Irish Democrat April - May 2000

April/May 2000 Connolly Association: campaigning for a united and independent Ireland issn 0021-1125 60p 

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William Morris 

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PEACE 

PROCESS 

Bobbie Heatley and 

David Granville 

IT APPEARS to have taken ham-fisted 

British Secretary of State Peter 

Mandelson just two months to jeopardise 

the work of years. 

Yet, while neither he nor his advisers 

in the Northern Ireland Office are 

blameless, ultimate responsibility for 

Britain's unilateral and illegal 

suspension of the institutions set up 

under the terms of the Good Friday 

agreement must rest with the Prime 

Minister himself, Tony Blair. 

By suspending the executive and the 

other institutions set up under the terms 

of the Good Friday agreement, the 

British government has placed itself in 

breach of the international treaty signed 

by Britain and the Republic on Good 

Friday 1998 — the British-Irish 

Agreement. 

The suspension, for which there is no 

express provision, and the fact that the 

British did not consult or agree the move 

with Dublin, puts them in clear breach of 

international law. It has also landed the 

Ahern government with a serious 

constitutional crisis. If the executive is 

not restored swiftly there seems little 

doubt that Dublin will be forced to 

introduce legislation to take back control 

of those areas referred to in the Irish 

constitution where authority has been 

ceded to various — currently defunkt — 

cross-border bodies. 

The embarassment that this is 

causing Dublin, is no doubt part of the 

reason why Ahern has toughened his 

stance on reestablishing the Good Friday 

institutions. 

Mandelson ought to have recognised 

that previous British strategy had been 

counter-productive and that a change of 

course was required in order save the 

Good Friday deal. 

That opportunity was passed up. 

Now he has to ask himself how he has 

managed to transform himself from 

'proconsul' into a factotum for one — 

apparently diminishing — wing of a 

squabbling Ulster Unionist Party. 

Both he and Blair have walked into 

this trap with eyes open. It is a 

consequcnce of what they have been 

doing from the beginning of the process. 

Like the Tories, they have regarded 

the Good Friday agreement as a device 

for coercing republicans, exclusively, into 

giving up their arms on unionist terms. 

Unionists are, naturally, in favour of 

this tunnel-visioned interpretation of the 

process, although they abhor the 

promised reforms which have been held 

out as inducement. Adroitly, they have 

grasped at decommissioning as a means 

of impeding reform. 

Blair hoisted himself on to this 

particular hook when he went outside the 

terms of the Belfast agreement in order 

to get unionists to vote for it — carrying 

on the work of Tory 'grandee' Lord 

Mayhew who dreamed up the logjam in 

1995 with his Washington 3 

precondition. 

Mandelson then calculated that 

Trimble, representing the crafty wing of 

the UUP, was the best marionette to 

assist him towards his objective, placing 

all his money on the gamble. Perhaps he 

now sees that he is likely to have backed 

a busted flush. 

Indeed whether or not Trimble's 

wing of the party remains nominally in 

control is increasingly immaterial. His 

group is in hock to anti-agreement 

unionists inside and outside the party. 

That faction, comprising the DUP, the 

happy-clappy Carsonite wing of Union 

First, the remnants of the United 

Kingdom Unionist Party (minus 

defectors) and the mute and motionless 

mime faction which passes itself off as 

the Ulster Unionist Assembly Party — 

which is incapable of doing anything 

more than engaging in a 'dialogue of the 

daft' with itself. This characterisation is 

not ours, but that of one thinking unionist 

expressed recently in the Belfast 

Telegraph. 

Should the UUP itself splinter, as 

seems likely, these oddballs will be 

augmented to become the majority 

element in Northern Ireland unionism. 

This is the wagon to which Mr 

Mandelson has hitched himself. 

The Downing St/Glengall St strategy 

has been based on a lie. It is that 

everything else in the agreement has 

been 'delivered' except for IRA 

disarmament. 

While much has been promised, 

precious little, especially given the 

suspension of the institutions, has been 

delivered. For decades there has been a 

Standing Advisory Commission on 

Human Rights and a Fair Employment 

Commission. 

Yet, because of the intrinsically antidemocratic 

nature of the state in 

Northern Ireland, little has changed 

fundamentally. Catholics are still three 

times more likely to be unemployed than 

RELATIVES AND supporters of the murdered human-rights 

lawyer Rosemary Nelson pressed the case for an 

independent international inquiry into her death on 15 

March, handing Tony Blair an open letter and 100,000 

signatures supporting the demand. 

The event was one of many organised as part of a 

world-wide day of action marking the first anniversary of 

the lawyer s death. A former member of the Royal Irish 

Regiment was recently charged with offences relating to 

her murder. Organisations supporting the inquiry call 

include The United Nations, the United States Congress, 

The European parliament, the Law Societies of England 

and Wales, Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland 

Protestants. 

The promised reforms in the 

agreement are themselves eloquent 

testimony to just how little has been 

delivered in the sphere of human rights. 

Meanwhile, nationalists and republicans 

suspect that Mandelson has been 

contriving to placate unionists on the 

issues of Orange parades, RUC reforms 

and the criminal justice review. 

The newly-appointed Human Rights 

commissioner has not been consulted on 

plans to fast-track selected parts of the 

European Convention and the body's 

derisory funding is being seen as an 

omen of the government's lack of 

seriousness in respect of it. 

Mandelson, if he wishes to have a 

hope of repairing the damage which he 

has done, is now required to respond to 

the Irish government's change of 

direction. Tunnel-vision on the arms 

issue has to be jettisoned. 

The agreement has to be seen as the 

most likely instrument for taking all guns 

out of the political conflict along with 

the demilitarisation of civic society in the 

North. These aims can be achieved only 

in the context of the agreement's 

implementation. 

Quangos are not, in themselves, 

sufficient. Megaphone demands from 

unionists in regard to one issue is not 

what the accomodation is about. 

One leading Irish newspaper has 

interpreted a recent speech by 

Mandelson in Dublin on 21 March as an 

indication that he may be moving in this 

direction. Every effort must be made to 

encourage him to do just that — starting 

with the reestablishment of the Good 

Friday institutions. 

and all leading human-rights organisations, including 

Amnesty International and the Committee on the 

Administration of Justice. 

Rosemary Nelson Campaign spokesperson Robbie 

McVeigh said: The world is watching and waiting for 

Tony Blair to do the right thing. It will be generous in its 

praise if he moves to institute an International inquiry. 

But Mr McVeigh warned that the world would be equally 

damning in its condemnation if Tony Blair now falls to 

deliver truth and justice to Rosemary Nelson . 

Rosemary Nelson s widower, Paul, stressed that truth 

and justice for his wife was critical to the family and to 

human rights in Northern Ireland. 

Trimble survives - but 

his hands are tied 

ULSTER UNIONIST leader David 

Trimble scored a narrow victory over 

rival leadership contender the ReV 

Martin Smyth, former Grand Master 

of the Orange Order, at a metting of 

the party's council on 25 March. 

Ulster Unionists also voted to 

demand the retention of the name of 

the Royal Ulster Constabulary as * 

new precondition to returning to a 

power-sharing assembly. 

M H m M H h H H 

placed further constraints on Wmble's 

leadership, jeopardising further 

progress on the Good Friday deal.|f : ' 

H H B M R M K H M i H i

iBisti Oemoouc 

Founded 1939 Volume 55, Number 2 

Who's running this show? 

LESS THAN veiled threats of a modern-day version of the 1921 

Curragh mutiny by British Army personnel in the six counties 

appear to have put paid to Peter Mandelson's plans of staging some 

form of 'reconciliation' ceremony as a means of breaking the 

current peace-process deadlock. The idea of all parties making a 

gesture on the surrender of arms first surfaced during last year's 

Hillsborough summit and is believed to have been part of the IRA's 

proposals for breaking the 'decommissioning' deadlock, which led 

Britain unilaterally to collapse the Good Friday institutions. 

According to reports carried on 22 February by two prominent 

mouthpieces for the British military establishment, security 

advisers warned Mandelson against attempting a ceremonial joint 

disposal of weapons as any hint of 'equivalence' would be 

unacceptable to the British military. One un-named source quoted 

in The Times 

even suggested that any such move would result in 

army personnel resigning en masse. 

Although commanding officer of the British troops in the North 

Lieut-Gen Sir Hugh Pike denied reports that he had threatened to 

resign over the 'reconcilaition' proposal it soon became clear that 

the threat had come from even higher up the military pole in the 

shape of Gen Sir Charles Guthrie, the Chief of the Defence Staff. 

Meanwhile, RUC chief constable Ronnie Flanagan had also let 

it be known that there could be "no equivalence between arms used 

for the protection of society and arms used for attacks upon it". The 

timing and similarity of these responses suggest a co-ordinated 

effort by senior army and police officers to thwart efforts to get the 

peace process back on track. Flanagan's response also 

speaks 

volumes about whom he regards as being legitimate members of 

society — 

obviously not those killed or injured by plastic and 

rubber bullets fired by his force, or those threatened, injured or 

killed by British military forces over the last 30 years. 

This recent incident highlights the confused and contradictory 

approach adopted the Blair government and Ulster unionists which 

lies at the heart of the on/off nature of peace process. Despite all the 

hype, the real issue is not the 'decommissioning' of 'paramilitary' 

weapons but the resolution of a war conflict. This requires a more 

equitable approach if there is to be a truly lasting solution. While 

republicans focus on 'demilitarisation' rather than 

'decommissioning' this should not be seen as a purely republican 

perspective — theirs is simply acceptance of the fact that the parties 

are involved in a conflict-resolution process along lines witnessed 

in other parts of the world. The partial and selective denial of this 

fact by the British government and unionists is the real problem. 

Here's the rub: the general terms of the Good Friday agreement 

— and all that preceded it — is recognisable as a process for 

resolving conflict. Yet, the specifics of the decommissioning 

element relies on a reversion to the preferred view of the British 

government and unionists as a conflict, not between 

'warring 

parties', but between 'criminally-violent activity' and 'the forces of 

law, order and democracy'. This unbalanced and unrealistic 

approach in respect of 'decommissioning' is undermining the entire 

process. The British government must end this schizophrenic 

approach and, along with Ulster unionism, fully embrace the 

principles of conflict resolution. 

As the British military and RUC response to a possible 

reconciliation gesture highlights, people in Britain need to ask the 

question 'who exactly is running the peace process?' — is it the 

elected government of the country or is the combined forces of the 

British military apparatus and the unionist leaders in the 

counties? The answer to this question is of importance to all those 

interested in resolving the Irish conflict once and for all. 

Imsh 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 8JR, 

tel 020 7833 3022 

Emalll connolly@geo2.poptel.org.uk 

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six 

News 

Page 10 Irish Democrat April/May 2000 

Livingstone set to win Irish vote 

LONDON 

MAYOR 

Democrat reporter 

A RECENT poll ot the Irish community 

in Britain confirms that independent 

London mayoral candidate Ken 

Livingstone is set to win the 

overwhelming majority of Irish votes in 

the 4 May contest. 

The poll, conducted by The Irish 

Post, Britain's biggest-selling Irish 

newspaper, gives Livingstone a 

staggering 92 per cent lead over his 

nearest rival, official Labour candidate 

Frank Dobson. 

Respected left-wing MP Tony Benn 

is among those who have put the blame 

for the Labour's mayoral-candidacy 

fiasco on the party's leadership: "This 

began with the sacking of Frank Dobson, 

the fixing of the electoral system and the 

demonising of Ken. The responsibility 

lies 100 per cent with Millbank and 

Number 10.1 feel this is a really sad day 

and the whole business will do terrible 

damage to the Labour Party. Ken is the 

overwhelming choice of members of the 

Labour Party in London and he is the 

best qualified candidate." 

The recent poll suggest that London's 

Irish community also subscribes to these 

sentiments. No doubt they also recall 

how Livingstone has expressed support 

for a united Ireland over decades, 

campaigned against the judicial 

victimisation of the Birmingham Six and 

Guildford Four long before the courts 

were forced to recognise their innocence, 

and how in his GLC days he supported 

cultural and welfare measures for 

London's minorities, including the Irish. 

Although Livingstone may entertain 

illusions about the Common Market and 

think that socialism can come by some 

miracle from Brussels, there is little 

doubt that for many London-Irish voters 

the negatives are likely to be outweighed 

by the positives. 

"No other candidate comes anywhere 

near the contribution Ken Livingstone 

has made to the capital's Irish 

community," said Paul May, 

spokesperson for Cairde Ken, the 

London-Irish community campaign 

backing Livingstone's candidacy. 

Unlverssl language talk on Ireland 

ESPERANTO 


IRISH DEMOCRAT contributor Ken 

Keable recently addressed the Esperanto 

Society of New York on the origins of the 

Northern Ireland question and the 

'decommissioning' crisis. 

Speaking in the international 

language, Esperanto, to an audience 

from many linguistic and ethnic 

backgrounds, he told how his study of 

Irish history had revealed to him, as an 

Englishman, the underlying cause of 

sectarian strife. 

The cause was not Irish stupidity as 

many English people thought, he said, 

but sectarian laws and practices which 

English governments had imposed on 

Ireland for centuries. 

Sectarianism, like racism, was rooted 

in discrimination, he said. Britain had 

partitioned Ireland without any Irish 

representative having voted for it, and 

had invented the border in order to create 

a territory with a unionist majority. 

Describing the Belfast agreement as 

A poet remembered 

CORK 

MEMORIAL 

Jim Savage 

PLANS ARE underway to create a 

permanent memorial to a poet whose 

final resting place in a County Cork 

cemetery has remained unmarked for the 

past 157 years. 

Today, Whitechurch locals do not 

even remember the location of the grave 

of Michael O'Longain, widely regarded 

as Ireland's first republican poet, who 

was buried in the village close to his 

native Carrignavar in 1841. 

The first step towards providing a 

permanent marker was taken on 10 

October 1999 with the unveiling of a 

scroll containing an account of the poet's 

life. The ceremony, which took place in 

Buckley's pub in the village was 

followed by readings of the poet's work. 

Coiste Comortha '98, the Cork City 

group set up to commemorate the 200th 

anniversary of the 1798 rising, now 

intends to set up a broad-based 

committee to raise funds for a permanent 

memorial. 

O'Longain, who wrote in the Irish 

language, was the first to address the 

political turmoil of the times in realistic 

rather than romantic terms. His straighttalking 

social commentary brought him 

both respect and controversy throughout 

his life. 

IN MEMORIUM 

Bob Condon, Irish patriot and 

communist, died tragically in a 

cycling accident in France, aged 78. 

Greatly missed by comrades and 

friends in Ireland, England and 

France. 

Imsh Oemociuc *f 

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 

Ireland and the rights of the Irish in Britain 

Annual subscription rates (six issues) 

£5.50 Britain I enclose a cheque 

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Address 

Send to: Connolly Publications Ltd, 244 Gray's Inn Road, London WCIX 8JR 

a pact between two enemies, each of 

which acknowledged that it could not 

defeat the other, he said that the 

agreement could not be fulfilled if 

Britain insisted on appearing victorious. 

The fulfillment of the agreement 

would show whether, without sectarian 

discrimination, unionism had any 

meaning. 

After the talk Ken, an Irish music 

enthusiast, played Roisin Dubh on the tin 

whistle and explained its patriotic 

origins. His presentation was followed 

lively discussion in Esperanto. 

EVENTS 

Thursdays through April and May: 

Reporting the Troubles: Northern Irish 

themes since 1968. Series of ten public 

lectures at Manchester Metropolitan 

University exploring: the nationalist 

dimension; the unionist position; and the 

troubles as background to Northern Irish 

culture. 

