Posted by Jim on July 22, 2017
Nationalist and republican groups are coming together this weekend to
again demand freedom for imprisoned Irish activist Tony Taylor.
Sinn Fein and other nationalist and republican groups urged all
supporters of human rights to attend a march in Derry this weekend for
the interned Derry man, a leading member of Republican Network for Unity
in the city.
Mr Taylor has spent almost 500 days in Maghaberry jail since he was
taken from his wife and children by the PSNI at the request of British
officials.
Local Sinn Fein representative Raymond McCartney has called on people to
attend Sunday’s march and rally. Mr McCartney said: “Tony Taylor was
returned to prison in Maghaberry Prison at the behest of the previous
British Secretary of State Theresa Villiers, without having been
charged, questioned or allowed legal representation.
“Sinn Fein has consistently stated that if evidence exists to show that
Tony Taylor is a risk to the public it should be put before him and his
legal team in open court so this can be challenged.
“His continued detention is a violation of fundamental human rights and
subversion of due process. It is a form of legalised interment by remand
and a denial of natural justice.”
The march is set to leave ‘The Grotto’ in the Brandywell at 2:30pm and
finish at the Guildhall where a rally will be held.
On Sunday 6th of August, an even larger Anti-Internment march is planned
for Belfast.
Organisers of the parade, the Anti-Internment League, say up to 5,000
people and five bands will protest internment and mark the 46th
anniversary of its introduction.
The parade is expected to leave Ardoyne in north Belfast at 11.30am
before making their way to Royal Avenue via Cliftonville Road, New Lodge
Road, North Queen Street and Donegall Street. A similar parade was
banned from going to Belfast city hall for a rally last year.
Posted by Jim on
The Orange Order has refused to apologise after photographs emerged of
supporters in Scotland wearing bizarre and shocking costumes expressing
racist and sectarian hate.
They include a man posing as Hitler, children wearing Jewish Holocaust
yellow stars, the Pope with a rope around his neck, men simulating
child abuse, and a woman wearing black face with an afro wig and a
straw skirt.
The pictures are of guests attending costume parties organised by the
Whinhall True Blues Flute Band at the Airdrie and District Orange Hall
and Social Club in North Lanarkshire, Scotland, in 2010 and 2013.
In one photo published widely, a man is saluting the camera dressed up
as Adolf Hitler. He is accompanied by a woman dressed as Eva Braun.
They are joined in the photo by two children, dressed in rags and
branded with yellow star-shaped patches, like those the Jewish people
were forced to wear by the Nazis.
Two other men are seen clutching a children’s soft toy, dressed in the
Celtic football strip. This is thought to be in reference to the abuse
of children within the Catholic Church.
The photographs were posted to a public Facebook page intended to
promote the activities of the Orange Order. The images have been
condemned as hateful and racist by Jewish, anti-racist and
anti-sectarian groups.
The images were uncovered just two weeks after an outcry over the
playing of the racist anti-Irish ‘Famine Song’ at a major parade by the
anti-Catholic organisation in Glasgow.
The Orange Order in Scotland remains defiant, insisting that the
publication of the photographs is part of a “baseless agenda to attack
and demonise our Protestant Culture and Heritage.”
It blamed media bias by the Sunday Herald, which first published the
photographs. “The Grand Orange Lodge of Scotland does not seek immunity
from media criticism, but surely the Herald has a duty to be impartial
or even handed.”
The images were uncovered just two weeks after an outcry over the
playing of the racist anti-Irish ‘Famine Song’ at a major parade by the
anti-Catholic organisation in Glasgow. That led to calls for a complete
ban on Orange Order parades in Scotland.
Scotland’s most prominent human rights lawyer Aamer Anwar said there
should be “utter condemnation” of the “grotesque” incident.
“I find this absolutely horrific – there is simply no space for this in
the 21st century,” he said.
The images were described as “horrific, sick and indefensible” by the
Scottish Nationalist Party, who said that the failure to condemn from
the Orange Order had been “truly disturbing”.
Pete Wishart, SNP MP for Perth and North Perthshire, added: “At some
point Scotland is going to have to deal with the range of issues that
allows something like this to be a feature of our community.”
Sinn Fein also renewed criticism of the failure to condemn the
sectarian July 11th bonfire displays in the north of Ireland. Speaking
at the MacGill summer school, Sinn Fein Vice President Mary Lou
McDonald said:
“On the night of July 11th effigies of Martin McGuinness were burnt on
unionist bonfires. Unionist leaders were silent. Posters of Sinn Fein
and SDLP Assembly members were all set alight, as were those from the
Alliance party. These are representatives elected by unionism’s
neighbours and fellow citizens.
“We need to call out these actions for what they are. This is not
colourful pageantry; it is the ugliest side of sectarianism. It is a
hate crime, and it sucks the hope of future generations.”
“Unionism tells us they want to share power with nationalists and
republicans yet are complicit with this naked sectarianism. We are at a
fork in the road. Choices need to be made.”
