Bloody Sunday programme of events

Posted by Jim on January 23, 2016

Bloody Sunday is unfinished business.

The Inquiry Report published in 2010 met some but by no means all the
demands of the campaign for truth and justice.

The Inquiry found that all of the dead and wounded had been unlawfully
shot. But the key demand for prosecution of the perpetrators continues
to be thwarted at every turn.

The Report left a shadow over Gerald Donaghey, murdered at Abbey Park –
while exonerating the senior politicians and military top brass who had
sent his killers into the Bogside. This is a disgrace and an insult to
Gerald’s relatives.

The commemorative programme for 2016 reflects the diversity of those
whose experiences we share: we march for the families of the Ballymurphy
massacre and for the victims of the paratroopers’ killing on the
Shankhill – as well as for the families of the hundreds across the North
killed directly by the State or through collusion.

Bloody Sunday is emblematic, too, of much of the horror happening around
the world. The Derry massacre has this in common with atrocities
everywhere: that it was perpetrated with malice aforethought by men
uniformed to represent a State which declares itself democratic and
claims commitment to human rights. There are Bloody Sundays somewhere
every day of the week. We remember all those victims also on the annual
march.

This year’s programme also reflects the diversity of those whose
experiences we share. We will hear from victims of police racism in
Britain; from the environmentalists infiltrated and abused by undercover
London police; from Dublin TD Clare Daly on political policing of
Shannon airport and anti-water charges campaigners and from many other
victims of State oppression.

Cultural events will include a new play at the Playhouse, “Hairy Jesus”,
by award-winning writer and actor Donal O’Kelly, the Irish premier of
the “Hard Stop”, a new documentary on the killing of Mark Duggan in
London in 2011 and the launch of new book at the Culturelann, “The Media
and Bloody Sunday”, by two Ulster University academics.

Bloody Sunday was a murderous assault on the people of the Bogside. But
it didn’t arise from antagonism between “the two communities.” It was a
crime planned in advance and condoned in the aftermath by
representatives of the British ruling class.

The campaign for the full truth has lasted for 44 years. We will
continue along the path, sustained by the knowledge that we are
accompanied every step of the way by many who, even in far distant
places of which we know little, add their voices to ours, as we echo
theirs, in calling for justice for all.

Full Programme of Events, 25th-31st January

Mon 25th Jan 2016

7.30pm: Ardoyne – Exhibition Launch

Exhibition by photographer Joe Gilmartin exploring life in Ardoyne and
North Belfast over recent years and the experiences of its residents in
their daily struggle against state control, sectarianism and
marginalisation.

Ardoyne residents will be in attendance to launch the exhibition. It
runs until the 31st Jan.

Venue: Eden Place Arts Centre

Tues 26th Jan 2016

7.30pm: This Changes Everything – Film & Discussion

This documentary’s message: the earth will survive, but this may be the
last century in which it is habitable for human kind.

Based on Naomi Klein’s book of the same name, it argues that we can
seize the crisis as an opportunity to transform our failed economic
system!

James Orr, of Friends of The Earth NI, will be part of the Q&A drawing
out the significance for us and some of the key sites of struggle for
climate justice here.

Venue: Nerve Centre Admission 3 pounds

Wed 27th Jan 2016

4.30pm: The British Media And Bloody Sunday – Book Launch

This book by Greg McLaughlin & Stephen Baker is a cross media analysis
of Bloody Sunday and its legacy identifying two impulses in its media
coverage: an urge to rescue the reputation of the British Army vs
Britain’s troubled conscience.

To be launched by Prof. Martin McLoone, and Eamonn McCann. Venue:
Culturlann Panel

7.30pm: Refugee – Film and Discussion

Screening of short film, Reunited Lives’, on refugees from the north
going south in the early 70’s followed by discussion on the current
crisis where, with the exception of Germany, Europe is turning its back
on the plight of refugees fleeing war it is complicit in.