Thursdays from 7pm to 9 pm, John 

Dalton centre (Room E34), Oxford 

Road, Manchester, (no lectures on 13,20 

and 27 April) 

Enquiries: Buijor Avari, Academic 

Division, MMU, All Saints Building, 

Manchester M15 6BH, tel: 0161 247 

1023 

14/15 April: Making the Good Friday 

Agreement Work: towards a new 

beginning. Conference organised by 

The Friends of Ireland Congress House, 

London details from BM Box Friends of 

Ireland, London WC1N 3XX, tel: 0171 

219 5194, or e-mail: 

friends@friendsofireland.freeserve.co.uk 

Donations to the Connolly Association 

and the Irish Democrat 

21 January 2000—16 March 2000 

D.&P. McLoughlin £40 (in memory of 

John Joseph McLoughlin); M. Murphy 

£4.50; C.C. £50; H.Kelsey £10; 

P.Jackson £4.50; C.Shannon £4.50; F. 

Jennings £10; R.M. £2; D. Ferrer £17; 

S.Yorks Communist Group £30; A. 

Dickinson £8; K. Keable £17; J. 

McGrath £30 (in memory of Tommy 

Treanor); S. O'Coileain £10; J. £5 (in 

memory of Paddy Bond); J.&V. Gibson 

£4; A. Morton £10; T.G. Smith £5; J. 

Boyd £10; M. Guinan £1; T. Arnold £5; 

J. Dempsey; M. Brennan £12; F.Small 

£5; G. Findlay £10; M.Clinton £8; 

Bankers orders (two months) £260.00 

Total £591.00 

Irish Democrat April/May 2000 Page 3 

HUMAN 

RIGHTS 

Collusion evidence 

continues to mount 

COLLUSION 


A DEVASTATING and detailed report 

into allegations of collusion between 

loyalists paramilitaries and British 

security forces which resulted in a reign 

of terrorist murder against Catholics and 

nationalists in the 1980s has been 

published by human-rights organisation 

British frish Rights Watch. " * 

The report, whiqh examines in depth 

the murder of the Belfast lawyer Patrick 

Finucane, Tenaee McDaid and Gerard 

Slane concludes that their deaths 

represent "the tip of an iceberg" and that 

the "three died because of systematic 

policies adopted by the security services 

involving British military intelligence 

and the RUC." 

The report also provides considerable 

evidence of aAuofficial cover up, 

including systematic attempts to 

frustrate the various inquiries already 

conducted into allegations of collusion 

between the security forces and loyalist 

paramilitaries. 

The report makes grim reading and 

r aises fundamental questions about 

human rights and the role of the state 

security forces in the conflict. 

However, far from being an 

examination of things past, the report 

also concludes that the callous murder of 

human rights lawyer Rosemary Nelson 

demonstrates that lawyers in Northern 

Ireland will continue to be atsiisk unless 

firm measures are taken by the 

government to deal with the allegations 

contained in the report. 

Following the publication of the 

report, Irish Taoiseach Bertie Ahern 

added the Irish government's voice to 

those calling for a full public inquiry into 

the murder of Pat Finucane. 

Describing theevidence in support of 

a public inquiry as "compelling", Irish 

Minister of State for Foreign Affairs Liz 

O'Donnell £ttd that all the available 

evidence poflltaig to Mr Finucane having 

been one of many victims of an 

"appalling vista of collusion". 

'»> She described the British 

government's decision not to hold an 

inquiry as "intolerable inaction". 

# The full report is available on the 

world wide web and can be accessed at 

http://www.fhit.org/birw/justice.htnil 

BLOODY 

ROBERT 

News 

Report puts DPP in the dock 


A DAMNING report into the workings 

of the office of the Director of Public 

Prosecutions in Northern Ireland has 

called for radical and far-reaching 

reforms, including the department's 

dissolution. 

The 85-page report, which is 

available on the World Wide Web (see 

below), has been written and published 

by the Derry-based Pat Finucane Centre. 

The centre's detailed study accuses the 

department of failing to meet the 

objective or providing an "independent, 

fair and effective" service and of failing 

"to meet... international standards of 

transparency and accountability, and 

efficiency" since its creation in 1972. 

Key criticisms levelled against the 

DPP in the report include: 

• That it has been subject to political 

influences. 

• That it has failed to act with 

impartiality and fairness. 

• That the prosecution process lacks 

transparency, thus frustrating legal 

accountability 

• That it is inefficient. 

• That it has failed to meet the minimum 

standards required under the United 

Nations 'Guidelines on the Role of 

Prosecutors'. 

• That there has been an unacceptable 

failure to administer justice in cases 

where there is evidence of a lack of 

respect for the protection of human 

dignity and where infringements of 

human rights have been committed. 

• That it lacks credibility within 

sections of the Northern Ireland 

community by appearing to have played 

an integral role in establishing and 

perpetuating the British security agenda. 

The report suggests that there is 

overwhelming evidence to back the 

Centre's call for the Office of the DPP to 

be "dissolved and replaced with a new 

mechanism, preferably within the 

context of the establishment of a 

Department of Justice". 

Among the evidence cited of the 

SUNDAY 

HAMILL 

department's failure to act with 

impartiality is the recent decision of the 

DPP not to prosecute any of the RUC 

officers who made threats on the life of 

the murdered human-rights lawyer 

Rosemary Nelson. This "provides stark 

testimony to the arguments that the 

prosecution system that operates in 

Northern Ireland does not serve the 

interests of justice," the report concludes. 

• The full report and details about the 

work of the Pat Finucane Centre is 

available on the World Wide Web at: 

http://www.serve.com/pfc 

The Centre can also be contacted at: 

1 West End Park, Derry BT48 9JF; tel; 

028 71268846 

Irish Democrat columnist Peter Berresford Ellis, left, provided some 

important pointers to areas of Irish history largely neglected as major 

subjects for historical research. The meeting, organised by the paper, the 

Connolly Association and the Four Provinces Bookshop as part of the 

Sheffield Irish Festival, also heard from another regular Democrat 

contributor, University of Limerick lecturer Bu6n O'Donnell (right), who spoke 

about the background to and the significance of the Act of Union. The 

t chaired by Democrat editor David Granville. 

Soldiers shot to kill 


RECENT EVENTS and revelations 

concerning a British military plan to 

shoot nationalist demonstrators have 

helped to clarify why the Ministry of 

Defence has been engaged in a desperate 

attempt to frustrate the Saville inquiry 

team's efforts to discover what really 

happened in Derry on 2 January 1972. 

Last September the ministry was 

forced to admit that 14 of the 29 rifles 

fired on the day had already been 

destroyed and that another ten had been 

privately sold. 

This was followed by a further 

admission to Kevin McNamara MP that 

two of the last five remaining rifles had 

been destroyed on 26 and 27 January, 

three months after the ministry had given 

an undertaking to preserve the remaining 

guns used on Bloody Sunday. 

This systematic destruction of vital 

evidence has been condemned by the 

families of victims and by human-rights 

campaigners. 

The reason for the cover up became 

clear in mid-March with the sensational 

revelation of a secret memo from the 

British army officer in charge of day-today 

command of troops in the six 

counties, Major-General Robert Ford. 

In his memo, Ford recommended to 

his senior officers that "The minimum 

force necessary to achieve a restoration 

of law and order is to shoot selected 

ringleaders among the DYH" (Derry 

Young Hooligans, sic), after clear 

warnings had been given. 

Maj-Gen Ford's memo confirms 

what campaigners have long believed, 

that the military was operating a shootto-kill 

policy. 

Whether these rifles were used to kill 

any of the 14 innocent protesters who 

died as a result of the events of Bloody 

Sunday, as is believed by relatives, may 

now never be known thanks to the efforts 

of the ministry to pervert the course of 

justice. 

Hamlll campaign heads north 


THE CAMPAIGN for an independent 

judicial inquiry into the murder of 

Portadown Catholic Robert Hamill is 

extending its activities to the north of 

England. 

Robert Hamill was kicked to death in 

Portadown in April 1997 by a loyalist 

mob, within lull view of four armed 

police officers. 

"No one has been prosecuted for 

Robert's murder, and the officers who sat 

by and did nothing were not even 

suspended," said Sheffield activist Gerry 

Kelly, also from Portadown. 

An event in Sheffield on 25 March, 

exploring the lessons of the Stephen 

Lawrence inquiry for the Irish 

community, saw the official launch of 

the Justice For Robert Hamill Campaign 

in the north of England. 

Speakers at the event, part of the 

Sheffield Irish Festival, included former 

Birmingham Six prisoner Paddy Hill, 

comedian and campaigner Jeremy 

Hardy, and Suresh Graver of the Stephen 

Lawrence campaign. 

• For further information about the 

Robert Hamill campaign in the north of 

England email: genygfkelly@aol.com or 

contact Sheffield and S Yorks Connolly 

Association PO Box 76, Sheffield S1 3B Y, 

email s&syca@haidgran.demon.co.uk 

WORLD 

COMMENT 

by Politicus 

Militarising the EU 

"WE WON'T commit ourselves to 

defending other European Union states if 

they should be attacked, because Ireland 

is militarily neutral after all; but we are 

willing to join them in attacking others." 

This is Irish neutrality £ la Taoiseach 

Bertie Ahem, as he tries to pretend he is 

upholding traditional neutrality, which 

still matters to most Irish people and 

most members of Ahern's own Fianna 

Fail party, while going along with 

current moves to militarise the EU. 

At an EU meeting in Helsinki before 

Christmas Ahern agreed to commit 

Ireland to supporting the establishment 

of a 60,000-strong EU intervention force 

capable of conducting 'European-led 

operations' beyond the EU's borders by 

the year 2003. This was quite consistent 

with his support for last year's mass 

bombing of Yugoslavia as 'warranted 

and necessary,' despite it being in 

violation of the UN Charter and in 

breach of the Geneva Convention. 

The four EU neutrals — Ireland, 

Austria, Finland and Sweden — are 

coming under heavy pressure these days 

to abandon their neutrality to the EU. An 

army and a currency are the two classical 

p essential features of sovereign states — 

o the monopoly of legal force over a 

territory and the monopoly of the issue 

of legal tender. So having obtained its 

own currency, an essential step in 

becoming a superstate, the next logical 

step in turning the EU into a superpower 

under German-French hegemony is the 

establishment of a European army or 

'defence force.' That is under way now. 

The German and French 

governments, which initiated the eurocurrency 

project and which also 

established between themselves the 

jointly-commanded Franco-German 

army corps, have been pushing strongly 

for some time for a common EU defence 

and military arm. They secured a legal 

base for this development in the 1992 

Maastricht Treaty and the 1998 

Amsterdam Treaty. The militarists were 

further encouraged by the involvement 

of all the EU states in either military or 

political support for the Kosovo war. 

The EU states have now agreed to 

hold regular meetings of defence 

ministers, and to establish an EU 

military committee, an EU military staff, 

and an EU situation centre, satellite 

centre and centre for strategic studies. 

They are working towards the 

establishment of the 60,000-strong EU 

force mentioned, with the general 

political support of the USA. 

The boundaries between the EU, the 

Western European Union and NATO are 

getting ever thinner. Last year NATO 

secretary-general Xavier Solana was 

appointed 'high representative for EU 

foreign and security polic.'. He is now 

proposing that NATO representatives sit 

in on EU defence/military meetings and 

EU officials on NATO ones. 

Of course no state is threatening to 

attack the EU, or threatens the security of 

any of its individual members. What is 

being planned is not a 'defence' force in 

any proper sense, but the establishment 

of a force that can undertake EU 

intervention outside the EU's borders, as 

occurred in Yugoslavia/Kosovo. 

The Blair government supports these 

developments. Britain and France have 

nuclear weapons; Germany does not. If 

there is a Euro-army and a Euro-bomb, 

Germany will get its finger, at last, on the 

nuclear trigger. 

This is the basis for much of 

Germany's Euro-enthusiasm, and the 

foolish British and French governments 

are hurrying to give her what she wants.


CA annual conference 

CA adds to reinstatement clamour 

DELEGATES AT the Connolly 

Association's annual conference 

unanimously endorsed calls for the 

immediate reinstatement of the Good 

Friday institutions, the agreement's full 

implementation and the use of Stand III 

to promote relations between progressive 

organisations in Britain and Ireland. 

Conference also agreed the need to 

continue to give practical welfare 

assistance to republicans imprisoned in 

Britain, renewed the Association's 

support for the Construction Safety 

Campaign and called for the an 

immediate end to reprocessing of 

nuclear fuel at BNFL's Sellafield plant. 

In his opening remarks to conference, 

CA executive member and Irish 

Democrat editor David Granville, 

stressed that Britain's unilateral decision 

to introduce legislation suspending the 

Good Friday institutions to save David 

Trimble's political neck had put the Blair 

government in breach of the treaty 

signed between Britain and Ireland on 

Good Friday 1998. 

While the 'decommissioning' issue 

had been fully dealt with under the terms 

of the agreement," he stressed that had 

always been "unrealistic to attempt to 

separate this from the issues of Britain's 

remaining 15,000 troops, the 1I5,(XX) 

plus legally-held arms in unionist hands 

and the realities for nationalists and 

republicans of living in the most highlymilitarised 

society in western Europe." 

Much of the problem lay w ith the fact 

that both the British and Ulster unionists 

refused to fully acknowledge and act as 

if they were taking part in a process of 

conflict resolution. "This requires them 

Taking the rights approach 

VETERANS OF the civil rights 

movement launched by the Connolly 

Association in the late 1950s were 

among those gathered in London on 

Saturday 4 March for the launch of a 

new pamphlet documenting the CA's 

role in placing the issue of 

discrimination against Catholics and 

nationalists in the six counties on the 

political map. 

Author Sean Redmond, a national 

officer with the Irish trade union 

IMPACT and a former CA general 

secretary, stressed that there was a strong 

case to he made for regarding the labour 

historian, political activists, and former 

editor of the Irish Democrat, Desmond 

Greaves, as the intellectual progenitor of 

the civil rights movement in the North. 

The political scene against which the 

Connolly Association launched its 

campaign for civil rights in the late 

1950s was hardly propitious, he insisted, 

set as it was against a background of the 

Cold War, a unified unionist party, the 

launch of the IRA border campaign — 

followed by the introduction of 

internment, north and south — and mass 

emigration to Britain from Ireland due to 

economic depression. 

The targets of the Association's 

campaign were the gerrymandered 

electoral system, the Special Powers Act 

under which internment had been 

introduced, and the convention w hich 

blocked debate on anything relating :•• 

the six counties in Westminster. 

Measures adopted by the CA to 

highlight the situation in the North 

included civil rights marches from 

London to Birmingham, Liverpool to 

Nottingham and London to Liverpool in 

1961 and '62. 

"By raising these civil-rights issues 

we were putting a question mark over the 

very nature of the six-county state, and 

questioning how it was possible for the 

Left to right: Sean Redmond, David Granville and Paul O'Connor 

to admit that there has been a conflict, as 

opposed to their preferred view of 

'criminally-violent activity' on one side 

and the forces of 'law, order and 

democracy' on the other." 

Accusing Peter Mandelson of 

playing the Orange card over 

decommissioning, CA general secretary 

Enda Finlay recalled that the crisis had 

been artificially manufactured. All the 

timetables in the agreement had been 

allowed to slip with the exception of the 

timetable on decommissioning, he said. 

"Trimble's decision to bring the 

decommissioning deadline forward from 

May to February 2000 had provoked the 

crisis and caused great frustration and 

disappointment among republicans." 

Calling for the immediate 

reinstatement of the Good Friday 

institutions he stressed that 800 members 

of one political party must not be 

allowed to overrule the wishes of the 

British government to tolerate such an 

abuse of civil rights in a 'part' of the 

United Kingdom," he said. 

Bringing the issue of human rights 

campaigning up to date, Paul O'Connor 

of the Derry-based Pat Finucane Centre 

noted the irony of having discovered 

within days of attending the launch of 

the consultation exercise by the Human 

Rights Commission established under 

the Good Friday Agreement that 

Desmond Greaves had drafted a 

comprehensive bill of rights, which was 

presented to parliament in May 1971. 

To move forward it was necessary to 

analyse why we had seen more than 

3,000 deaths, tens of thousands injured 

and hundreds of thousands traumatised 

over the last 30 years. 

