Archive for the ‘British Empire’ Category
“Frogs’ legs and lobster Thermidor – or the ABC of republican strategy” – Fearghal Mac Bhloscaidh
Fearghal Mac Bhloscaidh is one of the most interesting political writers in Ireland. The article below is a detailed analysis of Ireland’s peace process, which begins with a speech delivered by Bernadette McAliskey the year before the Good Friday Agreement was signed in 1998. I remember it well. (*)
John Meehan
About the author : Fearghal Mac Bhloscaidh is a Belfast-based historian and the author of a number of important books, including Tyrone: the Irish Revolution, 1912-1923 (Four Courts Press, 2014).
As a young man, I listened to a speech by Bernadette McAliskey the year before the signing of the Good Friday Agreement – the pinnacle of what became known as the ‘peace process’. McAliskey did not object to peace, she had notoriously been subtitled by the BBC in a 1992 interview, when she said: ‘No sane human being supports violence. We are often inevitably cornered into it by powerlessness, by lack of democracy, by lack of willingness of people to listen to our problems. We don’t choose political violence, the powerful force it on us.’ (quoted in Curtis, 1998:297) By the time I heard her speak in 1997, the powerful had arrested her pregnant daughter, Róisín, with the intent to extradite her to Germany. By 2000, the powerful admitted that Róisín, who had never been charged, had no case to answer as there was ‘not a realistic prospect of convicting Miss McAliskey for any offence.’ (Guardian, 20 July 2000). What struck me at the time, was that the powerful had a vendetta against a woman and her family because she had stood up for socialist republican principles for thirty years at that stage. Last month, fifty-five years after the Burntollet march and her subsequent election as the then youngest female Westminster MP ever, McAliskey gave the main oration at the solidarity march in Dublin, where she told the crowd that ‘Palestine is the litmus test of our humanity’ and then urged those present not to vote for any politician who would legitimise the Biden administration, which was ‘enabling genocide’, by attending the St Patrick’s Day events in the White House (Irish News, 14 January 2024).
McAliskey’s speech from all those years ago stuck in my mind because in the questions afterwards she was asked about the peace process and used a powerful analogy that I hadn’t heard before at that stage, but I have heard and used myself on numerous occasions since. She welcomed an end to violence but warned that the provisional movement appeared to be going down a well-worn reformist path that would eventually denude it of any revolutionary potential. She compared the republican movement to a frog, which if placed in a pot of boiling water, will immediately sense the danger, and jump out to save itself, but, if immersed in tepid water brought slowly to the boil so that the change in temperature remains gradual, the frog does not realise it’s boiling to death. In line with their – soon to be – new mates in New Labour, Sinn Féin had swallowed TINA – there is no alternative. Plan A – armed struggle has failed, now we try Plan B. In Sinn Fein’s case, this meant the long march through the institutions, acceptance of the principle of consent and parliamentary reformism on the classical constitutional nationalist model. McAliskey had the temerity to ask for a Plan C, which might mean retaining socialist republican principles and challenging the powerful rather than getting into bed with them.
Read the rest of this entry »The Border Partitioning Ireland – Credible opinion polls, Brexit, and Perfidious Albion
A new credible opinion poll in the six county bit of Ireland states the following :
This matters, because under the terms of the 1998 Good Friday Agreement (GFA), if a six county (Northern Ireland) referendum results in a pro United Ireland majority, partition will be dead.
There is no reason to doubt the accuracy of this survey – it is consistent with many other recent opinion polls.
Under the GFA, the NI Secretary of State (currently Chris Heaton-Harris) has the power to call a referendum. This Westminster minister is not obliged to call a referendum unless a series of surveys indicate that a majority of voters in the six county statelet (NI) will vote for a change in the constitutional status.
This was a perfect arrangement for the Dublin and London governments in 1998 – a big majority of the people living in Ireland (on both sides of the border) voted to accept a Unionist Veto. No real prospect of a shift in attitudes seemed possible. But something big happened in 2016 which is having long-term results : Brexit.
Read the rest of this entry »Is Independence the “Settled Will” of the Scottish People in the 2020’s?
Recent political events in England and Wales suggest chaos : Support for Rishi Sunak’s Tories is dive bombing. The excellent Stats for Lefties site regularly updates numbers, and they are startling :
At the same time Keir Starmer’s Labour Party seems to be busting a gut : Is it desperately snatching general election defeat from the jaws of victory? Readers are probably aware of Starmer’s deeply unpopular refusal to oppose Israeli genocide in Palestine. Did Sir Keir Starmer say Israel has the right to cut off food water and electricity to 2 million people in Gaza?
