Black and green civil rights

Posted by Jim on August 18, 2018

Black and green civil rights

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Fifty years ago the Civil Rights movement in the Six Counties began with
a march from Coalisland to Dungannon, which is being re-enacted today by
Sinn Fein. Brian Dooley describes how the original marchers drew
inspiration from the campaign for civil rights in the United States.
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Fifty years ago this week, several thousand marchers set off from
Coalisland on the first civil rights march in the north of Ireland.

The world remembers the Derry march of 5 October 1968, when the RUC
batoned the protestors off the streets, because it ended in violence and
– more importantly – was televised, but the Coalisland to Dungannon
march came first, and was much bigger than the Derry protest.

The march marked a tactical departure for the Northern Ireland Civil
Rights Association (NICRA), which had been content until the summer of
1968 with trying to pursue anti-discrimination cases in the courts,
issuing leaflets and writing letters to the press drawing attention to
gerrymandering and unfair housing allocation. In June 1968, Austin
Currie had brought media attention to housing discrimination by
squatting in a house in Caledon.

Republicans and others in NICRA pressed for more direct action, and
advocated taking to the streets in American-style civil rights marches.
Drawing on a long tradition of solidarity with the black American
struggle which stretched back to the 1840s, a march was planned for the
last Saturday in August 1968.

Television pictures of demonstrations in Georgia, Alabama, Arkansas and
elsewhere inspired civil rights activists in the north of Ireland, and
political links between black American and Irish activists spanned
several generations.

Daniel O’Connell had been a leading and public opponent of American
slavery, and in 1845, former black slave Frederick Douglass toured
Ireland. He gave a series of lectures in Belfast, and appeared at a
political rally at Dublin’s Liberty Hall with O’Connell to raise support
for the anti-slavery movement.

In the 1920s, the political grandfather of black nationalism, Marcus
Garvey, studied the structure and modus operandi of Sinn Fein, and
modeled his Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA) on the same
lines. At the huge UNIA rally at New York’s Madison Square Garden in
August 1920, Garvey telegrammed Eamon de Valera in the name of 25,000
black delegates to formally recognise him as president of the Irish
Republic.

That same year Garvey sent a telegram to British Prime Minister David
Lloyd George asking that Republican hunger striker Terence MacSwiney not
be allowed to die, and sent another to MacSwiney’s priest which said
“Convey to MacSwiney sympathy of 400,000,000 Negroes”.

MacSwiney’s death after 74 days on hunger strike touched a deep chord in
Garvey, who repeatedly expressed admiration for the prisoner’s
sacrifice. “I believe the death of MacSwiney did more for the freedom of
Ireland today than probably anything they did for 600 years prior to his
death”, he said, and compared him with Indian leader Mahatma Gandhi.

Fifty years later, Republicans were again linking their struggle to the
black civil rights movement in America, and were key in organising the
march to Dungannon.

Although Republicans provided the flatbed lorry from which the speakers
were to address the crowd, and supplied the stewards, march organizers
were keen to present the march as a civil rights, as opposed to a
Nationalist, demonstration. In fact, a NICRA official prevented Roy
Johnston, the IRA’s Director of Information, from delivering a message
of support at the start of the march.

When the procession reached the outskirts of Dungannon they found the
road ahead blocked by a police cordon, behind which stood several dozen
counter-demonstrators, led by Ian Paisley. A request to reroute the
protest and the presence of the police threw the civil rights marchers
into some confusion, and a heated debate raged between those who wanted
to take on the police, and those who insisted that the march remain
non-violent.

The march eventually passed off peacefully, and the marchers dispersed
singing “We Shall Overcome” with some voices mingling in “A Nation Once
Again”.

Links between Irish and black American activists intensified in the
following few years, with Eilis McDermott of People’s Democracy going to
Black Panther Offices in New York, where she was made an “honorary
panther”, and Bernadette Devlin McAliskey forging political ties with
the Panther leadership and even visiting prominent black radical Angela
Davis in jail in California in 1971.

Davis was awaiting trial for murder and kidnapping, had been on the
FBI’s “Most Wanted” list, and been publicly identified as “a terrorist”
by President Richard Nixon. Davis was acquitted of all charges, is now a
university professor and has remained a key ally in the Irish struggle.

She visited Belfast to take part in a women’s rights movement conference
in 1994, and remembered: “I thought immediately about the situation in
apartheid South Africa because I had visited South Africa and what
struck me most was the military presence … I’ve known about the
occupation for very many years, but it was quite another thing to come
face to face with it and to be searched everywhere … in the aftermath
of that visit I made a point to include in all of my talks some comments
on the situation there.” Davis joined former New York Mayor David
Dinkins and other black leaders in the campaign for the release of
Roisin McAliskey.

It was not just the radical wing of the black civil rights movement that
has supported Irish activists. In 1972, two weeks after the Bloody
Sunday massacre, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, founded
by Martin Luther King, sent a delegation of top officials to a NICRA
conference in Belfast. Bernard Lee, Juanita Abernathy and Juanita
Williams addressed the meeting and took part in protest marches about
the killings.

Several black Members of Congress have also taken a keen interest in the
Irish situation, including Donald Payne, the first African-American to
be elected to Congress from New Jersey. He visited the six counties in
1995 and in 1997 introduced a bill in the House of Representatives
calling for a ban on the use of plastic bullets by the RUC.

Although the civil rights march of August 1968 went largely unnoticed by
the international media, it marked the start of a new phase of direct
resistance to unjust laws, a willingness to confront authority in the
streets, and renewed co-operation in the long tradition of solidarity
between the black American and Irish struggles.

