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 .
'The Greater West Belfast Community Association' was set up and the Official IRA and the UDA held structured talks under its umbrella as the Dublin leadership attempted to stamp out the military activity which was now beyond their control , and outside their ideology . 'Dissidents' were ousted ; rules and regulations were introduced which mitigated against their enemies within their own organisation .
One 'OIRA Standing Order' stated that all members of the Official IRA had to be members of their local Workers' Party Cumann (party branch) - suspension from one automatically meant expulsion from the other ! 'Dissidents' found themselves suspended for minor breaches of discipline . At the Official Sinn Fein Ard Fheis (annual party conference) in Liberty Hall, Dublin , in 1973 , Seamus Costello circulated a list of twelve people he believed could rescue the organisation from the direction it had taken .
Dessie O' Hagan also circulated an alternative to that list but it was Seamus Costello alone who was charged ; winesses who were to give evidence on Costello's behalf found themselves under suspension . Seamus Costello knew that the break was coming and had postponed carrying out certain fund-raising operations ; he also had people who remained inside the Official IRA and who were in key positions within the OIRA Intelligence Department , which was the internal group which supplied names to the leadership of people likely to defect in the event of a split . The Officials ended up staking-out some of their own people and arming some of the opposition .
In November 1974 , the Official IRA started to beat up potential defectors : Kevin Rafferty and Vincent Fagan were beaten in Belfast .......
(MORE LATER).
EOGHAN HARRIS : OUT OF THE SHADOWS ....... From 'MAGILL' magazine , November 1997 .
By Brenda Power .
An RTE producer at the time said of Eoghan Harris and his supporters in the station - " They (Sinn Fein the Workers Party) had some very powerful friends in RTE and they managed to get friends and relatives and party members into prominent positions , often without jobs having been advertised or any interviews having been held . And their agenda infiltrated every programme , even the books programme ! I remember one current affairs team doing a programme on the hunger strikes who were told to "take their line" from Mary McMahon of Sinn Fein the Workers Party and John McMichael , who was then the 'Supreme Commander' of the UDA and was said to have been personally responsible for the deaths of 600 Catholics .
So of course the programmes did not reflect the huge support there was for the hunger strikers amongst the Catholic community . " In 1982 , 'Magill' magazine reported that the first four 'Today Tonight' RTE television programmes to deal with the issue of the POW position were hostile to the H-Block cause , and that a huge internal row was prompted by the irritation of the programme's then editor , Joe Mulholland , over a subsequent programme which reflected widespread support for the hunger strikers . " And that was when Mary McAleese first fell foul of Eoghan Harris and his people , " the RTE producer continues - " McAleese saw reporters being sent up to Belfast to take their line on the hunger strikes from people she knew to be members of the Official IRA . She recognised them because they used to drink in her father's pub on the Lower Falls Road - she took terrible abuse from these people at programme conferences . I remember her being called a Provo to her face , when anyone with a shred of wit could have seen that she detested violence . It just shows how vitriolic those people were , and how long their memories are , that they're still out to get her now . "
Eoghan Harris's association with Sinn Fein the Workers Party endured throughout the period when its military wing , the Official IRA , was known to be involved in murder and racketeering .......
(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.
Economically , following the logic of this inability to create a truncated 'nation' , the solutions are not sought within the State itself in the development of resources , but are sought from outside in attempts to attract multinationals or to beg from Brussels . Politically , all of this trend can easily be seen in the most recent developments .
The so-called abortion referendum - which ignored the social problems surrounding abortion - was a reflex action of a long socially-repressed people , which in its underlining of the confessional State could not have caused any great dismay to the Free State upholders of partition , whatever their public position on the issue . The abortion issue , as the question of divorce now is , was deliberately put into a fallacious context of 'concession to the Northern Protestants' , rather than an examination of an actual social problem in the Free State , with the inevitable partitionist result .
In the 'New Ireland Forum', the absence of any unionists - even the Alliance Party - is not seen as a major drawback at all . The 'Forum' is in fact being hailed as a success by the Free State establishment parties on the basis of a procession of unionist academics , who graciously tell it that Irish unity is not on , and a handful of 'nationalists' who suggest a variety of federal , confederal and dual sovereignty solutions which would leave the North of Ireland 'safely' separated . Fianna Fail is happily pontificating in that area of a '6 and 26 solution' ....... * (* '1169....' Comment - as , indeed , are Provisional Sinn Fein , as was verified in March 1999 when one of its leaders , Francie Molloy , stated - " Republicans are prepared to work an Executive . We are really prepared to administer British rule in Ireland for the foreseeable future . The very principle of partition is accepted . " The 'principle of partition' will never be 'accepted' by true Irish Republicans.)
(MORE LATER).
