly 

interested in. 

What is of concern is whether EMU 

will affect jobs, pensions and the welfare 

state. All these are under attack from 

Britain being lined up for joining EMU 

where the public sector has to be cut and 

trimmed in order to meet convergence 

criteria for the single currency. 

The single currency is to complete 

the European Single Market where there 

is to be the 'free movement of capital, 

goods, services and people (meaning 

labour)'. That is, to move capital to any 

location where it will make most profit 

and where corporate capital does not 

have to contribute towards the welfare 

state, including social protection. 

The TASC pamphlet deals with these 

implications of the single currency on 

public services from the point of view of 

trade unionists and the people they serve. 

This is the basic reason for cuts in 

hospital beds, low pay for skilled staff 

and so on. EMU is also behind the 

privatisation of residential homes, 

council housing and a lot more besides. 

The author points out that trade union 

ists would not accept the dictatorial 

manner in which the European Central 

Bank is run if it were a trade union. 

# Euro Fallout is available for £1.20 (or 

6x19p stamps) post free from CAEF, 57 

Green Lane, Merseyside CH45 8JQ. 

Trade Unions, Public Services and the 

EURO is available for £2.50 post free 

from LHE Ltd, Unit 6, Ivebury Court, 

325 Latimer Road, London W10 6RA 

They say... 

"We must now face the difficult task of 

moving towards a single economy, a 

single political entity... For the first time 

since the fall of the Roman empire we 

have the opportunity to unite Europe.' 

(EU Commission president Romano 

Prodi, October 1999) 

'Transforming the European Union 

into a single state with one army, one 

constitution and one foreign policy is the 

critical challenge of the age." (German 

Foreign Minister Joschka Fischcr, 

November 19%)


Connolly column 

In the Workers' Republic 

of 12 February 1916 

Connolly warned that the 

promised introduction of 

Home Rule, delayed by 

the outbreak of the interimperialist 

conflict 

generally known as 

World War I, should not 

be confused with the 

establishment of a free 

and sovereign Ireland 

What is a free nation? (part one) 

WE ARE moved to ask this question because of the extraordinary confusion of 

thought upon the subject which prevails in this country, due principally to the 

pernicious and misleading newspaper garbage upon which the Irish public has been 

fed for the past 25 years. 

Our Irish daily newspapers have done all that human agencies could do to confuse 

the public mind upon the question of what the essentials of a free nation are, what a 

free nation must be, and what a nation cannot submit to lose without losing its title to 

be free. 

It is because of this extraordinary newspaper-created ignorance that we find so 

many young people enlisting in the British army under the belief that Ireland has at 

long last attained to the status of a free nation, and that therefore the relations between 

Ireland and England, they have been told, are now sister nations, joined in the bond 

of empire, but each enjoying equal liberties — the equal liberties of nations equally 

free. 

How many recruits this idea sent into the British army in the first flush of war it 

would be difficult to estimate, but they were assuredly numbered by the thousand. 

The Irish Parliamentary Party, which at every stage of the Home Rule game has 

been outwitted by Carson and the unionists, which had surrendered every point and 

yielded every advantage to the skilful campaign of the aristocratic Orange military 

clique in times of peace, behaved in equally as cowardly and treacherous manner in 

the crisis of war. 

There are few men in whom the blast of bugles of war do not arose the fighting 

instinct, do not excite some chivalrous impulses if only for a moment. But the Irish 

Parliamentary Party must be reckoned amongst that few. 

In them the bugles of war only awakened the impulse to sell the bodies of their 

countrymen as cannon fodder in exchange for the gracious smiles of the rulers of 

England. In them the call of war sounded only as a call to emulate in prostitution. 

They heard the call of war — and set out to prove that the nationalists of Ireland were 

Our 

parliamentarians 

treat Ireland as an 

old prostitute 

selling her soul for 

the promise of 

favours to come 

more slavish than the Orangemen of 

Ireland, would more readily kill and be 

killed at the bidding of an empire that 

despised them both. 

The Orangemen had at least the 

satisfaction that they were called upon to 

fight abroad in order to save an empire 

they had been prepared to fight to retain 

unaltered at home; but the nationalists 

were called upon to fight abroad to save 

an empire whose rulers in their most 

generous moments had refused to grant 

their country the essentials of freedom in 

nationhood. 

Fighting abroad the Orangeman 

knows that he fights to preserve the 

power of the aristocratic rulers whom he followed at home; fighting abroad the 

nationalist soldier is fighting to maintain unimpaired the power of those who 

conspired to shoot him down at home when he asked for a small instalment of 

freedom. 

The Orangeman says: "We will fight for the Empire abroad if its rulers will 

promise not to force us to submit to Home Rule." And the rulers say heartily: "It is 

unthinkable that we should coerce Ulster for any such purpose". 

The Irish Parliamentary Party and its press said: "We will prove ourselves fit to be 

in the British Empire by fighting for it, in the hopes that after the war is over we will 

get Home Rule." 

And the rulers of the British Empire say: "Well, you know what we have promised 

Carson, but send out the Irish rabble to fight for us, and we will, ahem, consider your 

application after the war." Whereat, all the Parliamentary leaders and their press call 

the world to witness that they have won a wonderful victory! 

James Fintan Lalor spoke and conceived of Ireland as a "discrowned queen, taking 

back her own with an armed hand". Our parliamentarians treat Ireland, their country, 

as an old prostitute selling her soul for the promise of favours to come, and in the 

spirit . that conception of their country they are conducting their political campaign. 

That they should be able to do so with even the partial success that for a while 

attended their apostasy was possible only because so few in Ireland really understood 

the answer to the question that stands at the head of this article. 

What is a free nation? A free nation is one which possesses absolute control over 

its own internal resources and powers, and which has no restriction upon its 

intercourse with all other similarly circumscribed except the restrictions placed upon 

it by nature. 

Is that the case of Ireland? If the Home Rule Bill were in operation would that be 

the case of Ireland? To both questions the answer is: no, most emphatically, NO! 

Features 

Concern grows over 

extension of draconian 

'anti-terrorism' laws 

John Wadham, director of the civil-rights group Liberty, 

outlines his organisation's grave concern over Home 

Secretary Jack Straw's proposals to extend Britain's 

failed and discredited 'anti-terrorist' legislation 

WHERE CAN you be 

sentenced to ten 

years in prison for 

speaking at a 

meeting? The 

answer, I am afraid, 

is this country and the proposal is 

contained in clause ll(3)(b) of the 

Terrorism Bill which entered its 

committee stage in the House of 

Commons on Wednesday 19 January. 

The Bill gives the government the 

power to 'proscribe' organisations. 

Membership of a proscribed 

organisation would not be the only 

offence created. To speak at a meeting 

where a member of that organisation was 

speaking would also be a crime — even 

if your speech opposed terrorism, the use 

of violence, or of any criminal action. 

Whilst the only organisations 

currently proscribed are those associated 

with Northern Ireland, the bill gives the 

Secretary of State the power to add to 

these. If direct action organisations are 

being targeted as potential 'terrorists', 

then proscription is the next logical step. 

The Prevention of Terrorism Act is 

currently restricted to those suspected of 

involvement in international terrorism or 

terrorism connected with Northern 

Ireland. The government wants some of 

these special provisions to apply to any 

kind of 'terrorism'. People suspected of 

such 'terrorist' offences would also have 

fewer rights than other criminals. Surely 

it is wrong in principle to have a twintrack 

criminal justice system. 

There is a diversity of views about 

the morality of damaging property to 

prevent a new road scheme or making 

threats of violence to try and halt 

experimentation on animals. But there is 

no logic to a system that assumes that 

those suspected of such offences should 

have fewer rights than a person who 

assaults another for revenge or for greed. 

The anti-terrorism laws have led to 

some of the worst human rights abuses in 

this country over the last 25 years, 

contributed to miscarriages of justice and 

have led to the unnecessary detention of 

thousands of innocent people, most of 

them Irish. Only a tiny percentage of 

those detained have ever been charged 

and almost without exception they could 

have been detained under ordinary 

criminal laws. 