"The Pat Finucane Centre begins 

from the simple premise that the 

structural violence which existed doesn't 

explain what has happened over the last 

30 years. 

"Many of the original civil rights 

demands"v, , ere conceded within the first 

one to two years. We would argue that 

the death of Sammy Devenny, after he 

was attacked in his home by the RUC, 

impacted more on the politics and 

emotions of Derry than the entire voting 

system and the inequalities in housing 

and jobs." 

The anti-nationalist pogroms of 

August 1969 and the Falls curfew had a 

major impact, said. 

"A pattern was developing at that 

time which had profound implications 

for the next 30 years and continues to 

this day: that the most fundamental of all 

human rights, the right to life, was 

denied; and secondly that right was 

denied, with very few exceptions, with 

no consequence, no investigation no 

charges, no convictions." 

Over 30 years only three soldiers had 

been convicted of murder as a result of 

ninety-five per cent of the population in 

the Republic of Ireland and over three 

quarters of the population in the six 

counties who voted for the Good Friday 

agreement. 

It was now imperative to apply 

pressure on the British government to lift 

the suspension, several delegates 

insisted. 

Proposing a motion on east-west 

links under Strand III of the Good Friday 

agreement, Frank Small, London 

branch, praised the Irish government for 

honouring its side of the Good Friday 

deal. This had been done in a positive 

and imaginative way, including the 

supply of books to libraries servicing 

Irish studies courses in Britain and the 

establishment of consulates in Cardiff 

and Edinburgh. 

Unfortunately, the focus in Strand III 

was on official government links at the 

expense of grassroots links between 

the conflict. Of these, Clegg had finally 

been acquitted and Fraser and Wright 

have been allowed to resume their army 

careers. No RUC members had been 

convicted of murder 

"The failure to implement Article 7 

of the UN Declaration of Human Rights, 

which states that all are equal under the 

law and are entitled to equal protection, 

without discrimination, from the law, is 

probably one of the single most 

important explanations as to why the 

conflict has lasted until today. 

"Had this principal been applied 

from the very beginning successive 

generations would not, for better or 

worse, have decided that it wasn't 

enough to go out on the streets and take 

part in civil disobedience." 

Arguing the need for some form of 

truth commission, he said the need to 

recover 'historical memory' was crucial 

to moving forward, though not for the 

purposes of revenge. All parties to the 

conflict had been responsible for human 

rights violations over the last 30 years. 

Despite the problems of soldier 

anonymity and the destruction of 

evidence there was still a belief that 

evidence uncovered by the new Bloody 

Sunday could have a dramatic impact. "I 

am hoping that it may have the same 

profound effect on British society as the 

Stephen Lawrence inquiry," said Paul 

O'Connor. 

"As government become public and 

as people in Britain begin to realise the 

magnitude of the denial of human rights 

in Ireland they might begin to get a better 

sense of what the conflict was all about 

and to get away from the idea that it was 

simply some 17th century religious, 

quasi-ethnic conflict. 

"Our task and that for British people 

is to concentrate on the human right 

which is now denied us in the year 2000, 

the right to truth." 

people, organisations and communities 

in Britain and Ireland. It was the CA's 

job to help promote a broader concept of 

east-west relations to include increased 

contacts between ordinary people of 

Britain and Ireland and between 

progressive organisations in both 

countries. 

This was especially necessary to 

stem moves from within "West Briton, 

unionist and British government circles" 

of developing a hidden, pro-imperialist 

'Strand IV' agenda, including plans to 

reincorporate Ireland back into the 

Commonwealth, he warned. 

Winning the overwhelming support 

of delegates for a call to continue to 

provide welfare support to those 

republicans imprisoned in Britain, 

irrespective of whether or not they 

supported the Good Friday agreement, 

Alex Southern, London branch, 

reminded delegates that the CA had 

always supported the demand for 

political status for republican prisoners. 

"The Association can make a positive 

input to the peace process by ensuring 

the humane treatment of the remaining 

Irish republican prisoners and their 

families," he said. 

Outlining the CA's long involvement 

in the activities and demands of the 

Construction Safety Campaign, Charlie 

Cunningham, London branch, 

explained why it was necessary for the 

Association to continue its support. 

Although unscrupulous employers 

now faced the prospect of imprisonment 

for injuries caused by negligence, there 

were new problems in the construction 

industry, he said. 

These included the return of a new 

form of 'the lump' — workers employed 

by 'composite employment agencies', 

paid a minimal basic amount with 

additional money earned taxed as profits 

rather than earnings. These workers were 

not entitled to sick pay, holiday pay or 

overtime payments and were 

increasingly expected to provide their 

own safety equipment, he explained. 

Young Irish people today were more 

likely to be found at a computer screen 

than working in the construction 

industry, he said. 

Yet even high-tech workplace were 

not without hazards, such as repetitive 

strain injury. The CA's message to this 

new generation of Irish workers in 

Britain remained constant: "join the 

relevant trade union and become active 

trade unionists to protect and improve 

working and living standards". 

The point was re-emphasised when 

delegates unanimously backed a motion 

from the Sheffield branch, proposed by 

Annie Breen, calling for an immediate 

end to nuclear fuel reprocessing at 

Sellafield, an end to privatisation moves 

in the industry and for full compensation 

for all those whose health has been 

damaged as a result of nuclear leaks, 

poor safety and inadequate storage of 

nuclear waste. 

e The following were elected to serve 

on the C A executive for the coming year: 

Annie Breen, Stella Bond, John Brady 

Enda Finlay, David Granville, Peter 

Mulligan, Pat O'Donohoe, Chris 

Sullivan, Moya St. Leger, Jim Redmond, 

Frank Small, Alex Southern, Sally 

Richardson, Willie Wallis, Gary Whitby 

Above: the second CA civil-rights march from Liverpool to Nottingham, July 

1961, photographed in Oldham. Left to right Chris Sullivan, Aine Redmond, 

Martin Guigan, Joe Deigan, Desmond Greaves, Michael Crowe, Bobby Rossiter 

and Anthony Coughlan. 

Below: veterans of the CA civil-rights campaigns of the early 1960s 

photographed with Paul O'Connor of the Pat Finucane Centre. 

Back row, left to right Andy Higgins, Charlie Cunningham, Anthony Coughlan, 

Sean Redmond, Paul O'Connor. 

Seated: Jane Tate, Peter Mulligan and Chris O'Sullivan 


Good Friday conference 

Reviving the peace process 

Labour's former shadow 

spokesperson on Northern 

Ireland, Kevin McNamara 

MP, argues the need to 

introduce a new dynamic 

into troubled peace 

process and outlines how a 

forthcoming conference 

could play a vital role in 

any such initiative 

THE RECENT suspension of 

the Northern Ireland 

assembly, devolved 

government and cross-border 

bodies, came as a bitter 

disappointment, not just to 

the majority people of Ireland, but also to 

those many millions of people in Britain 

who have supported the Good Friday 

agreement since its historic inception 

two years ago. 

It is often overlooked, that while the 

agreement signalled new relationships 

and a new beginning in Northern Ireland 

— it also heralded the onset of a new era 

in wider Anglo—Irish relations. An 

agreement made by equals. 

For the first time since partition, 

agreement had been reached by the main 

parties representing both communities 

and by both governments — an 

agreement that was subsequently 

endorsed in a referendum, north and 

south — with an overwhelming majority 

in favour of its full implementation. 

With an elected assembly in place, a 

fledgling executive making real 

decisions on behalf of the people, and 

ministers from both sides of the border 

working in partnership for the benefit of 

Ireland as a whole — the hopes of a 

generation were slowly becoming a 

tangible reality. 

It must not be forgotten, that all the 

political progress took place against a 

backdrop of permanent and enduring 

ceasefires by the main paramilitary 

groups — republican and loyalist. 

However, as a result of the obduracy 

of some faceless rejectionists within 

unionism — determined to not only 

wreck the process, but also demonstrate 

a wilful disregard for the wishes of the 

vast majority of people in Ireland — the 

peace process was hijacked, ar.J the 

leadership of David Trimble heid to 

ransom. 

When the Good Friday Agreement 

was signed, it offered a framework for a 

new beginning. 

Since the signing, it has become clear 

that the process of implementation of 

Tlease sen3 for further information 

Name 

Address 

that framework, would be considerably 

more difficult than deciding what the 

framework itself should be. 

Many pitfalls, traps and dangers 

would lay in wait along the path of 

peace. 

The Friends of Ireland: Friends of the 

Good Friday Agreement, was 

established in Britain in 1998 as a crossparty 

organisation. 

In its founding statement we called 

for all those in Britain "who supported 

the implementation of the Agreement to 

come together to make their voices 

heard, to assist in maintaining the 

momentum for peace and reconciliation 

and to help overcome the difficulties in 

making the Agreement work." 

Since we published our statement, it 

has been endorsed by more than 200 

Members of Parliament in Britain, 

European parliament, House cf Lords, 

Scottish parliament and Welsh assembly. 

Endorsement has also come from the 

world of business, the Irish community 

and some 16 national trade unions in 

Britain. 

The agreement is indeed facing those 

"difficulties". 

Friends of Ireland is about to make its 

own contribution towards helping to 

create the new dynamic currently needed 

in the peace process. 

In April, the Friends of Ireland, will 

host a conference in London — "Making 

the Good Friday Agreement work: 

Towards a New Beginning". 

The conference — which will 

coincide with the second anniversary of 

the signing of the Good Friday 

agreement, will be the first opportunity 

in either Britain or Ireland for the parties 

and governments to participate in public 

dialogue to explore the possible ways 

forward of regaining the momentum in 

the search for peace and reconciliation. 

Besides the participation of the main 

political parties and governments of both 

Ireland and Britain, the conference will 

provide for academics, community 

groups, trade unions, NGOs and 

representatives from business to 

_ 

Return to: 

Making the Good Friday Agreement Work 

BM BO* Friends ot Ireland 

, -London WC1N3XX 

Tel Fa* Tel 020 7219 5194, or e-mait: 

E-mail 

trlends@friendsolireland.lreesecve.co.uk 

contribute towards the regaining the trust 

and confidence lost to the peace process 

in recent months. 

The conference will also be a unique 

opportunity to leam from the key players 

in the peace process at this critical 

juncture. 

It will provide space for all traditions, 

perspectives and viewpoints to be 

exchanged and debated. 

Among the issues that the conference 

will address, will be: The 

implementation of the Patten Report, 

controversial parades, demilitarisation 

and decommissioning, the new Human 

Rights Act, criminal justice review, 

equality, economic matters, 

constitutional issues, east—west 

relations, and the unionist identity. 

Through such dialogue, the Friends 

of Ireland believe the conference will 

help provide a vital stepping-stone for 

pro-agreement parties and governments 

to assist in re-establishing a much 

needed impetus. 

It is essential that we all play a part in 

trying to regain the optimism and hope 

that flourished both sides of the Irish 

Sea, just two short years ago. 

We believe — along with the 

majority of people in both Britain and 

Ireland, that the Good Friday agreement, 

implemented in its totality, is the only 

way forward to achieve a lasting and 

durable peace in Ireland. 

Hopefully, through our efforts at this 

conference, we can make our 

contribution, towards the new beginning. 

% Kevin McNamara MP is a co-founder 

of the Friends of Ireland 

Efforts are needed to restore confidence in the peace process 

Clegg promoted 

IN 

BRITISH PARATROOPER Lee Clegg 

has been promoted to corporal following 

his acquittal earlier this year of 

wounding with intent in connection with 

the murders of two west Belfast 

teenagers in September 1990. 

In a statement, the Derry-based Pat 

Finucane Centre stressed that despite the 

acquittal Clegg and his unit were 

responsible for the deaths two innocent 

teenagers, Martin Peake and Karen 

Reilly. Clegg's promotion sent a 

message that the army authorities 

"couldn't give a damn" about the two 

murdered teenagers and were a law unto 

themselves, the spokesperson said. 

Peace centre open 

A £3 million centre dedicated to 

promoting peace in Northern Ireland, 

especially among young people, opened 

in Warrington on 20 March. 

The centre, which also serves as a 

permanent memorial to the two children, 

Tim Parry and Jonathan Ball, who were 

killed in an IRA attack on Warrington 

town centre in 1993, includes extensive 

residential and resource facilities. The 

centre will regularly host groups of 

children from throughout Ireland. 

O'Neill verdict 

THE FAMILY of Diarmuid O'Neill is 

considering launching an appeal after a 

BRIEF 

coroner's inquest concluded that the 

unarmed IRA volunteer had been 'lawful 

killed' by armed police during a raid on 

a flat in Hammersmith in September 

1996. 

In a statement released after the 

verdict the O'Neill family said that as the 

inquest had "uncovered decisions and 

actions that the police are clearly content 

to repeat" a different form of public 

inquiry was needed "which can 

investigate all recent fatal shootings by 

armed police in order to ensure that 

lessons are learned, whether or not the 

police voluntarily agree." 

• The Justice for Dermot O'Neill 

Campaign can be contacted by telephone 

on 0796 836 1579 or by email: 

justicedoneill@btintemet.com 

Shayler lets more 

cats out of the bag 

WHISTLE-BLOWING ex-secret 

service agent, David Shayler, added to 

the government's and his former bosses' 

embarrassment recently by revealing that 

MIS has eavesdropped on a confidential 

discussion between a lawyer and her 

republican prisoner client. 

According to Shayler, MIS taped an 

interview between solicitor Gareth 

Pierce and Michael O'Brien at Belmarsh 

prison in June 1992. O'Brien was facing 

trial for his part in IRA activities in 

Britain, and was subsequently sentenced 

to 18 years imprisonment. 

Irish health crisis 

Jim Savage 

points out that 

the current 

crisis facing 

the health 

service in 

Britain has its 

parallels in 

the Republic 

of Ireland 

AS HOSPITAL waiting-lists mount to 

dangerous levels throughout the 

Republic of Ireland, and patients 

consider taking drastic legal action 

against the state to secure vital treatment, 

doctors and health professionals in Cork 

have highlighted the depth of the crisis. 

Despite a population of 230,000, 

Cork has just one consultant for 75,000 

patients. Vital ambulance service in the 

city appear equally understaffed and 

underfunded with just one vehicle per 

57,500 residents. 

The severe shortage of consultants in 

Cork came to light recently when Dr 

Stephen Cusack, who is based at the 

accident and emergency department at 

the city's University Hospital — which 

also serves the city's two other hospitals, 

revealed that up to 50 new consultants 

were needed throughout Cork and Kerry 

in order to provide adequate patient care. 

The doctor's function is to access 

what treatment patients need and to refer 

them to the appropriate specialists, but 

when Dr Cusack is on holiday no-one 

else is available to take on the work. 

At least one consultant has gone on 

record to say that longer waiting lists 

were the inevitable result of the failure to 

fill vacant posts. According to Dr 

Seamus O'Cathall, a radiotherapist at 

Cork University Hospital "we have 

reached a limit on how much we can do 

and when that happens people have to 

wait to be treated". 

Nurses representatives have also 

confirmed that last year the crisis led to 

wards being shut down in the summer 

because of insufficient staff. 

According to cancer specialists, 

although half of all cancer patients 

require radiotherapy treatment, twothirds 

are being deprived of this 

important treatment. 

Dr O'Cathall says: "The National 

Cancer Registry figures indicate that 

1,000 patients are dying due to lack of 

treatment. The figures are based on the 

accepted curative rate of 15 per cent for 

cancer patients who receive 

radiotherapy." 

The figures reveal that only of the 

10,500 patients eligible for radiotherapy 

only 3,400 received treatment. 

"The patients have no voice. They are 

just wasting away and they don't realise 

what it is that they should be getting," 

explained Dr O'Cathall. "The figures 

can't be disputed because they are 

already in the public domain. The 

government can't plead ignorance as 

experts have reported on the state of 

radiotherapy services for years." 

Authorities at the highest levels have 

known about the situation for some time. 

Dr Cathall insists. However, the figures 

were misrepresented or simply ignored. 