Starmer might be scoring an own-goal in Scotland. This Bella Caledonia article reviews the latest developments. Source : The Settled Will About the Author Mike Small : Mike Small
The Settled Will
How do you understand the latest polling from IPSOS which puts the SNP ahead of Labour by seven points and predicts they would pick up 40 seats in the next General Election?
At the last general election IPSOS predicted the SNP would win 48 seats (and were the most accurate pollster to predict the result). The SNP would indeed later win 48 seats. If the ‘extinction event’ that is predicted for the Conservatives this would mean the SNP taking 70% of available seats in Scotland. If Labour annihilate the Tories in England as looks very likely, there’s a possibility of the SNP becoming the official opposition.
The wider party prediction seat prediction is:
SNP 40
Labour 13
Conservatives 2
Lib Dems 2
Emily Gray from IPSOS Scotland said: “The SNP lead by 7 points on General Election voting intention, but Labour are narrowing the gap. There’s a Rise in public trust in Scottish Labour, including on the NHS and the economy – though SNP still the most trusted party.”
What’s going on?
Read the rest of this entry »Did British Labour Leader Sir Keir Starmer say “Israel has the right” to cut off food water and electricity to 2 million people in Gaza?
A resident of Great Britain advises these posters are appearing in an English city. The correspondent observes “Someone is sailing very close to the wind with electoral law even if it is an accurate account of what he said. This is the latest and biggest of a series of these that have popped up locally.”
Has anyone seen these posters in other parts of the British state, including the bit styled “Northern Ireland”. I am guessing the posters would be popular in Scotland and Wales. They could catch on!
A correspondent wondered “And of course it’s not what he said!” – so the blog team looked it up.
Read the rest of this entry »Fianna Fáil leader Micheál Martin opens the door to coalition with Sinn Féin
Fianna Fáil leader Micheál Martin has said there would be “huge difficulties” with his party going into government with Sinn Féin, but did not rule out the possibility of such a coalition after the next election.
Irish Times December 26 2023
Fianna Fáil (FF) and Fine Gael (FG), two tweedledum and tweedledee capitalist parties, have controlled every government running the southern 26 county bit of partitioned Ireland since a 1921 Treaty was signed with the former occupying power, Britain. A carnival of reaction followed on both sides of the Irish border.
Faced with a false choice between Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael, the only rational policy for the left was and is : no coalition, on principle, with any right-wing party.
The need for this policy is explained in this interview with Paul Murphy TD (People Before Profit, Dublin South-West) : To all of them we say: rule out coalition with Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael – interview with Paul Murphy TD after the February 2020 Irish General Election
Read the rest of this entry »‘An African “Homeland” for the Jewish Refugees?’ by CLR James from Socialist Appeal. Vol. 2 No. 51. November 26, 1938.
This is a remarkable CLR James essay from 1938, where the writer explains that a proposal to deport Jews from Nazi Germany to Africa is a form of racist European colonialism :
The transference of Jews from Germany to Africa means the extension of the Palestine policy to Africa, the strengthening of European imperialism in Africa, with the additional crime that the emigrant Jews will be forced to occupy the position in Africa in regard to the Africans that the Nazis occupy in regard to the Jews in Germany. That is how the ordinary African will see it. He could not help seeing it otherwise.
Yes, one of the ideas floated by the Roosevelt administration when it was turning away Jewish refugees from Nazi persecution was to send them to Ethiopia or Uganda. ‘An African “Homeland” for the Jewish Refugees?’ by C.L.R. James from Socialist Appeal. Vol. 2 No. 51. November 26, 1938. New “Panacea” Put Forward by World Imperialists […]
‘An African “Homeland” for the Jewish Refugees?’ by C.L.R. James from Socialist Appeal. Vol. 2 No. 51. November 26, 1938.
Among Africans, as all over the world, there is widespread sympathy for the Jews and detestation of this latest brutality of the Nazis. Africans, more than most other social groups, can understand what it is that the Jews are being subjected to. They are ready to take common action against the imperialists, Fascists and “democrats” who have for generations subjected them to similar persecution in their own country. But the land situation in South and East Africa makes inevitable a wide-spread resentment among Africans at any proposal to send Jews there.
