Archive for the ‘People Before Profit’ Category
Stormont Crackdown on Black Lives Matter Rallies in Derry and Belfast – Dáil greenIights Special Criminal Court
In Dublin Sinn Féin is the largest Dáil opposition party up against the new right-wing FFFGGG Coalition. In Belfast the same party is part of a coalition headed by the far-right Democratic Unionist Party at Stormont.
The Northern Ireland State is almost a world-leader for practicising racism, bigotry, and discrimination. The “Protestant State for a Protestant People” spent decades discriminating against a nationalist minority. That still happens, but has been scaled down. Rebellions helped – and mass struggle caused progressive legal change – for example the lifting of legal bans on abortion and gay rights. But, in 2020, this state discriminates vigorously against other minorities, especially immigrants.
Derry People Before Profit highlights Sinn Féin moving in the wrong direction on these issues :
Despite Sinn Féin’s claim to be a party interested in fundamental change – they are headed in the opposite direction.
In the North, Sinn Féin support the PSNI crackdown on Black Lives Matter rallies in Derry and Belfast. In the Stormont Assembly Sinn Féin MLAs voted with the DUP and others for Amendment 5 of the Health Regulations to approve the PSNI’s political policing of the Black Lives Matter rally including prosecution threats and fines. By backing Amendment 5 Sinn Féin voted to give the PSNI more enforcement powers even though no other incidents or events – including mass rallies of loyalists and racists to ‘protect statues’ – have been targeted by the PSNI.
Read the rest of this entry »In the South, by abstaining on the vote Sinn Féin gave the greenlight to legislation empowering the Special Criminal Court. Throughout its history Sinn Féin has voted against and called for the non-jury Special Criminal Court to be abolished. They’ve now turned their back on this position.
A West Belfast Republican Funeral Breaches CoronaVirus Restrictions – Trouble Ahead
The Sinn Féin organisers of Bobby Storey’s West Belfast funeral on June 30 2020 got plenty of advance warning – which they chose to ignore.
Suzanne Breen set the scene in the pages of the Belfast Telegraph :
Sinn Fein has adopted an uncompromising approach to fighting coronavirus in Northern Ireland. On school closures, workplace regulations and much more, the party has rightly insisted that health and safety trumps all else.
The funeral of Bobby Storey should be no different. No ifs, buts or maybes. It doesn’t matter that he was Sinn Fein’s northern chairman, spent 20 years in jail, or has heroic status for some in the republican community.
The same guidelines that apply when ordinary folk die apply to Bobby Storey, too. Just imagine the outrage there would be in the nationalist community if loyalists flouted the rules for a UDA or UVF funeral? https://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/opinion/comment/sinn-fein-should-set-example-at-bobby-storeys-funeral-but-its-a-case-of-do-as-i-say-not-as-i-do-39319738.html
Dominic Cummings moments in the six county statelet :
PBP Belfast Councillor Matt Collins observes
At the risk of sounding repetitive I will make the point again….
The only people in Belfast who have been systematically targeted with fines, cautions and prosecution threats from the PSNI for breaching the regulations during this crisis have been BAME protestors taking part in safe, socially distant Black Lives Matter protests.
Such a fact— in a majority white city with tonnes of examples of proportionally different police treatment to other gatherings — is discrimination by definition.
People should be shouting loudly about this. Those in power keeping quiet about it are increasingly becoming part of the problem in my opinion.
The double standards were also highlighted by Vincent Doherty.
Read the rest of this entry »Prosecution Threats Against Black Lives Matter Protesters – Derry, Belfast June 6 2020
Disgraceful events in Belfast and Derry – resistance is stepped up.
The originators of a statement supporting Black Lives Matter have condemned the Derry Journal for refusing to print a paid advert for the statement in today’s issue.
Dermie McClenaghan, Bernadette McAliskey, Eamonn McCann and Kate Nash, said that they were “deeply disappointed” at the paper’s decision.
They point out that the statement had already been published in full in a paid advert in the Derry News.
The signatories went on: “The statement condemned police action at the BLM protest in Derry on June 6 and was critical of some local interests which had called for the protest to be abandoned. We supported the decision of the BAME community in Derry to go ahead with the protest. We reiterate that support.
“There are two pandemics ravaging the world – Covid-19 and racism. The anti-racist demonstrations in Derry and in Belfast were meticulously arranged to meet public health requirements. In Derry, the PSNI operation – as if for a major riot – made the arrangements difficult to uphold.
Read the rest of this entry »Always Look on the Bright Side of Life – New World After the CoronaVirus War
Guest Post : John Meehan calls for an international revolutionary tendency!
Once, in the mid-1980’s while attending an extremely serious international political congress, I briefly attracted the attention of a Latin American comrade so Deep in Thought about the world revolution, he wasn’t saying hello to bit players like me.
A deluded speaker had seriously suggested that Lenin’s 1915 formula – “turn the imperialist war into a civil war” – could be adapted to the prospect of an imminent 20th Century Nuclear War. Workers’ and Capitalists’ bombs would reduce the globe to smithereens. Out of the Doomsday Ashes, human survivors would create the Communist Garden of Eden, a new Valhalla :
Valhalla, Old Norse Valhöll, in Norse mythology, the hall of slain warriors, who live there blissfully under the leadership of the god Odin. Valhalla is depicted as a splendid palace, roofed with shields, where the warriors feast on the flesh of a boar slaughtered daily and made whole again each evening. They drink liquor that flows from the udders of a goat, and their sport is to fight one another every day.
