Republicanism strained by one-way peace traffic

Posted by Jim on November 15, 2016

Sinn Fein’s Martin McGuinness has renewed a controversy over his party’s
‘outreach’ efforts after he was spotted at a royal reception in London
in which the English queen Elizabeth Windsor unveiled a new painting of
herself.

Windsor was joined by Mr McGuinness as she unveiled the new portrait to
celebrate her role in the peace process on Tuesday. DUP leader Arlene
Foster, 26 County Justice Minister Frances Fitzgerald and Windsor’s
husband, ‘Duke of Edinburgh’ Philip Mountbatten, were also on hand as
the painting was revealed to the gala event.

McGuinness applauded as the monarch pulled the satin cover off the
painting at a reception in Chelsea on Tuesday. He later posed beside the
portrait by Belfast-born artist Colin Davidson and again shook hands
with the queen, recreating the historic moment in 2012 which was said to
have inspired the portrait. He said: “I think she’s made a tremendous
contribution to support the whole process of peace and reconciliation.”

Sinn Fein has said its engagements with the English royals are part of a
process to recognise and respect the unionist tradition in Ireland. But
Mr McGuinness’s attendance at such royal events, including a banquet at
Windsor Castle two years ago, has repeatedly angered his party’s
traditional support.

The failure of unionists to reciprocate is the source of much of the
frustration, and the DUP’s campaign to inhibit use of the Irish language
in the north of Ireland is one example which was again highlighted this
week.

DUP minister Peter Weir adopted a new policy which sets out “the
principal language is English” and ended the use of Irish in
correspondence from the Six-County Department of Education. Official
letters had previously been written in both English and Irish, but the
use of Irish would is now deprecated.

Sinn Fein’s Niall O Donnghaile – who sits on the Irish Seanad – said the
DUP had politicised the language.

“When you have a minister for education, who has a statutory obligation
to promote and enhance the development of Irish medium education, taking
the decision to shut out the visibility of Irish and saying it will be
an English-only department, then that is ill intent, that is negative
and that is politicising.

“The DUP are punishing thousands of children from every religious and
cultural background.”

Responding to the development, Mr McGuinness admitted that some within
the DUP “hate anything Irish”.

He said: “There’s a cohort of people within the DUP who hate anything to
do with the Irish language”, adding: “We have to deal with the reality
that the political institutions we’re part of are institutions that
bring into government people who have different views about many of
these matters.”

NO FRESH START

Sinn Fein is facing mounting internal pressure over the failure of
last year’s ‘Fresh Start’ agreement on dealing with the past conflict.
There have also been conflicting messages over whether the party is
ready to make a historic decision to take up its seats in Westminster
parliaent.

While Martin McGuinness has refused to rule out the possibility, party
leader Gerry Adams has again insisted this week it wouldn’t happen.

“We were elected – and it was my great honour to represent the people of
Belfast for a long time – to not take our seats in the British
parliament,” he said.

“It is a foreign parliament. It is not our parliament and we owe no
allegiance to the English queen. We wish her well and we wish the people
of Britain well.”

During sharp exchanges in the Dublin parliament, opposition Fianna Fail
leader Micheal Martin said Sinn Fein’s approach was a “curious form of
abstentionism because they have never abstained from taking the salaries
or the expenses from Westminster or the Saxon shilling”, which he
estimated at “a couple million”.

He claimed that a principled form of abstention would be to abstain
altogether. Mr Adams said Mr Martin “would not be an expert on
principles”, adding: “you should look in the mirror” — referring to
Fianna Fail’s continued abstention on key votes in the Dublin parliament
order to sustain the Fine Gael-led minority government.

Demand the release of Tony Taylor

Posted by Jim on

By Cait Trainor

Tony Taylor, a Derry Republican has now been interned for 7 months.

Tony is a normal family man with a wife, children and responsibilities
just like everyone else, he has been interned at the behest of the
British Secretary of State in Ireland and has no charge against him, he
has no case to answer and he has no trial to face. So why exactly is
Tony Taylor in Jail? Why was he taken from his home and placed
indefinitely in a prison cell? He certainly doesn’t know why nor does
his family or lawyers; his predicament can be summed up with only one
word – Internment!