Wherever whites have been able to live in large numbers in Africa, there exists an economic, political and social situation of the most acute tension. The accepted policy is to take the best land for the whites and to segregate the Africans in areas too small for them. This is one of the means by which black labor is assured. Unable to earn a living and money for the Government tax in the restricted areas assigned to him, the African must go to the settler and seek employment at whatever terms the settler offers.
Read the rest of this entry »‘Lost Boys’ Film Adds Fuel To Kincora Fire And One Question: ‘Why Did The BBC Drop This Film?’ – Re- Blogged Posts which originally appeared on Ed Moloney’s site, The Broken Elbow
Introduction :
On Wednesday September 27 a world premiere takes place in Dublin’s Irish Film Institute
World Premiere
During the winter of 1969, young boys started to disappear from the streets of Belfast, never to be seen again. By 1974, as the Troubles were reaching a bloody and vicious peak, five boys in total had vanished within a five-mile radius. Fifty years later, as the disappearances remain unsolved and families continue to search for answers, filmmaker Des Henderson (How to Diffuse a Bomb) reopens these largely forgotten cold-cases, unearthing disturbing revelations in secret state documents to tell an extraordinary tale of abuse, trauma and potential cover-up.
Notes by Sunniva O’Flynn
Ed Moloney offers the recommendation below. Chris Moore, a journalist who has researched the subject thoroughly for many decades, wrote a fascinating (and chilling) background story about state collusion and child abuse on Ed Moloney’s blog in June 2023. it is reprinted below.
‘Lost Boys’ Film Adds Fuel To Kincora Fire And One Question: ‘Why Did The BBC Drop This Film?’
I had the opportunity yesterday to watch the new Kincora film made by Belfast’s own film company Alleycats. Called ‘Lost Boys’ it asks a simple but necessary question: was the disappearance and murder of four Belfast schoolboys in the 1970’s linked to the subsequent Kincora scandal, which broke some few years afterwards, revealing that all the employees at the home for wayward boys had been abusing inmates for years?
Read the rest of this entry »Irish troops to provide weapons training to Ukraine despite Government’s ‘non-lethal’ assistance pledge – Irish Times News Report, August 18 2023
“Department of Defence insists training does not impact neutrality and that there was no attempt to mislead public” – Irish Times
A copy of Conor Gallagher’s report is here :
Paul Murphy TD (Dublin South-West, People Before Profit) has issued a deeply mistaken public response, consistent with his party’s previously stated opposition to any military anti-imperialist solidarity action in support of the Ukrainian masses’ fight against a genocidal Russian invasion. Source :
This is a grim PBP Left-Evasionist chapter, part of the shocking story: failure to show anti-imperialist solidarity with the masses of Ukraine who are resisting a genocidal Russian invasion.
On July 29 2023 the PBP helped to organise a well-supported anti-racist rally in Dún Laoghaire, a town which proudly hosts a magnificent statue honouring the Irish anti-imperialist gun-runner and human rights activist Roger Casement.
PBP speakers drew attention to the many reasons we honour Casement today : but they overlooked a vital fact : this Easter 1916 rebel imported weapons from Kaiser Wilhelm’s German Empire in order to strike a blow against the then mighty British Empire.
John Meehan August 18 2023
Sinéad O’Connor – Political and Musical Tributes
I think this photo was taken in August 1989 at a FADA (Forum for a Democratic Alternative) march outside the RDS, Ballsbridge, Dublin. It was a protest marking the 20th anniversary of British troops taking over the streets of the six counties after the 1969 Battle of the Bogside. Other speakers included Eamonn McCann. Sinéad O’Connor is singing, flanked by Joe Kelly who chaired the meeting. Thanks to Niamh Kelly, Joe’s daughter, who supplied the photograph.
Sinéad O’Connor understood, better than many others, that the partition of Ireland is a 32 county problem – it is not just about the north. This letter was published in the Irish Times edition of Tuesday, July 30, 1996.
John Meehan August 8 2023
Sinéad O’Connor’s funeral tribute in Bray Co. Wicklow – where she spent many happy years in a house on a promenade beside the sea – was led by a beautifully decorated old van, almost vintage :
Mandy La Combre’s Tributes
Mandy la Combre is a feminist and trade union activist.
I really wanted to be in Bray today to say a final farewell to Sinéad but unfortunately I’m working in Belfast so couldn’t make it. This made me sad. I also haven’t really seen any of the coverage of this morning but I have it recorded at home to watch on my return.