Posted by Jim on July 20, 2017
RADIO FREE EIREANN will broadcast this Saturday July 22nd on WBAI 99.5 FM radio or wbai.org at 12noon New York time or 5 pm-6pm Irish time or listen any time after the broadcast on wbai.org/archives.
Professor Robert White will give his premier interview on his new book OUT OF THE ASHES:AN ORAL HISTORY OF THE PROVISIONAL IRISH REPUBLICAN MOVEMENT. This book is destined take its place as a must read for anyone who wants to understand the 1969-98 conflict.Based on first hand interviews with leading Republicans as well as scholarly research compiled over 30 years ,White will discuss all of the factors which caused and sustained the fight to end British rule, how that fight was not terrorism and the mindset of Republicans today.
Posted by Jim on July 16, 2017
————————————————————
A look at the evolution of internment, from a speech delivered by
National PRO of Republican Network for Unity, Nathan Stuart, at a picket
organised by the Anti-Internment Group For Ireland (AIGI).
————————————————————
The Introduction of Internment in the August of 1971 is one of the most
widely known examples of collective punishment in Irish history. It was
ham-fisted to say the least, mass arrests, out of date intelligence and
until February 1973 no loyalists were detained by the measure. The wide
scale nature of Internment, the indifference towards needing any
substantial or credible evidence, the safeguarding of pro state loyalist
terrorists and the subsequent brutality of the interrogations that
followed, as was piloted on the 14 internees which would become known as
the hooded men. All these overt, coercive tactics are the culminating
factors of British Army primacy in security and ample opposition to
these measures was forthcoming .
Continue reading »
Posted by Jim on
By Brian Feeney (for Irish News)
Many people rash enough to venture out without checking a list of Orange
marches might find themselves re-routed or delayed but it’s all much
reduced and predictable now compared to a generation ago.
Then it would have been, ‘Any people rash enough to venture out…’.
Orangemen and the RUC simply closed the north down: streets, shops,
buses, businesses, the lot. Belfast became a ghost town as did most
other towns. Not now. Most of the north remains unaffected.
It’s a sign of ownership changing hands. The Orange ‘demonstrations’, as
they’re pleased to call them, were in essence a demonstration of
ownership of the north. Orangemen demonstrated that they could march
anywhere they wanted and behave any way they wanted.
The law was their law. The police were their police. No longer. The
north is not a unionist state.
It has been a long slow painful process and of course it’s not completed
yet.
However Orangemen can no longer march where they want or where they
aren’t wanted. Slowly, slowly provocative marches were restricted, then
stopped by law, law which of course many Orangemen don’t accept. At what
a cost. It’s twenty years since the vast riots at Garvaghy Road. Still,
twenty-five years before that the RUC alongside UDA thugs forced marches
along Obins Street, known as the Tunnel. It took until 1985 to stop
that.
All through those years Orangeism has been shrivelling. It used to be
unionist newspapers that dutifully parroted a press release which began,
‘Today 100,000 Orangemen marched at x number of venues.’ That was never
true but now there aren’t 30,000 in the Orange Order. The order itself
has changed markedly from the days when members of the aristocracy like
the Earl of Erne were Imperial Grand Wizards and all unionist MPs were
members. Now the aristocracy wouldn’t be caught dead at an Orange march
and the leaders are old codgers. There’s no percentage in joining. Not
with Fair Employment legislation.
Today’s marches are the last relic in these islands of what used to be a
fortnight’s industrial holiday when for convenience all factories and
works closed for the same period and all the workers were free to go to
the seaside. Now heavy industry has closed, in most places forever, and
people go on holiday at different times but not by train to Bangor or
Portrush, rather by plane to Mallorca or Tenerife. They watch the
diminishing remains of Orange marches on satellite TV from their holiday
apartment if at all.
No one official from the unionist community will have anything to do
with the reckless, lawless bonfires which like the marches are slowly
being brought under control and amenable to the law as they become fewer
in number. Tons of toxic tyres are now a rarity. No one can defend their
presence.
Typically unionist politicians have deserted the communities who must
endure the hazard of bonfires polluting the district and organised in
most cases by people close to loyalist paramilitaries.
However unionist politicians also remain silent and don’t protest as the
bonfires reduce in size and number, the few giant ones remarkable not
just for their size but their rarity. Unwittingly for the bonfire
builders what they demonstrate is how little of the north unionists now
own and how powerless they are to behave lawlessly as in the past.
The same is true of the flags and bunting unionists string up to show
where they own. It used to be a large number of towns had official
arches with sockets in the footpath to receive brackets for the arches.
Some still do, but how many? Now the flags and bunting are erected not
officially but by loyalists thumbing their noses at the police who
appease them.
It’s all rather like Matthew Arnold’s 1851 poem Dover Beach where he
laments the tide of religion going out like the sea:
But now I only hear Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar; Retreating,
to the breath; Of the night-wind, down the vast edges drear; And naked
shingles of the world.
Even so, it doesn’t mean unionists are ready to share their diminished
ownership on equal terms.