Specialists have also pointed to huge 

regional variations in levels of cancer 

care, pointing out that there are more 

consultant radiotherapists in Belfast than 

in the whole of the twenty-six counties. 

The severity of the situation has been 

further highlighted by the figures for 

breast cancer which show that that 

Ireland has one of the highest rates in 

Europe. Health specialists and 

campaigners are now calling for the 

establishment of large, well-staffed, 

local treatment centres based in Dublin, 

Cork and Galway to deal with the 

problem.



Connolly column 

In the Workers' Republic 

of 12 February 1916 

Connolly warned that the 

promised introduction of 

Home Rule, which was 

delayed by the outbreak 

of the First World War, 

should not be confused 

with the establishment of 

an independent, sovereign 

and free Irish state 

Features 

The Catholic response 

to union with England 

Features 

For socialism and Irish freedom 

Fintan Lane outlines how solidarity with 

Irish people's struggle to free themselves 

from the chains of British imperialism was 

seen by the great English revolutionary 

socialist and artist William Morris as 

central to socialist efforts in Britain 

- /V^rfefT •*} : -" jsg 

w 1 t* - > 

V , 

t ; > J 

>1 f 

v1 ' % 

> 

What is a free nation? (part two) 

A FREE nation must have complete control over it's own harbours, to open or close 

them at will, or shut out any commodity, or allow it to enter in, just as it seemed best 

to suit the well-being of its own people, and in obedience to their wishes, and entirely 

free of the interference of any other nation, and in complete disregard of the wishes 

of any other nation. Short of that power no nation possesses the first essentials of 

freedom. 

Does Ireland possess such control? No. Will the Home Rule Bill give such control 

over Irish harbours in Ireland? It will not. Ireland must open and shut its harbours 

when it suits the interests of another nation, England; and the Home Rule Bill pledges 

to accept this loss of national control for ever. 

How would you like to live in a house if the keys of all the doors of that house 

were in the pockets of a rival who had often robbed you in the past? Would you be 

satisfied if he told you that he and you were going to be friends for ever more, but 

insisted upon you signing an agreement to leave him in control of all your doors, and 

custody of all your keys? 

This is the condition of Ireland today, and it will be the condition of Ireland under 

Redmond and Devlin's precious Home Rule Bill. 

A free nation must have full power to nurse industries to health, either by 

government or by government prohibition of the sale of goods of foreign rivals. 

Ireland has no such power, will have no such power under Home Rule. The 

nourishing of industries in Ireland hurts capitalists in England, therefore this power is 

expressly withheld from Ireland. 

A free nation must have full power to alter, amend, abolish or modify the laws 

under which the property of its citizens is held in obedience to the demand of its own 

citizens for any such alteration, amendment, abolition or modification. Every free 

nation has that power; Ireland does not have it, and it is not allowed it by the Home 

Rule Bill. 

It is recognised today that it is upon the wise treatment of economic power and 

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ resources and upon the wise ordering of 

The peaceful 

progress of the 

future requires the 

possession by 

Ireland of all the 

national rights now 

denied her 

social activities that the future of the 

nation depends. But Ireland is denied 

this power, and will be denied it under 

Home Rule. 

Ireland's rich natural resources, and 

the kindly genius of its children, are not 

to be allowed to combine for the 

satisfaction of Irish wants, save in so far 

as their combination can operate on lines 

approved of by the rulers of England. 

Her postal service, telegraphs, 

wireless, customs and excise, coinage, 

fighting forces, relations with other 

nations, merchant commerce, property 

relations, national activities, legislative 

sovereignty — all the things that are 

essential to a nation's freedom and denied Ireland now, and are denied to her under 

the provisions of the Home Rule Bill. 

And the Irish soldiers in the English army are fighting in Flanders to win for 

Belgium, we are told, all those things which the British Empire, now as in the past, 

denies to Ireland. 

There is not a Belgian patriot in England who would wish to end the war without 

Belgium being restored to full possession of those national rights and powers which 

Ireland does not possess, and which the Home Rule Bill denies her. 

But these same pacifists never mention Ireland when discussing or suggesting 

terms of settlement. Why should they? Belgium is fighting for her independence for 

the Empire that denies Ireland every right that Belgians think worth fighting for. 

And yet Belgium as a nation is but a creation of yesterday — an artificial product 

of the schemes of statesmen. Whereas, the frontiers of Ireland, the ineffaceable marks 

of the separate existence of Ireland, are as old as Europe itself. And as the marks of 

Ireland's separate nationality were not made by politicians so they cannot be unmade 

by them. 

As the separate individual is to the family, so the separate nation is to humanity. 

The perfect family is that which best draws out the inner powers of the individual, the 

most perfect world is that in which the separate existence of nations is held most 

sacred. 

There can be no perfect Europe in which Ireland is denied even the least of its 

national rights; there can be no worthy Ireland whose children brook tamely such 

denial. If such denial has been accepted by soulless slaves of politicians then it must 

be repudiated by Irish men and women whose souls are still their own. 

The peaceful progress of the future requires the possession by Ireland of all the 

national rights now denied her. Only in such possession can the workers of Ireland see 

stability and security for the fruits of their toil and organisation. 

Pitt, pictured addressing the British parliament, chose the 1798 rebellion as the moment to pursue his union plan 

Irish Historian Daire Keogh challenges the assertion 

that support for union with England was widespread 

among the Catholic population of Ireland in the wake of 

the failure of the United Irish rebellion of 1798 

JUST AS commentators 

delight in reminding 

audiences that Ireland's 

original republicans were 

Protestants, so too are the 

public often intrigued by the 

notion that the Catholics supported the 

Act of Union in 1800. Indeed, the 

historian Thomas Bartlett has gone so far 

as to argue that "the Catholics carried the 

Union, the rest is detail". 

The difficulty with this assertion is 

that it suggests that Catholics were active 

in the passage of the measure whereas in 

reality their passivity allowed the 

extinction of the Irish parliament. 

On closer examination it is not 

difficult to see why Ireland's Catholics 

would weep few tears for the demise of 

the assembly on College Green. 

Catholics had little attachment to the 

parliament; measures of emancipation 

had been passed in the decades since the 

1770s, but these were conceded 

grudgingly at London's insistence. As 

Theobald McKenna, a pro-union 

pamphleteer, put it "lenity came from 

abroad, harshness was the immediate 

and natural propensity of our own 

government". 

Edmund Burke, mentor of the 

Catholic establishment, expressed 

similar sentiments in his frequent 

assaults on the 'Protestant ascendancy' 

and Dublin Castle administration, which 

he despised and characterised as the 

"Jacobins of Ireland". 

The kingdom, he protested, had been 

"farmed out" to this "junto", thus 

depriving "Catholics of the protection of 

the British parliament". Such sentiments 

lay behind Bishop Thomas Hussey's 

remark that he would prefer a union with 

the "Beys and Mamelukes of Egypt than 

being under the iron rod of the 

Mamelukes of Ireland". 

There were, of course, other 

considerations which encouraged 

Catholics to support the measure. Some 

like Arthur O'Leary, the veteran 

Franciscan pamphleteer, believed that 

the union would "end all religious 

disqualifications and national 

jealousies". 

Critics point to bribes — Catholic 

gentry leaders, Lords Fingall and 

Gormanston, had their Jacobite titles 

confirmed by the crown, while the 

hierarchy received compensation for 

chapels destroyed in rebellion and its 

aftermath. 

Of perhaps greater significance was 

the promise of full emancipation implicit 

in Pitt's presentation of the measure. 

Of course, it would be mistaken to 

believe Catholics were unanimous in 

support of the union — on the contrary 

there was considerable opposition to the 

measure. Perhaps the most celebrated 

opposition came from a meeting of 

Dublin Catholics, gathered at the Royal 

Exchange in January 1802. Speaking 

from the floor, Daniel O'Connell — 

deist, United Irishman, yeoman — 

begged his audience "not to sell their 

country for a price", calling them to 

endure the current dispensation rather 

than a union with emancipation. 

The same assembly passed a 

resolution which declared that "even if 

there were advantages in the giving up of 

an independent legislature, they would 

be only the bounty of the master to the 

slave". 

The passage of the 

union must be 

understood within 

the atmosphere of 

fear which 

characterised postrebellion 

Ireland 

Across the country, similar meetings 

were held. In Wexford, Bishop Caulfield 

poured vitriol on James Edward 

Devereux and Philip Hay "leading the 

wise men of New Ross" in presenting 

independent addresses. The Anti-Union, 

a paper begun in December 1799, 

mentions several local declarations 

against the union, while, almost a 

century later during the Home Rule 

debates, Gladstone asserted that there 

were substantial bodies of Catholics 

against the measure. 

How come, given these sentiments, 

then did Catholic passivity allow the 

union to pass? Quite simply, the passage 

of the union must be understood in 

context, within the poisoned atmosphere 

of fear which characterised postrebellion 

Ireland. Indeed, fear, common 

to both Catholic and Protestant 

communities, was the means which 

carried the measure. 

Pitt chose the rebellion as the 

moment to pursue his great plan; King 

George approved of "using the present 

moment of terror for frightening the 

supporters of the Castle into a union", 

and Lord Carysfort stressed the 

importance of acting "while the terror of 

the late rebellion is still fresh". 

The rebellion had illustrated for the 

Protestants of Ireland the precarious 

nature of their security in Ireland — just 

as in 1641 or the 1680s they were 

presented again with a stark illustration 

of the sectarian arithmetic of Ireland. 

They would always be a beleaguered 

minority on a Catholic island, but within 

a United Kingdom their welfare would 

be safeguarded. 

For the Catholics, too, loyalist 

responses to the rebellion threatened a 

re-imposition of the penal laws under 

which they had suffered for a century. 

Within this atmosphere the union was 

held out by the administration as a 

measure of security to both parties; the 

implicit promise of emancipation was 

offered as a sweetner to Catholics who, 

in any case, were unlikely to oppose a 

measure opposed by the die-hards of the 

ascendancy and the Orange Order. 

This promise of emancipation was 

crucial to Catholic support of the 

measure. Cornwallis was determined 

that "England", not Britain significantly, 

"must make a union with the Irish nation 

instead of making it with a party in 

Ireland". The problem was how such an 

inclusive measure would be sold to 

Protestants who welcomed the proposal 

as protection against a Catholic threat. 

Given these difficulties it was 

deemed essential to introduce a simple 

union, uncomplicated by emancipation 

which would jeopardise its passage. 

Cornwallis accepted this policy, 

believing that the question could be 

raised again, "in quieter times" in the 

united parliament. 

With this in mind, Comwallis 

embarked on a rather dishonest attempt 

to sell the union —to Protestants he sold 

it as a shield, to Catholics he held out an 

implicit promise of full emancipation. 

• DSire Keogh lectures in history at St 

Patrick's College, Drumcondia, Dublin. 

THE REAPPRAISALS that 

occurred during the 

centenary of the death of 

William Morris (1834-96) 

further confirmed him as one 

of the outstanding figures of 

19th-century Britain. A multi-talented 

individual he achieved prominence in the 

arts as a poet, novelist, designer, printer, 

stained-glass artist, weaver, dyer and, 

rather to a lesser degree, as a painter. 

He was also a crusading 

conservationist and a pioneering 

environmentalist. In politics he stands 

out as perhaps the most original 

contributor to late 19th-century British 

socialism. His vitality as a writer, and his 

energy as an agitator, served him well in 

this sphere. 

Throughout his political life Morris 

was a keen observer of events in Ireland. 

It was a country that he had first visited 

while on business in October 1877, 

before his conversion to socialism, and 

he had found evidence of what he saw as 

exceptional poverty. "The villages we 

passed", he wrote to Geoigiana Burne- 

Jones, "were very poor-looking, and the 

cottiers' houses in outside appearance 

the very poorest habitations I have yet 

seen, Iceland by no means excepted." 

Although he found the country 

"much more beautiful" than he had 

expected, Dublin was dismissed as a 

"dirty and slatternly" city and the 

Guinness brewery seemed to Morris to 

be "the only thing of importance there". 

Moreover, Morris's innate aversion to 

injustice was roused by stories he heard 

in T\illamore of the savagery of 

government yeomanry during the 1798 

rebellion, and he referred wryly to 

passing the Curragh in County Kildare 

where "our army of occupation sits". 

Morris was in his late forties when he 

began to take a serious interest in 

politics. His initial involvement was with 

radicalism and he supported the Liberals 

against the Conservative party during the 

general election of 1880. The Irish Land 

League, which had been founded the 

previous October, played a role in the 

defeat of the Conservatives and many in 

the British radical movement, including 

Morris, expected the new government to 

be more accommodating to Irish 

demands. 

The Liberals did introduce a land bill 

that went some way towards placating 

the Irish tenant farmers but they also, to 

the chagrin of the advanced radicals, 

brought forward a most astringent 

coercion bill that allowed for the 

internment without trial of Land League 

activists. 

Morris was quickly disillusioned by 

the Liberal-Radical alliance and he later 

wrote that the lack of progressive action 

by the new administration "especially 

the coercion bill and the stock jobber's 

Egyptian war" drove him away from 

radicalism in the direction of the newlyemerging 

socialist movement. He 

concluded that the "age of shoddy" was 

doomed to collapse, and with regard to 

the Liberal and Conservative parties it 

was a case of "damn Tweedle-dum and 

blast Tweedie-dee". 

The Democratic Federation, which 

emerged partly as a result of opposition 

to coercion in Ireland, attracted Morris's 

attention and he joined this socialist 

organisation in January 1883 and 

became one of its most prominent 

members. 

His conversion surprised many and 

the Donegal poet William Allingham 

noted in his diary that Alfred Tennyson 

was "shocked" by the news. 

Nonetheless, Morris was to remain a 

staunch advocate of socialism until his 

death 13 years later, and he was one of 

those who successfully proposed 

renaming the organisation the Social 

Democratic Federation (SDF). 

The SDF was aggressively in favour 

of Irish home rule and took a leading role 

in the anti-coercion movement. Ernest 

Belfort Bax, a leading member, later 

remarked that the organisation was 

"largely occupied" with Ireland during 

its formative years. Morris, similarly, 

strongly supported home rule for Ireland 

and while lecturing for the SDF came 

into contact with many members of the 

Irish community in Britain. 

In early 1883, for instance, he 

lectured at the Irish National League 

rooms on Blackfiiars Road in London: 

"Parnellites to the backbone; but dear 

me! such quiet respectable people!" He 

assured them of his sympathy for their 

While supporting 

Irish demands, 

Morris remained 

wary of the social 

conservatism of 

Irish nationalism 

views and professed admiration for 

"their ancient literature". One of the 

principal organisers of this meeting was 

Peter O'Leary, an important supporter of 

the Irish rural labourers' movement 

although not a socialist. 

II —————>.> 

* 

Mm " T? 

*• 

In fact, while supporting Irish 

demands, Morris remained wary of the 

social conservatism of Irish nationalism. 

"We are internationalists not 

nationalists", he wrote to a 

correspondent, "yet we sympathise with 

the Irish revolt against English tyranny". 

He brought this perspective with him 

when he left the SDF to help form the 

more left-wing Socialist League in 

December 1884. The league's position 

on imperialism was outlined in the first 

issue of the group's newspaper, The 

Commonweal: 

"The establishment of socialism... 

on any national or race basis is out of the 

question... No, the foreign policy of the 

great internationalist socialist party must 

be to break up these hideous race 

monopolies called empires, beginning in 

each case at home. Hence everything 

which makes for the disintegration of the 

empire to which he belongs must be 

welcomed by the socialist as an ally." 

IN JANUARY 1888 Morris was to 

write that the Irish question "will 

educate many (in Britain) in 

revolution", and in this view he 

closely followed Karl Marx who 

had argued the same perspective 

during the 1870s. 

Two of those who signed the 

Socialist League's founding manifesto 

were of Irish extraction and one John 

Lincoln Mahon (formerly 'MacMahon') 

became the organisation's first secretary. 

