Posted by Jim on January 19, 2019
The site of the former Andersonstown RUC barracks in west Belfast has
been renamed Groves Reilly Corner, in honour of Clara Reilly and her
late friend, plastic bullet victim Emma Groves.
Relatives for Justice chairwoman Ms Reilly established the first
monitoring organisation of human rights breaches by the Crown Forces
during the late 1960s and 1970s.
She said: “Anybody deserves justice if they lost a loved one and they
have not gotten the truth and answers – that is all they want.
“People are not afraid to go up front and fight for justice.”
Ms Groves was blinded by a Crown Force plastic bullet in 1971. She and
Ms Reilly founded the United Campaign Against Plastic Bullets, which was
responsible for taking giant strides towards an outright ban on the
lethal projectiles.
Andersonstown was itself the location where one victim, John Downes, was
killed by the RUC with a plastic bullet in 1984.
Ms Reilly said she was honoured by the ceremony. “They said no matter
where you go in West Belfast it is royal this and royal that, they
wanted to bring the names back to the ordinary people.”
The married mother of six recounted how she lived in Turf Lodge in West
Belfast in 1969 and was the only person with a phone.
“The red phone, they called it the hotline. “At that time there were a
lot of arrests and complaints of ill-treatment, in Castlereagh and
different holding centres, and we felt that there was a need for a human
rights organisation monitoring all this.”
They formed the Association for Legal Justice in 1971.
“From that day on my house was like an advice centre,” she said. “People
were coming to say that their father, their son, their daughter had been
arrested and were not getting any information from the police.”
She drew up a list of lawyers, including the murdered Pat Finucane, who
could find out what had happened to them.
“He was a solicitor in a million, he went a step further in challenging
things in the courts. That is why he was selected to be murdered.”
She said Emma Groves was standing in her own living room when a soldier
fired a rubber bullet through the window and she was blinded. Ms Groves
went on to lead the campaign against their use.
Ms Reilly concluded: “I was doing this since 1969 and I would do every
minute of it again.
“It is our history and what the nationalist people suffered, and I was
not prepared to take it lying down.
“I thought you had to speak out no matter what.”
Speaking ahead of the unveiling Relatives For Justice (RFJ) Director
Mark Thompson said: “What these two women have given our community and
achieved is remarkable and as a community, a society, a country, we have
been privileged and blessed to have had them there for us all.”
Paul O’Connor from the Pat Finucane Centre described Emma Groves and
Clara Reilly as “two lives of resistance”.
“Two women who were leaders in their community – and Clara still is,”
said Paul.
“Many communities would be lucky to have had one of these indomitable
fighters. Belfast and beyond had two but for the saddest of reasons. We
say that Emma was ‘blinded by a rubber bullet’ in November 1972 but she
was actually blinded by a British soldier, a Para, who deliberately
fired a rubber bullet at her face.
“There wasn’t even an allegation that she was a phantom gunwoman or nail
bomber. She simply refused to turn off the rebel songs she was playing
in her own home. At some level the British Government must have
regretted that day because Emma Groves went on to campaign, highlight,
expose, denounce and bear witness to the dangers posed by rubber and
plastic bullets in the following decades.
“It is totally appropriate that the site of the former Andersonstown RUC
barracks, scene of so many pickets with Emma and Clara, should now be
renamed to honour these two strong working class women who did so much
for others.
“The chattering classes can keep their MBEs and CBEs. Clara and Emma are
and were real heroes. And Relatives for Justice is a fitting tribute to
all those years of dedication and struggle.”
Posted by Jim on
Plans are in train to send British Army Reservists to the north of
Ireland to deal with the consequences of a crash Brexit at the end of
March.
The Tory Minister of State for the British Armed Forces, Mark Lancaster,
told MPs that reservists would be deployed “throughout the United
Kingdom” as Britain looms closer to falling out of the European Union,
taking the north of Ireland with it.
An unknown number of reinforcements are be deployed to Ireland beginning
on February 10, 2019. According to the Minister, their role will be to
protect the “welfare, health and security of UK citizens and economic
stability of the UK”.
There was strong criticism of the move on both islands.
British Labour MP Ian Murray said it was “staggering” that British
reservists are being activated because of the risk of a constitutional
crisis of the British government’s own making.
