Fitzgerald, Murphy and MacSwiney

Posted by Jim on October 27, 2015

By Peter O’Rourke

In the autumn of 1920, at the height of the Tan War, republicans
imprisoned in camps and jails throughout the country intensified their
fight to be treated as prisoners of war.

By August, political status won by republican prisoners following the
death on hunger strike of Thomas Ashe in September 1917 and more
recently after the two-week-long mass hunger strike in Mountjoy Jail in
April 1920, which saw the release of many of those engaged in the fast,
was withdrawn by the British. From now on, republican prisoners were to
be treated as `criminals’.

On 11 August, a mass hunger strike began in Cork Jail when 60 IRA
Volunteers, most of them held without charge or trial, embarked on a
fast in support of their demand for political status and release. The
British government, whose attitude had hardened following the successful
hunger strike of the previous months, decided to risk the deaths of
prisoners rather than concede their demands.

During the weeks that followed, the British released or transferred many
of the hunger strikers until only eleven were left of the original 60.

On 12 August 1920, Terence MacSwiney, Lord Mayor of Cork, TD for
mid-Cork and O/C of the IRA No.1 Brigade and ten others were arrested
during a raid on the City Hall, Cork, and immediately joined the hunger
strike in Cork Jail, which had begun the previous day.

Those arrested with MacSwiney were released but on 16 August, he was
brought before a court-martial in Cork military barracks and charged
with possession of incriminating documents. MacSwiney was sentenced to
two years’ imprisonment but defiantly challenged the court: “I wish to
state that I will put a limit to the term of imprisonment you impose,
because of the action I will take. I have taken no food since Thursday,
therefore I will be free, alive or dead, in a month.”

He was deported that night to England and conveyed to Brixton Prison,
London, where his hunger strike continued.

During September and October 1920, as the hunger strikers in Cork Jail
deteriorated, crowds gathered daily outside the jail to pray and sing
hymns. World attention, however, was focused on MacSwiney’s lonely
struggle in Brixton Prison.

On Monday, 17 October 1920, having endured the agonies of hunger-strike
for 67 days, Michael Fitzgerald, one of the prisoners in Cork Jail,
died. The following Thursday, despite intimidation of mourners by
heavily armed British forces, thousands of people attended his funeral
in Fermoy.

The following Monday, 25 October, another of the Cork prisoners, Joseph
Murphy, died on his 76th day of hunger strike. His body, accompanied by
IRA Volunteers and members of Cumann na mBan, was brought through his
native Cork City and the following day he was buried in the Republican
Plot in St Finbarr’s Cemetery.

Several hours before Murphy’s death, MacSwiney, after 74 days on hunger
strike, died at 5.40am in Brixton Prison, London. His heroic struggle
had ended.

On Wednesday, 27 October, an inquest was held in the prison and that
night MacSwiney’s body was delivered to his relatives. The remains were
removed to Southwark Cathedral, where they were received by Archbishop
Mannix. Thousands filed past the coffin to pay their last respects. On
Thursday morning, thousands followed the cortege headed by IRA
Volunteers and members of Dail Eireann and Cork Corporation to Euston
Station, while thousands more lined the route.

The remains were taken by train to Hollyhead but the British government,
fearing the effects of MacSwiney’s body arriving in Dublin and
travelling down through the country to his native Cork, seized the body
and transferred it by sea directly to Cork.

Cork IRA Volunteers were out in force to meet the remains and
MacSwiney’s body was brought to the City Hall for a lying-in-state,
where thousands more filed past. On Sunday, 31 October, the funeral took
place to St Finbarr’s Cemetery, where MacSwiney was laid to rest in the
Republican Plot beside his friend and comrade Tomas Mac Curtain.

The hunger strike in Cork Jail continued for a further three weeks. At
the request of Arthur Griffith, acting President of the Irish Republic,
the remaining nine prisoners on hunger strike ended their fast on 12
November 1920.

Michael Fitzgerald, Joseph Murphy and Terence MacSwiney died on hunger
strike on 17 and 25 October 1920, respectively, 95 years ago.

Bill of Rights for the North is essential to the peace process – Martin Ferris TD

Posted by Jim on October 26, 2015

Speaking today at the Joint Oireachtas Committee on the Implementation of the Good Friday Agreement, discussing the subject of advancing a Bill of Rights for the North, Martin Ferris TD said:

“In a post conflict situation, human rights are even more important and a bill of rights is essential to building confidence in any peace process.

“It appears quite clear that the public has bought into the idea of a bill of rights, but there is not enough political will from the British government which seems intent on producing a British Bill of Rights, as opposed to implementing one based on the European Convention on Human Rights.