By 1885 British socialists, the SDF in 

particular, had pulled back sorrt&what 

I from Irish support work and focused 

| instead on social agitation and 

recruitment in Britain. The SDF 

ultimately decided, as it explained in 

January 1887, that the best assistance it 

could give "to the Irish in their struggles 

is to occupy as much as possible the 

government with an agitation on behalf 

of the workers of Great Britain". 

The Socialist League rejected this 

rather circuitous form of solidarity work 

and took a stronger line on the Irish 

question. Moreover, Mahon made 

serious efforts to recruit members in 

Ireland itself. 

The issue of Irish home rule rose high 

on the British political agenda in 1885 

when, with a general election pending, 

overtures were made to Charles Stewart 

Pamell to secure the Irish vote. The 

return of 335 Liberals. 249 

Conservatives and 86 Home Rulers 

fljjk 

v 

# 

— — 11 Slfl 

Above: William Morris, middle row, fourth from left, pictured with the 

Hammersmith branch of the Socialist League. 

Below: membership card of the Democratic Federation, designed by Morris 

meant that the Irish were placed in a 

strong position in the new parliament. 

When Liberal leader Gladstone 

converted to home rule, Parnell threw his 

support behind Liberal party and work 

began on a bill to satisfy Irish 

aspirations. 

Morris supported 

home rule but he 

had no illusions 

about the type of 

society that would 

emerge 

William Morris, as editor of The 

Commonweal, showed a marked interest 

in these developments. In October he 

wrote that Parnell, in all probability, 

would succeed in his objective and he 

mused that the next parliament could be 

the last in which Irish representatives sat. 

Morris rejoiced at the damage that 

this would inflict on the British Empire, 

but he also sounded a note of warning for 

those who would exaggerate the 

progressive nature of the Irish home rule 

movement. "Will socialists," he asked, 

"find their work any easier in the 

Pamellite Ireland than now? Will 

Michael Davitt be as dangerous a rebel 

as he is now?" 

For Morris the answer to both these 

questions was obvious. The Parnellites, 

in his opinion, wanted "pretty much the 

state of things which Liberal reformers 

want to realise in England as a bar to the 

march of socialism". While Morris was 

being rather far-fetched in his estimation 

of Pamellite and Liberal jitters regarding 

socialism, he was correct in perceiving 

limitations to the nationalist project. 

Radicalism on constitutional issues 

did not necessarily imply radicalism on 

social issues. On the land question he 

argued that the Irish objective of peasantproprietorship 

meant: "... an improved 

landlordism founded on a wider basis 

and therefore consolidated; that would 

lead, it seems to me, to founding a nation 

fanatically attached to the rights of 

private property (so-called), narrowminded, 

retrogressive, contentious and 

— unhappy." 

Morris supported home rule but he 

had no illusions about the type of society 

that would emerge. Pointing to the 

example of Italy he contended that 

despite national freedom poverty 

remained because the class system still 

stood. 

A solution to Ireland's problems, he 

insisted, could only be found through 

international revolution. If only the Irish 

could "make up their minds that, even if 

they have to wait for it, their revolution 

shall be part of the great international 

movement; they will then be rid of all the 

foreigners that they want to be rid of'. 

This was a position which appealed to 

few in late 19th-century Ireland. 

• The full text of Fintan Lane's article 

can be found in the Spring 2000 edition 

of History Ireland. Subscription details 

from History Ireland, P.O. Box 695, 

Dublin 8. 

• Finton Lane lectures in history at the 

University of Limerick.


Book reviews 

On the road to intellectual vibrancy 

Roy Johnson review v UCD: a 

National idea by Donal 

McCartney : Gill & Macmillan, £30 hbk 

THIS SUBSTANTIAL and timely work 

is essential for any serious student ot' 

20th century Irish history, especially for 

people concerned to understand the 

background to the 'Catholic nationalist' 

exclusivist image projected by the 'Irish 

Irelanders' in the 1900s, which 

influenced some of the northern 

Protestants to conspire with the out-ofoffice 

Tories to run guns in from 

Germany to subvert the constitutional 

Home Rule process. 

The background was the existence of 

Trinity College as a primarily Protestant 

university for the colonial elite. This did 

not prevent it from being a hot-bed of 

continental republicanism in the 1790s, 

with people like Wolfe Tone active in the 

Historical Society. 

Kells Ingram, who wrote Who Fears 

to Speak of 98, and the Thomas Davis 

group were active in the 1840s; Isaac 

Butt and Pamell all went through Trinity. 

There was the makings of a national 

I ONG 

G I.S I'M ION 

Sally Richardson reviews The Long 

Gestation: Irish nationalist 

life 1891-1918 by Patrick Maume, 

Gill anil Macmillan, £19.99 hbk 

THE EASTER Rising in 1916, followed 

two-and-a-half years later by the Sinn 

Fein landslide election victory, which 

resulted in the setting-up of the first Dail 

Eireann, transformed Irish politics. The 

Irish cultural and language movements 

undoubtedly prepared the ground, and 

gave Irish people the self-confidence 

needed to demand independence, But 

As they barely saw it 

Ruairi 6 Domhnaill reviews The 

Sinn F6ln Rebellion as They 

Saw It by Mary Louisa & Arthur 

Hamilton Norway (Ed. Keith Jeffery), 

Irish Academic Press, £16.50 hbk 

THE EDITOR'S Introduction is written 

with a well-informed fluency. The 

authors, the "well-connected" parents of 

Nevil Shuj£, had literary pretensions — 

hardly realised here. 

Mrs Norway's composition was 

published in 1916 as The Sinn Fein 

Rebellion as I Saw It — but she saw just 

about nothing. She peddled hearsay and 

"wild" rumours, from the comfort of the 

Royal Hibernian Hotel. In best 

Bracknellesque fashion, she bridled: 

intellectual focus in Trinity, despite its 

official ascendancy status. 

The need for Catholic university 

access was recognised, and the Queens 

Colleges were set up, without any 

Protestant ascendancy incubus. Sir 

Robert Kane, a Catholic, and a 

distinguished chemist who had served 

what of the political rubble left behind 

by the disintegrating post-Parnell Irish 

Parliamentary Party? 

Patrick Maume identifies the 

differences between the Irish 

Parliamentary Party and the emergent 

Sinn Fein as a continuation of the 

differences between O'Connell and 

Young Irelanders. 

Sinn Fein, in Maume's assessment, 

was more prominent and influential in 

the pre-Rising period than is often 

allowed for, and included members who 

were already declared republicans at 

odds with Griffith's concept of dualmonarchy 

with Britain. 

The parliamentary political scene 

during this period was complex, to say 

the least, and in a constant state of flux, 

with alliances and enmities forming and 

breaking, allegiances changing and some 

truly dizzying volte-faces. 

Maume follows the twists and turns 

of parliamentary politics with 

thoroughness and skill. Redmond, 

O'Brien, Healy and co. feature 

prominently, but Maume also pays 

considerable attention to the role of 

journalists, particularly Arthur Griffith 

and D.P. Moran. The complexities of the 

nationalist response to the First World 

War are also examined, as are the various 

land issues. Some political activists 

moved on from the Home Rule 

"The military thought (a sniper) was 

on our roof which made us all bristle 

with indignation — the mere idea of the 

wretch being on our hotel; but a 

thorough search proved that he was not 

there but he evidently had access to some 

roof." (Her italics) 

She recognised Carson's fanaticism 

and his 100,000-strong armed UVF. Her 

husband was less even-handed. He 

appears as a pompous, prejudiced namedropper. 

He was warned not to employ 

Catholic servants as they reported their 

masters' after-dinner conversations to 

their priests. 

This may explain why the Viceroy 

issued orders in "incomprehensible 

French": why the Irish Volunteers 

marched to "Die Wacht am Rhein" and 

Pearse confessed in Gaeilge Connachta! 

Predictably, Norway mistrusted his Irish 

Catholic deputy, who was friendly with 

his time in Germany with Liebig, 

became the president of Queens College 

Cork, which attracted distinguished staff, 

like Boole, who laid the basis, in 

Boolean Algebra, for modern computer 

science. 

Cardinal Cullen however blocked 

access to the Queens Colleges for 

Catholics, labelling them 'godless'. He 

held out for a Catholic university, and an 

attempt was made to set one up, under 

Cardinal Newman, in 1854. This 

survived, after a fashion, till 1883, when 

the buildings were taken over by the 

Jesuits. The Medical School in Cecilia St 

however survived with continuity until 

incorporated into UCD in 1908. 

This book explains in detail why it 

was felt important in UCD in 1954 for 

UCD to organise a major centenary 

commemoration with Newsman's 

Catholic University, and to fabricate a 

claim to continuity with it, although no 

such continuity in fact existed. The 

'Catholic ethos' pervaded UCD from the 

start of the NUI in 1908, and its main 

motivation was competition with Trinity, 

and assertion of a Catholic intellectual 

hegemonism, in the context of the 

Preparations for a troubled birth 

movement — • those who made the 

transition from constitutional 

nationalism to revolutionary 

republicanism include the Sheehy- 

Skeffmgtons, Laurence Ginnell and 

Rory O'Connor. 

Maume endorses the 'blood 

sacrifice' interpretation of the motives 

behind the Easter Rising. The rising was 

however, carefully planned and was 

meant to succeed. It has, moreover, to be 

said that 'blood sacrifice' rhetoric was a 

Europe-wide phenomenon just before 

and during the First World War, its 

proponents including English Fabian 

socialist-turned war hero Rupert Brooke. 

In this context, some of Pearse's 

statements are seen to be less outlandish 

than many have supposed. 

Maume analyses the legacy of the 

Irish Party on the politics that developed 

in the post-1922 Free State and attributes 

Britain's grudging acceptance that Irish 

demands for self-government had to be 

recognised to "long campaigns at 

Westminster by constitutional 

politicians". This may well be true. 

For this eviewer however, the Irish 

Party's de endence on the British 

political system was an inherent 

weakness. For all the undoubted abilities 

of many in the Irish Party, they were 

playing Britain's game, and they were 

playing away. 

bishops and whose office "was haunted 

by priests" — some of whom were 

probably relatives or former 

schoolmates. 

Norway received a secret police 

report that a Post Office employee was a 

member of the IRB. Thereafter, he kept 

an automatic pistol and thirty rounds of 

ammunition in his GPO desk and 

personally pursued clerks and sorters for 

all unsubstantiated accusations and petty 

offences. He demanded loyalty to the 

Crown, while totally ignoring UVF 

activists awash with German arms. It is 

remarkable that the British never 

contemplated denying telephones and 

telegraph to the UVF, as they did for 

"Southern Ireland". 

Here are clear stimuli to re-check 

historical 'facts' and to appreciate that, 

some of us with firm, British leadership, 

might have made it to the servants' hall. 

emerging national consciousness, in the 

exclusivist DP Moran 'Irish Irelander' 

tradition. 

The details of the intimate 

relationship which existed between 

Michael Tierney and John Charles 

McQuaid, the Archbishop of Dublin, 

make fascinating reading; also how this 

continued into Hogan's time. The 

various episodes when the Literary and 

Historical Society was banned are 

elaborated; there was a famous one in 

1949 involving Owen Sheehy- 

Skeffington and a projected debate on 

the Communist Manifesto. 

The intricacies of the merger' crisis, 

initiated by Donagh O'Malley in 1967, 

are outlined in detail. This was resisted 

tooth and nail by both TCD and UCD 

academics, for different reasons. The 

UCD Constitution, under which to get an 

appointment one has to canvass local 

councillors, was a factor in the situation. 

The 'gentle revolution' of 1968 is 

treated in detail, and the way in which 

the college establishment attempted to 

treat it as an externally-managed 

conspiracy is exposed. The saga of the 

acquisition of Belfield, which was 

JAMES 

GOODMAN 

i 

m 

r. ' v 

T fff-h,:, - 

V 

Single I u rope, 

Si 1L» 1 lc 

re ! la 1 ml ~ 

r 

Ireland and Europe 

John Murphy reviews Single 

Europe, Single Ireland by James 

Goodman, Irish Academic Press, £12 

THE ROOT of partition was the uneven 

development of capitalism in Ireland — 

the north industrial, the south 

agricultural. 

For in the late 19th and early 20th 

centuries the Protestant bourgeoisie of 

the six counties had very different 

economic interests from the nationalist 

Land League leader 

Ruairi 6 Domhnaill reviews Michael 

Davltt by Carla King, Historical 

Association of Ireland, Life and Times 

No. 14, Dundalgan Press, £6 pbk 

IF ALL the essays in this series of 

historical works are of similar quality, it 

deserves to be warmly welcomed. 

The author has produced excellent 

work, a realistic picture of man coping 

with the towering influences of the late 

19th century. 

Davitt, was revered in his lifetime as 

a Fenian leader and an individual, who 

overcame eviction, emigration and, aged 

eleven, the loss of his right arm in an 

industrial accident. As an active Fenian, 

he received 15 years' penal servitude, 

rock-breaking and hauling rocks, 

harnessed to a cart. On being released on 

licence, he campaigned for the freedom 

of his brother Fenians. 

Tiemey's vision, and for which indeed 

he deserves credit, is given in detail. The 

roots of the 'revolution' were of course 

the appalling conditions in Earlsfort 

Terrace which preceded the move to 

Belfield. 

The ban in Catholics in Trinity 

persisted up to 1970, and prior to that 

had been ignored by many. Dublin now, 

with a population of about one million in 

its hinterland, has in effect 4 

Universities, UCD on the south side, 

DCU on the north side, TCD centrally, 

and the Dublin Institute of Technology 

scattered all over the centre. Dublin is 

now well endowed, and people go where 

what they want is taught, irrespective of 

religion. One hear Dub accents all over 

Trinity. 

This book chronicles part of the 

rocky road to the current vibrant 

intellectual situation, which is a long 

way from the exclusivist world of 

Tierney and McQuaid, but which 

contains a whole new generation of 

issues and tensions, like how research 

gets funded, and how to attract good 

people to a city of which the 

infrastructure is creaking at the seams. 

Catholic bourgeoisie of the twenty-six. 

This book shows how that has 

changed since the 1950s, as the 

Republic's economic growth rate has 

more than doubled Britain's, while the 

north has been tethered to an 

economically stagnant UK. Ireland's 

economic dynamic is very different now 

from pre-partition days. In the era of the 

Common Market and EU transnational 

finance and manufacturing capital 

operates freely in both parts of Ireland. 

Big business sees partition as out-ofdate. 

Indeed these days big business sees 

the British state itself as out-of-date, as it 

seeks to 'Europeanise' everything and 

have a completely free field of operation 

for itself. That is why it wants economic 

control to be exercised from Brussels 

and Frankfurt, where ordinary citizens 

have no way of influencing things. 

This book is a perceptive study of the 

interaction of economic interest, 

political ideology and party alignment in 

both parts of Ireland. The author shows 

how 'Europeanisation' is central to the 

northern peace process. 

Most economists do not understand 

politics and most political writers know 

little economics. This book is a rarity, in 

being written by someone who 

understands both and who uses that 

understanding to throw a flood of light 

on the making of modern Ireland. 

His loyalties shifted from 

republicanism to agrarian agitation: to 

Parnellite politics, to membership of the 

British parliament and ultimately, to 

international journalism. The IRB had 

expelled him in 1879, but the final 

emotional break came with the Phoenix 

Park assassinations in 1882. 

He claimed to be a socialist, but 

unlike some of his brother Fenians, he 

was never a member of the First 

International; he wanted Irish 

independence but swore allegiance to 

Victoria. 

The Land League was Davitt's great 

achievement, but like all social 

organisations its operations were 

complicated by the conflicting interests 

of its members. 

In the best tradition, this essay 

prompts many questions, such as why 

didn't he support the indigenous people 

in the Boer War and did he facilitate the 

end of ascendancy landlordism to 

replace it with an Irish Catholic 

bourgeoisie? 


