ANNUAL WOLFE TONE COMMEMORATION : Sunday , June 11 , 2006 , Sallins , Co. Kildare .
A bus for this Commemoration , which is organised each year by the Republican Movement , will leave from outside the old McBirneys/Virgin Megastore site on Dublin's Aston Quay at 12.45PM on the day : the Commemoration itself starts at 2.30PM .
The same bus will leave Bodenstown at 5.30PM that afternoon on its return to Dublin city centre . The fare is ten Euro per person .
For information on the death of Wolfe Tone , scroll through this piece (article starts on March 9 on that page) which was published on this blog last year .
"To subvert the tyranny of our execrable government, to break the connection with England, the never-failing source of all our political evils and to assert the independence of my country- these were my objectives. To unite the whole people of Ireland, to abolish the memory of all past dissensions, and to substitute the common name of Irishman in place of the denominations of Protestant, Catholic and Dissenter - these were my means." -Theobald Wolfe Tone .
MacGIOLLA's GUERRILLAS .......Fifteen years ago , the leadership of the 'Official Republican Movement' (now 'The Workers' Party') stated that their armed wing , the 'Official IRA' , went out of existence .
Today , the 'Official IRA' is alive and well and living mainly in Belfast and Newry . In the days when both organisations were operating in an overt way , the leadership of 'The Workers' Party' and the 'Official IRA' overlapped to a certain degree .
Tomas MacGiolla , the man who led the 'Official IRA' for the last twenty-five years has always maintained the position that the 'Official IRA' went out of existence in 1972 . But the 'Official IRA' still march on , not an army fighting the British , but as a fund-collecting agency .
DEREK DUNNE traces the roots of the 'Official IRA' and 'The Workers' Party' .
From 'IN DUBLIN' magazine , October 1987 .
During the mid-1970's , the Officials underwent a major change : there was first of all their famous conference and various papers were delivered and discussed . The Workers' Party 'Research Department' outlined that they were in favour of multi-natioal investment , rather than align the party with what they saw as being SDLP/Provo small-scale business , with the Unionists in control at the top .
By the mid-1970's , the SDLP had consolidated its middle class Catholic vote and the Provos had taken the military road : the Unionists were equally entrenched , and the Officials , in order to survive , had to carve out a new ideological niche for themselves . Since they had already renounced armed struggle as a means of attaining power their policies and direction had to be discernibly different from anything else on the political scene in order to attract support .
Hence the 'evolution' of tortured and changed positions on a range of issues from the EEC to the RUC to multi-national investment .......
(MORE LATER).
EOGHAN HARRIS : OUT OF THE SHADOWS ....... From 'MAGILL' magazine , November 1997 .
By Brenda Power .
Eoghan Harris stated - " If I broke the broadcasting restrictions then I never did it in an underhand way ; I was suspended for six months in 1974 for a programme on the treatment of internees (Conor Cruise O' Brien furiously denounced the programme at a Labour Party conference that year) and I was docked a huge amount of money , there was a point when I'd have lost my house only Gay Byrne and Bunny Carr sent me £50 . But I have seen my personnel file in RTE and there's a report in it by Michael Garvey where he says that I just was'nt capable of producing an unbalanced programme . "
That is not , however , how another senior RTE figure remembers the era : " Here was the sort of thing he'd do for the Workers Party - if a panel required , say , a Labour member and a Stickie , he'd pick the greatest gobdaw (ie 'half-wit') of a Labour specimen he could find , and put him up against the brightest Workers Party member . Or if there was a report on a issue that was dear to the Workers' Party heart , you'd have trade unionists or community spokesmen on discussing it , without any acknowledgement that they were members of the Workers Party . "
In a 'Today Tonight' programme aired on April 22 , 1982 , a Dr. John McManus admitted that there was considerable tax evasion within the medical profession during a debate on the iniquities of the PRSI system . Dr. McManus was not identified as a Workers Party Ard Comhairle (ie 'ruling body') member and a party candidate in that year's general election , nor the line he took acknowledged as the party line.......
(MORE LATER).
THE 26 COUNTIES : A STATE BUT NOT A NATION .......The history of the Free State has been one of progressively solidifying partition : cross-border collaboration is only one aspect of this .
From 'IRIS' magazine , November 1983.
No By-Line.
In pursuing a strategy in the 26 counties , Sinn Fein , which is a revolutionary party , therefore has to consider two major aspects : first of all it has to retain its republican analysis of partition as the major block to the development of a nation which can achieve political , economic , social and cultural justice . It therefore has to campaign against the present negations of that justice and attempt to build a revolutionary awareness of cultural pride and development , social freedom and economic independence - the reverse of the partitionist strategy - not in a vague or general way but on the specific issues .
Secondly , it has to communicate with the audience it wishes to reach in a way which that audience can , in today's context , trust and understand . The proposition then that , somehow , republicans 'are bent on plunging the 26 counties into an armed revolution' must be totally scotched ; and the habit of republicans of isolating themselves in their political campaigning must be reversed .......
(MORE LATER).