This Bill will create a duty to report 

people to the police in certain 

circumstances. If during the course of 

your work you find information about, or 

become suspicious of, someone who you 

suspect may be using money or property 

to contribute to the causes of terrorism, 

you must report them. Failure to do so 

will make you liable to a five year prison 

sentence. This could have a serious effect 

on journalistic investigations. 

The definition of terrorism in the Bill 

needs to be more, rather than less 

focused. The Government proposes to 

widen the definition and include 

motivation other than the overthrow of a 

state, particularly for 'political, religious 

or ideological ends'. 

Furthermore, under this bill exiled 

Straw: insists bill complies with 

human-rights convention 

supporters of Nelson Mandela who 

publicly supported the armed struggle in 

South Africa would be classified as 

terrorist. 

Anti-terrorism 

laws have led to 

some of the worst 

human-rights 

abuses in this 

country 

The offence of 'incitement' may be 

committed by mere words and there will 

be clashes with the right to freedom of 

expression. Investigation of such 

offences will often be brought about by 

political forces such as overseas 

governments complaining about the 

tactics of pressure groups and 

government opponents based in this 

country. 

To enforce the new offences the 

British authorities will have to rely on 

the co-operation and integrity of 

overseas governments and agencies 

without proper safeguards. The UK 

could become tainted by the practice and 

conduct of investigative bodies overseas 

which fall far short of our own standards. 

It will also be very difficult to ensure that 

the trials are fair if the witnesses and 

evidence are from another country. 

Those who support struggles for 

human rights and democracy in other 

countries may find themselves under 

investigation by the police and those that 

have fled from repressive regimes to the 

safety of this country will become a 

legitimate target of the police merely 

because they support the overthrow of 

that regime, even when they themselves 

are opposed to violence. 

In one clause anyone who was found 

in possession of, say, a list of cabinet 

ministers' addresses, (who might be 

considered a teiTorist target) will find 

that they, rather the prosecution, would 

have the duty to prove that their 

possession of these lists was innocent. 

When these same offences were 

introduced in 1994, Lord Williams of 

Mostyn QC, the Labour Home Affairs 

spokesman in the House of Lords and 

now the Attorney General described the 

offences as "alarming". He said that the 

offences were "far too harsh and 

draconian" and would bring the law into 

disrepute and that they would "bring us 

into serious conflict with the European 

Convention on Human Rights". The 

Lord Chief Justice in the Divisional 

Court on 30 March this year decided that 

these same provisions in a "blatant and 

obvious way undermined the 

presumption of innocence". 

Home Secretary Jack Straw believes 

that this bill complies with the European 

Convention on Human Rights. We would 

have to disagree. It risks infringing the 

rights to a fair trial, to freedom from 

unlawful detention, to freedom of speech 

and freedom of association. 

Yet the powers in the Police and 

Criminal Evidence Act, are more than 

sufficient to deal with the criminal 

activities described under in the bill. 

Draconian anti-terrorist laws should be 

abolished and not extended: such laws 

have a far greater impact on human 

rights then they ever will on crime. 

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Capital, capital, capital. War, war, 

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Greed, greed, greed. 

You want something different? 

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'Morning Star 

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They fired 

the flame 

of freedom 

A new book by socialist historian JOHN 

CHARLTON recounts how the struggle of 

over 1,000 mainly young Irish women for 

improved working conditions and the right 

to form a trade union gave birth to an era 

of militancy and inspired the burgeoning 

labour movement of the late 19th century. 

Below we publish an edited extract 

ON AN early July afternoon 

in 1888 a crowd of 200, 

mainly teenaged girls, 

arrived outside a 

newspaper office in 

Bouverie Street, off Fleet 

Street in the City of London. They had 

come from their factory at Bow in the 

East End. They had run along the Mile 

End Road, through Whitechapel and by 

the Aldgate pump, along Leadenhall 

Street near the Stock Exchange and the 

Bank of England, through the crowds of 

black-coated City workers, down 

Cheapside, through St Paul's churchyard 

up Ludgate Hill and into Fleet Street. 

Their charge of over two miles was 

fuelled with outraged anger. They had 

left their work at the Bryant and May 

match factory in protest when three of 

their colleagues had been fired. 

Management had accused them of 

telling lies about their working 

conditions to a left-wing journalist, 

Annie Besant. They had come to her for 

help. 

In the middle and upper-class 

London of the 1880s there was a 

growing interest in the working and 

living conditions of the poor of the East 

End. Polite ladies and gentlemen visited 

the district to observe, to sympathise, to 

hand out charity and to agitate and 

organise. Annie Besant belonged to the 

reporting, agitating and organising 

faction. 

She had recently founded a weekly 

agitational paper, The Link, in which she 

wrote up her story of life in the match 

factory. It was entitled 'White Slavery in 

London'. She noted that the women 

suffered an eleven and a half hour day in 

winter and a 13 and a half hour day in 

summer, standing all the time, apart from 

a miserly one and a half hour break in 

total. 

For this a typical worker earned 4/- a 

week from which 'splendid salary' she 

had to eat, clothe and house herself. To 

add insult her pay was subject to a 

system of fines: "If the feet are dirty, or 

if the ground under the bench is left 

untidy, a fine of 3d is inflicted, for 

putting 'burnts' — matches that have 

caught fire during the work on the bench 

Is has been forfeited, and one unhappy 

girl was once fined 2/6 for some 

unknown crime. If a girl leaves four or 

five matches on her bench when she goes 

out for a fresh 'frame' she is fined 3d, 

and in some departments a fine of 3d is 

deducted for talking." (The Link 23 June, 

1888) 

From the crowd of 200 women at the 

door, Besant brought a small group into 

her office where they set up an 

organising committee. They had a tough 

task ahead. The sense of injustice had 

pushed the workers out of the factory 

and fired their march to town. But, on 

strike, they would have to face the 

powerful hostility of the Bryant and May 

Mrs Besant would 

not be intimidated. 

The next issue of 

The Link invited 

Bryant to sue. 

management and there would be over 

1,000 mouths to feed. 

The managing director, Frederick 

Bryant, was already using his influence 

on the press. "His (sic) employees were 

liars. Relations with them were very 

friendly until they had been duped by 

socialist outsiders. He paid wages above 

the level of his competitors. He did not 

use fines. Working conditions were 

excellent. That deductions from pay had 

been made to finance the erection of a 

statue to Mr Gladstone was a 

preposterous suggestion. He would sue 

Features 

Mrs Besant for libel." 

'Mrs Besant would not be 

intimidated. The next issue of The Link 

invited Bryant to sue. Much better, she 

asserted, to sue her than to sack 

defenceless poor women. She followed 

that up with a viciously sarcastic letter to 

shareholders. 

With no facilities provided, the 

workers would eat their dinner at their 

benches. "They eat disease as seasoning 

to their bread." The result was the 

debilitating and disfiguring phossy jaw. 

On fines she wrote, "A system of 

devilish ingenuity catches them in 

endless traps and robs them even of part 

of the poor wages they nominally earn." 

She finished by writing, "I hold you 

up to the public opprobrium you deserve, 

and brand you with the shame that is 

your rightful doom." 

She took 50 workers to parliament. 

The women catalogued their grievances 

before a group of MPs and, afterwards, 

"outside the House they linked arms and 

marched three abreast along the 

Embankment..." (Justice, 14 July 1888) 

Besant addressed the problem of 

finance. An appeal was launched in The 

Link. Large marches and rallies were 

organised in Regents Park in the West 

End as well as Victoria Park and Mile 

End Waste in the east. 

Yet the element the middle classes 

and especially the employers could not 

comprehend was the degree to which the 

workers could help themselves. 

There is no doubt that extreme 

poverty was debilitating, nor that the 

vagaries of the market could wreak 

havoc upon individuals and families. But 

there was also resistance and mutuality 

Match workers' open struggles went 

back to at least 1871. 

APPARANTLY HIDDEN 

from the view of most 

historians is the fact that the 

Match Girls were largely 

Irish or of Irish origin, 

though a director 

interviewed in 1893 for the Girls' Own 

Paper noted that all our hands, men and 

women, hail from the Emerald Isle by 

birth or lineage'. This may have added 

an important ingredient to their 

mutuality and maybe even to their 

readiness to fight at that time. 