Book reviews 

Recollections of a 'good-hearted' snob 

4l|l I 

Mkh*) I In,,km. .n 

The Last Days 

h 

Peter Berresford Ellis reviews The 

Last Days of Dublin Castle: 

The Mark Sturgis Diaries, 

edited by Michael Hopkinson, 

Academic Press, £27.50 hbk 

Irish 

MARK STURGIS was a senior civil 

servant in Dublin Castle from July, 1920 

to January, 1922. He was a snobbish 

Englishman, arriving at his post via 

Eton, Oxford, and the rarefied 

atmosphere of the English establishment 

and their London clubs. 

Yet, in spite of his prejudices, Sturgis 

was "good-hearted". His record of the 

last days of the English administration in 

Dublin from an insider viewpoint is one 

of the most fascinating documents of the 

War of Independence. 

The diaries, of course, became 

available in the Public Record Office, 

London, in the 1960s, since when they 

have been widely used by scholars of the 

period. But this is the first time that an 

edited volume has been made available 

for a wider readership. 

One wonders if senior civil servants 

like Sturgis were really kept in the dark 

about the atrocities their side were 

committing in Ireland? In mentioning 

the burning of Cork City, for example, 

Sturgis notes that Major Holmes, the 

Divisional Commander of the RIC in 

Cork, told him that "the Saturday fires 

were almost certainly started not by any 

organised body but by single individuals 

who got together casually, as it were, for 

some mischief — an odd subaltern 

perhaps, a policeman, an odd Auxiliary, 

The burning embers of rebellion 

Ruai'ri 6 Domhnaill reviews 

Aftermath: Post-Rebellion 

Insurgency In Wlcklow, 1799- 

1803 by Rudn O'Donnell, Irish 

Academic Press, 

£16.95pbk 

FOR MANY the expression '1798' tends 

to be a synonym for the heroics of 

Wexford and Mayo. This perspective 

detracts from Ireland's unrelenting 

struggle. For example, in Wicklow 

armed resistance lasted from 1798 until 

1804. 

Dr O'Donnell conveys a real sense of 

living through the bloody ordeals: the 

menace of state and quasi-state (Orange) 

terrorism; of victory, defeat and ultimate 

compromise, of desperation and superhuman 

perseverance. 

He also alludes to another phase of 

strife in Ireland, the Tithe Wars, in Co. 

Limerick in the winter of 1799-1800, not 

in 1815 or 1831. 

My parents painted a similar picture 

of 'the Troubles' in Cork, but while the 

'us-them' split in Cork was not always 

simple, in 18-19th century Wicklow it 

was perplexing. Human frailties 

abounded from predictable enmities to 

inexplicable friendships, and which 

embraced nobility, loyalty and treachery, 

corruption and weakness. 

The author succeeds where his fellow 

historians rarely do — in attending to the 

plight of ordinary people on both 

individual and factional levels, on which 

history often hinges. 

r. t § tM 

; - 

I 

4 

" "w - 

R 1 \ N (1 1 111 \ \ 111 

Two local yeomen, one a sergeant, 

exemplified this. They captured a very 

drunken Michael Dwyer. Being practical 

men they balanced their immortality and 

a substantial reward against the future of 

their families. They sacrificed a glorious 

place in history; Dwyer was wisely 

released. There was also the expedient 

truce between equally-matched, heavily 

armed groups of yeomen and rebels, 

which averted a potentially bloody 

skirmish. 

Against these is heroism — the badly 

wounded (Protestant?) defector from the 

Antrim Militia, who selflessly drew fire 

to save Michael Dwyer's life. 

Some explanations may have a basis 

in the neighbourliness of mountain 

people; some in the United Irishmen's 

survival in good order and their 

embracing Catholics and Protestants. It 

was this which accounted for the 

violence between Freemasons and 

Orangemen. As the Vatican was 

soliciting his Britannic Majesty, it could 

not approve the United Irishmen's links 

with revolutionary France and 

freemasonry. 

Dr O'Donnell creditably writes for 

historians and 'lay' readers. His 

unobtrusive, but eminently extensive 

endnotes and appendices, facilitate 

general readers in one sense. On the 

other hand, they may miss rich detail. 

More easily accessible biographical 

(foot) notes would assist lay readers. 

The text mentions 73 military 

formations: regular (18); militia (14); 

yeoman (34), and 'fencibles (7). It is not 

easy to identify yeomanry units, which 

were local, numerous, shadowy and 

undisciplined armed forces, which 

sometimes seemed like private Orange 

armies, and which bitterly opposed the 

Act of Union. 

The presence of English and Scottish 

'fencible' troops apparently raised only 

for the defence of their native counties 

might be explained in the text. 

Fortunately, the title is a slight 

misnomer, for there is an excellent 

description of 'Robert Emmet's' mainly 

Dublin rebellion. 

Ruin O'Donnell's manifest expertise 

and positioning of his accounts of lesserknown 

heroes, who neither surrendered 

nor, like Michael Dwyer, compromised, 

allows the narrative to retain its grip on 

the reader to the very last word. 

Saying goodbye to the dinosaurs of the North 

Ann Rossiter reviews Women's 

Work: The Story of the 

Northern Ireland Women's 

Coalition by Kate Fearvn, 

Press, Belfast, £11.99 pbk 

Blackstaff 

KATE FEARON'S account of the 

Northern Ireland Women's Coalition is 

worth reading if only for its shocking 

expose of the extent of misogyny in 

Northern Irish party political life. 

Northern Ireland is distinguished for 

many things, not least for its miserable 

level of female political 

representation. 

There are currently no women elected to 

Westminster, only three have served as 

MPs there since the inception of the 

statelet. 

In the 50 years of its existence until 

was prorogued in 1972, a mere nine 

women were elected — some more than 

once — to Stormont, and only one 

achieved ministerial office. Bairbre de 

Brun's ministerial status in the now 

defunct Assembly did little to alter the 

gender deficit. 

In local government, the one tier of 

elected office that has remained durable, 

women's representation has been more 

successful, increasing from 7.2 to twelve 

per cent in the period 1977 to 1993, No 

woman has ever been elected to the 

European Parliament. 

All in all, a very poor showing and 

one which demonstrates that 

sectarianism is alive and well in more 

ways than one. 

Fearon's story covers the Northern 

Ireland Women's Coalition's existence, 

which began as an idea in the minds of 

women at a conference at Drapers town 

in June, 1995, progressed to a reality six 

weeks before the May, 19% election and 

polled 7,731 votes, entitling it to send 

two delegates to the multi-party talks, 

and to the Northern Ireland Forum for 

Political Understanding and Dialogue. 

On a platform of inclusion, rather 

than exclusion, problem-solving rather 

than confrontation, and what Fearon 

describes as 'a DIY campaign' with a 

paucity of money and personnel, the 

NIWC secured the ninth-largest total of 

all parties contesting the election and 

edged out more established parties, such 

as the Ulster Tories, the Workers Party 

and the Democratic Left. 

The Northern Ireland Women's 

Coalition's slogan, 'Say goodbye to the 

dinosaurs', clearly had resonated with 

women across class and sectarian 

divisions. 

Its further success in the Assembly 

elections ensured that the ideal of a 

genuinely representative democracy in 

Northern Ireland had been fleshed out a 

little more for future generations. 

doubtless some civilians, and after the 

start many real hooligans out for loot." 

For those with file copies of the Irish 

Democrat, see my December 1989 

column relating the burning of the city 

by organised detachments of Black and 

Tans, Auxiliaries and, moreover, regular 

troops such as the Bucks Light Infantry 

and Oxfordshire Regiment. 

More important to Sturgis was that 

fact that the next day the Bishop of Cork 

issued an excommunication decree 

against the republicans. 'This is 

important," he notes gleefully. 

However, what stuck in my mind, 

was a note with which Sturgis ends his 

diary for 1920. It is a clear indication 

that, somewhere in his mind, he must 

have realised that the English position in 

Ireland was a rotten one but he has an 

Outsider president? 

John Murphy reviews Mary 

McAleese, an unauthorised 

biography by Justine 

Blackwater Press, £16.99 

McCarthy, 

THE IRISH presidency is a symbolic 

office belonging, like the British 

monarchy, to what 19th century writer 

Walter Bagehot called the 'decorative 

part' of the constitution. But symbolism 

can be important, especially when there 

is such popular disillusionment with 

Ireland's elected politicians. 

Her predecessor, Mary Robinson, 

who made her reputation as a lawyer 

championing feminist issues, was the 

symbol of a newly emergent liberal 

Ireland, spiced with anti-clericalism. 

Robinson popularised the notion of a 

woman president, and all the parties 

pushed women candidates when she 

Spotlight on the '30s 

Rudn O'Donnell reviews Joost 

Augusteijn (ed.), Inland In the 

1930s, Four Courts Press, £12. 50 pbk 

IRELAND IN the 1930s, one of the last 

Irish histories to appear in the 20th 

century, comprises eight short essays on 

social and cultural life during the first 

full decade of independence. 

The editor, Joost Augusteijn of 

Queens University, Belfast, disclaims 

any pretence of having produced ^ 

comprehensive account of 'the first 

decade in power of Fianna Ffiil' and 

instead makes a case for highlighting 

"social developments, which often 

underpinned, affected and contributed to 

the events in the political arena". 

The volume draws heavily on 

postgraduate research into the onceneglected 

1930s, and five of the 

contributors attended University College 

odd justification for it. 

"In a few hours ends the Year of 

Grace 1920. We are nght on top and if 

we have climbed there by a ladder with 

many rotten rungs one may, almost say, 

'Tout comprendre c'est tout pardoner ." 

(To understand all is to pardon all.) "It is 

all so much more difficult than even 

Cabinet Ministers not in this sweet 

county realise. I think I am repeating 

myself when I say that it's not at all 

unlike riding a fast hunt — o ie jumps a 

fence and there's another in front of you; 

no time to stop and have a look at it but 

smack at it you go with no idea what's 

t'other side and you may be clearing 

another obstacle or in for a crashing fall.' 

As Tim Pat Coogan said, one 

wonders if there is a modem day Sturgis 

writing his diaries in Stormont Castle 

who realises that if the Labour 

government myopically believe that are 

'on top' in Ireland, it is because they've 

climbed a ladder with rotten rungs. 

resigned in 1997. Fianna Fail's Bertie 

Ahem adopted Mary McAleese, having 

decided that the alternative candidate, 

former Taoiseach Albert Reynolds, 

would not defeat the female contenders. 

Mary McAleese in turn, a 

Belfastwoman and a strong if maverick 

Catholic, has become symbolic of a 

Republic in which national feeling is 

rising in sympathy with the northern 

peace process and in reaction to the antinational 

brainwashing and historical 

revisionism of recent decades. 

This is a fascinating biography of an 

exuberant, emotional personality, who is 

temperamentally Mary Robinson's 

opposite. Born in Ardoyne, she and her 

family had to move house in face of 

assault by loyalist mobs. She became a 

lawyer, taught in Trinity College Dublin, 

joined RTE as a programme presenter 

and fell foul of the anti-national 'sticky 

clique that dominated programming 

there in the 1970s. She failed to get 

elected a Fianna Fail TD in Dublin, 

returned to Belfast, where she defeated 

her former law tutor David Trimble for 

the job of director of university legal 

studies, and then triumphantly came 

south again as President. 

And the future? Will this complex 

energetic woman be happy occupying 

indefinitely the rather boring sinecure 

that is the Republic's presidency? One 

useful thing she could do would be to 

encourage Ireland's diaspora, especially 

in Britain, to press the politicians in the 

countries they live in to support the 

peace process. 

Much of the interest of this book lies 

in showing how throughout her career 

Mary McAleese has re-positioned 

herself to move from one career slot to 

another. Further interesting moves may 

be expected. 

Dublin. 

Essays by Elizabeth Russell and 

Adrian Kelly address issues of literature, 

Irish language and education during the 

inter-war years. Gillian Mcintosh and 

Kieren Mullarkey explore themes 

pertaining to the Catholic Church, — 

widely regarded as having exerted undue 

control over government policy and 

national character in this period. 

Issues of land and labourers are dealt 

with by Anne-Marie Walsh, while 

Margaret O hOgartaigh examines the 

efforts of Dr Dorothy Stopford-Price to 

eliminate childhood TB with the 

adoption of the BCG vaccine in 1937. 

Feaighal McGarry, author of a recent 

book on the Blueshirt Irish Brigade, 

contributes a lucid item on general 

O'Duffy's efforts to unite Irish fascists 

and ultra-nationalists, while Labhras 

Joye examines the Irish Army's reserve, 

a popular force in the mid-1930s which 

never lived up to governmen 1 

expectations.


Reviews/culture 

Ulsterman who rang the changes 

Sally Richardson reviews Sam 

Hanna Bell: a biography by- 

Sean MacMahon, Blackstaff Press, 

£17.09 hbk 

RUTH DUDLEY Edwards recently 

claimed that Ulster Protestants can't 

write books. Or perhaps she just meant 

Orangemen — bigotry certainly puts a 

squeeze on the creative faculties. 

In any case, Ireland's abundance of 

great writers includes many Ulster 

Protestants, including Sam Hanna Bell, 

author of the brilliant December Bride, 

recently included in a list of the best 200 

novels in English since 1950. 

Bell was also a pioneering features 

producer with the BBC Northern 

Sodom and 

Begorrah 

Ruairi 6 Domhnaill reviews Dear 

God: the price of religion In 

Ireland 

by Eamonn McCann. 

Bookmarks, £9.99 pbk 

EAMONN McCANN'S publicists 

modestly pledge that he has "tremendous 

wit" and a "sharp mind... (which) sorts 

through the mighty maze of religious 

beliefs, practices and paranoias". But, 

they exhort, those who are aggravated by 

his book are "bigots". 

The author can be a brilliant 

communicator, although his research 

shows minute cracks. For example, Red 

Hugh O'Donnell, murdered in 1602, was 

spared the gross indignities of an English 

earldom and deserting his clan in 1607. 

While confusing "Columba" with 

"Columbanus" may be deliberate, the 

frequent references to the "South", 

"Southern Irish" and to "Southern 

Ireland" appear provocative. For 

Ireland, a protege and appointee of the 

Belfast poet Louis MacNeice. who 

worked for the BBC in London. 

He did not get on with the prounionist 

BBC N1 establishment and was 

denied promotion, although with 

MacNeices's support he saw to it that the 

place was never the same again. 

After a prank involving the comic 

disruption of the live broadcast of the 

inauguration of a new NI governor. Bell 

said: "I believe that the fabric of the state 

got a sore kick up the arse!" 

In his work as a writer and 

broadcaster Bell explored and 

documented the lives, customs and 

history of the people of the north. 

His deep attachment to his native 

region did not prevent a questioning and 

example, an Irish senator is reported to 

have concerns about Protestants' rights 

in "Southern Ireland". As a 

constitutional lawyer, Mary Robinson 

should have been as aware, as Eamonn 

McCann, of the 13 words of the English 

version of Article 4 of the Bunreacht. 

The author has collected accounts of 

age-old, world-wide, depravities of 

Catholics, Christians and of the Papacy 

and appears to wish to focus all on the 

already guilt-ridden "Southern Irish". 

Chief vice of choice is the 

indefensible child-abuse. The final 

chapter, factual or fictional, is a most 

competent presentation of abuse of 

children. It is unclear to what extent it is 

the author's own work, but it is simple, 

direct and chilling. 

It seems that the author ignores non - 

"Southern-Irish-Catholic" abuses, like 

those in the loyalist establishment of 

Northern Ireland or recently in North 

Wales. Acknowledgement of others' 

violations would not excuse those, which 

are actually 'ours', but it might 

contribute to an impression of a balanced 

approach, and reduce any justification 

for challenging to the author's motives. 

Still crazy for that rushy mountain style 

Derek Humphries reviews Stone 

Mad for Music, the Sliabh 

Luachra story by Donal Hickley, 

Marino Books, £9.99 pbk and 

GleanntAn, Sliabh Notes 

Ossian (cd and cassette), OSS 114 

DONAL HICKEY, a Kerry-based 

journalist, grew up within the heart of 

Sliabh Luachra and considers himself 

fortunate to have absorbed the local lore 

from a much-respected older generation. 