Speakers:

Briege Voyle (featured in the film), Agim Kryeziu a refugee from Kosova
living here some twenty years, Aza Ali Ahmad from Mosul northern Iraq
recently arrived, Eamonn McCann activist and journalist. Chair:
Bernadette McAliskey. Venue: Nerve Centre

Thur 28 Jan 2016

7.30pm: The State We’re In – Panel Discussion

2016 marks the centenary year of the Easter rising in Dublin, this event
will explore where Irish society now finds itself when set against the
aspirations and avowed ideals of that time. Speakers:

Patrick Murphy, Irish News columnist, will offer his own inimitable take
on the subject while journalist

Chris Moore will approach the subject through the lens of the Kincora
scandal contrasting it with the ideal of “cherishing all of the children
of the nation equally”

Geraldine Dunne, Dublin Southside Travellers Action Group, will speak
from a traveller perspective on her community’s place in modern Ireland.

Chair: Paul McFadden Venue: Nerve Centre

Fri 29 Jan 2016

1.00pm: Shannon Airport & 21st Century War – Book Launch

John Lannon will launch this important publication he co-edited with
Roger Cole. It chronicles the Irish government’s shameful misuse of the
civil airport at Shannon, allowing it to be treated as a forward
operating base for the US Military and CIA!

Venue: Central Library

8pm: Hairy Jaysus – Drama

Award-winning playwright & actor Donal O’Kelly’s solo play about
pacifist, feminist and socialist Frank Sheehy- Skeffington, shot dead in
Portobello Barracks, 26th April, 1916. Told through the eyes of a Dublin
street beggar today.

Dubbed “Hairy Jaysus” by his friend James Joyce, Sean O’Casey said that
Sheehy-Skeffington was, “the soul of revolt against man’s inhumanity to
man, the ripest ear of corn that fell in Easter Week”.

Venue: Playhouse, Admission 8 pounds (6 concession)

Sat 30 Jan 2016

12.00pm: The Whole Truth – Panel Discussion

Where to now for truth and justice for murders legitimised by the state?

The experiences of three women seeking redress for the murder of their
loved ones:

Kate Nash sister of William murdered by the British Army on Bloody
Sunday, Janet Donnelly daughter of Joseph Murphy murdered by the British
Army in the Ballymurphy massacre and Shauna Moreland daughter of
Caroline Moreland murdered by the IRA, under the direction of British
agent, ‘Stakeknife’.

Chair:Eamonn McCann. Venue: Pilots Row

2.30pm: Out of the Shadows – Panel Discussion

A discussion exploring the state’s coercive methods of control through
its police, army and secret organisations: Is Britain using strategies
developed in the north against Black and Asian communities in English
inner cites? Looking south, ‘political policing’ by the Garda is overtly
used to suppress anti-water charges protests. Is this to be the new
norm?

Speakers are:

Prof. Mark McGovern, (Sociology) of Edge Hill University Liverpool his
research is in human rights, state violence and transitional justice;

Suresh Grover, Director and cofounder of London based ‘Monitoring
Group’, who works supporting those experiencing racial prejudice and
violence;

Aidan Ferguson, Greater Ardoyne Residents Collective (GARC) work to
oppose: sectarian marches, militarised curfews and advocate on behalf of
the community;

Helen Steel, one of seven women who sued English police after being
deceived into relationships with undercover policemen infiltrating
environmental and social justice movements and

Clare Daly, TD for North Dublin, founding member of the United Left
Alliance who has been recently instrumental in exposing malpractice
within the south’s Garda Siochana

Venue: Pilots Row

7.30pm: The Hard Stop – Film and Discussion

The Irish Premier of George Amponsah’s new film exploring the life and
death of Mark Duggan. Shot by armed police in London, on 4th Aug 2011,
his death sparked riots in London and other English cities. George
Amponsah and the film’s two main protagonists Marcus Knox-Hooke and
Curtis Henville will attend the post screening Q & A.

Venue: Nerve Centre Admission 3 pounds

More details of events are available online at: BloodySundayMarch.org

Lunch will be available In Pilot’s Row on the Saturday

Sun 31 Jan 2016

2.30pm: The March and Rally

Writer, journalist and political activist Eamonn McCann will be the main
speaker addressing the rally at this year’s Bloody Sunday March For
Justice.