It is well known and recorded that 

The employers 

could not 

comprehend the 

degree to which 

the workers could 

help themselves 

communities of Irish immigrants shared 

a strong identity and were ready to 

defend it fiercely. Charles Booth in his 

monumental survey of east London 

pointed to a particular area as being 

noted for sending more police to hospital 

than any other block in London. Known 

as the Fenian Barracks, its men would 

not allow one of their number to be taken 

and would keep out 'invaders' with 

barricades. 

At least 23 match workers lived in the 

'Fenian Barracks', five in Fem Street 

adjoining them and another 24 in Sophia 

Street and Rook Street, Poplar — all 

predominantly 'Irish' streets according 

to the 1891 Census. The strike register 

compiled by the strike committee lists 

over 600 workers by name and address. 

Large numbers have obviously Irish 

names. The Irish had also built a network 

of cultural, religious and political 

organisations keeping identity and 

contact alive. 

It is also the case that the 1880s were 

a decade in which Irish affairs were 

extremely high profile. From famine to 

evictions, to coercion, to terrorism, to 

Land Reform and to Home Rule, Irish 

matters were never far from the top of 

the agenda. The Irish in Britain were 

continuously engaged with these issues, 

nowhere more prominently than in 

London. Mass demonstrations were 

almost a commonplace. Tens of 

thousands of the London Irish 

participated and it is extremely likely 

that the communities which housed the 

Match Girls had played their part. 

There was sometimes a show of 

affection and support for Gladstone for 

some of his Irish policies. At the time of 

the unveiling of a statue to the Liberal 

prime minister on Bow Road in 1882 the 

government's Irish land reform promises 

were a hot issue, though coercion was 

also on the agenda after the murder of 

the new chief secretary to Ireland in 

Phoenix Park, Dublin in May. 

Lord Carlingford, a former cabinet 

colleague of Gladstone gave the address 

in which he made special and prolonged 

reference to the 'great' man's sympathy 

for, and commitment to. the people of 

Ireland. 

Gladstone's apparent popularity on 

the street in no way diminishes the 

possibility of there having been sharp 

antagonism among Bryant's employees 

to the behaviour of their Liberal 

employer. 

Then there is John Denvir's account 

of the Hyde Park demonstrations: 

"Indeed the Irish may be seen to be 

the backbone of... popular movements 

in London... Not only do you find them 

in the ranks of the purely Catholic and 

Irish societies with their bands, banners 

and patriotic emblems, but in connection 

with other political and temperance 

organisations — if one may judge from 

the handsome banners on which you 

often see depicted such subjects as 

'Sarsfield', 'The Irish Parliament house', 

and 'O'Connell'; with quotations from 

Tom Moore and harps and shamrocks 

galore." 

Finally, just three months before the 

strike a mass demonstration took place 

on Tower Hill, near to Limehouse, 

Poplar and Bow. The issue was the 

imprisonment of three nationalists: 

"There was to be witnessed... 

procession after procession marching 

from every street and road emerging 

onto the hill, their banners flying gaily 

and their bands playing... Green was 

without doubt the favourite colour of the 

day... The speeches at all the platforms 

were vigorous and earnest; but those of 

the two East End Irish delegates were 

received with special enthusiasm, 

dealing as they did with their recent 

experiences in Ireland." (East London 

Advertiser, 25 February 1888) 

The Match Girls stayed out for three 

weeks. The London Trades Council, at 

the strike committee's invitation, 

interceded. George Shipton, its secretary, 

met Frederick Bryant and set up a 

meeting between him and a group of 

strikers. The young women had to face 

humiliation while Bryant crossexamined 

them, tricking them into 

giving answers which suited his 

particular view of events. Shipton 

concurred with him in diminishing the 

force of the workers' grievances and 

sought to help him to effect a public 

face-saving compromise which gave the 

strikers very little but did enable them to 

establish a trade union, the very first in 

the new movement for the unionisation 

of the unskilled. This in itself was no 

mean achievement. 

The Match Girls deservedly became 

the heroines of the labour movement. 

They would probably have been 

delighted to know that they continued to 

rattle Bryant and May right up to the 

time of closure. 

For documentation of this we have to 

thank an obsessive managing director 

and his company secretary. They 

collected for over 50 years, from all over 

the world, the tiniest fragments of 

information about the Match Girls and 

their strike. Their files contain numerous 

letters from schoolchildren and their 

teachers asking for help in projects on 

the strike. Every single one assumes that 

the workers were right. 

e 'It Just Went IJke Tinder', the mass 

movement and New Unionism in Britain 

1889 by John Charlton is published by 

Redwords, price £6.99 pbk. A further 

chapter in the book deals with the 

general contribution of the Irish to the 

labour-movement struggles of this 

period.

Page 8 

A great man 

off the people 

Anthony Coughlan reviews Peadar 

O'Donnell by Peter Hegartx. Mercier 

Press, £12.99 pbk 

THIS SPLENDID book will surely 

become the standard biography of that 

great Irishman and extraordinary human 

being. Peadar O'Donnell (1893-1986). 

Incidentally, although the book does 

not mention it, Peadar O'Donnell 

thought highly of the work of the 

Connolly Association, its newspaper the 

Irish Democrat, and its late editor C. 

Desmond Greaves, as one would expect 

from someone who supported all 

progressive causes he came in contact 

with during his 93 years of life. 

The book's author, Derryman Peter 

Hegarty, knows adjacent County 

Donegal well where O'Donnell was 

born. His account of O'Donnell's 

activity in the First Northern Division of 

the IRA during the War of Independence 

is a real contribution to the local history 

of that event. 

He shows his literary sensitivity in 

his discussion of P.adar O'Donnell's six 

novels, two of which, Islanders (1928) 

and The Rig Windows (1955), are 

classics, and in his account of the 

centrality to Irish cultural life in the 

PEADAR 

O'DONNELL 

1940s and early 1950s of The Bell 

magazine, founded by O'Donnell. 

A real pleasure of Hegarty's book is 

that he lets the many people he 

interviewed who knew Peadar 

personally speak for themselves, so that 

the story is full of sparkling vignettes, 

rich images and phrases that linger in the 

mind. 

O'Donnell's most important 

historical contribution was probably his 

Essential guide to the 

conflict In the North 

David Granville reviews Northern 

Ireland, a political directory 

1968 — 1999 by Sydney Elliot, W.D 

Flackes and John Coulter, Blackstaff 

Press. £30 hbk 

THE NEW edition of Elliot and Flakes' 

superb reference book on the Irish 

conflict since 1968, the fifth do date, 

looks set to confirm its place as the most 

comprehensive reference work of its 

kind currently available. 

Completely updated and revised this 

mammoth tome, which weighs in at a 

hefty 730 pages, is an indispensable 

resource for anyone who is interested in 

the modern history of Ireland. 

Essentially divided into three 

sections, the first 144 pages comprise a 

year by year chronology of major events 

from March 1968 to June 1999, 

preceded by four double-column pages 

of abbreviations and acronyms to help 

the reader through this particular 

minefield. 

The middle part of the book (370 

pages) details, in alphabetical order, the 

people, parties, organisations and places 

associated with politics of the six 

counties and the conflict which has 

blighted life in this part of Ireland for 

over three decades. 

Detailed study of 

Irish public policy 

John Murphy reviews Political 

Issues In Ireland Today, by Neill 

Collins, Manchester U P., 

£15.50pbk 

IF YOU already know something about 

Irish politics, but want a more detailed 

account of key public policy and 

administrative issues confronting the 

Irish state and society today, this is a 

book for you. 

The economy, the Irish constitution, 

The final section written by media 

lecturer and investigative journalist John 

Coulter takes the form of an addendum 

to the main dictionary. As well as dealing 

with developments between January and 

July 1999, the addendum includes 

details of election results between 1968 

and 1999, systems of government and 

the various means, legal and military, 

utilised by British in their battle against 

militant republicanism. 

Some entries in the dictionary section 

are exceptionally detailed for a work of 

this kind, with several pages apiece given 

over to Sinn Fein, Ulster Unionist Party, 

SDLP, UDA, UVF, IRA, Ian Paisley and 

various other key players in the conflict. 

One serious omission, given the 

thorough revision the work has 

undergone since the last edition in 1994, 

is the absence of an entry for Desmond 

Greaves, editor of the Irish Democrat for 

over 40 years, or the Connolly 

Association which has campaigned for 

Irish unity for over 60 years. 