In Stone Mad for Music he has 

undertaken a superb piece of research, 

transporting us back in time with his 

highly-readable and fascinating tales. 

Sliabh Luachra (rushy mountain) is a 

wild landscape of bog/farmland lying 

either side of the Cork/Kerry border and 

dissected by the Blackwater river. The 

locality has retained much tradition due 

to its relative isolation and the reader is 

presented with a vivid portrayal of the 

Anniversary Parade 

Chris Magulre selects some notable 

dates for April and May 

April 4 Longford poet Oliver Goldsmith 

dies London, 1774 

April 7 Trial of the United Irishman 

Napper Tandy opens, 1801; 

April 9 Catholic Relief Act passed, 1793; 

Gerry (now Lord) Fitt, SDLP leader 

from its foundation in 1970 until 1979, 

born 1926 

region's prominent musicians, singers, 

poets, story-tellers and collectors. 

Hickley describes how prior to the 

1920—30s music and dancing were 

generally restricted to the home kitchen 

and how this was superseded by the 

April 11 Third Home Rule Bill placed 

before the House of Commons, 1912 

April 13 Catholic Emancipation (Relief) 

Act enabled Roman Catholics to sit in 

the British parliament and made them 

eligible for most public offices, 1829 

April 15 John Doheity, Chartist, dies 

1854 

April 19 Northern Ireland civil rights 

march, banned by the RUC, sets off from 

Burn toilet, 1969 

April 20 Dublin-born Bram Stoker, 

author of Dracula, dies 1912 

criticism of the Presbyterian community 

trom which he came, showing depths 

and complexities in the Orange Order 

that unionists would rather have 

remained hidden. 

Bell's anti-sectarianism was 

demonstrated in his work, his everyday 

life and his friendships. 

What is perhaps missing in this book 

is a deeper explanation and analysis of 

his socialism, and the contradictions 

inherent in the somewhat anomalous 

position he often found himself in, 

subverting the British and unionist 

establishments from within their own 

organisations. 

Nevertheless, this book is a valuable 

and affectionate tribute to a great writer 

and an adventurous broadcaster. 

Reviews in brief 

The Story of Irish Dance by 

Helen Brennan (Brandon, £15.99 hbk) is 

the first comprehensive study of a 

vibrant and ever-developing 

phenomenon. 

Delving back into the history of Irish 

dance, Brennan, an acknowledged 

authority and consultant for the 

producers of Riverdance, has managed 

to produce a lively account, which 

covers many important aspects, 

including the importance of the Gaelic 

revival, the social significance of dance 

in Ireland and difficulties with Church 

authorities. 

It also contributes to the ongoing 

debate as to what constitutes 'real' Irish 

dancing. 

Great Irish Voices, over 400 

years of Irish oratory (Irish 

Academic Press, £24.50 hbk) will 

provide hours of stimulating reading and 

enjoyment, providing you can afford it 

The collection includes some of the 

most influential Irish speeches of all 

time, including Pearse's oration at the 

graveside of the Fenian Jeremiah 

emergence of the local village dance 

hall, which was followed, in turn, by the 

rise of post-war ballrooms, where bigger 

bands replaced the local musician. 

During these eras the great fiddle 

master Padraig O'Keefe (bl887) was in 

his prime. O'Keefe had many local 

pupils and passed on an enduring and 

rich legacy. Other colourful characters 

depicted include the blind, nomadic 

fiddler, Billy Murphy (bl875), who 

travelled by donkey; the much-loved 

fiddler Dennis Murphy (bl910); and the 

legendary accordionist Johnny O'Leary 

(bl923), to name but a few. 

Hickley explores the role of 

traditional (sean-nos) singing, whose 

popularity suffered following the demise 

of the house dances. Jimmy O'Brien and 

Paddy Coakley are perhaps the bestremembered 

sean-nos exponents who, 

by good fortune, passed on 100s of local 

songs to collector Tom Mullaney of the 

Folklore Commission. 

The book concludes with Hickley's 

enlightening profiles of the region's 

celebrated poets: Aodhagan 6 Rathaille 

April 21 Roger Casement discovered and 

arrested after landing at Banna Strand, 

Tralee, 1916 

April 23 Brian Boru dies Clontarf, 1014 

April 26 Vere Foster, philanthropist, 

educator and inventor of the copy-book 

once used in Irish schools, born 1819 

May 1 Percy French, poet, born 

Roscommom, 1854, James Clarence 

Morgan, poet, born Dublin, 1803 

May 2 Easter rising leaders Padraig 

Pearse, Tom Clarke and Thomas 

MacDonagh shot by firing squad, 1916: 

It is a great pity that so little of Bell's 

work is in print — only December Bride 

and a collection of folklore and short 

stories are available. How about a 

reprint of The Hallow Ball, Blackstaff? 

O'Donovan Rossa and Robert Emmet, 

Wolfe Tone and Roger Casement's 

speeches from the dock. In a section 

entitled The Rights of Man Jim Larkin's 

speech at the 1913 lockout tribunal is an 

incisive and emotional testament to the 

necessity of working-class struggle. 

On the other side of the coin there are 

contributions from Carson, Burke and 

James Craig, among others. It's a pity 

Reid didn't see fit to include some of 

Connolly's speeches — don't tell me 

that he couldn't find any recorded — and 

there's only one contribution from a 

woman, Countess Markieievicz. Come 

on, you do better than this. 

For devotees of what some used still 

to refer to as Black Gold, Guinness 

Times, my days in the world's 

most famous brewery by A1 

Byrne (Town House, £19.99 hbk) is a 

thoroughly charming, if somewhat rosetinted, 

view of the famous brewing firm. 

Beautifully illustrated, it's enough to 

inspire almost anyone acquainted with 

the black stuff to start chiming up with 

clever advertising slogans. 

(bl670); Eoghan 6 Suilleabhain (bl748) 

and Fr Patrick Stephen Dinneen (bl860). 

The three musicians of Sliabh Notes, 

Matt Cranith;! (fiddle), Donal Murphy 

(accordion) and Tommy O'Sullivan 

(guitar &.. vocals), hail from counties 

Cork, Kerry and Limerick. The band 

prides itself in playing to the Sliabh 

Luachra style. 

The album's title, Gleanntan, is 

named after the home village of the 

legendary fiddle player Padraig O'Keefe. 

A significant proportion of the featured 

tunes are drawn from local sources. 

Some originate from O'Keefe's own 

manuscripts whilst others have been 

learnt via his pupils or other local 

musicians. 

Slides and polkas feature 

prominently and the band perform 

various dance sets with superb technique 

and precision. In general the tunes can be 

recognised by their simplicity, with 

distinct characteristics coming from the 

rhythm and ornamentation. The Sliabh 

Luachra style is worth the acquired taste 

— and it certainly grows on you. 

Joseph Plunkett, Edward Daly, Willie 

Pearse and Michael O'Hanrahan were 

executed the following day. 

May 5 Bobby Sands, republican hunger 

striker and MP for Fermanagh/S.Tyrone, 

dies after 66 days without food, 1981 

May 8 Easter rising leaders £amonn 

Ceannt, Se£n Heuston, Con Colbert and 

Michael Mallin executed, 1916 

May 10 Henry Vincent, regarded as the 

Demosthenes of the Chartist movement, 

bom Gray's Inn Road, London, 1813 

May 12 Easter rising leaders James 

itwn-out. 

Seamus 6 

Cionnfhaola 

Una Bh£n and 

Tom£s L6idir Costello 

Una Mac Dermot was the daughter of a 

wealthy man. Tomas L4idir (Strong) 

Costello wanted her hand in marriage. 

But, when he called to the house to ask 

for her hand he wasn't made welcome. 

Her father refused to see him and didn't 

tell Una about his visit. 

After a while Una went into a decline 

and Tomas wrote this song to ease his 

broken heart. Only when she came near 

death was Tomas allowed to visit her, 

although he still did not feel welcome in 

the house. At the sight of Tom£s Una 

brightened up before slipping into 

unconsciousness. 

Tomas left the house and he vowed 

never to go back there again. As he was 

crossing the ford of the river he heard his 

name being called, but he would not 

change his mind. 

Although they could not be together 

in life, when he finally came to die, he 

was buried beside her grave. Legend tells 

us that two trees grew alongside the 

graves and formed an arch above them. 

Una Bhan 

A Una Bhan a bhldth na ndlaoi omra, 

Ata thar eis do bhais de bharr 

droch-chomhairle, 

Feach a ghra, ce acu ab fhearr den 

da chomhairle 

A ein I gcliabhan, is me in Ath 

na Donoige. 

A Una Bhan, d'fhag tu me I mbron 

casta, 

Agus c6 bail leat bheith ag tracht go 

deo feasta, 

Cuih'n fainneach ar ar fMs suas an 

t-or leachta, i 

Is go mb'fhearr lion ar l&mh leat 

na an ghloir Fhlaitheas. 

A Una Bhan, mar ros I ngairdm thu, 

's ba choinnleoir 6ir ar bhord na 

banrfona thu. 

Ba Cheiliur, 's ba cheolmhar ag 

gabhail an bhealaigh seo romham thu, 

'se mo chreach-mhaidne bronach, 

nar posadh ledo dhughra thu. 

A Una Bhan, is tu do mhearaigh =* , 

mo chiall, 

A Una, is tu a chuaigh go dluth 

idir me is Dia, 

A Una, a chraobh chumhra, a luibin 

chasta na gciabh, 

Narbh fhearr domsa a bheith gan suile 

na d'fheiceail riamh 

Focloir 

Vocabulary 

Blathanna na bliana 

(blossoms of the year) Part 1 

pluirfn sneachta (snow drop); aiteann 

(furze, gorse); labhrais bheag (wind 

flower); druid lus (common mistletoe); 

cluas liath (coltsfoot); nedim'n (daisy); 

bainne b6 bleacht (primrose); bainne 

caoin/meacan buf (spurge); crann sailigh 

(willow); lus spor&n (shepherds purse); 

fli'odh (chickweed); draighnan dubh 

(blackthorn); bainne bo but (cowslip); 

lus mol6as (sweet); crann cuilleann 

(holly tree); lus miola (forget-me-not); 

Aran glas (white rot); crann fears/crann 

truime (elder tree). 

Connolly and Sein MacDermot, 

executed 1916 

May 14 Ulster Workers' Councilorganised 

strike delivers the death blow 

to the Sunningdale Agreement, 1974 

May 26 Michael Barrett, 26-year-old 

Fenian hanged for his part in the attempt 

to release fellow Fenian imprisoned in 

Clerkenwell jail. 

May 28 Thomas Moore, poet, satirist 

and musician born Dublin, 1779 

May 30 Michael Davitt, Land League 

founder, dies, 1906. 


Lonely Banna Strand 

This song explains what happened to Casement after he 

landed on the west coast of Ireland following his efforts 

get help for the Irish cause from the Germans. New light 

is thrown on his work in Germany in Prelude to the 

Easter Rising, Sir Roger Casement in Imperial 

Germany by Reinhard R. Doe tries. The song was 

published by Ossian Publications in 1979. 

'Twas on good Friday morning all in the month of May, 

A German ship was signalling beyond there in the Bay 

We've twenty thousand rifles here, all ready for to land, 

But no answering signal came from the lonely Banna 

Strand. 

A motorcar was dashing through the early morning 

gloom 

A sudden crash, and in the stream they went to meet 

their doom, 

Two Irish lads were dying there jist like their hopes so 

grand, 

They could not give the signal now from lonely Banna 

Strand. 

The German ship lying there with rifles in galore, 

Up came a British ship 'No Germans reach the shore; 

You are our empire's enemy, and we bid you stand, 

No German foot shall ere pollute the lonely Banna 

Strand.' 

They sailed for Queenstown harbour, said the Germans, 

We're undone, 

The British are our masters man for man and gun for 

gun, 

We've twenty thousand rifles here, but they never will 

reach the land, 

We'll sink them all and bid farewell to lonely Banna 

Strand. 

The R.I.C. were hunting for Sir Roger high and low, 

They found his at McKenna's fort, they said, 'You are 

our foe' 

Said he 'I'm Roger Casement I came to my native land, 

I meant to free my countrymen on the lonely Banna 

Strand.' 

They took Sir Roger prisoner and sailed for London 

town, 

And in the tower they laid him as a traitor to the crown 

Said he 'I am no traitor,' but his trial he had to stand, 

For bringing German rifles to the lonely Banna Strand. 

'Twas in an English prison that they led him to his 

death, 

I'm dying for my country' he said with his last breath, 

He's buried in the prison yard far from his native land, 

The wild waves sing his Requiem on the lonely Banna 

Strand. 

Gerard Curran's songs page 

The Irish Citizen Army 

I found this song by Leo Maguire in a collection called 

The Faithful and the Few. This song brings out the stark 

poverty of many who fought in 1916. 

Nineteen thirteen and Dublin is dead! 

The children whimper and ask for bread. 

There's none to give and no money to buy: 

There's nothing but hate 'neath a sullen sky, 

Yet Larkin and Connolly won't give in , 

So tighten your belt and stick out your chin 

And follow them close and be ready to hit. 

Though they lead us down to the nethermost pit. 

Aye, tighten your belt and grip your stick! 

The batons are swinging: you'd better be quick! 

If hunger has left any strength in your arm 

You'll live through the day and you'll come to no harm. 

The wife and the children sit round the black grate; 

There's nothing to bum and nothing to eat. 

There's nothing to pawn and nothing to sell; 

So face the peelers and give them hell! 

Nineteen sixteen and the hour has come, 

Without blast of bugle or tuck of drum 

Its get to your post! and do your best! 

With green jacket hiding a ragged vest. 

What harm's in that if your bayonet's bright 

And your face aglow with the battle light? 

So its shoulder your rifle and join the boys! 

Though the backside out of your corduroys. 

Join the Connolly Association 

in its campaign for unity and peace in Ireland 

Membership £10 per year; £12 (joint), £6 (joint 

unwaged); £5 students, unemployed and 

pensioners. Membership includes a subscription 

to the Irish Democrat 

For further details or a membership form contact: The Connolly 

Association, 244 Grays Inn Road, London WC1X 8JR 

Celtic 

Art Cards 

May Day 

Tolpuddle Martyrs 

Pack of ten cards (various 

designs) £5.50 (price 

includes p&p) - UK only 

Into the Green with the gates made fast, 

Dig yourself in and look your last 

On the Dublin you love and the Dublin you hate! 

But, dig yourself in for the hour is late! 

Holy Mary! The end is near! 

Speak to your son for those we hold dear! 

So fire your last bullet and die with the boys 

With the backside out of your corduroys. 

Row, Bullies, Row 

The news that a replica of one of the famine ships is 

being built at Blennerville near Tralee, for a voyage 

across the Atlantic, reminded me of this sea shanty. It 

comes from Folk Songs of North America, selected by 

Alan Lomax, published by Doubleday 

Chorus: 

Singing, row,row, 

Them sweet Frisco girls, they have got us in tow. 

From Liverpool to Frisco, a roving I went 

To stay in that country it was my intent 

But by drinking bad whiskey, like other damn fools, 

I soon was transported to Liverpool. 

Cheques payable to Northampton 

Connolly Association 

Available from: Northampton Connolly Association, 

5 Woodland Avenue, Abingdon, 

Northampton NN3 2BY. 

Tel. 01604 715793 email: pmcelt@compuserve.com 

Irish Freedom/ 

Irish Democrat 

A unique record of antipartition 

and Irish cMI rights 

campaigns in Britain available 

on microfilm 

Irish Freedom 1939-1944; 

Irish Democrat 1945-1980 

Details from: Connolly 

Publications Ltd 244 Gray s Inn 

Road, London WC1X 8JR 

Tel: 0207-833-3022 

Email: 

connolly@geo2.poptel.org.uk 

The clipper ship Comet, lies out in bay, 

Awaiting for a fair wind to get under way, 

The sailors on board are so sick and so sore 

For the liquor's all gone and they can't get no more. 

