Posted by Jim on May 2, 2018
“Again, more words of wisdom for Members of Congress from noted commentator Brian Feeney on Brexit and how the DUP is all that is keeping Prime Minister May in power:’Remember, a year after the Brexit referendum, the British electorate had a look at Theresa May and her divided party, didn’t like what they saw and removed her majority. However, with the help of the DUP, she plows doggedly on. Foster’s party is supporting a government the British people rejected.’”—Fr. Sean McManus
Foster’s absurd EU comments show narrow world view
Brian Feeney. Irish News. Belfast. Wednesday, May 2, 2018
What’s that song, ‘Small Town Girl Livin’ in a lonely world,’? Taking a train to anywhere to get out of the big city.
It exemplifies Arlene Foster’s attitude to the EU and high politics. She reduces everything to the worm’s eye view of an unreconstructed 1950s Fermanagh unionist. Watch them-uns in Sinn Féin.
Her interview on Monday with the BBC – note BBC London, not BBC NI which it looks like she’s still in a huff with – showed she hasn’t a clue about how Michel Barnier is required to operate, what his aims and objectives are and what’s going on in the big world of politics. What was most pitiable is that she thought unionists had some role in Barnier’s negotiating calculations.
She complained he is not an ‘honest broker’: absurd. Barnier once again reminded journalists in Dundalk that he represents the EU27 and they present him with written guidelines he must follow. As he said, ‘I am not an arbitrator.’ His job is to get the best deal for the EU27 and of course that includes the Republic and definitely does not include Arlene.
Furthermore, negotiations are between the UK and the EU27, not between Barnier and Unionists who are represented or more accurately misrepresented by this UK government. Laura Kuenssberg correctly put it to Foster that she should be telling the British government of her concerns, not Barnier.
Sadly Foster doesn’t accept that she has no role. In her tiny circumscribed world everything is reduced to the fear of Sinn Féin. She complained that Barnier listens to the Irish government and Sinn Féin but not Unionists. Well of course Barnier listens to the Irish government. They are one of the EU27 on whose behalf he is negotiating and whose instructions he is complying with. They are remaining in the EU. Why should he, would he, listen to someone who doesn’t represent a sovereign government and besides, advocates leaving the EU? Of course he will also listen to Sinn Féin, a party with 23 TDs and four MEPs in an EU27 government and who support the EU. Why would he not listen to them? How silly to think otherwise.
Oh yes, of course. On Planet Foster Sinn, Féin are the bad guys, not to be trusted, guilty of “disgraceful behavior” and should never be accorded equal status with Unionists even though Unionists in this case are supporting the opposition in the negotiations Barnier is leading. What kind of a daft mindset is that? Oh yes, of course, a Fermanagh unionist ‘livin’ in a lonely world’. Unfortunately for Arlene she’s a spectator and will remain so.
What never figures in her remarks, is the preposterous position of her own party which does not represent the views of the majority of people in The North but worse, props up a dreadful shambolic government which has no mandate for its actions.
Remember, a year after the Brexit referendum, the British electorate had a look at Theresa May and her divided party, didn’t like what they saw and removed her majority. However, with the help of the DUP, she plows doggedly on. Foster’s party is supporting a government the British people rejected.
As opponents of May’s chaotic rigmaroles point out, no-one in Britain voted in the EU referendum to be poorer yet the DUP encouraged people here, unsuccessfully it should be said, to vote in their own worst interests.
You don’t hear much talk now from the DUP about ‘opportunities’ flowing from Brexit for it has dawned on them there are none. Every report from the British government, Stormont officials and independent economists agrees that The North will take the biggest hit from Brexit no matter what the exit deal is.
Yet despite the Conservatives’ austerity programme making people worse off, the cuts in education, health and welfare and the guaranteed economic downturn the DUP has never produced a plan of its own, never suggested how to mitigate the impact of Brexit on The North. Why? They can’t because it would put them at odds with the government they are keeping in power in defiance of the wishes of the British people.
In a Fermanagh unionist world-view is this the only way to secure The Union [with Britain]?