Particularly galling is the fact that the 

only reference to the Connolly 

Association, found under the entry on 

Bernadette McAliskey (Devlin), is 

inaccurate. The Starry Plough flag 

unfurled by Bernadette Devlin at the 

Rossville Street barricades in Derry 

during August 1969 referred to in the 

the management of public services, 

Ireland and the EU, women's issues, 

trades unions and business, health policy, 

housing policy and much else, are 

discussed by authorities in their fields. 

There is a specially interesting 

chapter on corruption, which reviews the 

scandals of recent years. 

In 1996 an international comiption 

index put Ireland 14th among 50 

developed industrial countries, Denmark 

being the least corrupt. 

Since then we have had a further 

string of scandals. Would the Republic 

not be lower down the scale now? 

It is easy think of other issues that 

might have been included. 

Book reviews 

campaign in the early 1930s to get small 

farmers to stop paying the land annuities 

owed to Britain under the 1921 Anglo- 

Irish Treaty. The effect of pressurising a 

reluctant De Valera into taking up this 

issue was to widen the support-base of 

nascent Fianna Fail, speeding its path 

into office. 

O'Donnell's attempt in the same 

decade to lead the IRA away from 

physical force and towards politics, with 

a view to establishing a political 

republican force — not a socialist one — 

to the left of Fianna Fail that would make 

it more difficult for the mainstream party 

to sell-out to imperialism and 

multinational capitalism, as has 

happened since, will remain of perennial 

political interest. 

This reviewer got the impression that 

the author is not entirely certain what 

Peadar O' Donnell, George Gilmore, 

Frank Ryan and the rest were really 

seeking to achieve through the 1934 

Republican Congress. His treatment of 

that episode lacks a certain sureness of 

touch. At the same time, it is fair enough 

of him to imply that if other tactics had 

been adopted, the Congress might have 

left a more lasting legacy, although as 

with all historical might-have-beens one 

can never be really sure. 

Altogether this is a great human 

story, well written and full of interesting 

new information on Peadar O'Donnell 

and his times. And absolutely essential 

reading for anyone seeking to 

understand modern Irish republicanism 

and the Irish political left. 

entry was not the flag of the Connolly 

Association. The Starry Plough was 

originally used on a flag of James 

Connolly's Irish Citizens Army. Since 

then the motif has been adopted and 

adapted by a variety of labour and 

republican organisations, though not the 

Connolly Association, although an 

inverted version based on the original 

1CA flag does appear on the masthead of 

this paper. 

However, these quibbles aside, there 

can only be one serious criticism of this 

excellent book, the price. Despite its 

size, at £30 in hardback it is beyond the 

reach of most readers of this paper. Let's 

hope that a paperback edition is not far 

off and in the meantime ask your local 

library to stock a copy. 

For instance the influence of 

Ireland's system of electoral PR and I 

would have liked a more adequate 

explanation of the 'celtic-tiger'economy, 

why Ireland's economic growth rates 

have doubled since the early '90s 

There is no reference to the fact that 

the period since 1993 has been the only 

period in the Irish State's existence that it 

has followed an independent exchangerate 

policy, something it has now decided 

to abandon, in theory forever, by joining 

'Euroland'. 

All in all this is an ideal text for 

students of Irish politics in universities, 

colleges and schools, and people 

generally interested in Irish studies. 

Irish Democrat February/March 

'God's Englishman' 

but Ireland's bane 

Rudn O'Donnell reviews Cromwell 

in Ireland by James Scott Wheeler, 

Gill and Macmillan, £19.99 hbk 

THE PUBLICATION of Cromwell in 

Ireland, as with many other books on the 

subject, was timed to coincide with the 

400th anniversary of the birth of 'God's 

Englishman' in April 1599 and the 350th 

anniversary of his arrival in Ireland in 

August 1649. 

Wheeler's assessment of Cromwell, 

however, differs from all but a handful 

by concentrating on the conquest of 

Ireland in 1649-52. His intention is to 

build upon Denis Murphy's pioneering 

1883 work of the same name by 

incorporating recent scholarship with his 

own work with primary sources. 

In keeping with current 

historiographical trends, Wheeler places 

Cromwell's crucial, if not decisive, 

personal role in the Irish campaign in the 

context of the various interlocked wars 

which gripped England, Scotland and 

Ireland between 1641 and 1652. The 

background of the Irish theatre into 

which Cromwell entered in 1649 is well 

covered, as is the subsequent strategic 

and logistic factors which shaped the 

slow conquest which ensued. 

This is a fairly objective account, 

albeit one which is bound to irritate 

many Irish readers with his comment 

that "brutality" was shown "by all 

participants... reflecting the religious 

bitterness and prejudices on both sides". 

The motives underlying the war's 

atrocities will always be debated and 

Wheeler's religious attribution is 

controversial, but the scale and effect of 

the Cromwellian massacres at Drogheda 

and Wexford are a matter of record. 

The fact is, as Wheeler confirms, that 

the excesses perpetrated by Irish forces 

pale into insignificance in comparison 

with the calculated, systematic cruelty 

overseen by Cromwell and his leading 

officers. 

Field day for the 

rounded scholar 

James Kirwan reviews Ireland 

After History by David Lloyd, Cork 

University Press, £14.95 pbk 

DAVID LLOYD'S Inland after History, 

like many Field Day publications, is not 

for the faint hearted and, more than most, 

requires a reasonable grounding in Irish 

history, politics and cultural studies to be 

truly rewarding. 

From its title to its conclusion the 

book is crammed with dense erudition 

and its astonishing scope moves the 

reader from 'Regarding Ireland in a 

postcolonial frame' to 'The recovery of 

kitsch'. 

The unusual thematic range of 

Lloyd's essays stems from the 

circumstance of their having appeared 

A gem for students 

of Irish history 

Enda Finlay reviews An Age of 

Innocence: Irish Culture 

1930 — 1960 by Brian Fallon, (Gill 

and Macmillan £12.99 pbk) 

THIS BOOK sets out to re-examine 

Ireland during the three decades from its 

emergence as a national democracy. 

The most original and insightful part 

of the book deals with the final phase of 

the war after Cromwell's return to 

England in May 1650 and the early 

months of 1653. Such was the tenacity 

shown by Irish 'tory' guerrillas that 

Henry Ireton, Cromwell's son in law, felt 

compelled to classify large portions of 

the country as what were referred to as 

'free fire zones' during the Vietnam War. 

From 10 April 1652 the inhabitants 

of ten of Ireland's most productive 

southern counties were deemed to be 

"excluded from the protection of the 

Parliament and Commonwealth of 

England". All who failed to relocate 

uncompensated to English controlled 

zones or resisted the accompanying 

scorched earth tactics were liable to be 

killed. 

Moreover, as Wheeler shows, those 

who accepted this upheaval were 

rendered vulnerable to the diseases and 

famines which racked the country. Little 

wonder that Ireland's population is 

estimated to have fallen by as much as 40 

per cent by 1652. 

Overall, this is a useful, wellillustrated 

and readable account of one of 

the most critical campaigns in Irish 

history. 

separately elsewhere and one, 

'Nationalisms against the state', has 

enjoyed three previous incarnations. 

This is no opportunistic rehash of old 

material, however, as Lloyd has clearly 

grasped the forum offered by the 

impressive Critical Conditions: Field 

Day Essay series to revise much of his 

best work of the 1990s. 

The result is an impressive, if 

challenging, record of opinion on recent 

Irish historiography, art, cinema, 

emigration and many other topics. 

The book is stimulating throughout 

and full of well observed comment, not 

least the following extract from the 

epilogue: "What, then, will be the cost of 

this peace process that has been made 

hostage to the c !d state forms and to 

accelerated transnational investment and 

extraction? 

"The reconstruction of Ireland, 

unified or not, will be meaningless if 

paid for by the exploitation of low-paid 

Irish workers." 

These years are often stereotyped as 

inward-looking, priest-ridden and 

isolationist, a sort of national bucolic 

bliss. 

Fallon argues that rapid 

developments took place in the social, 

political and cultural life of Ireland 

during this time, and that many of these 

developments have greatly influenced 

the Ireland of today. 