“It takes political support to bring the progress for a Bill of Rights forward.

“We have to create a situation where the demand comes from the people and leaders in civil society so their politicians are forced to support them. That is the way forward to what is an essential factor in the peace process.”

Deputy Ferris also welcomed the Joint Oireachtas Committee Chairman’s Frank Feighan TD comments when he welcomed the return of DUP ministers to the Northern Assembly and his call on all parties to engage positively together to address outstanding issue around the implementation of the Stormont House Agreement, related legacy issues, and the impact of paramilitarism.

Petition launched to officially re-name Irish Famine “The Great Hunger”

Posted by Jim on October 24, 2015

Close to 7,000 people from all over the world pledge to change to way we view the hunger and poverty in Ireland in the 1840s. Photo by: Getty

An online petition aiming to officially rename the Irish “Great Famine” the “Great Hunger” has attracted over 6,600 signatures.

“When genocide became ‘famine’: Ireland, 1845 – 1850” seeks support for a campaign to permanently change the manner in which we speak of the hunger and poverty in Ireland in the 1840s that caused the death of one million and the immigration of another million.

In order to do this, the petitioners aim to persuade authors, editors and writers who wrote, write or will write about the period to forgo using the word “famine” and use “The Great Hunger” or the Irish-language version “An tOcras Mór” in its stead.

They also call on the Irish Government and its politicians to make the same change, asking anybody “who wants the truth about Ireland’s history to be faced and justly discussed” to join their campaign.

There has long been debate as to the term that should be used to describe this event in Irish history with some claiming that the version of events used by the education system and in media worldwide is not a truly accurate portrayal of what happened.

The pain and poverty suffered by the Irish people in this time is often blamed on their reliance on the potato crop that was ruined

by blight throughout these years, leaving the Irish people hungry.

Others argue that the blight was not the cause of the lack of food experienced by the population at the time as plenty of other food types were being produced in the country – more than enough to feed the starving. They argue, however, that it was the choices made by the English government to export this food from Ireland instead of feeding the hungry that caused the disaster. On these terms, they feel that “genocide” is a more suitable way to describe the tragedy.

 Started by the group “Irish Holocaust – Not Famine. The Push to educate in Facts,” the campaign believes: “History books, text books and websites around the world still repeat and give life to the idea that the ‘Great Famine’ of 1845 – 1850 was a severe and prolonged food shortage arising purely from the effects of potato blight. This grossly distorts the truth: ‘famine’ implies that the food shortages arose simply from natural causes.

“In fact, armed British troops seized Ireland’s agricultural produce and exported it to Britain – while the Irish people were dying from starvation. There was no food shortage to blame on potato blight; exports of all food products from Ireland increased during the worst years of the ‘Famine’. Ireland actually produced sufficient food to feed its population twice over. Also, British troops and government officials blocked many attempts at relief from entering Ireland.”

According to their campaign site, the group feel that an increasing number of people worldwide are becoming aware of the facts surrounding the Great Hunger and are calling for the truth to no longer be concealed, slamming those that use the historic event as a tourist attraction.

“Increasing numbers of people worldwide want what they feel is a deliberate attempt to inflict genocide on the people of Ireland discussed and exposed and if true described as a crime against the people,” they write.

“People are now learning the knowledge that was withheld from them at school and questioning why our education system treats the subject as something not to be spoken of.”

“Britain failed miserably and the question is, did they do it deliberately? The signatories of this petition seem to think so. They feel that sites using this tragedy in our country as a present day tourist attractions and persist in using the word famine are wrong and are misleading.”

Since the petition was started on January 7, 2014, it has been slowly gaining momentum with 6,634 signatures at time of writing from 4,063 different towns, villages and cities across the world.

The majority of signatories come from Ireland, England, the US, Canada, and Australia, the main ports of immigration for Irish people both now and back in Great Hunger times.

A Great Hunger Memorial in Rhode Island remembers those Irish who escaped from hunger and poverty.

The largest number of signatures comes from Dublin where 398 people (6% of all participants) have signed, followed by Glasgow, Belfast, and London (all at 2.5%). The first US city comes in 9th place with 48 New Yorkers joining the campaign.

Many of those signing have also left their own ancestral stories or thoughts on the campaign site, expressing their support and their reason for signing.

“My mother-in-law told me of her great grandparents travels walking on foot from Monaghan to Belfast at the time of the genocide, coming across starving families laying by the lanes and roads murdered by the British government by their acts and laws of oppression,” said one.

