Posted by Jim on October 13, 2012
A Cairde,
May I begin by extending my warmest and heartiest greetings to you all. This evening’s event is a tribute to the organisational skills, fundamental decency and great Patriotic spirit of the wonderful people of Dublin. May God bless you all.
When I was arrested following the 2007 northern Assembly elections, in which I had stood as an Independent Republican candidate, the British were sending a very clear message to the Irish people: Any expression of Irish Patriotic political sentiment or opinion by any Irishman within the 6 counties would not be tolerated.
When this was followed-up by my being ritualistically dragged through the corrupt Diplock court system and finally flung into jail, the British were issuing another warning that this was to be the expected fate of any Irish Patriot who did not bow the knee to English rule and Orange domination in the North of Ireland. In other words: “Croppies lie down”
Encouraged by the disgraceful submissive silence of the Sinn Féin leadership in my case, the British believed that they had won and there would be no further ramifications over my incarceration.
Once again, these foreign rulers had failed to take into account the refusal of the Irish people to be bullied or intimidated by them. The courageous men and women of the Irish Republican base are made of stern stuff.
The British wanted me to rot in silence in jail, but thanks to the efforts of great people like yourselves and members of our Justice Campaign in Ireland, north and south, in the United States, Spain and throughout the world, the political persecution and injustice that had been perpetrated upon my family and I has been highlighted and exposed for all to see. For that I am truly and deeply grateful.
In your refusal to be subjugated to the dictates of alien rule, you are following in the ancient tradition of Independent Irish nationhood. It is fitting that tonight’s event should be held in Dublin just a few miles from the site of the Battle of Clontarf where, almost a thousand years ago in 1014, the great king Brian Boru, champion of the Irish Christian Nation, literally drove the Viking heathens, who had been terrorising our country for centuries, into the seas around Dublin Bay.
Though born in Munster, this great leader of our people was buried in Armagh as a mark of his kingship of all Ireland. There, his bones lay honoured and undisturbed until the 19th century when a group of drunken British soldiers, enraged by the Irish pride in Brian and our reverence of an ancient nationhood, vandalised his tomb and pulverised his remains into dust.
The British hatred of our sense of independent nationhood continues to this day and my arrest and continued incarceration is a manifestation of this. To the people of Dublin and Ireland I say pay tribute to Brian Boru by celebrating with gusto the 1,000th anniversary of the Battle of Clontarf in the Spring of 2014.
To the English occupation Establishment still in Ireland, meanwhile, I say: For God’s sake, just go home!
Finally, in once again thanking you all for your prayers, support and solidarity. I would like to acknowledge the tremendous work that has been done on our behalf by Mr. Éamon Ó’Cuív TD, a true stalwart and great Irishman.
On that note, I wish everyone an enjoyable evening and a great night’s craic! Beannact Dé oraibh agus Éireann go Brách !
Gerry McGeough
Posted by Jim on October 6, 2012
There have been calls for the Parades Commission to be scrapped after legally-binding restrictions on the giant Ulster Covenant parade were again ignored by Orangemen and loyalist bands on Saturday.
The most provocative behaviour was seen in east Belfast, where a loyalist mob took advantage of the relative absence of media cameras to incite bandsmen to engage in hate-filled actions.
The chanting and shouting of loyalists fused with the hammering of drums to reach a terrifying crescendo outside St Matthew’s Catholic Church as its bells struck at 6pm.
From the outset a number of bands disregarded the restrictions and played ‘The Sash’, The Famine Song – the source of controversy when played outside St Patrick’s Church on the other side of the city centre on the Twelfth of July – and other sectarian tunes, to the delight of loyalists waving flags and holding banners. At the same time, nationalists were cordoned off from their own church and community.
Only one of over twenty loyalist bands passing the church on their return obeyed large electronic road signs warning them to play ‘sacred music’ only.
At various stages during the day loyalist spectators also broke into spontaneous renditions of ‘The Sash’ as the parade passed by. By 5pm the main road was strewn with the cast-off litter of beer boxes and cans and bottles as the mob became increasingly intoxicated.
On several occasions spectators, some of whom were drinking openly, verbally abused a band and Orange Order members because they did not play ‘The Sash’ as they passed St Matthew’s.
Supporters also jeered when a bands walked past the church to a single drum beat.
As tension started to rise one woman stepped into the road and held up a placard reading: ‘We don’t want hymns’ before shouting “No Surrender”.
One bandsman could be clearly seen urinating against the gate pillars into the church — which had cancelled Saturday’s scheduled morning Mass– as women and children walked past.
One of the returning bands stopped to playing loyalist tunes outside the grounds of the church.
