1169 And Counting.....: 04/30/2006

Friday, May 05, 2006

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 .

Twenty-three out of twenty-four Belfast OIRA Units voted to overturn the ceasefire , but Liam McMillan refused to convey the decision to Dublin on the basis that it was not unanimous ! A loose , fast and liberal interpretation was put on the 'defence and retaliation' clause .

People like Gerry Steenson , who appeared on fourteen IRA Court Martials for breaking the ceasefire , gradually became a law unto themselves . Major criticism of the people in Dublin - MacGiolla , Goulding and Garland - began to emerge and Seamus Costello became the focus for this : he argued for a return to the armed struggle , and for placing the national question firmly on the agenda . He was ousted from the OIRA .

Official Sinn Fein was by now calling for a 'democratisation' of the North ('1169...' Comment - ie like 'this') and dis-agreed with the abolition of Stormont ('1169...' Comment - ie like these) . Dessie O'Hagan , Tomas MacGiolla , Sean Garland and Cathal Goulding were publicly arguing that the armed struggle was sectarian and that class unity had to be built in advance of a British withdrawal . Seamus Lynch , now a Workers Party councillor in Belfast , sided with the Dublin leadership , as did his brother , Martin .......
(MORE LATER).

EOGHAN HARRIS : OUT OF THE SHADOWS .......
From 'MAGILL' magazine , November 1997 .
By Brenda Power .

One senior RTE producer said of Eoghan Harris and his Workers Party colleagues : " They were very determined and personally ambitious people , which of course conflicted totally with the dominant ethos in RTE in those days , and so they found it very easy to take over the Workers Union of Ireland . Then Harris brought in John Caden , who was an account's clerk . The NUJ was too lazy and cynical to concern them at the time - the journalists always wanted just more money , but the WUI represented the producers .

Harris and those realised that if they controlled the producers then they could control programming and effectively control the television station , and that was what they set out to do . " To this end Eoghan Harris set up a secret branch of 'Sinn Fein the Workers Party', which was called the Ned Stapleton Cumann , within the Workers' Union of Ireland . Although he was never a member of Sinn Fein the Workers' Party himself , Harris recruited members in 'sensitive positions' who could not openly support the party - " We had people in the IDA , for example , who gave us information for our pamphlets : they could'nt be seen to be members and so people like that could vote through the Ned Stapleton Cumann , " said Eoghan Harris .

Though Mairin de Burca , who was an Ard Comhairle ('Ruling Body') member of Sinn Fein the Workers' Party at the time , says now that she doubts that the Ned Stapleton Cumann ever actually existed within RTE - " Just because Eoghan Harris says he helped set it up does'nt mean that's true , you know , " she said . But the group and its activities still remain a part of RTE lore : a producer who was in the station at the time but does not wish to be named stated - " Essentially , he ran a sort of a left-wing freemasonry within RTE at the time . The agenda was to promote the Workers' Party through the programmes , and they set about achieving this in a number of different ways ....... "
(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.

Today's 26-county state is very different from what it was 62 years ago - very much the stable unit that suits those who rule it and who profit from it : it does , however , lack an essential ingredient for totally solidifying that stability - the ability to portray itself as something more than an apparently independent state ; in short - to portray itself as a nation .

Because of the all-too-obvious contradictions of their true actions on nationalism , the establishment Free State parties have to restrict the national expressions of the people least these flow to their natural conclusions . In verbalising , Fianna Fail allows itself freer rein in this regard , but has successfully created an unwholesome cocktail of rhetoric which includes friendship with Britain and rejection of force even as a conclusion to a traditional rebel-rousing oration .

If this exists as a 'safety valve' to nationalist emotions , underneath the stifling of national characteristics is much more in evidence : thus , the distinctive culture - a keystone of any nation - including the Irish language , is deliberately neglected and allowed to wither . Instead an alien mish-mash of mid-Atlantic culture is imported . Equally , social values of a most conservative type , in keeping not with the historic spirit of the people , but rather with the objectives of the economic system , are used as shackles to development .......
(MORE LATER).

(NOTE : the crew here at '1169...' have not had a break since July 2005 - in order to catch-up with other matters , we will be taking a one-week break from this Friday , May 5th . We will make a 'holding' post during our week off in relation to the up-coming Bodenstown Commemoration . Go raibh maith agat ! John)

Thursday, May 04, 2006

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 .

Liam McMillan was the Officer Commanding of the Official IRA in Belfast ; he was one of the 180 or so people who had emerged from internment in Crumlin Road Jail in 1962 to a shattered Republican Movement : he took over Belfast two years later , and built up the number of activists to 120 in a five-year period .