This is a word that in 2016 people are hesitant to use, it has an
emotive history in Ireland, where hundreds of people in the 70’s had
been wholesale subjected to internment. There are even those who
somewhat support Tony who are at pains to avoid using this word when
talking about Tony’s case, yet anyone with the faintest knowledge of
British abuse again Irish Republicans will know that internment is
exactly what Tony is a victim of.

It is no secret that Tony Taylor is an ex Republican political prisoner
and indeed is still a proud and active Republican. Tony had served 3
years previously in Jail and was released in 2014. Tony was a member of
Republican Network for Unity, a perfectly legal Political organisation
and he contributed significantly to the local politics in Derry raising
issues such as benefit cuts, prison conditions and policing issues.

It is precisely this, Tony’s politics which has led to his internment.
Ireland in 2016 is a cold house for Republicanism, anyone who doesn’t
rubber stamp the good Friday agreement is a threat to the state, state
sanctioned harassment is a daily occurrence for Irish Republicans and in
Tony’s case it would seem to me that the extreme of internment has been
used against him to try and make him toe the political line.

Of course we have seen this before, in the last few years a number of
high profile interments have taken place such as that of Martin Corey
and Marian Price, Tony is just the latest victim and undoubtedly he
won’t be the last. The revocation of Tony’s licence is justified
ostensibly with the line that he is a “risk to the Public”. Any
justification they are using to intern Tony is of course subject to
secrecy with neither Tony nor his legal team able to see any evidence
against him, which of course means he cannot be defended against any
allegations.

The current climate worldwide allows governments to act in this secret
and abusive way, the general public are happy to believe that these
“measures” are taken for their protection that “they” must have a good
and valid reason for doing it and that is as far as their thinking goes.
This apathy of the general public is essential for governments carrying
out this sort of abuse and so it’s up to us all to highlight to the
general public why they should be concerned, such is the apathy that
these secret agencies do not even need to go through the bother of
creating trumped up charges.

Tony Taylor is a victim of the secret Police and agencies working in
Ireland, instead of transparently enforcing the rule of law and being
subject to public scrutiny as ordinary police agencies do, their modus
operandi is to operate beyond and above the law in order to suppress
political dissent, anyone who comes under the scrutiny of the secret
police can expect to be arbitrarily arrested and detained without due
process.

The internment of Tony Taylor strikes at the very heart of democracy and
the right to a fair trial. The use of secret evidence and secret police
is not something that anyone would expect in the western world in 2016,
yet is going on in Ireland; this should be enough for any citizen to
publicly question what is going on.

It is now time that the media investigated this case that those
concerned with human rights issues demand an explanation as to why Tony
Taylor has been taken from his home and incarcerated due to secret
evidence that we cannot see. I question the secret evidence, is there
evidence at all? Or is this a well-rehearsed ploy to stifle political
dissent?

“All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do
nothing.”

PSNI harassment claims a second life

Posted by Jim on

A west Belfast man has died in troubling circumstances after being
arrested and questioned for over ten hours by the PSNI last week.

The family of Paddy Green have demanded answers after a stop-and-search
operation became a life-threatening and ultimately fatal encounter.

Mr Green had been driving to his brother’s house when he was stopped by
the PSNI. Despite seeking attention, Mr Green was refused treatment for
what was an urgent condition. Instead, his detention at PSNI Musgrave
Barracks was extended overnight to allow his interrogation to continue.
It was only when his condition deteriorated the following morning that
he was taken to the Royal Victoria Hospital. He passed away on
Wednesday, a week after his arrest.

The Police Ombudsman’s office have said that they are “making
preliminary enquiries”. Mr Green’s family said they have questions about
the care he received in police custody.

“He should have been taken to hospital straight away,” they said. “As a
family we’ve questions that need answered and we can only hope that the
police ombudsman is able to provide us with those answers.

“It’s too late for our family, but it needs properly investigated so no
other family have to go through what we are now.”