Posted by Jim on
IRISH CONGRESSIONAL BRIEFING
Distributed by Irish National Caucus
Latest example of anti-Catholic strategy is deeply offensive
Letters to Editor. Irish News. Belfast. Published. Wednesday, May 2, 2018
Fr Sean McManus. President Irish National Caucus,Washington, DC
Since 1920, whenever it appeared that Catholics in Northern Ireland might be making a little progress – or being seen as getting uppity – right-wing fundamentalists were magically produced to preach odious anti-Catholic bigotry. It, of course, had nothing to do with true religion but, rather, all about “keeping Catholics in their place” – maintaining the systematic injustice and institutionalised violence of England’s Orange State.
Of course, straightforward political methods, needless to say, were also used. For example, in the recently published book on the modern UVF, “UVF: Behind the Mask,” author Aaron Edwards states (in a not altogether unsympathetic book): “Its [UVF) founding members claimed at the time that it had originally been formed to oppose the perceived threat posed by the IRA, though they later admitted that the UVF was really a tool of political intrigue utilised by a handful of faceless right-wing unionist politicians.”
The ‘two-wings’ approach was thus always used: the ‘religious’ anti-Catholic one, and the political-paramilitary anti-Irish one.
The latest example of the appalling and deeply offensive anti-Catholic strategy appears in the article, ‘The Protestant at Mass’ in the April-June edition of Ulster Bulwark, a right-wing, fundamentalist magazine. The article appallingly describes the Mass as evil. Nothing could be more offensive and shocking – indeed evil – to Catholics.
And, to make it even more atrocious, a co-founder of the DUP – and a key ally of the leader of the DUP delegation in the British Parliament – brazenly defends this appalling anti-Catholicism. This is all the more sad given the wonderful, Holy Spirit-inspired growing agreement between the Catholic Church, the Anglican Church, the World Methodist Council, the World Lutheran Federation and the World Communion of Reformed Churches on key issues – God help the poor north.
Protestant leaders in Northern Ireland – especially the DUP – must denounce this bigotry. And, I don’t want to hear those – who otherwise say they are for the human rights of all in the north – try to downplay and dismiss this odious religious hatred, no ‘buts’ – as if attacks on Catholicism is somehow not all that important. Anti-Catholicism, anti-Semitism, anti-Black racism and anti-Muslimism must all be unequivocally and publicly condemned – no ‘buts’.
Fr. Sean Mc Manus
President
Irish National Caucus
Posted by Jim on May 1, 2018
“Ordinary folk in Scotland, Wales, and England have mostly given up to holding on to the racist British Empire pathology.
But sadly, there are still some holdouts in Northern Ireland. A section of the Unionist/Loyalist/ Protestant community has never fully rejected the discredited inglorious British-Empire thinking.
As the attached Irish Mirror article again reminds us, former unionist MP John Taylor seems to have a real problem with the fact that the new, impressive Irish Taoiseach (Prime Minister) Leo Varadkar, whose father is from India.
Winston Churchill appallingly personified the British Empire racist attitude toward India: “I hate Indians. They are a beastly people with a beastly religion . . . Let the Viceroy sit on the back of a giant elephant and trample Gandhi into the dirt.”
—Fr. Sean Mc Manus.
Former British politician John Taylor calls Leo Varadkar ‘typical Indian’
It’s at least the second time the ex-Ulster Unionist MP has described the Taoiseach with a racial term
Brynmor Pattison. Irish Mirror. Dublin. Monday, April 30, 2018
A former Ulster Unionist politician has been labelled racist after calling Taoiseach Leo Varadkar a “typical Indian”.
John Taylor, who now calls himself Lord Kilclooney, replied to a BBC Newsline post on Twitter that linked to an article about the DUP decrying the Fine Gael leader’s “poor manners” during a visit to Northern Ireland.
He tweeted simply: “Typical Indian.”
A host of people replied to the post, with one describing it as “appalling” and “shameful”.
Mr Taylor added to the post by tweeting: “You fail to understand that racially he is half Indian and legally he is Irish.
“Some day you will learn to know the difference in these terms.
“The Indians are a great race and I know as a Member of the British/Indian APPG helping Indians almost daily.”
When a person asked how Mr Varadkar was a “typical” Indian, he replied: “He does not understand how provocative he is to unionists. Irish politicians mostly know better and that is why we were able to have the Belfast Agreement.”
Mr Taylor further accused Mr Varadkar of “damaging North/South relations by being provocative several times to the Unionist Community in Northern Ireland”.