“I signed this petition because I want the truth to be recognized; that the ‘Great Hunger’ was caused by greed, bigotry, and British Imperial Ideology!” wrote another.

Despite the growing support for the campaign, not everybody will agree with their aims. Earlier this month, a leading Irish academic, Liam Kennedy, and journalist Ruth Dudley Edward revealed that they did not believe the tragedy could be called a genocide.

“What caused the Famine was the potato blight, not the English government. Get over it,” Dudley Edwards wrote in the Sunday Independent.

“It was your social status, not your religion or ethnicity, that determined your fate in Ireland in the second half of the 1840s.”

“So here’s the simple truth. The British government handled the catastrophe incompetently, and for doctrinaire but not ill-intentioned reasons changed policy to non-interference after two years, but there was no deliberate cruelty and no intention to kill anyone.

“In these days of sophisticated infrastructure and brilliant communications, western democracies still fail to save hungry or endangered people in many parts of the world, but that is not because we want them dead. It’s because we are incapable of dealing with most catastrophes.”

If you wish to sign the petition or to find more information, you can visit http://www.petitions24.com/when_famine_became_genocide_ireland_1845_-_1850.

Gerry McGeough: Supreme Court rejects IRA evidence appeal

Posted by Jim on

BBC – Northern Ireland

An appeal by a man jailed for the 1981 attempted murder of an off-duty Ulster Defence Regiment soldier has been rejected by the UK Supreme Court.

Gerry McGeough, from Dungannon, County Tyrone, was jailed in 2011 for 20 years for shooting Samuel Brush.

He argued that a trial judge was wrong to take into account evidence about his IRA membership in the 1970s and 1980s.

However, a panel of five judges at the UK’s highest court of appeal dismissed his claim.

Mr Brush, who is now a DUP councillor, was shot in an IRA gun attack in Aughnacloy, County Tyrone, in 1981.

McGeough was given a 20-year prison term but served less than two, under the terms of the Good Friday Agreement.

The Supreme Court was asked to rule on whether admissions of IRA membership made by McGeough during a Swedish asylum application should have been relied upon during his 2011 trial.

At his trial in Belfast, the judge had decided that he could take that information into account when making decisions on McGeough’s guilt or innocence.

McGeough claimed that the judge had acted unfairly.

He suggested that information he had given to Swedish authorities was confidential and said its use as evidence against him offended a “rule against self-incrimination”.

But the Supreme Court backed the trial judge’s decision and said he had rightly taken what McGeough had said to Swedish authorities into account.

Appeal judges had earlier also ruled against McGeough.

PSNI ‘attempting to put RNU out of business’

Posted by Jim on October 23, 2015

The chairperson of Republican Network for Unity has been arrested and
charged with ‘directing terrorism’, while another member of the RNU
leadership, Paul Crawford, was also arrested on IRA charges.

Despite facing a potentially lengthy internment at Maghaberry, Carl
Reilly smiled and acknowledged friends and supporters packed into the
public gallery at Belfast Magistrates’ Court.

The PSNI claimed he had attended in a hotel in County Louth which had
been bugged by the Gardai police south of the border. He was refused
bail.

Republican Network for Unity spokesperson Cait Nic Shomhairle has
condemned the PSNI and judiciary’s attempt to put the party “out of
business”.

“It comes as no surprise that after years of trying, the state has moved
to quell legitimate political opposition to the six county internal
settlement once and for all,” she said.

“The PSNI in cooperation with the judiciary have decided to arrest and
charge two members of Republican Network for Unity’s Ard Chomhairle
using evidence that simply isn’t fit for purpose.

“This has been shown up exactly for what it is; an attempt to remove the
party from the political scene.”

She said the party’s collective leadership would respond to the
political policing “in its most blatant form” with the “only appropriate
response; hard work and continued determination to achieve the party’s
goals”.

“The PSNI, like their predecessors are pursuing a strategy underpinned
by redundant tactics that will result in utter failure. Naturally we
demand the immediate release of the two men and call for an end to the
PSNI’s political persecution of the Republican community.”

The Irish Republican Socialist Party has also condemned the use of
repressive actions by the PSNI, including the arrest and detention of
party members, the searching of homes and sinister approaches to young
party activists.

They distributed leaflets in the Divis area of west Belfast which read,
in part: “The PSNI can never be accepted as a legitimate police service
because they exist to protect partition and to serve the ruling elite…
we must never forget that this is what that uniform stands for.”

Last week there was a mass ‘mobilisation’ and march in north Belfast,
also in protest at political policing, organised by the Greater Ardoyne
Residents Collective.