An interesting and well-argued book 

of particular interest to students in Irish 

cultural history. 


Book reviews 

A sane voice In the wilderness 

Bobbie Heatley reviews Civil War in 

Ulster by Joseph Johnston, University 

College Dublin Press, £13.95 pbk 

OF PROTESTANT background from 

Castlecaulfield, Co. Tyrone, Joseph 

Johnston wrote this book in 1913, aged 

23, mainly for the benefit of his coreligionists 

who were being swept up 

into, or coerced into, Carson and Craig's 

crusade against the Liberal government's 

Home Rule Bill. It is a remarkable 

achievement. 

With considerable foresight he 

realised that if the British Tories and 

their Ulster unionist appendage 

succeeded in their threatened armed 

revolt against the constitutionallyelected 

Liberal government the 

consequences would be disastrous for 

those who were most ardently in support 

of it — the Protestant working-people of 

the North. There were to be grievous 

costs for the British people too. 

The aristocrats, landlords and most 

reactionary elements of the legal 

profession succeeded without having to 

actually carry out their threat — the 

Home Rule Bill was truncated and 

Ireland partitioned. What they 

Rose Ardron reviews The State and 

Community Action by Terry Robson, 

Pluto Press, £14.99pbk 

TERRY ROBSON has had many years 

of involvement with community action 

and currently teaches at the University of 

Ulster. He sets out to contribute to a 

theoretical critique of community action 

Priscilla Metscher reviews Germany 

and Ireland 1945-1955, two 

nations' friendship by Cathy 

Molohan, Irish Academic Press, £16.50 

pbk 

CONSIDERABLE LITERATURE has 

been published on German-Irish 

relations through the centuries. This 

book sets out to explore the as-yet 

undocumented post-war relations 

between West Germany and the 26 

counties, both of which became 

republics in 1949. 

It is Molohan's contention that 

relations with the Federal Republic of 

Germany on diplomatic, humanitarian, 

economic and cultural levels were 

Classics of Irish History 

bequeathed to successive generations 

was 70 years of 'troubles' which have 

not, as yet, been finally resolved 

JJ's son, Roy, has done everyone a 

service because, in many of its insights, 

this book enables a clearer 

understanding of present-day problems. 

For instance, after the signing of the 

Good Friday accord, a great many 

members of the Protestant family in the 

North have been thrown into confusion 

Restricted view of 

community activism 

using the theory of Gramsci, the Italian 

marxist, to look at the relationship 

between community action and the state. 

He begins by setting out a lengthy 

discussion of the theoretical perspectives 

involving the community movement 

today followed by three case studies 

based in the north of Ireland, USA and 

Romania. 

Community action is a field riddled 

with contradictions and unresolved 

debates: a focus on community issues 

avoids the identification of overarching 

structures that are the main obstacles to 

progress; a community-based solution to 

poverty shifts the responsibility for the 

causes and the solutions onto the poor 

and the powerless; dependence on 

external funding compromises 

independence of action. 

Many of these contradictions are 

acted out according to the motivations, 

commitment and perspectives of the 

individual activist. Community is an 

imprecise concept to describe he 

interests and power imbalances that e ist 

intra-community. How this uncertain 

entity can then enter into a relationship 

with the state, let alone be a force for 

meaningful change has yet to be 

demonstrated. 

Robson uses Gramsci's language of 

influenced by political considerations on 

the part of the Irish government, in its 

desire to prove that Ireland could act 

independently of any outside pressure. 

The fact that there were among the 

German spies, soldiers and diplomats in 

Ireland during the war active Nazis did 

not detract de Valera from his decision in 

the immediate post-war period to refuse 

to comply to the Allies' wishes of 

deporting the German prisoners. 

While the majority of the Irish people 

supported the Allied war cause there 

were individuals who were fanatically 

pro-German, extremely anti-British and 

anti-Semitic. This was reflected in some 

of those who were involved in the Save 

the German Children Society. Relations 

between the Society and the Irish Red 

and perplexity. Had they been able to 

peruse JJ's book at the time when it was 

written, this would probably not have 

happened. They would have had a better 

understanding of what their rabblerousing 

leaders, under the Orange banner 

of anti-Catholicism, really were on 

about. 

Carson's 'tearing-up of the British 

constitution' had three main aims: to 

protect landlord interest in Ireland, to 

preserve the British Empire and to 

remove the Liberals from governmental 

office. Although JJ himself was of a leftleaning 

Liberal inclination, his analysis 

runs along much the same lines as Lenin, 

the Russian revolutionary leader. 

In the early part of his book JJ scoffs 

at the emptiness of the Tory bluster about 

rebellion, but footnotes provided by his 

son Roy Johnston explain that the plot to 

employ the UVF to import guns from the 

Kaiser at Larne in 1914 was not then 

known to JJ. 

Some 'British' patriots were those 

boys, introducing the gun into modern 

Irish politics and triggering a reactive 

response from the Irish Volunteers. 

While the Tory threat of insurrection 

in Ulster now appeared credible, Lenin, 

for one, saw it as a bluff that ought to 

hegemony, counter-hegemony and civil 

society to revisit these age-old dilemmas 

regarding the state's exercise of power 

and social control. The question of 

whether community can replace class as 

a motor of political change is re-stated, 

alongside an examination of the role of 

state control in community development. 

He concludes that community 

development can never be more than a 

pawn of the state. 

Instead of bringing the theoretical 

discussion to life, the case studies are 

servants of the arguments and present a 

narrow view of the dynamics of 

community action. The opportunity is 

missed to examine the heightened 

significance of community action in the 

context of the dysfunctional Northern 

Ireland state. 

Has community action created a 

space where the identification of 

common cause begins to develop a class 

based understanding that may supersede 

violent community division and mount a 

challenge to conservative and sectarian 

political parties? 

How will the newly evolving local 

state respond? How will it establish 

social control? What role will 

community development play in 

maintaining the status quo? 

This book contributes to a theoretical 

framework and debate, but fails to bring 

the arguments to life by drawing on the 

wealth of experience and practice on the 

ground. 

Making western friends out east 

Cross proved difficult and helped to 

delay the sending of German children to 

Irish foster homes. 

In the post-war years trade with 

Germany was seen as a means of 

breaking away from English economic 

predominance and the question of 

partition dominated cultural issues in this 

period. What is mentioned, but not given 

major coverage is Irish press perceptions 

of the German Democratic Republic in 

the 1950s which were, on the whole, 

vehemently anti-communist and pro- 

Catholic. German newspaper articles 

played a major role in increasing 

German interest in Ireland, but it was 

often an idealised picture of a green, 

romantic island, evident still in the 

German tourist image of Ireland today. 

have been called: "March 21, 1914, 

(will be) an epoch-making turning point, 

the day when the noble landlords of 

Britain smashed the British constitution 

and British law to bits and gave an 

excellent lesson in class struggle", he 

noted. 

The Tories had suborned the King 

and the landlord-linked top brass of the 

military and, being only half-hearted in 

rectifying Ireland's grievances and 

fearful of calling upon the British people 

for support, the Liberals capitulated to 

Toryism and, in so doing, eclipsed 

themselves, leaving a political space in 

which the Labour Party could emerge. 

Dealing with other topics JJ's book 

shows, using unionist sources, that the 

Act of Union, 1801 was a disaster for 

Ireland and of limited benefit to England 

herself. Drawing on European and Irish 

examples, he also demonstrates that in 

the conditions of the early 20th century 

the mere fact of a predominantly 

Catholic population did not 

automatically translate into a Rome-led 

theocracy. 

When the Tories and compliant 

Liberals partitioned Ireland they set up 

one state and a segment of another state 

in which sectarian-religious politics 

An imperialist 

policing model 

Frank Small reviews The Irish 

Constabularies 1822-1922 by 

Donal J. O'Sullivan, Brandon Books, 

£30 hbk 

THIS BOOK, which includes an 

overview of the system for maintaining 

law and order from early Christian 

Ireland through to the 19th century, 

provides a detailed account of policing 

between 1822 through to the 

disbandment of the Royal Irish 

Constabulary in 1921 and discusses 

post-partition policing arrangements 

instigated in 1922. 