He also posted: “It is not racially abusive as he himself has confirmed he is half Indian. That is great and not to be dismissed as the Indians are a great race.
“However he has damaged North/South relations by being continually offensive and provocative to the Unionist majority in N Ireland.”
Mr Taylor also added: “You should not reject established practice when a foreign politician enters the UK. The Irish PM does not recognize the damage he continues to do to NorthSouth Relations by his provocative actions!”
The life peer landed in hot water last November when he described Mr Varadkar as “the Indian” in another tweet.
He tweeted: “Simon Coveney is stirring things up. Very dangerous non statesman like role! Clearly hoping to undermine the Indian.”
Fine Gael Senator Catherine Noone soon called out the post and replied: “Disgraceful comment John. Leo is 100% Irish as you well know. The mind boggles.
Lord Kilclooney said: “In which way is he 100 per cent Irish??”
Ms. Noone replied: “Please go back to the 1800’s.”
In other posts explaining the tweet the life peer claimed the offensive nickname was “shorthand for an Indian surname which I could not spell”.
He added: “I should have said PM and not used Indian as shorthand for his name which I must learn to spell correctly.”
Posted by Jim on
The struggle for national liberation in the occupied six counties has undoubtedly led to a widespread radical politicisation of not just revolutionary activists but the oppressed people who realise that the fruits of our victory must be social and economic as well as the political freedom of national separation.
The term republicanism is something of a dirty word politically among some left-wing groups on the continent where it has right-wing connotations. But our republicanism is anti-imperialist and radical and we realise that if the connection is not made with the struggle of labour then there will be no realisation of socialism in Ireland, just as the labour movement if it ignores the national question is also scuttling the full potential of the working class.
To Connolly, the basic condition of socialist advance was the assertion and acceptance of Ireland’s right to self-government. His opponent in the debate was William Walker, a Belfast member of the Labour movement, whose conception of socialism was reformist, Walker pointed out with pride to the progress of ‘municipal socialism’ in Belfast. Did they not collectively own and control gasworks, waterworks, harbour works, markets, tramways, electricity, museums and art galleries? He even boasted that they had an RIC band! Connolly described Walker’s position as ‘’ gas and water ‘’ socialism and insisted that the Irish question was not merely an economic question, it was also a revolutionary question, a question of national independence.
The debate is also contemporary. The Northern Committee of the Irish Congress of Trade Unions historically traded recognition by the old Stormont government in return that the constitution and politics of the occupied six counties, as other reformists have since done, would not be discussed by the trade union movement. By agreeing to the partition of Ireland the trade union movement and others who adopted this position have helped the British and Free-State governments to divide, weaken and conquer the Irish working class. This siding with the British colonialism continues to this very day. The reformist weakened labour movement is therefore in no position to effectively oppose the poverty, repression and inequality.
We have to reach this pessimistic conclusion. On neither its chosen ground of jobs and bread and butter issues, nor on the ground of increasingly repressive legalisation and practice do the trade unions convince the mass of Irish workers and unemployment that it will or can take on bourgeois government. By its abdication and failures, they leave the worker and the unemployed divided and frustrated, seeking elsewhere the organisations, campaigns and beliefs which promise an end to or a cure for the endemic poverty, inequality and repression.
And so it is increasingly that workers, the low-paid and the unemployed in the ghettos are turning to Saoradh for a lead not only in the fight against British colonialism but also in the struggle for social and economic justice. Saoradh is responding to this challenge. It has established party offices and advice centres in Belfast, Derry and Dungannon, with staff competent to handle routine problems and backed up by experts experienced personnel.
Only a British withdrawal can create the conditions for Irish workers and unemployed, urban and rural, Catholic, Protestant and Dissenter, women, men and all gender orientations, young and old to come together and construct the socialist republic in their own interests.
The twin demands of the right to self-determination and the right to work signposts the Irish road to socialism. The answer to the injustice, poverty and national dispossession in Ireland lies in the willingness of the people to struggle and make sacrifices.
That makes revolutionary republicans the greatest threat to the ruling class, both in the occupied six counties and the neo-colonial Free-State, and that’s what makes us the vanguard of the Irish revolution.
Davy Jordan is Saoradh National Chairperson and a former political prisoner based in East Tyrone