It still feels like a gut-punch to lose this priestess, political agitator, and gifted songwriter, who had an otherworldly voice like an angel and who inspired so many of us teenage girls growing up in grim 1980’s Ireland. What a terrible loss for us all.
It seems fitting that a giant installation honouring Sinéad was unveiled on Bray Head, Co.Wicklow, as she too was a giant. It reads ‘ÉIRE LOVES SINÉAD’ and is located where the recently rediscovered World War Two ‘ÉIRE’ navigational landmark is, also close to Sinéad’s former seafront home at Strand Road, Bray.
I love the below images. Sinéad indelibly marked into the Irish landscape as she should be, and a wonderful happy picture of Sinéad at the MTV Video Music Awards in 1990 – long before she was battered at the hands of the press and the world.
If I was religious I’d say something like I hope she’s sleeping soundly now in the arms of her boy, but unfortunately I’m not, and I’ve a hard time believing that to be true.
So when you don’t know what to say….
“Where words fail, music speaks”.
Thank you Sinéad, for everything. 
Written on August 8 2023
It’s taken me 24 hours to post anything about Sinéad O’Connor. It was actually quite a shock to hear the news.
I’ve enjoyed Sinéad’s music since the 80’s. When she rocked out onto the scene with her doc martens, rolled up jeans, shaved head and a screeching voice like an angel – she was quite the firebrand. Relentlessly willing to stand up for her beliefs even when they were not popular, and they so often were not.
As a teenage girl I wasn’t that many years younger than her and consumed her debut album ‘The Lion & The Cobra’ mercilessly. Playing it for years long after its release date. In fact when pregnant, the first time my son kicked inside my womb I was listening to ‘Troy’ on my Walkman, and so it was set in stone that would be his name. Over 30 years later the album still resonates, it’s a timeless work and an astonishing debut…and Troy still has the coolest name.
I’ve seen Sinéad live only a few times in my life; once in the 80’s in the Olympic ballroom where she looked incredible flouncing around the stage in a black tutu like a beautiful angry nymph, once in the 90’s in Giant stadium in New York, where she headlined an Irish music festival and she filled the stadium with her voice singing a capella literally stopping me in my tracks. And later in the 00’s singing on stage with Gavin Friday with whom her stunning performances with her iconic voice and attitude always complimented Gavin’s shows.
I met her briefly on two occasions and she was always polite. One particular occasion she appeared particularly quiet, shy and unassuming gripping Gavin’s arm for moral support as she navigated the nightclub trepidatiously as if worried that people would start looking at her – even though she looked just beautiful.
Last year I read her book ‘Rememberings’ and saw the film about her life ‘Nothing Compares’. Both fantastic pieces of work, both I seriously recommend to get a real insight into Sinéad’s character and talent.
The book is a brutally honest account of Sinéad’s life in her own words and the film is a stunning portrayal of a celebrated rise to fame and quick exile from mainstream music as a result of her outspokenness and activism. I was delighted to see I had a two second accidental cameo in the latter, it made me giggle in the cinema. Also, my abiding memory leaving the viewing was walking away thinking what a remarkable woman she really was.
You will see a multitude of platitudes to Sinéad in the coming days and weeks, most sincere, and some by those that used, persecuted, and mistreated her while she was alive. But if you really want to remember and celebrate Sinéad, get her back catalogue. That is where the real magic lies. The music and her unique voice speak for themselves. That is where she really shone.
Yes, she was a trailblazer, a feminist, an activist, a moral character that relied on honesty and was always true to herself – but she was also damaged and dreadfully hurt and her songs are an expression of all that she was, not faux, but genuine, and oftentimes in your face. That’s why we loved her and that’s what we should remember.
Right now I really feel for her children, her family and her friends that loved her so much, it must be an unbearable loss. But I also extend condolences to those fans that never wavered and always held Sinéad in their hearts through thick and thin and all the ups and downs. We’ve lost a true talent, and Ireland has lost the best female voice this country has ever produced.
Her work was such a gift.
Sinéad Marie Bernadette O’Connor, rest in power.
You have been loved. 
Written on July 27 2023
Sinéad O’Connor reached back to a powerful Irish ballad, “The Foggy Dew”, and produced a haunting new version with the Chieftains in 1995 :
Twas better to die neath an Irish sky than at Suvla or Sud-el-Bar
Tomás Ó Flatharta 