The up steps the first mate in his jacket of blue, 

He's hunting up work for the sailors to do, 

The it's 'Up topsail halyards,' he loudly does roar, 

'Lay aloft, Paddy, you son of a whore!' 

That night off Cape Horn I won't soon forget. 

It gives me the horrors to think of it yet, 

We were diving bows under and all of us wet, 

A-making twelve knots with the skysails all set. 

Here's to our captain, where'er he may be, 

He's a fiend to a sailor on land or on sea, 

But as for the first mate, the dirty old brute, 

I hope when he dies, straight to hell he'll skyhoot. 

The Merchant's Daughter 

Reading between the lines, I would say that the young 

man in this song did not have good prospects. There is 

a conflict in the girl's mind between comfort and love. 

The song is published in the excellent Irish Street 

Ballads, 1979 

In Deny City lived a merchant, and he had an only 

daughter 

And she had sweethearts plenty to court her night and day. 

But when she had them gained, their company distained, 

And many the clever young man, heart wounded went 

away. 

At length there came a suitor from Clady for to court her, 

With scorchin' flames for to thaw her heart 

Says she, 'Retire, your suit I don't admire, 

Nor is it my desire, a single life to part 

'Your passion for me smother, and go and court some 

other.' 

So he went next Wednesday evening to one he had in 

view. 

He went and courted Sally, and left disdainful Molly. 

And with tears of melancholy he gave her time to rue. 

About six weeks or better she wrote him a letter, 

And he wrote back an answer and sealed it with disdain; 

Saying 'When you could you would not, and 

when you would you need not, 

So read these lines and grieve not, my answer is quite 

plain.' 

Now all ye maids take warning by me and my misfortune, 

And never slight the young man that's master of your 

heart; 

For if you lightly spurn him, you'll find him not returning, 

Your days youOU spend in mourning 'tis I that 

feels the smart. 

Bretagne Vh/ant, campaign to help 

IUIMANMiN——IMNg l LUJ Inn!UAAM' 

wiiuifie enoangereo uy lasi yean 

Erifca oil-tanker diaster off Brittany. 

Donations and information: 

Bretagne Vrvant - SEPNB, 186, 

rue Anatole France, BP 32 29276 

Brest Cedex, Brittany 

Four Provinces 

Irish bookshop 

244 Gray's Inn Road, London 

WC1X 8JR 

tel: 020 7833 3022 

For a wide selection of Irish-interest books, seasonal 

cards, mugs, badges, Irish language materials, music 

tapes, CDs and calendars. 

Open 11am-4pm, Tuesday to Saturday 

Mail order and catalogue available on request 

Sources said... 

PETER MULLIGAN'S tregular 

trawl through the pages of 

the British press 

Mandeison got in first — One senior 

security source said: 'If David Trimble 

has lo go before his Ulster Unionists next 

week with a shafted RUC and no guns 

handed in, I can assure you that the 

power-sharing executive is finished.'" 

(The Times) 

Arms and the State — "For all the brave 

talk about decommissioning the British 

state in Ireland, there is no possibility of 

decommissioning the UK subvention to 

Northern Ireland." (Paul Bew, Professor 

of Irish politics at Queens University in 

The Times) 

Arms and the man — "The 1998 Good 

Friday Agreement — which he (Tony 

Blair) endorsed — commits only 

vaguely 'all participants' to 'use any 

influence they may have to achieve the 

decommissioning of all paramilitary 

weapons' by May 22. It contains no 

specific commitment to, or timetable for, 

the destruction of IRA weapons. Sinn 

F£in was not slow to remind the 

Government of the small print: after all, 

the IRA never signed anything. Mr Blair 

might even be tempted, in the difficult 

weeks to come, to accept 'the silence of 

the guns' instead of their destruction. 

(Editorial, Sunday Telegraph) 

Arms and freedom — '"We were caught 

with our trousers down in 1969 when the 

IRA did not have the weapons to defend 

us, and we are bloody glad that will 

never happen again', said Jimmy, 51 and 

a life long resident of the Ardoyne". (The 

Times) 

Arms and politics — "Though Sinn 

Fein/IRA have made great gains through 

the peace process, they have also seen 

the Republic's constitutional claims to 

Northern Ireland abandoned. The IRA 

does arithmetic differently from the rest 

of us. It might decide that it has lost more 

than it gained in the initiative; it might 

feel it has been duped, cheated and 

finally double-crossed; and therefore 

could justify a return to war." (Kevin 

Myers, Sunday Telegraph) 

Arms and arms — "The IRA statement 

read: 'We have never entered into any 

agreement or understanding at any time 

whatsoever on any aspect of 

decommissioning. We have not broken 

any commitment or betrayed anyone... 

Those who have once again made the 

political process conditional on the 

decommissioning of silenced IRA guns 

are responsible for creating the current 

difficulties.'" (Sunday Telegraph) 

Peace! — "Peace has to come from the 

other side as well . How can people 

expect the nationalist people to have any 

faith when we have seen nothing since 

the 1997 IRA cease-fire except a 

reinforcement of those towers and the 

bases, with nothing to acknowledge the 

IRA guns re silent?" (Toni Carragher of 

the South Armagh farmers and residents 

committee, quoted in The Times) 

Last Word 

£ ft I believe the situation has now gone 

so far that it is impossible to conceive of 

an effective long-term solution in which 

the agenda does not at least include 

consideration... of progress towards a 

united Ireland. J J 

Harold Wilson, British Labour leader, 

outlining his 'blueprint'for a united 

Ireland. House of Commons 

November 25, 1971.

t 

lBlShOCltlOCRAC 

Anonn Is Anall: The Peter Berresfford Ellis Column 

England's identity crisis 

1 

wariYium suyMM^ 

m MonHiraLD j^MC 

Figures such as Wat Tyler rather than Richard I are the true heroes of English history 

Peter Berresford Ellis calls on the English to re-discover their own 

historical identity in order to debunk imperialist myths and reach an 

understanding of the cultural struggles of their Celtic neighbours 

SINCE THE re-establishment of a 

parliament in Scotland and the 

institution of a national assembly in 

Wales, the English media have lately 

been concerned with analysing what it 

means to be English. No longer can the 

old imperial label of 'British' suffice. That was 

merely an 18th century 'newspeak' invention to 

persuade the other nationalities in these island that 

they were part of some strange homogeneous 

identity which had a co-equal role in the empire. 

That was a favourite concept of Winston Churchill 

— remember his book The Island Race? 

It was also used an excuse which allowed the 

English not to examine their own history and 

development too closely. Some parts of the English 

press and media, in their search to identify the 

ethnic make-up of these islands, have finally 

realised that the Manx are a Celtic people with their 

own parliament whose constitutional status is that of 

a crown dependency outside of the United 

Kingdom. The same constitutional status 

encompasses the Channel Islands. 

The other day I even received a letter from the 

UK government office for the southwest telling me 

that it has just commissioned a study to help it 

advise on the government's policy towards the 

Cornish language in relation to the Council of 

Europe Charter on Regional and Minority 

Languages. 

As someone who lived in Cornwall 1967/68 and 

wrote a history of the Cornish language and its 

literature, I am delighted that Westminster has 

finally recognised what has been described as the 

'Cinderella' of the Celtic languages. 

What is more important, I am delighted by the 

fact that the English might be on the verge of 

discovering their own historical identity. Perhaps 

they will find another way to measure their history 

than by the false imagery of a list of meaningless 

kings and queens. 

Finally, we may see a new understanding 

emerging and some of those ghastly myths, with 

which the English are so fond of illustrating the tale 

of imperial grandeur might be finally dispelled. 

We all know those myths, thanks either to the 

popular history books or the Hollywood movies. 

Take that of Richard Coeur du Lion or the Lionheait 

(1189-119). Loved by the Anglo-Saxon peasants 

and their champion Robin Hood? Who's kidding 

who? Like most of the "English' kings between 

1066 and 1225, Richard was hardly ever in England. 

That he was born here was a pure accident and 

quickly remedied when his mother took him back to 

Anjou. Richard had no interest in this colonial 

outpost of the Angevin empire. His arrival in 

England as an adult in 1189 was marked by an 

excessively nasty persecution of the Jews in London 

and York. His stay was brief; just four months; long 

enough to raise some taxes from the hapless Anglo- 

Saxons. Where was Robin and his merry men then? 

In the ten years that he was King, Richard only 

spent six months in England. He did not speak 

English nor was he a stalwart defender of the Anglo- 

Saxons against the machinations of the Norman 

barons. Ivanhoe was merely a novel by Walter Scott. 

The myopic English view of history has England 

as the centre of the Norman kingdom from 1066- 

1225. Instead it was merely a colonial outpost of the 

Angevin empire. By changing their history, the 

English do not have to deal with its realities and this 

allowed them to propagandise the neighbouring 

nations who were the first to fall to their empire 

when it finally started in earnest in Tudor times. 

I have seen some, who would denigrate the role 

of the Irish language, speak of the 'English 

language' as being used in Ireland from the 12th 

century. Scots are taught that 'Inglis', which is now 

more fashionable referred to as 'Scots' or 'Lallans', 

had always been dominant in southern Scotland and 

Gaelic merely confined to the 'Highlands'. These 

nonsensical ideas stem from the English not getting 

to grips with their own history. 

Maybe all these myths will change. One new 

development along the right lines is a volume in The 

New Oxford History of England series from Oxford 

University Press. In his England Under the Norman 

and Angevin Kings 1075-1225 Robert Bartlett 

shows that England was a colony of the French 

based Angevin kings with its subjugated population 

continually rising in insurrection against its rulers. 

In 1066 William of Normandy managed to get a 

tenuous grip on southern England. Between then 

and his death just over 20 years later, William spent 

hardly more than four years in the country; this was 

four military campaigns to subdue the natives. He 

spent only seven months in England in 1066. His 

successors also showed an equal disinclination to 

spend long periods in the country. Yet we are told 

that they were 'English' kings. 

After the Norman conquest, the English (Anglo- 

Saxon) language was suppressed and ceased to be 

the language of the ruling, commercial and educated 

classes. The literature produced in England was 

French and many classics of French literature were 

written in southern England. 

In 1154 those monks who tried to maintain the 

Anglo-Saxon chronicle gave up their task as a 

silence descended on Anglo-Saxon literary 

endeavours. French was the language in which the 

upper and middle classes were educated and in 

which commerce was carried on. French and Latin 

were the languages of literacy and intellectual 

endeavour. Anglo-Saxon became a peasant 

language. It was not until 1258 that Henry III, 

bowing to pressure from Simon de Montfort (a 

liberal of his day) promised to allow English to be 

taught by schoolmasters. That promised died with 

de Montfort's defeat in 1265. 

IN AD 1300 the author of Cursor Mundi 

made a plea for status for the English 

language in England. "If we give everyone 

their own language, it seems to me we are 

doing them no injury." However, the same 

year Robert of Gloucester had noted: 

"Unless a man knows French he is thought little of." 

Anglo-Saxon families were even Frenchifying their 

names because Anglo-Saxon was synonymous with 

the peasants and Norman with the educated, upper 

classes. To help the process, William of 

Bibbesworth produced a textbook for the children of 

English speakers by which they could learn French 

"which every gentlemen ought to know". 

A friar from Chester, Brother Ranulph Higden, 

wrote in 1364: "This impairing of the native tongue 

(English) is because of two things. One is that 

children in schools, contrary to the usage and 

customs of all other nations, are compelled to drop 

their own language and to construe their lessons and 

their other things in French, and have done so since 

the Normans first came to England. Also 

gentlemen's children are taught to speak French 

from the time that they are rocked in their cradle and 

can talk and play with a child's trinket." 

If the English can 

understand their own 

cultural development, 

perhaps they will begin 

to understand the 

cultural destruction they 

have inflicted on their 

Celtic neighbours 

Things changed in the 14th century simply 

because of the wars with France. The Angevin 

empire had broken up in t'ie early 13th century as 

the power of the Frankish kingdom grew over that 

of Angevin. The Angevin kings retreated across 

their territory until they were forced back into 

England and it was only then that England became 

a centre of political power. Even so, King John, who 

lost a fair size of the empire in France, was 

nicknamed 'John Lackland' (Landless John). 

• But England was still a culturally French 

kingdom so far as its ruling class and middle class 

were concerned. The change was a spin off of 

political pragmatism. 

The rise in the importance of the peasantry and 

labouring class after the Black Death and the need 

for them to be encouraged as 'cannon fodder' during 

the Hundred Years War with France, starting in 

1337, forced the French speaking ruling class to 

change their attempt to crush Anglo-Saxon culture. 

How could they persuade the Anglo-Saxons to fight 

for them when the peasants could not differentiate 

between their own rulers and the people they were 

fighting against — both spoke French! The ruling 

class had to make some changes if they wanted the 

bulk of the Anglo-Saxons to support them. 

The conservative elements did not allow 

linguistic changes to be made without a struggle. It 

was decreed in 1325 that all conversation in Oxford 

University must be in French or Latin. In 1332 an 

Act of Parliament declared that all children in 

education had to be taught in French. 

In spite of this, English was allowed in Oxford 

University in 1349. Edward III passed a statute in 

1362 which allowed English to be used in courts of 

law instead of French or Latin, although 'Law 

French' was only ejected by an Act of Parliament as 

late as 1731 in spite of an attempt by Oliver 

Cromwell to oust it. 

It was in 1362 that a major step was taken when 

the parliament at Westminster was opened with a 

little speech in English by the Lord Chancellor and 

it was announced that the English language could be 

used in debate there. Yet it was not until 1484 that 

the first parliamentary statutes were allowed to be 

written in English and printed. 

Between 1403 and 1413 there was a shift by the 

English royal court and French and Latin were now 

complemented by English being allowed as a court 

language. The royals had been quick to see the 

benefits a knowledge of English and, during Wat 

Tyler's iBsurrection in 1381, Richard II won over 

some peasants by speaking a few words in English 

to them. Henry iy, the Bolingbroke who overthrew 

the power of the Plantagenets, on seizing the throne 

in 1399, addressed his subjects in English. 

In 1474 William Caxton printed the first book in 

the English language — Recuyell of the Historues of 

Trvye — ironically the printing was actually done at 

Bruges. It was not for another couple of years that 

he was able to set up a press at Westminster and 

printed Canterbury Tales. 

In 1384 John Wyclife had translated the Bible 

into English but it was not until 1526 that William 

Tyndale, forced into exile, printed an English Bible 

at Cologne. Henry VIII was instrumental in having 

Tyndale burned at the stake near Brussels. This was 

more to do with church politics than cultural 

suppression. 

In 1535 Miles Coverdale printed the first 

complete Bible in English at Marberg in Germany. 

Finally in 1539 the combined Coverdale and 

Tyndale Bible was allowed to be placed in every 

parish church and in 1549 English became the 

language of state religion in the country. 

The struggle of the English language is an 

essential element of understanding the development 

of the English. The struggle between the Norman 

rulers and the Anglo-Saxon underclass after the 

Conquest of 1066 is also an essential element in 

examining the growth of English imperialism. 

I was arguing 30 years ago that the very ruling 

class which sought to eradicate the Anglo-Saxon 

language and culture, still exists and, in the fullness 

of time have alienated the ordinary English from a 

real knowledge of their own past. 

The lack of understanding of their own history 

and especially a lack of knowledge of the English 

linguistic struggle, which is never mentioned in 

general histories, goes a long way to explaining the 

insularity of the average English person when it 

comes to making an effort to understanding the 

linguistic problems of their closest neighbours. 

Yet, with the new search for English identity, 

perhaps there is a hope. If the English can 

understand their own cultural development, perhaps 

they will, in turn, begin to undersold the cultural 

destruction they have inflicted on their Celtic 

neighbours and come to understand those cultures 

have values just as much as their own had when they 

were fighting for the right to be allowed freedom to 

develop.

Irish Democrat April - May 2000

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