The Irish Constabulary was an armed 

gendarmerie with multifarious duties 

including a basic policing function, the 

collection of agricultural statistics and 

the filling in of census returns. However, 

their primary function was to gather 

intelligence on a restive population, to 

control and hinder the various 

democratic reform movements in Ireland 

and to suppress revolt, should it occur. 

People in Ireland still refer to the 

'barracks', not to the police station, 

revealing the coercive nature of the RIC. 

Queen Victoria awarded the Irish 

Constabulary the prefix 'Royal' for their 

role in suppressing the Fenians. The RIC 

served as a model for British colonial 

police in Canada, various African 

countries and Palestine and O'Sullivan's 

book is a valuable study of a police force 

in a colonial society. 

The well-armed RIC buckled under 

Law but no justice 

Rualri 6 Domhnaill reviews The 

Birmingham Six and Other 

Cases: victims of 

circumstance by Louis Blom- 

Cooper, Duckworth, £8.95 pbk 

CHRIS MULLIN'S book Error of 

Judgement describes the social aspects 

of respectable mob rale. Sir Louis Blom- 

Cooper, QC, deals only with the niceties 

of English law. 

In the early 

1990s, a released 

were over-emphasised in one part for a 

time — only recently receding — while 

in the UK part they were deliberately 

installed and are as virulent as ever. 

If anyone wishes to understand better 

the complexities, and perplexities, 

surrounding the issue of 

'decommissioning' in Northern Ireland 

and the wilful politicking of the 

hypocritical unreformed unionists in 

respect of it, a reading of this book will 

perhaps assist 

The defensive psychology of the 

nationalist community has its deep 

origin in the history therein described as 

well as, of course, in more recent events 

The present phase of nationalist 

armament happened in 1969 when three 

Northern MPs had to rush to Dublin in 

order to supplicate for guns in the face of 

RUC, B-Special and loyalist pc jroms 

against their community. Ultimat :ly the 

community had to rely on its own 

resources. 

It is a bit late in the day for 

Protestants to be reading this book, but 

not too late. There is no doubt that it 

would help those of a unionist bent to see 

their way out of their present 

predicament. Civil War in Ulster ought 

to be on the reading list of students from 

post-primary level upwards. 

No student of politics, economics, 

history, sociology or anthropology ought 

to be without it. 

H 

THE IRISH 

CONSTABULARIES 

1822-1922 

A century


THE INS and outs of Insh politics must 

appear to many to have been scripted by 

Monty Python with help from Robert 

Maxwell and the Krays. 

In short, there's plenty of scope for 

satire and sarcasm, both of which feature 

in abundance in Culture Vultures, 

political cartoons 1991— 1999 by Ian 

Knox (Blackstaff Press. £5.99 pbk) 

Taken almost exclusively from his 

contributions to the voice of middleclass 

Irish nationalism in the North, the 

Irish News, republicans, unionists, the 

Orange Order and key British political 

figures are all subjected to Knox's pen. 

Having made a seamless transition 

from ultra-leftism to liberalism — Knox 

once contributed regularly to Red Weekly 

and Socialist Challenge — his take on 

six-county politics dovetails neatly with 

the SDLP's, which escapes largely 

unscathed. 

Frustrating and annoying though this 

sometimes is, Knox nevertheless 

manages to hit the mark on a surprising 

number of occasions. DG 

A Northern heritage 

Derek Humphries reviews 

Traditional Songs of the 

North Of Ireland by Derek Bell & 

Liam 0 Conchuhhair, Wolfhound Press. 

£9.99 phk 

LIAM O CONCHUBHAIR and Derek 

Bell s book features 60 traditional songs 

from a rich heritage from all over the 

north of Ireland. The authors, a respected 

sean-nos singer and a musician best 

known as the Chieftan's harpist, have 

successfully compiled a treasure of 

words, musical notation and translation 

for every mood and occasion. 

The ii.aterial featured forms part of O 

Conchubhair's vast personal repertoire 

and the reader is presented with a myriad 

of largely unknown northern culture and 

ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED in 1989, 

The Blitz, Belfast in the war 

years by Brian Barton (Blackstaff 

Press £14.99 pbk) provides detailed and 

moving account of how the war against 

Nazi Germany impacted on the people 

and infrastructure of Ireland's foremost 

industrial city. 

The city's industry was key to the 

Allied war effort and ensured that it 

became a major target for the Luftwaffe, 

who targeted the city with devastating 

results in April 1941. 

Based on official records and 

personal accounts, the book includes 

examinations of the authorities' lack of 

preparation for the German attacks, their 

traumatic impact on the city's 

inhabitants, the extreme poverty exposed 

Anniversary parade 

Chris Maguire selects some notable 

dates for February and March 

February 1 Britain formally recognises 

the Soviet Union, 1924 

February 2 British Embassy in Dublin 

besieged and burned down during 

Bloody Sunday killings protest, 1972 

February 8 Jim Connell, author of the 

socialist anthem The Red Flag, died, 

1929 

February 9 Brendan Behan, writer, rebel 

and raconteur, born at Holies Street 

Hospital, Dublin, 1923; Edward Henry 

Carson, lawyer and unionist leader bom, 

Dublin, 1854 

February 11 The works of James Joyce 

Reviews/culture 

Drawn into the spotlight 

M M , MY ffl 

mm TALK to 

You if You'll 

S6NP HMlONt 

m! 

each song is accompanied by an revival of traditional instrumentation and 

explanatory text. 

The titles and lyrics for over half of 

the songs originate in the Irish language. 

this publication goes far to help redress 

the balance for vocal music. If nothing 

else, it will have captured this absorbing 

O Conchubhair's encyclopaedic study of northern Irish tradition for 

knowledge of Gaelic provides the posterity. 

English reader with superb translations, 

which seem to retain the original beauty 

of the native verse. The song titles Fiddler on the hoof 

include English phonetic spelling, 

allowing many of us the important Ken Keable reviews On tSean-Am 

opportunity at least the name of the song 

Anall, Danny O'Donnell, RTE Music 

correctly. 

Ltd, CD and cassette IR£12.99/IR£8.99) 

Reviews in brief 

Great pains have also been exercised 

by Derek Bell who has meticulously 

notated the music directly from Liam O 

Conchubhair's renditions. 

The musical scores are written in a 

variety of keys, down to demi-semiquaver 

accuracy, thereby capturing, as 

near as possible, the nuances of each 

piece. 

Much has been achieved in the 

by the blitz, and the tensions which 

existed between the nationalist and 

unionist communities. 

Illustrated throughout, the book 

includes lists prepared by the Belfast 

Civil Defence Authority of those killed 

and injured during German air raids 

between 17 and 20 April 1941. 

Hope Against History, the 

Ulster conflict by Jack Holland 

(Hodder and Stoughton, £17.99 hbk) is 

yet another 'history' of the conflict. 

While highly readable Holland's book 

adds very little to what has already been 

written on the subject and includes at 

least one disgraceful calumny. 

The suggestion that left-wing Labour 

Party activists were involved in the 

conspiracy to kill Airy Neave — a 

and Sedn O'Casey come under 

ecclesiastical fire when John Charles 

McQuaid, Archbishop of Dublin, refuses 

permission for prayers to be said at the 

beginning of an official drama festival 

featuring their work, 1958 

February 12 IRA volunteer Frank Stagg 

d is on hunger strike, Wakefield Prison, 

England, 1976; Chartist leader James 

Bronterre O'Brien born, Granard, 

Longford, 1804 

February 15 Sdan MacBride, Nobel 

Peace Prize winner, dies, Dublin, 1988 

February 22 First burial at Glasnevin 

Cemetary, Dublin, 1832, OIRA bomb 

attack on the Parachute Regiment HQ in 

Aldershot kills seven, five of whom are 

canteen workers, 1972 

February 28 John Philip Holland, 

submarine pioneer, born, Liscannor, 

ALTHOUGH DANNY O'Donnell (now 

90) was born in Co. Donegal he rejects 

the description "Donegal fiddler" 

because his style has been subject to so 

many other influences. 

Born in Dungloe in 1910 he has lived 

in Killybegs, England, New Jersey, San 

Francisco, Dublin, and Glasgow, and 

insinuation for which he provides no 

evidence — is likely to have originated 

among Holland's extensive contacts with 

British security organisations. Most of 

the other meagre snippets of 'new' 

information seem likely to have a similar 

provenance and, as such, should be 

treated with caution. 

