Official Communication from the UFA

Posted by Jim on August 29, 2019

Johnson and the DUP continuing … opposition to the “Backstop”

Posted by Jim on

Brian Feeney. Irish News. Belfast. Wednesday, August 28, 2019 

THERE is an eerie echo in the present state of British-Irish relations of those same relations—or lack of them —exactly a hundred years ago.

In 1919 the newly expanded Irish electorate had just overwhelmingly endorsed Sinn Féin’s policy of Irish self-determination in the December 1918 general election.

The British government not only ignored the firm will of the majority of Irish people but proceeded to spend the next two years fighting to prevent the fulfilment of that will.

The reason they adopted that stupid anti-democratic course of action was because the prime minister Lloyd George relied on the Conservative and Unionist party to stay in office.

Since 1915 senior figures in Ulster Unionism had directed the policy of the Conservative party on Ireland.

In that year, following disastrous reverses in World War I, Asquith established a coalition government.

It included all the chief enemies of Irish independence: Lord Lansdowne, leader of the southern unionists; Bonar Law, leader of the Conservative party and dyed in the wool Unionist; Arthur Balfour; Austen Chamberlain; Walter Long, former Chief Secretary and former leader of the Ulster Unionists; and, bitterest of all, the leader of sedition against the government of which he was now a member, Edward Carson.

What this new coalition meant for British-Irish politics was this. From 1910-15 Ulster Unionists had been the enemies of the Liberal government; now they were the Liberals’ allies.

After 1915, instead of being at loggerheads about Ireland, if a difficulty arose there was a powerful incentive to reach an agreement about Ireland.

A century ago that meant partition. Neither the Irish Party nor the new dominant party in 1919, Sinn Féin, had any leverage.

From 1915 onwards unionists dominated British government policy on Ireland with leading members in Lloyd George’s cabinet until 1922.

In the current state of affairs the DUP exercise nothing like the same leverage as their Unionist predecessors, but they wield a baleful and malign influence which means there will be no progress on any of the institutions of the Good Friday Agreement.

You will notice that just as in 1919 the British government ignored the will of the Irish people, so too this Conservative government ignores the will of a majority of people in the north.

In his tendentious four-page diatribe he sent to the EU, Johnson called the backstop ‘anti-democratic’; it’s not. It was agreed by the democratically elected British government in December 2017 and has been endorsed by the majority of elected representatives in The North no later than last week. Opinion polls here show support for it increasing.

Relying on the minority DUP, just as Lloyd George gave into minority unionist sentiment, Johnson presses on, regardless of the consequences here, or the consequences for relations with Dublin, or on the economy and society of Ireland.

However, don’t be misled into wishful thinking that Johnson and the clique around him don’t agree with the DUP, or will automatically ditch them or their antiquated views on British-Irish relations. He won’t.

You might notice that in his letter to the EU, Johnson invented an entirely new function for the Good Friday Agreement; respect for minority rights, mentioned nowhere in the GFA which guarantees rights for all.

At the same time he minimised any role for the Irish government. That’s because for Johnson, Michael Gove, Johnson’s personal Rasputin Dominic Cummings, and several other members of the most right-wing cabinet of third-raters anyone can remember, both the Good Friday Agreement and the “Backstop” are threats to the desire to ‘take back control’ that consumes all their waking (and sleepless) hours.

Johnson’s letter preposterously claims the “Backstop” undermines the GFA because it’s ‘undemocratic’ since people in The North would have ‘no democratic control over commercial and economic life,’ which is nonsense.

Worse, he promotes ‘consent’ to equal status with his invented minority rights, thereby accepting the DUP line that unionists have a veto on everything.

Official Communication from the UFA

Posted by Jim on August 28, 2019

100 Years of Banning Irish Democracy, Remembering September 1919.

Posted by Jim on August 27, 2019

by Tom Abernathy

We have been marking a variety of centennials in Irish history over the past few years, most prominently the 100th anniversary of the Easter Rising in 2016. But one centennial is upon us now and is not getting the attention it deserves. On September 10, 1919, the British Government “outlawed” the Irish national assembly, Dáil Éireann, declaring it an “illegal assembly.” It could be argued that this act by the British Government is one of the signal events in the history of the Anglo-Irish conflict of the last decades. But for reasons that are not entirely clear, this fateful decision by the British Government has never received the attention it has deserved. With the anniversary approaching, now would be a good time to reflect on this seminal event in Irish history.

Dáil Éireann was the democratically elected parliament of the Irish people, assembled after the watershed General Election of December 1918, the first held under a greatly expanded franchise that abolished almost all property qualifications for men and provided for the first time, a (restricted) franchise to women. Irish separatists ran on a platform of sovereign independence and an Irish Republic. The advocates for Irish independence ran the election campaign under great difficulties, many of the independence activists were in jail, a great part of Ireland was under British military rule, and Britain censored and suppressed Irish newspapers. The whole electoral machinery was under British control. However, despite all the obstacles, the General Election resulted in advocates of Irish independence winning 73 out of 105 Irish seats. True to their election promise, instead of sitting in a British parliament, the elected representative of the Irish people met in Dublin on January 21, 1919 as Dáil Éireann and declared Irish Independence. The centennial of that momentous event in Irish history has just passed and perhaps did not get the attention it deserved. In any event, the Irish in 1919 were not content to merely proclaim independence, they set about to try to establish a counter-state to British rule in Ireland.