The last bandsmen passed after the supposed deadline of 6pm — but not before the playing and singing of sectarian tunes had reached fever pitch.
STILL NO RESPECT
In north Belfast, the presence of the international media and a banner held by nationalist residents again calling for ‘Respect’ failed to deter a number of loyalist bands from starting up sectarian tunes as they passed the doors of the church.
The restriction to play hymns outside the church was openly mocked by the loyalists.
Several bands deliberately paused to beat drums as loudly as possible at the doors of St Patrick’s, with one loyalist jumping around in a hysterical fashion.
“I have never heard ‘Abide With Me’ played with such vigour,” said local priest Fr Michael Sheehan.
There was no sign of the Young Conway Volunteers, the Shankill band who sparked months of trouble around St Patrick’s by playing the sectarian Famine Song and walking in circles outside its doors on the Twelfth of July.
But Frank Dempsey of the Carrick Hill Residents Association said the Parades Commission determination had been “smashed” [destroyed].
Pensioner Elish McEarlean, who was stopped by the PSNI at North Queen Street and prevented from accessing her regular church service at St Patrick’s, described the cordon stopping her as “a disgrace”.
She was eventually allowed through to Mass.
Sinn Fein assembly member Gerry Kelly said bands had behaved “provocatively”.
“If the bands had played a single drum beat or were silent when they passed the church as the residents asked, there would be no issue. That said it has been calm there was no trouble but the core issue of mutual respect remains unresolved,” he said.
Posted by Jim on October 5, 2012
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The 28th September 2012 will be the centenary of Edward Carson’s Ulster Solemn League and Covenant, signed by northern unionists in protest against the Third Home Rule Bill for Irish self-government. Far less well known is the ‘Alternative Ulster Covenant’, signed in October 1913 by Protestants from County Antrim in support of Home Rule and against partition.
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On the 24th of October 1913, a public meeting titled ‘Protestants against Carsonism’ was held in Ballymoney Town Hall, Co. Antrim. The meeting was called by Rev J. B. Armour, minister of the local Trinity Presbyterian Church and a liberal Home Ruler. Armour was an outspoken critic of the politics of Edward Carson, his Ulster Volunteer Force and the 1912 Ulster Covenant. The town of Ballymoney was chosen as the meeting place because the district had a radical Republican tradition going back to the United Irishmen in the 1790s. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries it was also the hotbed of tenant rights agitation among the Protestant tenant farmer population.
Over five hundred people attended the meeting, which overflowed from the hall onto the street outside. Mottos on the walls proclaimed ‘Ulster for Ireland and Ireland for Ulster’. Those attending included representatives of all social classes. Rev. Armour wanted to demonstrate the level of strong opposition to partition and sectarian politics that existed among Irish Protestants; for this reason the meeting was a Protestant one and Catholics were specifically asked not to attend.
Two resolutions were passed. The first resolution rejected the claim of Carson to speak for Ulster’s Protestants and it pledged its signatories to lawful resistance to Carson’s activities. The second resolution was put before the meeting by Roger Casement. A British consul from Ballymena, Casement had gained international acclaim for his exposure of the exploitation of native peoples in the Congo and the Putumayo River region in Peru.
Casement’s resolution read:
“That this meeting dispute the narrow claim that differences of creed necessarily separate Irishmen and women into hostile camps, affirms its belief that joint public service is the best means of allaying dissensions and promoting patriotism, and calls upon his Majesty’s Government to pursue the policy of bringing all Irish men together in one common field of national effort.”
This resolution was passed unanimously. Various contributions from the floor expressed anger at the thought of the division of Ulster and the exclusion of three of her nine counties. It was argued that if they accepted Home Rule, Irish Protestants would have at least one quarter of the membership of any Dublin parliament to protect them and to look after their interests. Partition, however, would bring about two sectarian states, where the major denomination in each would have too much power and would dominate religious minorities. Religious division rather than cooperation would become the order of the day. Others at the meeting suggested that partition would have a severe negative impact on the economy of Ulster and of Ireland as a whole. Further industrialisation would become difficult and Ulster’s natural farming communities would be divided from each other.
Casement remarked:
‘I have no wish to add to the tensions of the day. I am seeking only to point a way, not to conflict and further embitterment of feeling, but to a peace with honour; a peace for Ireland as a whole and honour for Ulster as the first province of Ireland.’
He went on:
‘Ulstermen have been sold by political trickery, arming and drilling against the perceived enemy. The enemy they are been led against, is no enemy at all: Catholic Ireland, Nationalist Ireland, desires not triumph over Ulster, they seek only friendship and goodwill.’