* Brian Dooley is author of Black and Green, The Fight for Civil Rights
in Northern Ireland and Black America, published by Pluto Press.

 The Omagh bomb

Posted by Jim on

Jude Collins (judecollins.com)

As children, we all loved a simple tale: Goldilocks v the wolf,
Cinderella v the ugly sisters (not very pc, that one), the three little
pigs v another wolf. In life, things are rarely that neat.

Take the Omagh bomb. This morning on the BBC Raidio Uladh/Radio Ulster
news, the anniversary topped the news headlines. There were tape
recordings of breathless news reports at the time, interviews with the
loved ones of those killed. The words of Kevin Skelton (married, as it
happens, to a remote cousin of mine) still can move even after twenty
years. We heard the heartfelt words of a police officer who although
off-duty went to the scene to help as best he could.

The victims of Omagh – my home town – are often spoken of as being
murdered. There were events that occurred during the Troubles that were
indeed murder – that is, the killers set out to and succeeded in killing
innocent people. If we consider the pattern of events for some months
before Omagh, the signs are that it wasn’t murder: the Real IRA didn’t
set out to deliberately slaughter the good and defenceless people they
did.

Earlier in August 1998, the Real IRA bombed Banbridge, where they caused
extensive damage and injured quite a few people, but killed no one. How
could that be? Because they phoned a warning in advance. Their target
was commercial, not human.

In Omagh a few weeks later, they also phoned an advance warning. But
because, we are told, they misnamed the streets, police shepherded
people into the epicentre of the blast, not away from it. So the Real
IRA appear to have made the basic mistake of not knowing the street
names of the town they were bombing.

But were the Omagh victims not murdered? Ultimately it’s an academic
exercise – all those people are in their graves, owing to that bomb. But
if you were setting out to murder someone, would you ring up and give
advance notice? The Real IRA had in mind to do to Omagh what they did to
Banbridge, but they cocked it up. Or someone did.

Because there are stories, not all of them fanciful, that the
authorities knew in advance about the Omagh bomb but did nothing. It is
certainly true that there were two undercover agents in the Real IRA at
the time – David Rupert, an American FBI informer and Paddy Dixon, who
procured cars for the Real IRA to transport bombs. Both these men almost
certainly knew what was planned and their handlers very likely knew
also, but because, presumably, they didn’t want these people’s cover to
be blown, nothing was done. The Omagh families of those killed speak of
a “starving of intelligence” prior to the bomb being triggered. And so
the bomb was brought to Omagh and exploded.

None of this was mentioned in the news coverage on BBC this morning.
Instead, they repeated news reports and the agonised testimony of a
traumatised Kevin Skelton, and pleas for those who carried out the
bombing to come forward and admit their crime. Nothing of the fact that
the Real IRA almost certainly did not intend to slaughter over thirty
people: even in terms of self-interest, such an event was sure to turn
all sympathy away from them, and it did. Behind all this there were the
shadowy figures of Rupert and Dixon, who almost certainly knew that a
bomb was on its way – as did, in all likelihood, their handlers – but
nothing was done to stop it.

The bereaved of Omagh have never been short of sympathy. But they have
been starved of truth. And although it’s an academic point, their loved
ones were slaughtered but not murdered.

RADIO FREE EIREANN will broadcast  this Saturday August 18th on WBAI Radio 99.5FM or WBAI.ORG at 12 noon-1pm

Posted by Jim on August 17, 2018

RADIO FREE EIREANN will broadcast  this Saturday August 18th on WBAI Radio 99.5FM or WBAI.ORG at 12 noon-1pm New York time or 5pm-6pm in Ireland or anytime after the program on WBAI.ORG – Archives (scroll back to 12 noon Saturday)

Official Communication from the UFA

Posted by Jim on

FDNY vs. NYPD BASEBALL
The 19th Annual Heroes Baseball Classic will be held Friday, August 17, 2018, at 7:00 PM at MCU Park, Coney Island. Tickets are $10 each online at fdnybaseball.com or $15 at the gate.

HOOKS FOR HEROES
Hooks for Heroes, a nonprofit organization that supports American Veterans and First Responders by sending them fishing free of cost to help cope with the physical and mental stress sustained during service, will be holding their 2nd Annual Summer Fluke Slam Fishing Tournament August 25-26, 2018, at 72 Bayside Drive, Point Lookout, NY 11569, next to the Buoy Bar. For more information and to register, please visit hooksforheroes.org or email info@hooksforheroes.org.

PLAQUE DEDICATION 
On Tuesday, August 28, 2018, at 1100 hours, a Plaque Dedication will be held honoring the memory of Firefighter Michael R. O’Hanlon, E-68, who died on August 28, 2017. The dedication will take place in the quarters of E-68/L-49, 1160 Ogden Avenue, Bronx, NY. All off-duty members and their families are invited to attend. Members are requested to attend in dress uniform.

PLAQUE DEDICATION 
On Wednesday, September 26, 2018, at 1100 hours, a Line of Duty Death Plaque Dedication Ceremony will be held honoring the memory of Firefighter William N. Tolley, Ladder 135. The dedication will take place in the Quarters of Engine 286 & Ladder 135, 66-44 Myrtle Avenue, Queens, NY.  All off-duty members and their families are invited to attend. Members are requested to attend in dress uniform.

WALK A MILE IN THEIR SHOES

Posted by Jim on August 16, 2018