Sinn Fein South Down MP Chris Hazzard said it showed how chaotic the
British Brexit policy had become. “No government can seriously claim
that any policy that results in the need to deploy soldiers onto the
streets is a good one,” he said.
Meanwhile, unguarded comments by two Irish Ministers as they discussed
plans to introduce customs controls after Brexit have also caused alarm.
The Dublin government had consistently claimed it is not preparing to
introduce a border through Ireland in any circumstances – deal or no
deal.
But in a tape of a private conversation between Minister for Foreign
Affairs Simon Coveney and Minister for Transport Shane Ross, just as a
press conference ended, Mr Coveney is heard telling Mr Ross: “Once you
start talking about checks anywhere near the Border, people will start
delving into that, and all of a sudden we’ll be the government that
reintroduced a physical border on the island of Ireland.”
Mr Coveney also said border checks “could be at sea”. Mr Ross then said,
“yeah, but I didn’t know what to say” .
The private exchange led Fianna Fail leader Micheal Martin to say a
“private understanding” now existed that border checks were in prospect.
He called the taped conversation “deeply worrying”.
Saoradh’s Packy Carty said that it was “astonishing” that the partition
drawn up and manned by the British for almost a century might now be
imposed by a Southern Irish administration.
“This weekend marks the centenary of the foundation of the 32 County
Irish Republic,” he said.
“Britain through imperial might, state violence and the threat of war
eventually forced on the Irish people two states, that to this day usurp
the Republic of 1919 and continue to deny the Irish people democratic
self-determination and sovereignty.
“Should the neo-colonial administration in Dublin set about maintaining
the British border in Ireland as Coveney suggests, then its subservience
to British and EU imperialism, rather than the interests of the Irish
people, will be clear for all to see.”
Posted by Jim on January 18, 2019
FDNY BOXING
Come and enjoy a night of USA Sanctioned Boxing with New York’s Bravest on March 15th, 2019, at Madison Square Garden’s Hulu Theatre (The Old Felt Forum). Doors open at 7:00 PM, with the first bout scheduled for 7:30 PM. The Beast of the East Boxing will feature FDNY Boxing vs Police and Firefighters from Boston to Baltimore. Proceeds benefit Building Homes for Heroes. Tickets cost $30-$65 and are on sale now. Click here to purchase tickets, or visit FDNYBoxing.com for more information.
FIREHOUSE KITCHEN TALK WITH FINDING JOHN AUTHOR & FF ANDY SERRA
Mark your calendar for Friends of Firefighters’ first Firehouse Kitchen Talk of 2019. Part memoir, part investigative history, FINDING JOHN is the poignant, emotional story of FDNY Firefighter Andy Serra’s life in the months and years after September 11. Join him at Friends of Firefighters (199 Van Brunt Street, Brooklyn, NY 11231) on Wednesday, January 30, from 6:00-9:00 PM, for a firefighter-prepared dinner followed by an informative presentation that delves into his reasons for writing the book, gives background on his research and interviews, and ends with an audience Q&A. Copies of the book will be available for sale with a percentage of proceeds going to The Ray Pfeifer Foundation and Friends of Firefighters. This event is free for active and retired FDNY members. No RSVP necessary.
2ND ANNUAL BAYSIDE ST. PATRICK’S DAY PARADE
The 2nd annual Bayside St. Patrick’s Day Parade will take place on Saturday, March 30, 2019, at 11:00 AM. This year’s Grand Marshal will be Chief Ed Kilduff, Retired Chief of Department, with Aides Phil Brady, Martin Dolan, Betty McLoughlin, John Ryan and Rev. Msgr. Thomas Machalaski, Sacred Heart. Formation for the parade will be on 35th Avenue and Bell Boulevard. All members participating in the march are requested in their Class A Uniform. For further information, please contact Lt. Gerard Walsh, BN 51, at 347-525-4107 or FF Daniel Casey, E316, at 917-484-2291.
Posted by Jim on
With Brexit, the chumocrats who drew borders from India to Ireland are getting a taste of their own medicine.
By Pankaj Mishra. New York Times. Thursday, January 17, 2019
Mr. Mishra is the author, most recently, of “Age of Anger: A History of the Present.”
