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 .
" From my earliest youth I have regarded the connection between Great Britain and Ireland as the curse of the Irish nation , and felt convinced that , while it lasted , this country could never be free nor happy . My mind has been confirmed in this opinion by the experience of every succeeding year , and the conclusions which I have drawn from every fact before my eyes . In consequence , I was determined to employ all the powers which my individual efforts could move , in order to separate the two countries .
That Ireland was not able of herself to throw off the yoke , I knew ; I therefore sought for aid wherever it was to be found . In honourable poverty I rejected offers which , to a man in my circumstances , might be considered highly advantageous . I remained faithful to what I thought the cause of my country , and sought in the French Republic an ally to rescue three millions of my countrymen " . -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 1980 , a Mr. Josie McKee was shot dead by the UVF: McKee was an Official IRA man who had involved himself with the theft of a load of washing machines from the Docks . The UVF were in on the job , but McKee held onto some of the money himself . The UVF shot him dead at his place of work , and there followed a hurried meeting between the Official IRA and the UVF . Workers' Party representatives went on television and radio and pointed out that the killing was sectarian and that anybody with any information should pass it on to the RUC .
Every Christmas , Official IRA collections for 'Republican Prisoners' are made in West Belfast : the Official IRA had by now only a few prisoners left in jail . Shops are also approached . One chemists shop on the Falls Road which at first declined to 'contribute' had return visits from the collectors ....
The inherent contradictions within The Workers' Party itself are also mirrored in the lifestyles of some of its members : for example , Seamus Lynch , the Belfast WP Councillor , lives in the well-off Antrim Road area and has been known to take elocution lessons . He used to be a Belfast docker and was a political internee , and is frequently seen on television . Following a 'Today Tonight' TV programme outlining some of the excesses of the Official IRA in Belfast , Seamus Lynch was asked for his reaction and he claimed that the programme was "...politically motivated.." .
Some people in the South , especially younger voters who had some leanings towards The Workers' Party , were less than impressed with his performance.......
(MORE LATER).
SHANE ROSS : PLAYING THE ORANGE CARD .......From 'The Phoenix' magazine , February 1984 .
No By-Line.
Compared to the endless search for realistic initiatives by his respected fellow (State) Senator John Robb , Shane Ross's agonising about the anti-loyalist attitudes in the South of Ireland seems to many just as intolerant and predictable as the "...fundamentalist bible thumping.." he so regularly lambasts . Obviously he enjoys preaching to his own converted , but he appears incapable of reaching out to a wider audience .
Shane Ross still has friends in very high places , many of them carefully attended to with gin 'n' tonics and fancy patter : but even with this , his narrow support base and insular thinking will probably ensure that he never gets the opportunity to shoot his mouth off where it matters most * - Leinster House . ('1169....' Comment * - but that's not where "it matters most" : one more self-serving careerist in that vile institution will make little difference to those of us who are judged by them to have only one function - to maintain them in the style they have become accustomed to.)
[END of 'SHANE ROSS : PLAYING THE ORANGE CARD'.]
(Monday , 5th June - ' THE YOUNGER BREED: ANDY CALLAGHAN' - from 1986.)
THE RIGHT TO SILENCE.Section 31 of the Broadcasting Act has just been renewed for another year by State Communications Minister Jim Mitchell , despite increasing protests and lobbying by the NUJ .
HELEN O'CONNOR examines the results of a recent NIHE survey of the attitudes of Dublin people on the issue and GERRY LAVERY looks back to the roots of Section 31 .
From 'IN DUBLIN' magazine , February 1987 .
When Rhonda Paisley , DUP , sits back in her easychair on 7 March next (1987) as 'Hostess' of RTE's 'Saturday Night Live' programme , and , acting as a representative of some of 'the other traditions' on this isle , interviews her father , Ian Paisley , DUP , and Sammy Wilson , Mayor of Belfast , DUP , she won't have to worry about Provos or Sinn Feiners answering her back .
Because of the operation of Section 31 of the Broadcasting Act , they won't be there , along with the members of the other groups proscribed by the Act , including the INLA , the UVF and the UDA . And judging by the policies of the main political parties as regards Section 31 they won't be there for quite a while to come . The only opposition in Leinster House to the renewal of Section 31 on 19 January last came from Tomas MacGiolla of The Workers' Party who said it was "...anti-democratic , riddled with anomalies and should therefore be repealed.. " .
Other than that it was passed for another year without comment . Despite recent ambivalence , Fianna Fail still regards Section 31 as a 'necessary evil' , while Fine Gael and the 'Progressive Democrats' maintain a policy of keeping it there . And no Labour Party leader has made a statement on it for over eleven years.......
(MORE LATER).