The Dáil government, in fact, was eventually able to supplant the British Government machinery in parts of Ireland, establishing, for example an Irish court system. The idea was simple, that an Irish government representing the democratic will of the Irish people and dedicated to the best interests of the Irish people had more legitimacy than a British government that had no democratic mandate to be in Ireland and that pursued British rather than Irish interests.

At first the British Government treated Dáil Éireann with contempt and largely ignored it. But when it became clear that Dáil Éireann meant business in governing Ireland, the British responded with repression. On September 11, 1919 after the British had issued a proclamation “banning” Dáil Éireann, British military and police raided the Dáil headquarters at 76 Harcourt Street in Dublin and arrested 9 staff members of the Dáil. This action by the British forced the Irish government to go underground for the rest of the War of Independence. The guerilla campaign in Ireland, in fact, did not really heat up until after the Dáil was “outlawed” by the British government. Having denied the Irish the right to self- government, the British then brought in the infamous Auxiliaries and the Black and Tan paramilitary forces as tools of ever more ferocious repression of the Irish. It was in a sense a coup by the British Government against the democratic government of Ireland. It is remarkable, therefore, that this fateful event in Irish history, the decision by the British
Government to “outlaw” a democratically elected government and to enforce that suppression by force and violence, is not centrally featured in discussions of the Many history books do not even mention this decision by the British Government, or do so in only cursory fashion. And yet there is probably no decision that was more consequential in terms of future Anglo-Irish “Troubles” than this decision taken by the British Government in September 1919.

The British could have accepted Irish democracy and worked to repair relations between Britain and Ireland on a basis of equality and mutual respect. Instead, the British ruling class chose violence and conflict. But despite the clear rejection of British rule by the voters of Ireland, not only in the General Election of 1918, but also the Local Elections of 1920 and the election of May 1921, Britain never doubted in own right to dictate terms and conditions to the Irish people. This was certainly true when it came to the imposition of Partition on Ireland by the British Government.

The people of Ireland were not evenly divided on partition; the overwhelming majority of Irish people were opposed to it. Following democratic norms, those who constituted a political minority in Ireland, pro-British unionists, would constitute a political minority in an Irish state. As historian Donnacha Ó Beacháin summarized, “[n]ot only was the concept of partition inherently undemocratic, considering that 80 per cent of the Irish population favored independence from Britain, the execution compounded the iniquity.” Historian Joseph J Lee in his major work, Ireland 1912-1985, accurately describes “a border (Northern Ireland) justifiable only the basis of racial supremacy” and also refers to the dedication with which Ulster Unionists laboured to “sustain a sense of racial superiority”.

The British contempt for Irish democracy has not lessened over the years. The British have no problem re-imposing a hard border separating one part of Ireland from the other as part of Brexit and yet criticize Irish politicians for insisting on a “backstop” whose purpose is to try to alleviate some of the disruption caused by British action in Ireland. British politicians even have the nerve to say that such a backstop would infringe on British sovereignty and would not give to the democratic will of the British people to leave the EU as demonstrated by the Brexit vote. This has been the argument, for example, of Owen Patterson, former Secretary of State for Northern Ireland and a frontline Brexiteer. The irony of an ardent unionist such as Patterson talking about sovereignty and the will of the people seems to be lost not only on unionist such as Patterson, but also most sections of political and media class, which has failed to point out that partition itself is an affront to Irish sovereignty and democracy.

The contempt that Britain demonstrated toward Ireland in “banning” the first Irish national democratic assembly 100 years ago is still there. The British clearly neither knew nor cared about what effect the Brexit vote would have on Ireland. The only question is whether Irish people will still put up with this contempt shown them by the British pollical class. There are choices available to the Irish other than sitting back and waiting to see what British politicians have planned for Ireland. One option would be to insist that the British allow an all -Ireland vote on the question of unity. Certainly, the likes of Owen Patterson and the rest of the British establishment would fight tooth and nail against any all- Ireland referendum on Irish unity. As far as the British are concerned, ideas of sovereignty and democracy only
apply for England, not Ireland. Therefore a mass -based, democratic campaign is needed to insist that a unity vote take place in all Ireland and not limited to the British created jurisdiction of the Six Counties. Part of that campaign would need to focus on educating Irish people as to what has happened in the past, in particular the “banning” of the All Ireland Government of Dáil Éireann in September 1919 against all principles of democracy. We will have to insist that contrary to what happened in September 1919, that this time Britain respect the wishes of a majority of the people of Ireland for a unified country free of British control.

Official Communication from the UFA

Posted by Jim on August 25, 2019

WTC

Retired FirefighterJohn W. BoyleRescue Company 1

Wake:

Tuesday, August 27, 2019 and Wednesday, August 28, 2019

2:00PM-5:00PM – 7:00PM-9:00PM

Papavero Funeral Home

72-27 Grand AvenueMaspeth, NY 11378

Funeral:

Thursday, August 29, 2019

10:45AM

Our Lady of Hope

61-27 71st Street Middle Village, NY 11379

All Off-Duty Members should attend in Class A Uniform