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 .
In 1983 , the Free State gardai discovered plates at the Workers' Party Headquarters at Gardiner Place in Dublin which could have been used to print 'Irish Life' chequebooks and car tax books . The garda raid at Gardiner Place was to the ground floor , a space occupied by Repsol Ltd ., a printing company : the directors of Repsol are Tomas MacGiolla , Sean Garland , Cathal Goulding , Michael Ryan and Patrick Yeates : all are or have been closely associated with the Official Republican Movement .
The raid at Gardiner Place followed another garda raid at a warehouse in Ringsend , Dublin , where £1.7 million in forged fivers were found : the gardai wished to interview Brian Lynch , a Repsol employee , in relation to the find , but he was unavailable . Brian Lynch was spotted recently (ie 1987) at the Munster Hurling final in Thurles , County Tipperary . However , there was never any explanation as to how 'Irish Life' and car tax plates came to be in Gardiner Place .
But if the Official IRA had moved away from military activity aimed at the British by the early 1980's , there were still plenty of signs that the organisation was alive and keeping well.......
(MORE LATER).
SHANE ROSS : PLAYING THE ORANGE CARD .From 'The Phoenix' magazine , February 1984 .
No By-Line.
Shane Ross first entered Seanad Eireann ( '1169...' Comment - sic : that 'Senate' does not represent the island of Ireland , regardless of that which it calls itself) in October 1981 . The timing was most appropriate as it coincided with the launching of Garret Fitzgerald's corny 'constitutional crusade' , amid a flurry of pious pluralist platitudes . The rhetoric was ideally suited to our Shane , and indeed Garret could not have wished for a more insistent preacher of his secular society in the months that lay ahead .
Trouble is , that 'crusade' is now a dead duck : the message and rhetoric were finally laid to rest last year (ie 1983) when the referendum fever took over , but it seems that Shane has'nt got the message yet , because he's still spouting on , ever so eloquently , about just what a nasty bunch of insular , doctrinaire old Taigues (ie Catholics) we really are .
Shane Ross comes from solid , conservative , Merrion Square , professional , Unionist stock : his father , John N. Ross , was a Senator for Trinity in the 1960's and is a partner in the top-crust Dublin law firm of Matheson Ormsby Prentice . So the precedent was set for young Shane to dabble in politics when he came of age . But first he had to sow those wild oats.......
(MORE LATER).
" WE ARE ALL PART OF THE SAME STRUGGLE ....... " MARGARET WARD , author of a recent book 'UNMANAGEABLE REVOLUTIONARIES' , on the role of women in the national struggle , argues critically that republicans need to develop a non-elitist attitude of support for the feminist movement as an integral part of the liberation struggle .
From 'IRIS' magazine , November 1983 .
No By-Line.
If a political movement that claims to represent the aspirations of the Irish people decides not to confront the reactionary might of the Catholic Church , not to add its considerable weight and political experience to a campaign desperately in need of all the support it can muster , because of a fear that it might alienate some of its supporters , can it expect the unconditional support of women in the future ?
At the very least , this failure to support women provides feminists with over-whelming confirmation of the wisdom of their insistence that women must continue to organise separately in their own interests , that they cannot automatically expect other political organisations to come to their defence .
We are all part of the same struggle , with its many layers of oppression . Women , gays , children , tenants , prisoners , claimants , pensioners - who can decide on the most worthy categories for attention ? We are all oppressed and we are all struggling for our freedom . Women's groups and women's caucuses in trade unions and political organisations cannot take on the burden single-handedly of fighting for women : while they can formulate policy to be adopted by their organisations , those policies should be taken seriously and fought for by all members - male and female.......
(MORE LATER).
