Monday, March 21, 2005

DYING BY THE SWORD .
By Emer Woodful .
The murder of LVF leader BILLY WRIGHT has ignited the most violent spell in the North's recent history and threatened the peace process . He may well have considered it an appropriate legacy .
First published in 'MAGILL' magazine , February 1998 , pages 30,31,34 and 35 .
Re-published here in 17 parts .
(1 of 17).


It's New Year's Eve in Belfast ; the Christmas tree's winking , and we're all sitting at a big fire , popping open a bottle of champagne . We turn on the radio to hear the midnight chimes of Big Ben . And then the plummy Radio 4 newsreader announces the echoing , silencing news that a Catholic man has been shot dead in North Belfast .

Thirty-one-year-old Eddie Treanor , shot dead while out having a drink in his girlfriend's local , the Clifton Tavern , on Cliftonville Road . The second reprisal for the shooting dead in the Maze Prison , four days earlier , of LVF leader Billy Wright by two INLA men . His death won't be mourned by nationalists ; a sign daubed on a wall near the area of the killing said - ' King Rat : May He Rot In Hell . '

Then , ten days later , 28-year-old Catholic cross-community worker Terry Enright is gunned down outside a nightclub in Belfast , in the next LVF killing .......

(MORE LATER).


WOMEN IN IRELAND'S FIGHT FOR FREEDOM .......
By the late Cork Republican , Gearoid MacCarthaigh .


" When the Irish Citizen Army was founded in 1913 women were entitled to become members with full rights of equality with the male members . In 1916 they joined in the fighting in all buildings held by the Irish Citizen Army ; they also participated in the attack on Dublin Castle .

Many of the women were wounded during the week's fighting - the Countess Markievicz was one of the first to join . She served as second-in-command to Michael Mullin in the College of Surgeons in Stephen's Green , and was sentenced to death with the other leaders of the Rising but this sentence was commuted to life imprisonment .

She was released with the rest of the prisoners in 1917 , and was elected to the First Dail in 1919 and became Minister for Labour . The Countess Markievicz was the first women in Ireland and England , if not in the world , to be elected a member of Parliament and a Minister of Parliament .

Shortly after the founding of Oglaigh na hEireann in 1913 the organisation of Cumann na mBan was founded ; they have been active in Ireland's fight up to the present day ....... "

(MORE LATER).


A POTENT WEAPON OF AGRESSION .......
From 'The United Irishman' newspaper , Aibrean [April] 1957 , page 1.
(IML. IX. UIMHIR 4 - price Tri Pingin [Three Pennies].
Thanks to my late friends Christy and Theresa L. for giving me this 48-year-old newspaper ; this thread published in memory of those two old Fenians ! - John.


' Ireland has not escaped her share of this scourge ; at the start of the last world war , Mr. de Valera's Government set up a concentration camp in the Curragh , County Kildare and hundreds of Republicans were held there without trial for the duration of the war under the most appalling conditions .

In the Six Counties , too , during the war years , concentration camps were used to detain Republicans without trial , notably in Belfast and Derry and on the prison ship Al Rawdah . In 1943 a number of men escaped from the Derry camp ; making their way into the 26-County State for refuge , they were promptly rounded-up and arrested and thrown into the camp in the Curragh .

Today , too , the concentration camp throws its grim shadow on the Irish scene ....... '

(MORE LATER).