Venue: Creggan Shops to Guildhall Square

The fantasy history of the 1916 Easter Rising

Posted by Jim on

By An Sionnach Fionn

Liam Kennedy is a professor of economic and social history at Queen’s
University Belfast, which is somewhat shocking given that he seems to
have, at best, a passing familiarity with the latter half of his chosen
speciality. Here he is in the Irish Independent, salami-slicing Irish
history to suit his particular tastes. A little bit of this, a little
bit of that, and you end up with a dog’s dinner of a historical
analysis:

“A small, unrepresentative bunch of fanatical nationalists, none of whom
had been elected, presumed to speak on behalf of the Irish people and
plunge them, without so much as a by-your-leave, into the most terrible
of all states, that of war and its associated terrors.”

Nope, he’s not referring to John Redmond, the head of the Irish
Parliamentary Party and the self-proclaimed “leader of nationalist
Ireland” in 1916, who cajoled, heckled and bullied tens of thousands of
Irish men into the service of the fanatically nationalistic British
Empire, knowing that many of them would be doomed to lie torn and
dismembered beneath the battlefields of Europe, Asia and Africa.

“It was the plain people of inner-city Dublin who died in their hundreds
to satisfy the blood-drenched fantasies of less-than-impressive poets
and marginal figures on the Irish political scene.”

Those “marginal figures” of Irish politics were responsible for the
deaths of less than 500 “plain people” in 1916. In contrast, the
mainstream figures of Irish politics were responsible for the deaths of
at least 15,000 “plain people” in 1916. The supposed nationalist,
Redmond, and his ideological rival, the unionist demagogue Edward
Carson, contrived between them to bring about the deaths – the
industrial-scale murder – of some 35,000 khaki-clad men and boys from
Ireland. Both did so while proclaiming their loyalty to a
“blood-drenched” imperium ruled from London, Redmond condemning those
who declined to fight as, “…running away in the hour of their Empire’s
need.”

“Easter 1916 was a pivotal moment in Irish history. It copper-fastened
Partition and deformed Irish politics. How could fellow Irish people of
a unionist persuasion, who made up a quarter of the population, even
think of an all-Ireland state after an insurrection that proudly
proclaimed its alliance with the armies of the German Kaiser?”

The partition of Ireland was copper-fastened when the British separatist
minority in the country, the unionists in the north-east under the
malign tutelage of Carson, took up arms in 1912 against UK legislation
to enact limited “home rule”. When they adopted terrorism and the threat
of terrorism in pursuit of their rebellion, Ireland’s deformation was
complete. And who armed the would-be insurrectionists? The German
Kaiser. And who declared that the rule of “…Germany and the German
Emperor would be preferred to the rule of John Redmond, Patrick Ford and
the Molly Maguires”? None other than Edward Carson, leader and founder
of the Ulster Unionist Party and the Ulster Volunteer Force.

Kennedy’s counter-factual fantasies are echoed in those of conservative
politician-turned-presenter, Ivan Yates, also writing for the British
apologist rag that is the Irish Independent:

“Constitutional nationalism is discommoded by self-appointed violent
Republicans, who sought no electoral mandate from voters. Redmondites
and pacifist traditions still maintain we’d have won freedom from
British imperialism without taking up arms.”

From at least 1902 the Irish Parliamentary Party (IPP), the
“Redmondites”, had an acknowledged army of street and parish thugs,
which it used to beat its opponents into the ground. This was the
Ancient Order of Hibernians, or AOH, an extremist force grown so
ferocious that the two general elections held in 1910 were widely
regarded as the bloodiest in living memory. AOH men openly displayed
firearms at hustings and rallies, appeared with cudgels and batons
during parades and demonstrations, raided or broke up rival meetings,
including those of the All-for-Ireland League and the politically
incipient Sinn Fein. By 1914 John Redmond had added an actual army, the
Irish National Volunteers (INV), to his “baton men”. The IPP now had a
military wing, the INV, with Redmond as the supreme leader of both,
while his cohorts worked as gun-smugglers to arm the new Redmondite
legion.

So who is more reprehensible on the scales of historical judgement?
Patrick Pearse, a progressive militant who sought a modern democratic
republic, a sovereign and independent Ireland where all of the children
of the nation would be cherished equally, or John Redmond, a
conservative militant who was ready to accept a devolved, partitioned
Ireland within the United Kingdom, a province committed to the onward
march of the UK’s imperial hegemony over the peoples of the Earth?