He was quite ruthless , as evidenced in an interview he gave in 1972 in which he responded to a question about whether or not the Official IRA should have wiped out the Provisional IRA at birth : " Well , this was discussed at one stage . But the attitude of the movement was that if we did have an all out go at the Provos that the British Army would only be standing on the sidelines rubbing their hands , and we would have been doing their job for them . "

Liam McMillan was trusted militarily and politically by the Dublin leadership ; the rank and file in Belfast resented the direction taken by Dublin . The Official IRA was structured in 'Units' , with up to forty people in each . They ran training camps in Donegal and Louth and their weapons were mainly old bolt-action rifles . In September 1972 , four months after the ceasefire was called , Patricia McKay was killed when a bomb she was carrying went off : the ceasefire had been called without any consultation with the membership . And the membership were'nt having it .......
(MORE LATER).

EOGHAN HARRIS : OUT OF THE SHADOWS .......
From 'MAGILL' magazine , November 1997 .
By Brenda Power .

That there is widespread fear and loathing for Eoghan Harris within RTE is not in doubt ; scarcely anyone can remain neutral at the mention of his name and , while some remember him as a fearless opponent of Provo sympathies in RTE in the heated years of the late 1970's and early 1980's many others consider that he and a handful of acolytes wielded unaccountable power within the station for the advancement of their own political ends in those times .

They dominated current affairs editorial lines and 'packed' panels and slanted coverage towards their own agenda , setting out to crush anyone who stood in their way . " Fearsome .....mesmerising ....intimidating ...bombastic .." are among the terms used by former colleagues to describe the means by which Eoghan Harris swayed and seduced all round him in those days .

As the major ideologue , pamphleteer and chief adviser to Official Sinn Fein leader Cathal Goulding in the early 1970's , after Harris joined RTE as a producer he first became active within the RTE branch of the Workers' Union of Ireland in the implementation of Sinn Fein The Workers Party strategies of infiltration .......
(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.

The national objective has been reduced by the two major Free State parties - Fianna Fail and Fine Gael - to a mere cypher , a mere 'difference in emphasis' between two essentially conservative parties , which successfully creates a smoke-screen behind which the vested interests of capitalist economics can be protected in a state which has - because of its history of militant social as well as national agitation - a potentially dynamic working class .

As part of the overall restriction of such dynamism , the creation of a closed confessional state - in direct negation of all the principles of republicanism - has played a very significant role in turning the 26-county state inwards on itself . The collapse of the Stormont government , and therefore , in effect , the collapse of the 6-county state , should have seen a dramatic acceleration towards a united Ireland - even though the British prop remained . It did not do so because of the determination of Dublin governments that it should not do so .

The establishment political parties and the economic interests they represent could not hope to sustain the comfortable position they had built for themselves in a new 32-county Ireland .......
(MORE LATER).

(NOTE : the crew here at '1169...' have not had a break since July 2005 - in order to catch-up with other matters , we will be taking a one-week break from this Friday , May 5th . We will make a 'holding' post during our week off in relation to the up-coming Bodenstown Commemoration . Go raibh maith agat ! John)

Wednesday, May 03, 2006

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 Derry Command of the Official IRA were placed under the watchful eye of the Officer Commanding of the OIRA in the North , Malachy McGurrin , for a period ; eventually , in 1974 , when Seamus Costello split with the Officials and started up the Irish Republican Socialist Party (IRSP) and the Irish National Liberation Army (INLA) , most of Derry went with him .

Following that split , three Official IRA assassins took over a house in Rathlin Gardens in Derry , but later aborted their mission to assassinate three Derry INLA men : the three assassins defected shortly afterwards . Before the split with the Official IRA , the Derry Command OIRA had been preparing - they had carried out robberies to fund weaponry , but did not pass the money on to Dublin . If the split had not occured , they would have set up their own private army .

Derry was unique in that it was totally politicised , but not in the way Dublin liked : throughout the early 1970's , Sean Garland was always considered a 'hard man' by those in Derry . Mick Ryan was his 'sidekick' . Cathal Goulding was not taken seriously and Tomas MacGiolla was considered a bit of a 'father figure' . Belfast , meanwhile , was having its own problems , and Dublin's decision to scale down the war was not welcomed .......
(MORE LATER).

EOGHAN HARRIS : OUT OF THE SHADOWS .......
From 'MAGILL' magazine , November 1997 .
By Brenda Power .

In reply to a student's question in Trinity College , Derek Nally accepted Mary McAleese's explanations about the leaked State Department of Foreign Affairs memos and , the following Friday , he claimed on the 'Late Late Show' debate that he had been duped , deceived and manipulated by John Caden and his dark , cloaked , shadowy , sinister puppetmaster Eoghan Harris .

Sounding like a newly de-programmed 'Moonie' , Derek Nally portrayed himself as having been briefly possessed in an almost demonic fashion , forced to speak in a voice that was not his and helplessly spewing imprecations that came from not even God knew where ! The fact that his extraordinary claims elicited not a titter of scepticism in the studio , least of all from his fellow candidates , and the air of almost awestruck admiration at a brave and lucky escape that attended his tale , prompted several callers to RTE to wonder who , exactly , was this Eoghan Harris and why did he have such acknowledged power ?