Mr Green’s death at the hands of the PSNI is the second to be
investigated by the Police Ombudsman in the last two months. In
September, Gerard ‘Maco’ McMahon died in hospital hours after being
arrested in Belfast city centre, also in suspicious circumstances.

They come amid a fresh wave of PSNI harassment against nationalists,
particularly in west Belfast, where the force has been conducting an
aggressive campaign of stop-and-search operations and arrests.

It also comes amid revelations over the PSNI’s use of military-style
training methods. A report by the Policing Board raised concerns about
what it said was a “pseudo militaristic” boot camp at a police college
in east Belfast, where recruits are grouped into “squads” and required
to march in formation.

Responding to the report, Sinn Fein’s Gerry Kelly said “a police officer
isn’t a member of the army; a police officer is a member of the
community”.

Saoradh said its activists would be undeterred by the increasing
oppression from the PSNI. They said they would continue with plans to
hold a commemoration fot IRA Volunteer Patricia Black next Sunday, which
they said was being targeted by the PSNI.

“Saoradh activists will not be intimidated by paid lackeys of British
Imperialism intent on disrupting us as we plan to commemorate our
martyred dead,” they said.

“Instead we remain committed to staying true to the ideals they fought
and died for. Courageous Volunteers like Patricia Black, who took the
war to Britain at the tender age of 18 and lost her life in the
process.”

McSorley’s Old Ale House: “Good ale, raw onions, and no ladies.”

Posted by Jim on November 11, 2016

McSorley’s Old Ale House (photo by Leonard J DeFrancisci)

As we trudge ever more quickly into the depths of the twenty-first century, it is a comfort to know that some places never change. (Willingly, anyway.) On a quiet stretch of East 7^th Street, in the shadow of the domed St. George Ukrainian Catholic Church and the starkly modern 41 Cooper Square, stands an institution which seems to have been forgotten by time. Or rather, an institution which has resisted time’s effects for more than a dozen decades. “Good ale, raw onions, and no ladies.” That’s McSorley’s Old Ale House. Other than a brief experiment serving liquor in 1905-6, they’ve served nothing but ale since their founding. And until they were legally forced to do so in 1970, they never allowed women inside the bar. Everything about McSorley’s is a throwback to a bygone era, and a relic of a New York that exists now only in black-and-white photographs.

NY Times, January 11, 1937

McSorley’s claims to have been founded in 1854 by John McSorley of County Tyrone in Northern Ireland. He arrived in New York City in 1851, fleeing the potato famine ravaging the country at that time. Three years later, he opened the doors of “The Old House at Home” at 15 East 7^th Street. The exact year is debatable, as city records show the location as a vacant lot as late as 1861, but you’d be hard-pressed to win an argument on the issue with any of McSorley’s faithful. Suffice it to say that the bar is old. Very old, actually, by the standards of a city where profit and necessity ensure a turning over of buildings, streets, and entire neighborhoods on a fairly regular basis.

“McSorley’s Bar” by John Sloan, 1912

The ale house retained the name “The Old House at Home” until 1908, when its sign was blown down in a storm. It was replaced with a new sign, reading “McSorley’s Old Time Ale House,” and other than dropping the word “Time” at some point, the name has stuck ever since. Two years later, in 1910, John McSorley died in his apartment above the bar at age 83, and his son Bill took over for him, treating the bar as a shrine to his father.

Inside, it is said that not a single piece of memorabilia has been removed from the walls since Bill took over in 1910. A chandelier hanging over the bar is spangled with dozens of fragile wishbones. Starting with World War I, soldiers have hung the bones on the lamp to give them luck before leaving for war. The bones left behind symbolize the patrons who never made it back to reclaim their bones. They have become something of a holy relic in McSorley’s, and it wasn’t until the Health Department put its foot down in 2011 that the owners, reluctantly and begrudgingly, swept a century of dust from the lamp. The wishbones which survived the cleaning process were hung back above the bar as a memorial to those McSorley boys never to return.