Casement appealed to the spirit of 1798, when Irish Catholics and Protestants had fought together for an independent Republic.
Mrs. Alice Stopford Green spoke next. Daughter of the Church of Ireland Archdeacon of Meath and granddaughter of the Bishop of Meath, she declared that she was present for the honour of the Protestant faith.
She reminded the largely Presbyterian audience that both Irish Presbyterians and Catholics had historically been discriminated against by an Anglican, aristocratic ascendancy, and that both had been bond together in the struggle for political and social rights. The future of all Irish Protestants and Catholics lay together, not apart. She touched her audience deeply when she made reference to the Land League:
‘the Protestant farmers of Ulster owe their present prosperity to the legislation obtained by Southern sacrifice’.
Captain Jack White also spoke. White was the son of a British general and himself a soldier, but his experience in the Boer war would turn him into a strong opponent of British imperialism. White declared that their common Christian faith held each man to be a son of God. ‘But let Protestants remember this: the test of their sonship of God is their brotherhood with man, and those Protestants who think and act towards their Catholic fellow-countrymen as though they were their hereditary enemies had better, for their own sakes, leave the name Protestantism and God out of the question’. This declaration was met with cheering and prolonged applause.
White proposed a counter covenant to that of Carson’s. The counter covenant read:
“Being convinced in our conscience that Home Rule will not be disastrous to the national well-being of Ulster, and that, moreover, the responsibility of self-government would strengthen the popular forces in other provinces, would pave the way to a civil and religious freedom, which we do not now possess, and would give scope for a spirit of citizenship, we, in whose names are underwritten, Irish citizens, Protestants, and loyal supporters of Irish Nationality, relying under God on the proven good feelings and democratic instincts in our fellow-countrymen of other creeds, hereby pledge ourselves to stand by one another and our country in the troubled days that are before us and more especially to help one another when our liberties are threatened by any non-statutory body that may be set up in Ulster or elsewhere. We intend to abide by the just laws of the lawful Parliament of Ireland until such time as it may prove itself hostile to democracy. In sure confidence that God will stand by those who stand by the people, irrespective of class or creed, we hereunto subscribe our names.”
After the meeting the Alternative Covenant was distributed and efforts were made to get a large number of Protestants in the county to sign.
It is claimed that twelve thousand people signed the Alternative Covenant. Copies of the signatories were reported to be among Jack White’s papers when he died. Unfortunately, White’s family, who did not share his views, made a bonfire of his papers immediately after his funeral.
The speeches of the three main speakers were subsequently published in a pamphlet entitled ‘A Protestant Protest.’
After the Ballymoney meeting, a deputation went to meet the British Prime Minister Asquith on the 26th November 1913. The deputation was a mixture of businesspeople, trade unionists and academics, such as Professor Henry of Queens University Belfast, David Campbell of the Belfast Trade Council and Alex Wilson. The deputation emphasised to Asquith that those who were organising the Ulster Volunteer Force, an illegal militia established to resist Home Rule by force, were for the most part landlords, their tenants and their dependants. These paramilitaries did not speak for the Protestants of Ulster.
Rev. JB Armour was quite vocal in dismissing Carson’s ‘Ulster Day’, the day of the signing of the Solemn League and Covenant, as ‘Protestant fool’s day’. He publicly denounced Carson, the Unionist leader, as ‘a sheer mountebank’ and ‘the greatest enemy of Protestantism’. He even wrote that Carson ought to be tarred and feathered!
A public platform party against partition was formed. Its forty or so public representatives were distinguished Protestants, such as J.
Goold-Verschoyle, Robert Carson, James Hanna, Rev JB Armour, WD.
Hamilton and JL. Taggart. Also a member was Alec Wilson, the son of one of the directors of the great ship-building firms Harland and Wolff.
Interestingly, Harland and Wolf expressed an indication at the time that they were opposed to partition and that they supported Home Rule.
Unhappily, the Ballymoney meeting was a once-off and any activity that sprung from it failed to turn the tide of Carsonism. Carson and his followers in the Unionist Party and the UVF rose to popular power in Ulster in a wave of anti-catholic sentiment. The result was the British-imposed partition of Ireland. However, the Ballymoney meeting did show that a significant minority of Protestants in North-East Ulster were opposed to partition.
At the Ballymoney meeting Roger Casement emphasised the links between ‘the Catholics of Wexford and the Presbyterians of Antrim who had fought together on the same side little more than a hundred years previously’. He said the ‘Protestant Dissenters of Ulster’ had played a very progressive role in Irish history, and what a wonderful contribution they could make to an all-Ireland state. He hoped that Catholics and Protestants would unite and that they would ‘set the Antrim hills ablaze’.