Displaying Faith, Orange, 

Green and trade union 

banners in Northern Ireland 

by Neil Jarman (Institute of Irish Studies, 

£8.50 pbk) looks at the part played by the 

carrying of banners and parading in 


Dealing with everything from their 

form and style through to an assessment 

their political and cultural significance, 

Jarman lends the subject his 

anthropologists eye. Illustrated with 

colour photographs throughout all is 

here from the ubiquitous King Billy and 

Co.Clare, 1840 

March 4 Emmett Dalton, Free State 

army officer in charge of the 

bombardment of republican forces in the 

Four Courts at the start of the civil war 

dies, 1978, aged 80 

March 6 SAS unit shoots dead three 

unarmed IRA volunteers, Mairead 

Farrell, Danny McCann and S6an 

Savage, Gibraltar, 1988 

March 9 British police deport the 

Cypriot nationalist leader Archbishop 

Makarios from Cyprus to the Seychelles 

after he is accused by the occupying 

authorities of 'fostering terrorism' 

March 11 The Daily Currant, a singlesheet 

broadsheet and England's first 

daily broadsheet published in Fleet 

Street, London, 1702 

March 14 Karl Marx, revolutionary, 

somv a ma 

Pi mw row 

m a SHOULD 

HAVE ROOM m 

m mor? 

was influenced by fiddle players and 

playing experiences in all those places. 

This is evident in his bowing style, 

which is smoother than is typical of 

Donegal players. 

These recordings, now issued by 

RTE in conjunction with Raidio na 

Gaeltachta, were made in 1977. 

Here are 18 tracks of reels, 

hornpipes, jigs and one highland fling, 

all beautifully played, with great skill but 

no showiness, and with a supportive but 

unobtrusive guitar accompaniment. 

What a pity there are no slow airs, 

slip-jigs or set-dance tunes. 

Nevertheless, highly recommended for 

lovers of fine fiddle playing. The sleeve 

notes are all in Irish, with only the tides 

also in English. 

Available from music shops in 

Ireland or by mail order from, RTE, 

Dublin 4 (phone +353 1208 2721). 

Catalogue no. RTE 233 CD/MC. 

reformation religion on the Orange side 

to St Patrick, the United Irishmen, Pearse 

and the iconography of militant 

republicanism on the other. Thankfully, 

Connolly still makes it on to at least one 

TU banner. All in all fascinating reading. 

philosopher and political economist dies 

in London, 1883 

March 18 Six west country agricultural 

workers, commonly known as the 

Tolpuddle Martyrs, are sentenced to 

transportation for forming a trade union, 

1884 

March 24 Flann Campbell, educationalist, 

historian and a former editor of the 

Irish Democrat (1946—47), born 

Glencree, Co.Wicklow, 1919 

March 25 Michael Davitt, Fenian and 

land reformer bom Straide, Co. Mayo, 

1846 

March 28 Pioneering socialist William 

Thompson dies, 1833 

March 30 Playwright and author Se£n 

O'Casey bom, Dublin 1880 

March 31 Arthur Griffith, founder of 

Sinn Fdin, bom in Dublin, 1872. 

kwn-om 

Seamus 6 Cionnfhaola 

Eamonn an chonic 

Edmund of the Hill 

EDWARD RYAN, better known as 

Eamonn Chnoi (Edmund of the Hill) was 

born before the wars of 1691 in 

Shanbohy in the parish of Temple Beg, 

Tipperary. 

His father was descended from the 

warlike O Ryans, many of whom lost 

their lives and property in the obstinate 

but ineffectual struggle for independence 

led by the Earl of Desmond in the reign 

of Elizabeth I. His mother was of the 

ancient family of O Dwyers, lords of 

Kilnemanagh. 

An affair on his return from the 

continent forced Edmund to abandon his 

ambition of becoming a priest. He was 

eventually arrested and hanged for 

offences against the state. 

C6 h-e sin amuigh 

'Na bhfuil faobhar ar a ghuth, 

Ag reabadh mo dhorais dunta? 

Mise Eamon a' Chnoic 

Ata baite fuar fluich 

6 shforshiul slebhte is gleannta! 

A laol dhil is a chuid, 

Cad a dhenfainnse duit, 

Muna gcuirfinn ort binn dem ghuna, 

Is go bhfuil pudar go tiubh 

Da shfrsheideadh leat, 

Is go mbeirrus araon muchta. 

Is fada mise amuigh 

Fe shneachta is fe shioc 

Is gan danacht agam ar einne; 

Mo sheisreach gan scur, 

Mo bhranar gan cur, 

Is gan iad agam in aon chor! 

Nfl caraid agam, 

Is danafd liom san, 

Do ghlacadh me moch na d6anach, 

Is go gcaithfidh me dul 

Thar farraige soir, 

6s ann nach bhfuil mo ghaolta. 

A chuil alainn deas. 

Na bhfainm gcas, 

Is bred agus is glas do shuile! 

Go bhfuil mo chroi

Anonn Is Anall: The Peter Berresford Ellis Column 

iRisti OemocRAC 

Recalling a 4 forgotten 9 man 

Peter Berresford Ellis welcomes a new book 

focusing on the life and work of James Fintan Lalor, 

the much-neglected Irish revolutionary intellectual 

whose teachings inspired James Connolly and 

countless other Irish socialists and republicans 

JAMES FINTAN Lalor? Who was he?' 

The question arose during a conversation 

with a socialist from Co. Laois'(of all 

places!! a few weeks ago. 1 was torn 

between pointing out that there should be 

little excuse for a follower of James 

Connolly to be in ignorance and the acceptance of 

the fact that, so far as the Irish state and its education 

system is concerned, Lalor is generally a 

(purposefully) forgotten man. 

Even back in 1897, James Connolly, in an 

introduction to some of Lalor's writings published 

by his Socialist Party of Ireland, observed: 

"He died as he had lived, a revolutionist and a 

rebel against all forms of political and social 

injustice, and for nearly fifty years the middle-class 

patriots' who write Ireland's history have honoured 

his memory by boycotting his writings and slurring 

over his name. May the labours of our Irish 

democracy inscribe on the pages of their country's 

history a more fitting tribute to his genius." 

We are still awaiting that event. When my 

History of the Irish Working Class first appeared in 

1972, I had no hesitation in following Connolly's 

lead in recognising the enormous intellectual 

contribution that Lalor made in developing the 

radicalism of the Irish movement. Indeed, anyone 

who writes about the mid-19th century in Ireland, 

let alone the history of the working class and the 

Irish struggle for social democracy, ignores Lalor at 

their peril. 

Even Eamon de Valera was compelled to 

recognise his contribution and claim Lalor's 

political objectives were his own. 

Of course, cynic that I am, I would point out that 

de Valera conjured the ghost of Lalor to his banner 

in 1925 before gaining power. De Valera used these 

words of Lalor to outline what he claim was his own 

objective: 

"Ireland her own... the entire ownership of 

Ireland, moral and material, up to the sun down to 

the centre, is vested of right in the people of Ireland; 

that they, none but they are the land owners and law 

makers of this island." 

Cynically I recall how many post 1916 

nationalist politicians flocked to hail James 

Connolly as their inspiration and quite neglected to 

observe his teachings. Therefore, something which 

has been sadly lacking to the general Irish reader 

since the inception of the Irish state has been an 

easily available guide to Lalor's political teachings. 

In 1918 there was a volume introduced by 

Nathaniel Marlow as James Fintan Lalor — 

collected writings but this was by no means all his 

writings nor were Lalor's letters, also of great 

importance in any presentation of his views, 

included. Many letters were actually published in 

1921 when Arthur Griffith, who heaped Lalor with 

faint praise, dismissing him merely as a 'land 

reformer', introduced a volume of his work. 

It is sad, as I say, that there has been so little 

written on Lalor. It is significant that the last study 

was from the Belfast Republican Press Centre 

which, in 1975, issued a booklet entitled Readings 

fmm Fintan Lalor. 

Well, I am now please to welcome a little book. 