Describing Britain’s calamitous exit from its Indian empire in 1947, the novelist Paul Scott wrote that in India the British “came to the end of themselves as they were” — that is, to the end of their exalted idea about themselves. Scott was among those shocked by how hastily and ruthlessly the British, who had ruled India for more than a century, condemned it to fragmentation and anarchy; how Louis Mountbatten, accurately described by the right-wing historian Andrew Roberts as a “mendacious, intellectually limited hustler,” came to preside, as the last British viceroy of India, over the destiny of some 400 million people.
Britain’s rupture with the European Union is proving to be another act of moral dereliction by the country’s rulers. The Brexiteers, pursuing a fantasy of imperial-era strength and self-sufficiency, have repeatedly revealed their hubris, mulishness and ineptitude over the past two years. Though originally a “Remainer,” Prime Minister Theresa May has matched their arrogant obduracy, imposing a patently unworkable timetable of two years on Brexit and laying down red lines that undermined negotiations with Brussels and doomed her deal to resoundingly bipartisan rejection this week in Parliament.
Such a pattern of egotistic and destructive behavior by the British elite flabbergasts many people today. But it was already manifest seven decades ago during Britain’s rash exit from India.
Mountbatten, derided as “Master of Disaster” in British naval circles, was a representative member of a small group of upper- and middle-class British men from which the imperial masters of Asia and Africa were recruited. Abysmally equipped for their immense responsibilities, they were nevertheless allowed by Britain’s brute imperial power to blunder through the world — a “world of whose richness and subtlety,” as E.M. Forster wrote in “Notes on the English Character,” they could “have no conception.”
Forster blamed Britain’s political fiascos on its privately educated men, callow beneficiaries of the country’s elitist public school system. These eternal schoolboys whose “weight is out of all proportion” to their numbers are certainly overrepresented among Tories. They have today plunged Britain into its worst crisis, exposing its incestuous and self-serving ruling class like never before.
From David Cameron, who recklessly gambled his country’s future on a referendum in order to isolate some whingers in his Conservative party, to the opportunistic Boris Johnson, who jumped on the Brexit bandwagon to secure the prime ministerial chair once warmed by his role model Winston Churchill, and the top-hatted, theatrically retro Jacob Rees-Mogg, whose fund management company has set up an office within the European Union even as he vehemently scorns it, the British political class has offered to the world an astounding spectacle of mendacious, intellectually limited hustlers.
Even a columnist for The Economist, an organ of the British elite, now professes dismay over “Oxford chums” who coast through life on “bluff rather than expertise.” “Britain,” the magazine belatedly lamented last month, “is governed by a self-involved clique that rewards group membership above competence and self-confidence above expertise.” In Brexit, the British “chumocracy,” the column declared, “has finally met its Waterloo.”
It is actually more accurate, for those invoking British history, to say that partition — the British Empire’s ruinous exit strategy — has come home. In a grotesque irony, borders imposed in 1921 on Ireland, England’s first colony, have proved to be the biggest stumbling block for the English Brexiteers chasing imperial virility. Moreover, Britain itself faces the prospect of partition if Brexit, a primarily English demand, is achieved and Scottish nationalists renew their call for independence.
It is a measure of English Brexiteers’ political acumen that they were initially oblivious to the volatile Irish question and contemptuous of the Scottish one. Ireland was cynically partitioned to ensure that Protestant settlers outnumber native Catholics in one part of the country. The division provoked decades of violence and consumed thousands of lives. It was partly healed in 1998, when a peace agreement removed the need for security and customs checks along the British-imposed partition line.
The re-imposition of a customs and immigration regime along Britain’s only land border with the European Union was always likely to be resisted with violence. But Brexiteers, awakening late to this ominous possibility, have tried to deny it. A leaked recording revealed Mr. Johnson scorning concerns about the border as “pure millennium bug stuff.”
Politicians and journalists in Ireland are understandably aghast over the aggressive ignorance of English Brexiteers. Business people everywhere are outraged by their cavalier disregard for the economic consequences of new borders. But none of this would surprise anyone who knows of the unconscionable breeziness with which the British ruling class first drew lines through Asia and Africa and then doomed the people living across them to endless suffering.
The malign incompetence of the Brexiteers was precisely prefigured during Britain’s exit from India in 1947, most strikingly in the lack of orderly preparation for it. The British government had announced that India would have independence by June 1948. In the first week of June 1947, however, Mountbatten suddenly proclaimed that the transfer of power would happen on Aug. 15, 1947 — a “ludicrously early date,” as he himself blurted out. In July, a British lawyer named Cyril Radcliffe was entrusted with the task of drawing new boundaries of a country he had never previously visited.