Thus they will live until the Ragnarök(Doomsday), when they will march out the 540 doors of the palace to fight at the side of Odin against the giants. When heroes fall in battle it is said that Odin needs them to strengthen his forces for the Ragnarök.
https://www.britannica.com/topic/Valhalla-Norse-mythology
A mischievous comrade – promoting the despised “pacifist” and “reformist” policy of abolishing all nuclear weapons – advised us that success for the Valhalla Doomsday Policy would leave our planet inhabited only by termites – the only living creatures capable of surviving a nuclear holocaust. Civil War For Termites Comrades?
Read the rest of this entry »Galway PBP 2020: time for clarity on the allegations or for moving on.
Guest post from Des Derwin
The suspension (and subsequent expulsion) by People Before Profit of its Galway West candidate on the day of the general election has been followed by accusations of dismissal of members’ complaints for long before that day, of exclusion of complainants since that day, and by discussion of the events and surrounding events on Facebook and Twitter. Now another left organisation, the Connolly Youth Movement, has taken it upon itself to enter the fray with a strong public statement (23rd March) supporting the woman at the centre of an assault allegation and criticizing the response and leadership of People Before Profit. And implicating a separate organisation (Solidarity-The Socialist Party) in the process.
A new thread on Facebook (25th March) about this was tagged to my timeline. So, in a way, involving me, a bit, publicly. I’m reluctant to add fuel to the Facebook fire, for reasons I hope are explained below. I have removed the tag. But not commenting at all would, I feel, amount to the type of polite silence that has accompanied allegations of abuse down the years. Maybe here might be a cooler and quieter place to say a few initial words.
Read the rest of this entry »Westminster Government in London and Stormont Puppet in Belfast Planning Virus Mass Murder
Eamonn McCann, a People Before Profit Derry and Strabane Councillor, argues that, in effect, the Boris Johnson British Government is planning Mass Murder :
But this isn’t really about herd immunity. It’s about a dangerous and reckless drive to keep Britain open for business and maintain profits at all costs
Veteran British Comrade Phil Hearse Makes the Same Argument : he says the Westminster “herd immunity” strategy is akin to a “far-right death cult” https://www.timetomutiny.org/post/government-strategy-tipping-britain-towards-huge-death-toll
McCann continues in the same vein below. He calls on Admiral Arlene Foster to steer the Stormont Titanic Away from the Mass Grave. But, she won’t do that. It is Time for a Mutiny – Sinn Féin should sink the Stormont Titanic.
Read the rest of this entry »RISE Leaflet – We need a socialist government
RISE distributed a leaflet (link below) at a 1000 strong March 7 Dublin Demonstration. The last paragraphs advocates the creation of a new left party which is “open for different groups to organise within it”. This is extremely positive.
Sinn Féin Talking to Fine Gael – and the Social Democrats Offering Coalition With Either Leo Varadkar or Mícheál Matrtin
A useful post from the Cedar Lounge Revolution Blog :
Okay, intriguing that FG are willing to talk to SF. Perhaps the penny has dropped with some that not talking is a bad look for political parties in a democracy. Can FF hold their line in light of this?
But more interesting again is the following from the SDs:
Ms Shortall and Ms Murphy reiterated the party’s position that they would not enter government with Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil, but would consider serving in government with one of the two parties and Sinn Féin.
https://cedarlounge.wordpress.com/2020/03/04/an-interesting-distinction/
The ballroom dances are not over! Coalition with FFFG is a one-way ticket into Dante’s Inferno.
Words on Des Bonass (died 26th September 2019), commemorative evening, Teachers Club, 29th February 2020.
Words on Des Bonass (died 26th September 2019), commemorative evening, Teachers Club, 29th February 2020.
Delivered by Des Derwin, on behalf of the Dublin Council of Trade Unions.
Des Bonass, a constant campaigner in a long life of activity in the most stirring and also the most unproductive political times, is missing, just missing, the extraordinary outcome of this month’s general election. The upending of a century of duopoly by Tweedle Fail and Tweedle Gael, a surge for change at the ballot box, the development of a left-right configuration, however confused, and a crisis in mainstream, establishment politics. ‘Who would have thunk it’? An overflow crowd outside a political meeting in Liberty Hall [25th February 2020] addressed in the biting wind by one the speakers who has come out to speak to them too. In the 21st century.
Well, such is the lot of many a life-long political activist. Things happen just after you are gone. But that is not the way we think and its not the way Des would have thought. Because he worked and acted in the here and now; he did what could be done at the time. And because he helped set the present in motion, and a lot of other big steps too in the past. And because we are this evening giving Des his rightful place in whatever is happening now, because of his contribution, and because he would have been no less a part of the big things, and the small less-noticed things, than he ever was. And finally, what is happening this month is – if indeed it keeps up and develops – only a small proportion of the eventual historical events that will be needed, and that will follow, and will probably be missed by most of us here too, to bring about the really momentous social change that Des Bonass stood for, and worked for and carried a clear vision of in his head, throughout his long trade union, republican and socialist life. Read the rest of this entry »
Tomás Ó Flatharta 