Hunger Strike Rally , GPO , Dublin , Saturday May 6th 2006 .Remembering the Hunger-Strikers 25 years on.
A rally to commemorate the heroic struggle of the ten hunger-strikers : Bobby Sands, Francis Hughes, Ray McCreesh, Patsy O'Hara, Joe McDonnell, Martin Hurson, Kevin Lynch, Kieran Doherty, Thomas McElwee, Michael Devine - who gave their lives in 1981- will be held in Dublin on Saturday May 6 2006 . Assemble at the Garden of Remembrance at 2pm for march to GPO on O'Connell Street.
"They will not criminalise us, rob us of our true identity, steal our individualism, depoliticise us, churn us out as systemised, institutionalised, decent law-abiding robots. Never will they label our liberation struggle as criminal."
- Bobby Sands.
Twenty-two Irish political prisoners died on hunger-strike between 1917 and 1981 . The Dublin Rally is being held to commemorate all those Irishmen .
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 .
Cathal Goulding was quoted as saying in 1972 - when the Official IRA was supposed to have gone out of existance - " I am a physical force revolutionary . I'm not naive enough to think that we don't have to use guns . An armed proletariat is the only assurance that they can have the rule of the proletariat . "
In the nine months preceeding the ceasefire , the Derry Official IRA killed twenty-one British soldiers . At that time , Free Derry was in existance , and the Official IRA operated in conjunction with Saor Eire and the Provos . Dublin , from where all the supplies came , started to scale down the war before the ceasefire was called ; they sent up wrong ammunition in order to slow down activity . Dublin , even prior to the ceasefire , were clearly worried about the direction their Derry comrades were taking .
Derry had its own paper , 'The Starry Plough' , which was selling almost as many copies as the Official's publication , 'The United Irishman' : incidentally , Eamonn McCann contributed to both publications at this time , and for six months in 1972 , wrote all the editorials for 'The United Irishman' .......
(MORE LATER).
EOGHAN HARRIS : OUT OF THE SHADOWS ....... From 'MAGILL' magazine , November 1997 .
By Brenda Power .
'Their' prejudices are the residue of a collapsed ideology - they may have reservations about Mary McAleese's "...appalling record on the liberal agenda.. " but they won't dare raise it because their 'Crypto-Provo-Trot' sympathies run deeper than their 'liberal feminist conceits' .
If , as Eoghan Harris predicts with absolute conviction , the 'People With Bad Politics' (ie alleged 'Provo sympathisers') feel the wrath of the 48 per cent of voters who have imposed a "Secret Fatwa" on Sinn Fein's critical supporters on polling day , McAleese has lost and then " I deserve credit . I alerted my country to her character . And , if she wins , I still deserve credit because she will enter Aras an Uachtarain under a cloud , and she'll fill the place with Shinners singing 'The Men Behind The Wire' and she'll be astonished at the public revulsion to her over the next few months , and I choose the term 'tribal timebomb' very carefully because she'll blow up in Bertie's face sooner or later . And if she wins , not on a technicality but because so many people gave her their number one , then I am living in a country I no longer understand . "
Eoghan Harris has a flair for a memorable tag line and an impressive facility for certainty : so Derek Nally is a "...slimeball , a blustering bucolic windbag (who) bottled out .. " of pursuing the strategy that had been tailored and presented to him for free and which , Harris reckons , was technically foolproof but for the fact that it had failed to contemplate the shortcomings of "...a big thick Guard .. " ('1169...' Comment - Nally was an ex-Garda , while Harris is an ex-citizen of Planet Earth !)
According to Eoghan Harris , Nally was "...the best candidate to point up McAleese's bad politics .. " and he was "...going like a train .. " under the guidance of Harris and his friend John Caden right up to the Trinity College debate when "...McAleese eyeballed him like a bright young barrister cross-examining an elderly cop on a car crash and he just lost it ....... " ('1169....' Comment - Mickey Spillane has nothing on this guy . Except Spillane might have had closer ties to Planet Earth .)
(MORE LATER).
ORANGE JUDGE EXECUTED.......From 'IRIS' magazine , March 1983 .
No 'By-Line' .
As Diplock Judge William Doyle got into his Mercedes saloon car after leaving St. Brigid's Catholic Church in Derryvolgie Avenue , two IRA Volunteers , armed with a .38 Special and a Magnum , and dressed in hats and black overcoats to blend into the middle-class environment , approached and fired several rapid shots , killing Doyle instantly . Seconds later , the Volunteers ran off to a waiting car driven by a third Volunteer , which the Active Service Unit abandoned a short distance away before transferring to a second vehicle and returning to base .
The IRA's ability to carry out intensive surveillance and intelligence on a county court judge , normally protected by round-the-clock RUC armed bodyguards , and to mount an elaborate attack on such a prestigious target , proved a major embarrassment to the Brits in the immediate aftermath of Doyle's death , especially since security procedures were supposed to have been tightened following an earlier unsuccessful attack on 'Lord' Chief Justice Lowry by the IRA in March 1982 .
It also drew unwelcome attention for the British to the collaborative role of some middle-class Catholics in the North , in propping up the British administration and so inevitably prolonging the war and the suffering of the nationalist people . It is a collaboration that the IRA will not gladly tolerate . ('1169....' Comment : that obviously depends on who is doing the collaborating.)
[END of 'ORANGE JUDGE EXECUTED']
(Tomorrow - 'The 26 Counties : A State But Not A Nation' - from 1983)