Collected Writings by and about James Fintan 

Lalor, which everyone interested in Irish political 

history ought to make sure they have a copy of. Its 

compilers are Eva Guarino and Judith Tumbull of 

the University of Rome 'La Sapienza'. 

Professor Guarino is an associated professor of 

economics but her interest in Ireland was first 

aroused by reading Desmond Greaves' The Life and 

Times of James Connolly. Since then she was 

travelled widely in Ireland and became fascinated 

by its history. She hopes soon to undertake a new 

biography of Ernie O'Malley. 

I cannot recommend this volume highly enough. 

Its basic structure is in three parts: a short critical 

biography of Lalor; his philosophies and writings 

and, finally, what Irish leaders have said of Lalor 

and his ideas over the years. 

Lalor was bom at Tinakill, Co. Laois (then 

Queen's County) on March 10, 1807. His father, 

Patrick, was a pioneer of the anti-tithe war and in 

1832 was returned as a radical Member of 

Parliament for the county. Opposed to the landlord 

ascendancy he became a supporter of Daniel 

O'Connell, believing in his Repeal of the Union 

movement to be the way forward. But in 1847, the 

year of O'Connell's death, Patrick realised that he 

was no friend of the Irish poor nor, indeed, of a truly 

independent Ireland, and so he withdrew his support 

'in disgust'. 

James Fintan was the eldest of Patrick's eleven 

children. His brothers Richard and Peter were 

forced to emigrate to Australia where Peter Lalor 

led insurgent miners at the famous Eureka Stockade 

in 1854. Peter eventually became Speaker of the 

legislative assembly of Victoria. 

Even de Valera was 

compelled to recognise 

the conbtribution and 

claim Lalor's political 

objectives were his own 

James Fintan suffered chronic ill-health. He was 

tubercular and he also had a physical handicap — he 

was a hunchback. John O'Leary, the Fenian leader, 

would later record that his humour was bitter and 

sardonic. 

At school, excluded from sports, he 

concentrated on his studies, excelling in Greek and 

Latin and admiring, in particular, the French writers 

and philosophers. He went to live in France for a 

while in spite of his ill health and immersed himself 

in a study of the French revolutionary literature of 

the day. 

When he returned to Ireland he began to see the 

suffering of the rural population. Like his father, he 

realised that Daniel O'Connell's Repeal Association 

was not really interested in the struggle for social 

and national freedom. So when, in 1846, the Young 

Ireland movement broke with O'Connell and 

proclaimed the right of Ireland to self-government 

and self-reliance, Lalor did not hesitate in 

pronouncing his support for them. 

He began to write to the editor of The 

Nation, the mouthpiece of Young Ireland 

movement founded by Charles Gavan Duffy. 

His letters were circulated among the Young 

Ireland leaders and then Gavan Duffy sought 

permission to publish them. They attracted 

support from the militant wing of the 

movement, including John Mitchel, the 

Ulster Presbyterian republican. 

Against the background of the 

infamous 'Great Hunger', the most 

devastating of the artificial famines induced 

in Ireland by the ascendancy landlord system, 

Lalor declared that Irish tenants should start 

withholding their rents. This proposal was too 

radical even for Gavan Duffy and fellow Young 

Ireland leader, William Smith O'Brien. It savoured 

too much of an instigation for peasant revolution. 

Lalor was soon openly declaring his policy not 

merely to 'reform' but to 'undo the conquest'. 

Realising the negative attitude of the 

Young Ireland leaders, Lalor, as frail and ill 

as he was, went to Tipperary and with thehelp 

of Michael Doheny, a barrister who 

was eventually to help form the IRB, set up 

the League of Tenants as a separate 

organisation. Lalor's programme, announced at 

the first meeting at Holycross, was radical in the 

extreme. 

"That the people of Ireland have for ages been 

deprived of their natural right of property in their 

own soil, that their right has been in practical effect 

utterly defeated and diverted, and that it now 

requires to be asserted, enforced and established." 

John Mitchell launched the United Irishman and 

took over the revolutionary sections of Lalor's 

social programme. Lalor did not contribute to the 

journal but when Mitchel was arrested he joined 

with John Martin to co-edit The Irish Felon which 

continued the United Irishman editorial strategy. 

Martin was soon arrested as well and Lalor 

continued to produce the newspaper single handed 

until it was suppressed on July 29, 1848. The last 

lines Lalor had written in the journal were: "Who 

strikes the first blow for Ireland? Who draws first 

blood or Ireland? Who wins a wreath that will be 

green for ever?" 

The next day in Tipperary the Young Irelander's 

attempted insurrection moved into its last chaotic 

stages. Lalor, who was in Templederry at the time, 

was arrested under the Suspension of the Habeas 

Corpus Act and sent to Nenagh Jail. He was then 

transferred to Newgate in Dublin. His ill heath 

increased under the appalling conditions and he was 

released, the authorities thinking that were releasing 

a dying man. 

Yet Lalor threw himself back into the 

revolution. In spite of the disastrous failure of the 

Young Ireland insurrection; in spite of the fact that 

Mitchel and Martin, his close supporters, had been 

deported to Australia while Doheny had fled to New 

York, and other leaders had been imprisoned or 

deported, Lalor went on a tour of the south, 

organising a new secret revolutionary movement. 

He was joined in this new movement by Thomas 

Clarke Luby, John O'Leary, Charles J. Kickham and 

Michael Joseph Brenan. On November 16, 1849, 

Lalor issued the call for insurrection. The centre was 

to be at Cashel, Co. Tipperary. However, it was not 

in Cashel but in Co. Waterford that the 1849 rising 

had its only affect. There was an attack on the police 

barracks at Cappoquin in which a policeman and 

one of the insurgents were killed. 

IN CASHEL, only 150 men turned out, and 

these were poorly armed. Lalor realised 

insurrection was hopeless and, sensibly, he 

sent them home until such time that a better 

response would be forthcoming. One of the 

curiosities pf Irish historiography is that this 

1849 insurrection generally goes unmentioned by 

Irish historians of the period. 

Lalor returned to Dublin determined to carry on 

building up his oiganisation. But his imprisonment 

had taken its toll on this very ill man. He was 

suffering from recurring bouts of his bronchial 

problems. On December 27,1849, aged only forty- 

It was no coincidence 

that the proclamation of 

the Irish Republic of 

1916 should carry words 

that are but an echo 

of Lalor 

two, Lalor died. 

The London Times admitted that "Mr Lalor was 

undoubtedly one of the (if not the) ablest as well as 

most dangerous of those men who perverted 

abilities of a very high order to the worst of 

purposes". It was high praise from his enemies. 

Lalor rests in Glasnevin. 

His texts should be read by everyone who 

follows the teachings of James Connolly who hailed 

Lalor as "the keenest intellect in Ireland in his day". 

Let Connolly sum him up for us. ".. .the palm of 

honour for the clearest exposition of the doctrine of 

revolution, social and political, must be given to 

James Fintan Lalor of Tenakill, Queen's County 

(Co. Laois). Lalor, unfortunately, suffered from a 

slight physical disability, which incapacitated him 

from attaining to any leadership other than 

intellectual, a fact that in such a time and amidst 

such a people was fatal to his immediate influence. 

Yet in his writings, as we study them today, we find 

principles of action and of society which have 

within them not only the best plan of campaign 

suited for the needs of a country seeking its freedom 

through insurrection against a dominant nation, but 

also held the seeds of the more perfect social peace 

of the future." 

In the 144 pages of this new volume on Lalor are 

the key philosophies whose influence have been 

enormous on subsequent generations of socialists 

and republicans. 

It was no coincidence that Connolly decided to 

reprint Lalor's Faith of a Felon in 1897 nor that the 

Proclamation of the Irish Republic of 1916 should 

carry words that are but an echo of Lalor: "We 

declare the right of tjie people of Ireland to the 

ownership of Ireland, and to the unfettered control 

of Irish destinies to be sovereign and indefeasible". 

• Collected Writings by and about James Fintan 

Lalor is published (in English) by Edizione il 

Pontesonoro, Rome, and is distributed by Argenta 

Publications in Dublin, price IR£5 (Copies of the 

book are also available from the Four Provinces 

Bookshop, for details tel. 020 7833 3022).

Irish Democrat February - March 2000

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