Given only around five weeks to invent the political geography of an India flanked by an eastern and a western wing called Pakistan, Radcliffe failed to visit any villages, communities, rivers or forests along the border he planned to demarcate. Dividing agricultural hinterlands from port cities, and abruptly reducing Hindus, Muslims and Sikhs on either side of the new border to a religious minority, Radcliffe delivered a plan for partition that effectively sentenced millions to death or desolation while bringing him the highest-ranked knighthood.
Up to one million people died, countless women were abducted and raped, and the world’s largest refugee population was created during the population transfers across Radcliffe’s border — an extensive carnage that exceeds all apocalyptic scenarios of Brexit.
In retrospect, Mountbatten had even less reason than Mrs. May to speed up the exit clock — and create insoluble and eternal problems. Just a few months after the botched partition, for instance, India and Pakistan were fighting a war over the disputed territory of Kashmir. None of the concerned parties were pushing for a hasty British exit. As the historian Alex von Tunzelmann points out, “the rush was Mountbatten’s, and his alone.”
Mountbatten was actually less pigheaded than Winston Churchill, whose invocation stiffens the spines of many Brexiteers today. Churchill, a fanatical imperialist, worked harder than any British politician to thwart Indian independence and, as prime minister from 1940 to 1945, did much to compromise it. Seized by a racist fantasy about superior Anglo-Americans, he refused to help Indians cope with famine in 1943 on the grounds that they “breed like rabbits.”
Needless to say, such ravings issued from an ignorance about India as intractable as that of the Brexiteers about Ireland. Churchill’s own secretary of state for India claimed that his boss knew “as much of the Indian problem as George III did of the American colonies.” Churchill displayed in his long career a similarly imperial insouciance toward Ireland, sending countless young Irishmen to their deaths in a catastrophic military fiasco at Gallipoli, Turkey, during World War I and unleashing brutal paramilitaries against Irish nationalists in 1920.
The many crimes of the empire’s bumptious adventurers were enabled by Britain’s great geopolitical power and then obscured by its cultural prestige. This is why images cherished by the British elite of itself as valiant, wise and benevolent could survive, until recently, much damning historical evidence about these masters of disaster from Cyprus to Malaysia, Palestine to South Africa. In recent years, such privately educated and smooth-tongued men as Niall Ferguson and Tony Blair could even present the British as saviors of suffering and benighted humanity, urging American neoconservatives to take up the white man’s burden globally.
Humiliations in neo-imperialist ventures abroad, followed by the rolling calamity of Brexit at home, have cruelly exposed the bluff of what Hannah Arendt called the “quixotic fools of imperialism.” As partition comes home, threatening bloodshed in Ireland and secession in Scotland, and an unimaginable chaos of no-deal Brexit looms, ordinary British people stand to suffer from the untreatable exit wounds once inflicted by Britain’s bumbling chumocrats on millions of Asians and Africans. More ugly historical ironies may yet waylay Britain on its treacherous road to Brexit. But it is safe to say that a long-cossetted British ruling class has finally come to the end of itself as it was.
Posted by Jim on January 16, 2019
Disappeared
Sean Maguire with a poem from a published collection of his work.
(First published the in Cringeblog.com May 2016).
It is twenty years to the day,
since you drove all night,
in foul winter rain.
Someone saw him hitching lifts,
a hundred miles from home.
Although exhausted, we talked all
night,
until the sun smiled between yellow
clouds,
well rested from the day before.
And yet, aft er all this time,
we had fallen foul of idle speculation
and misinformation;
that he was alive and well.
We hoped it was true,
that he would turn up someday,
out of the blue.
I love those tales of roller blades,
Sunday dance halls and schoolyard
races.
For you, those happy days
are shades of broken smiles
and pensive faces.
Those times are gone.
A long time gone,
lost in shadows of the past,
wrapped in blankets of youthful
dreams;
drowning in a raging tide,
whilst fading fast.
➽Seán Maguire has been writing poetry, song lyrics, short stories and non-fiction for over thirty years and has had a considerable amount of his work published in magazines, newspapers, anthologies and online blogs. The above poem is taken from his collection For Those Left Behind.