Eoghan Harris himself is tetchily dismissive of such concerns - " What's all this dark , shadowy crap ? My enemies use these terms like darkness , mental instability , manic depression , to try to harm me and turn me into dark forces . But I'm a narky fucker who'll talk to anybody . I'm completely open about what I do . I always wore my politics on my sleeve and I was totally straightforward about what I was trying to do with Derek Nally , he just did'nt have the intelligence to see it . I am a very strong personality , a person of powerful polemical force , but I have enemies in RTE and they refuse to give myself and John Caden a right to reply to this defamation ......."
(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.

The partition of this island is all too often thought of as just a single event which took place 62 years ago and has remained a static piece of unfinished business from that period . But that is not so .

The effects of British occupation - social , economic and cultural , as well as military - over several centuries , were part of the evolution of partition . And equally , since 1921 , those same factors have continued to solidfy partition , in an on-going process , on both sides of the artificial border .

The Stormont government was rather obvious in its efforts to buttress the 6-county state : pogroms , special powers , housing and job discrimination , and electoral gerrymandering . The Dublin government's contribution was a combination of a passive role of abandoning any thought of action to end partition - substituting meaningless verbal platitudes - and then the very active role of repressing those in the 26 counties who sought to take practical steps towards achieving the national objective .......
(MORE LATER).

(NOTE : the crew here at '1169...' have not had a break since July 2005 - in order to catch-up with other matters , we will be taking a one-week break from this Friday , May 5th . We will make a 'holding' post during our week off in relation to the up-coming Bodenstown Commemoration . Go raibh maith agat ! John)

Tuesday, May 02, 2006

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)

Monday, May 01, 2006

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 .

Malachy McGurrin , Officer Commanding of the Official IRA in the North , was fully aware that British soldier Ranger Best had been 'arrested' by the OIRA : following the killing , he oversaw the press release which talked about the "...slobbering moderates.. " who condemned the action . It should be noted that Malachy McGurrin was one of the people that Tomas MacGiolla complimented on taking their organisation along a more peaceful line after 1962 .

Sean Garland ordered an inquiry into the shooting of Ranger Best and Dublin wished to take disciplinary action against those involved , including shooting the Derry Officer Commanding of the OIRA : the OIRA Army Executive discussed the matter , and the motion to shoot the OC was defeated by just one vote - that of Seamus Costello's , who stated that the day the Official IRA shot one of its own for killing a British soldier would be the day he would leave the organisation .

The Stalinist Dublin leadership of the OIRA used the Ranger Best killing to call a ceasefire , but allowed members to use weapons for defence and retaliation - this 'clause' was effectively a sop to the younger members in Belfast who would have joined the PIRA if there was no military activity within the Official IRA .......
(MORE LATER).

EOGHAN HARRIS : OUT OF THE SHADOWS .
From 'MAGILL' magazine , November 1997 .
By Brenda Power .

They love : French films , John Waters , the 'Questions & Answers' RTE television programme audience , Gerry Adams on the 'Late Late Show'. Hanging around the IFC in black clothes . Nuala O Faolain , DCU journalism , Trotskyism , Feminism (" Scratch a Trot or a feminist and find a Provo... ") and RTE Radio One .

They hate : Zionism , Dana , The Daily Telegraph , Camille Paglia , Unionism , Conor Cruise O' Brien ("...a touchstone for bad politics.. ") , Rupert Murdoch , American cinematic classicism and Aristotle . 'They' are 'People With Bad Politics' , and Eoghan Harris can spot them at a glance - one small 'tic' , one gesture or smart quip and then Eoghan Harris knows , he reveals in 'Alien-script' uppercase , it's ONE OF THEM !

They are typically Dublin middle class professional types who have a series of kneejerk cliched positions on a tight core of political opinion . They are 'Sneaking Regarders' , Hush Puppy Radicals and if they join an organisation it will be a "...mosquito group.." like the International Marxist Group.......
(MORE LATER).

ORANGE JUDGE EXECUTED.......
From 'IRIS' magazine , March 1983 .
No 'By-Line' .

Responding to Bishop Cathal Daly's criticism of Irish republicanism , the IRA said - " But we pose one of these questions again so that the nationalist people , who will find it outlandish that we are the gravest threat to them in 50 years , can see who is and who is not afraid of the truth .

We ask the bishop in plain and simple layperson's language to answer the question : is the British presence , generally speaking , morally good for the nationalist people in the North ? We will see if he is as quick to answer this as he is to condemn us . " The IRA , doubtlessly not to its surprise , is still waiting for Bishop Daly's reply .

Judge William Doyle , a conscious upholder of British law in the six counties , a Diplock judge who had played his full role in railroading republican and nationalists into jail on forced 'confessions' and perjured 'evidence' , died in a carefully planned and carried out attack in the middle-class Malone suburb of South Belfast on January 16th 1983 .......
(MORE LATER).