The chandelier in 2004 and after its cleaning in 2011

1920 saw the bar’s survival threatened, as Prohibition went into effect. McSorley’s limped along by serving “near beer” to its cadre of loyal patrons until the law was struck down in 1933. In 1936, Bill McSorley sold the bar to policeman Daniel O’Connell, who retired from the NYPD to run it. McSorley would die in 1938, followed in 1939 by O’Connell, who left the bar in the charge of his daughter Dorothy O’Connell Kirwan. Honoring a promise to her father, Dorothy never entered the bar except when it was closed on Sundays, and left its management to her husband Harry.

McSorley’s as photographed by Berenice Abbott, who received special permission to be allowed in.
November 1, 1937.

In 1940, an author for the New Yorker named Joseph Mitchell wrote the first of several articles and stories revolving around McSorley’s and its peanut gallery of patrons. These would eventually be compiled into a book in 1943, entitled “McSorley’s Wonderful Saloon.” The book and articles brought increased attention to the little old bar in the East Village, and its reputation as a local institution began to be cemented.

In 1964, while traveling through Ireland, Dorothy and Harry Kirwan’s son Danny had his car break down. A young man by the name of Matty Maher picked him up and helped him get back on his way. In gratitude, Danny promised Matty that if he ever came to New York, he’d give him a job. Matty took him up on his offer, becoming a waiter and bartender and McSorley’s that very year. He would eventually go on to buy the bar from Danny in 1977, and he continues to run it to this day.

NY Times, January 3, 1937

The 1960s were a time of great and rapid change in the New York and the world, and McSorley’s, for once, couldn’t avoid being swept up in the tumult. In 1969, Karen DeCrow and Faith Seidenberg of the National Organization for Women sued to be allowed into McSorley’s Old Ale House on the grounds of gender discrimination.

NY Times, June 16, 1966

On June 25, 1970, Judge Walter R. Mansfield declared that, as a public establishment, McSorley’s could not legally prevent women from entering. The bar attempted to appeal, going so far as to turn women away at the door even after the law was supposed to have gone into effect. But on August 10^th, they could fight it no longer: Mayor Lindsay arrived with an army of reporters as the first women in history walked through the doors and past the potbellied stove of McSorley’s Old Ale House.

NY Times, August 11, 1970

Most of the first women to enter the bar were what were then called “militant feminists” who were more interested in the politics of their actions than in the taste of liederkranz and ale. In fact, the first day of a coed McSorley’s also marked the bar’s first coed fight. A young male patron showed a lewd poem he’d written on a napkin to NOW Vice President Lucy Komisar. Offended, she tried to snatch it from his hand. He retaliated by calling her an unprintable name and dumping a mug of beer over her heard. The man was thrown out, and a dripping-wet Ms. Komisar, when asked by the bartender if she was having a good time, replied, “Not particularly, but politics is not always enjoyable.” Perhaps as a sign of resistance to this forced integration of the sexes, McSorley’s didn’t build a designated women’s restroom until 1986.

Minnie II, resident cat of McSorley’s
(photo from Flickr by Skyliner72)

McSorley’s Old Ale House remains planted on East 7^th Street, much as it has for generations. They may now have to allow women inside, but little else has changed: sawdust on the floor, memorabilia on the walls, cold beer on the taps … and cats in permanent residence. The felines were even featured in one of John Sloan’s paintings of the bar in 1928. In 2009, Maher and McSorley’s were on the receiving end of a lawsuit filed by New Jersey resident Cheryl Sibley (a woman!) who claimed to have been mauled by the bar’s current resident cat, Minnie II. Owner Matty Maher insisted that he had no knowledge of the attack and didn’t know how the lady could have been attacked, seeing as how health laws prevent Minnie from being in the drinking areas of the bar during open hours.

Cats in McSorley’s, by John Sloan, 1928

“It may have been this beast over here,” he joked in an interview with the New York Post, pointing to a stuffed jackalope on the wall. “There have always been cats at McSorley’s, and there always will be.” Sticking steadfastly to tradition: the old McSorley’s way.

Woody Guthrie at McSorley’s

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