Unfortunately, this was not to be.
Posted by Jim on October 2, 2012
Independent Republican Councillor Angela Nelson recently visited Gerry McGeough in Maghaberry prison along with Gerry’s wife and their four children.
Speaking after her visit, Councillor Nelson stated;
“As an Independent Republican Councillor, I give my full support to the release of Gerry McGeough and I believe Gerry should be at home with his family in time for Christmas. I have written to British Prime Minister David Cameron and also to the British Secretary of State Theresa Villiers who has confirmed that she will consider and respond shortly to my correspondence.
“Gerry McGeough believes he has been let down by those in power who he feels should have been to the fore in ensuring that when the agreements were signed in 1998 and 2001, what had been promised back then was delivered”.
Councillor Nelson continued by saying;
“I personally believe that Gerry McGeough’s imprisonment is a significant step backwards at the end of which nothing will have been achieved. It defies all logic to inflict such an injustice upon a family in the middle of a peace process. Although he is due for release in early 2013, I would like to add my voice to those who have already called for Gerry’s immediate release and I believe there should be no reluctance in allowing Gerry to be released in time to be at home with his wife and their four children at Christmas”.
Gerry McGeough, a 54 year old teacher and published author is married with four young children, Gerry returned to Ireland in 1996. He then graduated from Trinity College Dublin with an Honours Degree in History and attained a Higher Diploma in Education from University College Dublin.
As a former Ard Chomlairle member of Sinn Féin, Gerry was an architect of the peace process and continues to support a peaceful and political solution to achieving a United Ireland.
Gerry however, for a number of reasons, became disenchanted with the political direction of Sinn Féin at that time, in particular because of the stance taken by Sinn Féin in their support of abortion and he left the party in 2001.
On 7th March 2007 he stood as an Independent Republican MLA candidate in the Stormont Assembly elections. The following day as he left the count centre in Omagh, he was surrounded by police officers and arrested. His arrest was a direct result of the withdrawal of the legislation required to implement paragraph 20 of the Weston Park Accord (2001) which dealt with the issues of OTR’s. Gerry, who was classified as an OTR has been incarcerated in Maghaberry since 18th February 2011 on alleged conflict related activities dating back to 1975 and 1981. However, despite the fact that the legislation for paragraph 20 was never passed through Westminster, recent negotiations with former British Secretary of State Owen Paterson have resolved a number of OTR cases and it is believed only about twenty people now need to be given clearance to return home without fear of prosecution.
Posted by Jim on September 14, 2012
by Damian Herron on Thursday, September 13, 2012 Northern Chair of the Free Gerry McGeough Campaign
Thirty-six years after the Blanket Protest began the psychological and physical impact on the lives of those political prisoners and their families who were involved is to be examined at a conference in Belfast on September 15th. That protest took place during a time of conflict.
Thirty-six years later during what is termed a time of peace and a time for moving on, Gerry McGeough and his family are experiencing the psychological and physical impact of political incarceration on alleged activities thirty-seven years ago.
Martin Corey and his family experience the impact of internment without trial and one hour after the conference closes, people will take to the streets of Dublin in protest against the psychological and physical impact of British injustice against Marian Price and her family.
Thirty-six years later in 2012 the protests and strip searching continue, this time in Maghaberry prison.
What is happening against Irish Republicans is a result of a Dissident Unionist initiative to dismantle the Good Friday Agreement in conjunction with an almost obsessive need to appease rather than hold to account the anti-peace process Unionists.
The arrest of Gerry McGeough in 2007 should have brought Sinn Féin out of what was soon to become their power sharing political comfort zone “to ensure pain and suffering never again become the experience of any Republican, Unionist and English or Irish citizen”.
The attitude in 2007 of a muzzled tolerance towards one of the finest examples of political policing against a political opponent was a step back into our period of conflict which ended with a verdict of twenty years imprisonment.
Five years later and Martin McGuinness is “allowed” to shake the hand of a British Queen while the incarceration of Gerry McGeough, the internment of Martin Corey and Marian Price and the dirty protest within Maghaberry have been “allowed” as examples of how the Dissident Unionists are willing to compromise and work towards peace and reconciliation.
Thirty-six years from now, on September 15th 2048, will our own children suffer British injustice and Unionist persecution because of their political opinion? Will those who suffer today find themselves dealing with the psychological and physical impact of a muzzled tolerance towards British injustice and Unionist persecution? Will our grandchildren be forced onto the street of Dublin in protest against the British policy of internment while the future leadership of Sinn Féin “allow” a handshake with the British King Charles as he approaches his 100th birthday?