Come out and fight for a free and united Ireland

Posted by Jim on January 21, 2016

Update on the NYC St. Patrick’s day Parade 2016

Posted by Jim on January 20, 2016

The Concerned Members of the Affiliated Organizations (“CMAO”) find it ironic that in a year when the eminent peace maker Sen. George Mitchell has been selected to be the 2016 Parade Grand Marshal that Dr. Lahey unilaterally continues down the road of confrontation with the Affiliated Organizations rather than dialogue and reconciliation. Senator Mitchell famously brought to the bargaining table two communities with a long and storied history of violent and bitter differences, yet Dr. Lahey refuses to come to the table to recognize and work with the duly elected Parade Committee.
Dr. Lahey has steadfastly refused to work for the common good of the parade because of his distorted belief that the Parade is the exclusive property of the Board of Directors. Dr. Lahey appears to be more concerned with protecting television contracts with NBC, courting favor with Mayor De Blasio,
the City Council and the Irish Government and the interests of Quinnipiac University above the people of the New York Irish American community who are the heart of the parade. In contradiction to glittering generalities served up for the benefit of his dignitaries and the press, Dr Lahey maintains an indifference to their voice and concerns as expressed through the Affiliated Organizations who have worked and supported the Parade for generations.
As we celebrate the centenary of the proclamation of the Irish Republic, one of whose key principles was universal suffrage, it is ironic that Dr. Lahey remains steadfast in his determination to disenfranchise the Affiliated Organizations and eliminate the Parade Committee. His blatant attempt to disenfranchise the Irish-American community from their own Parade dishonors the legacy of Pearse, Connolly and Markievicz. He has gone back on his word on numerous occasions, and thus we remain skeptical when
he claims that “the Parade Affiliated groups would have a role in future parades.”
In spite of the best efforts of the Quinnipiac University spin machine to herald a new era of inclusivity, Dr. Lahey has exclude the duly elected Parade Committee and Affiliated Organizations who are the heart and soul of the Parade in favor of an exclusive club of network executives and Quinnipiac University employees.
Dr. Lahey had the temerity to announce at the Grand Marshal installation that the Elected Parade Committee “is working extremely well with me and the board of directors in representing not only the committee but the affiliated organizations, 180 strong, that are such an important part of the parade.”
However, Dr. Lahey’s actions do not match his rhetoric, since Dr. Lahey (i) has publicly refused to recognize the Parade Committee on numerous occasions; (ii) has refused to let the Parade organize and operate the Parade as they are duly authorized to do so pursuant to the By-Laws; (iii) has appointed an unelected Special Executive Committee to run the Parade in lieu of the Parade Committee; (iv) continues to manufacture news reasons out of whole cloth to justify his ignoring the By-Laws with regards to Board appointments and the operation of the Parade Corporation; and (v) refused to invite the Parade Committee Chairman on the dais during the announcement of the Grand Marshal; (vi) Dr. Lahey denied the honor the traditional honor accorded the Parade Committee Chairman of presenting the Grand Marshal. Dr. Lahey’s deliberate avoidance of working with the Parade Committee or meeting with the Affiliated Organizations is both a testament to his arrogance and contempt for the countless Irish-Americans who have dedicated their hearts and souls to this Parade. It should be noted that in a bit of burlesque that despite Dr Lahey’s claims of “working closely with Mr. Tully” he could not identify him when he attempted to do so from the lofty perch of the podium. Despite the comedic aspects, we are angered that our elected chairman was used as no more than a prop. It is further interesting to note that while MR. Tully and the Board members were absent from the invitation to the GM installation, the Board managed to remember their names on the fundraising letter; a Freudian slip which shows how the Board views the affiliates: a disenfranchised cash cow.
The CMAO can understand the decision of Chairman Tully and his committee being silent since their election by the affiliated was an attempt to create an open space for dialogue, however, it appears that this sincere overture has unintentionally created is a vacuum which Dr. Lahey and the Board choose to
fill with misinformation. We remind the committee that they were elected by the affiliates to represent the affiliates. In that spirit we call for Chairman Tully to convene a meeting of the affiliates to explain their planned course of action in light of the recent disrespect and continuing marginalization of the
Affiliated organizations.

Statement from Republican Prisoners Roe 4 Maghaberry 18/01/16

Posted by Jim on January 19, 2016