(UPDATE : A BRIEF REPORT AND SOME PHOTOGRAPHS OF TODAYS ANTI-CENSORSHIP PICKET ON RTÉ CAN BE VIEWED HERE).
Anti-censorship picket on RTE Studios in Dublin, Saturday December 1st , 2007 , from 12 Noon to 1.30pm .

As a publicly-funded institution , RTE leaves a lot to be desired : the coverage it provides could be said to be based on the political 'prevailing winds' of the day . It has consistently and spectacularly failed to either report on what it apparently views as 'delicate' issues or will cover same in a light which is favourable to its own administration and the administration-of-the-day in Leinster House .
Regardless of the importance of the issue - whether it concerns the political situation in the north-east of this isle, the 'Shell To Sea' issue or the State Health Service (or lack of same) , RTE , it seems , will do its utmost to spare the blushes of its political colleagues and part-paymasters in Kildare Street .
With this in mind , an anti-censorship picket will be placed on the RTE Studios in Donnybrook , Dublin , on Saturday 1st December 2007 , between the hours of 12 Noon and 1.30pm . If you can't make it on the day , check-back here on this blog on the following day where we will publish a piece on how the picket went . Just don't expect it to be covered on RTE.....

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REPUBLICAN MARTYRS OF 1957.......
From 'The United Irishman' newspaper, January 1958 .

PATRICK PARLE came from Wexford Town , from where one of his friends had shown the Republican Movement a certificate of voluntary blood donation which stated : " This certificate is granted in recognition of the fact that Patrick Parle gave blood voluntarily for the benefit of others..." . That friend had added his own post script to the certificate - "...Patrick Parle gave the last drops of his blood voluntarily for the benefit of others on November 11 , 1957 , at Edentubber..."

MICHAEL WATTERS from County Louth added his blood too , to all the blood that has been spilled in Ireland so that we would be one nation and one people and one country with full control over our own affairs . He rests in the Republican Plot , Dundalk , beside his young comrades Paul Smith and Oliver Craven .

The greatest monument we can build to those seven martyrs is a free Irish Republic . The way we do it is by combining the strength of all our people to defeat an enemy with the resources of an Empire behind him and agencies of terror at his beck and call . Be proud of the risen nation and of the men and women who died for it !

[END of ' REPUBLICAN MARTYRS OF 1957']
(Next : ' Derry - A Strategy Of Neglect' , from 1983)





TOXIC WASTE IN KILL,COUNTY KILDARE .
From 'The Phoenix' magazine , May 1983.

Most of Ireland's toxic waste has been dumped into a huge quarry near Kill , County Kildare. The place is known as 'Gavins Quarry' and it covers an area of about ten acres not far off the Nass dual carriageway . The principal depositor at this site has been Willie O' Brien , who is probably the largest disposer of industrial waste in the country .

Nobody knows for certain what toxic materials have been dumped here over the past fifteen years , but they do know that Willie O' Brien has been disposing of most of the toxic effluent from the principal chemical manufacturers in Ireland . Now , local residents are beginning to worry about the danger of living in the lee of this huge depository of poison . In March 1983 , after two years of court proceedings , Kildare County Council finally achieved the closure of the dump at Gavin's Quarry , Arthurstown , Kill , when a Patrick Gavin lost his appeal against a previous court order to close the pit .

The court heard the details of a report commissioned by the County Council from An Foras Forbartha which disclosed that traces of highly toxic chromium , cyanide and other heavy metals were found on the site . Properties up to a half-mile from the core of the pit were affected by serious pollution . Any further dumping of any kind would endanger local water supplies and rivers as the dump at this stage was full , the court was told.......
(MORE LATER).





REPUBLICAN MOURNERS DEFEAT RUC.......
Between December 1983 and May 1987 , over 25 republican or nationalist funerals were systematically attacked by the RUC as a matter of deliberate British policy . The objective was to drive mourners off the streets so that later Britain could claim dwindling support for republicanism as 'evidenced' by the small numbers attending IRA funerals . As Jane Plunkett reports , the opposite happened . More and more people came out to defend the remains of republican dead , the RUC were exposed as being as brutal and sectarian as ever , and these two factors , combined with damaging international news coverage , eventually forced the British government to reverse its policy of attacking republican funerals .
From 'IRIS' magazine , October 1987.

The British government desperately wanted to stamp their 'authority' on nationalist areas , to make nationalists feel powerless against the might of the imperial state and thus to demoralise the struggle . That strategy was also to result in the murderous attack on the 1984 internment march , when John Downes was killed by a plastic bullet , in unprecedented heavy RUC shows of strength at recent Bloody Sunday commemorations in Derry and in restrictions , via the new Public Order Order, on rights to protest .

It had its counterpart too in the now-discredited use of paid-perjurers which aimed to demoralise nationalists by the de facto reintroduction of internment without trial and by the spreading of 'black propaganda' about the PIRA . So , in accordance with the new British strategy , there began to be a change in the situation which had held from the early 1970's , whereby the right of the bereaved , even in war , to bury their dead with dignity , was recognised by the PIRA and , on the whole , by the crown forces .

As late as November 1982 , at the funerals in Lurgan of PIRA Volunteers Gervase McKerr , Sean Burns and Eugene Toman, the RUC were nowhere in sight as a ten-member PIRA Colour Party in battledress flanked their comrades' coffins , or later when a Volunteer fired a single shot in tribute . That funeral service passed off peacefully and with dignity , as did a Republican funeral a little over one year later which passed an RUC Barracks with no attempted interference from those inside the structure.......
(MORE LATER).

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Anti-censorship picket on RTE Studios in Dublin, Saturday December 1st , 2007 , from 12 Noon to 1.30pm .

As a publicly-funded institution , RTE leaves a lot to be desired : the coverage it provides could be said to be based on the political 'prevailing winds' of the day . It has consistently and spectacularly failed to either report on what it apparently views as 'delicate' issues or will cover same in a light which is favourable to its own administration and the administration-of-the-day in Leinster House .
Regardless of the importance of the issue - whether it concerns the political situation in the north-east of this isle, the 'Shell To Sea' issue or the State Health Service (or lack of same) , RTE , it seems , will do its utmost to spare the blushes of its political colleagues and part-paymasters in Kildare Street .
With this in mind , an anti-censorship picket will be placed on the RTE Studios in Donnybrook , Dublin , on Saturday 1st December 2007 , between the hours of 12 Noon and 1.30pm . If you can't make it on the day , check-back here on this blog on the following day where we will publish a piece on how the picket went . Just don't expect it to be covered on RTE.....

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REPUBLICAN MARTYRS OF 1957.......
From 'The United Irishman' newspaper, January 1958 .

PAUL SMITH was from Bessbrook , County Armagh , and he knew that force of British arms have kept our country divided and unfree . He knew that only by force of Irish arms could Ireland be restored to her rightful owners , the Irish people . He died at Edentubber on November 11 , 1957 .

OLIVER CRAVEN was from Newry , County Down and , out of his own experience , he knew that by force of arms the usurper maintains his rule in our land and that there was no other way to win independence for our nation . He gave his life at Edentubber on November 11 , 1957 .

GEORGE KEEGAN was from Enniscorthy , County Wexford . He followed the path his father had trod 40 years before him , and he followed it through all the way to his death at lonely Edentubber , overlooking the Gap of the North on November 11 , 1957 . He died for the Republican faith which once united Wexford and the North in the days of William Orr and Fr. John Murphy.......
(MORE LATER).





KING OF THE YUPPIE HEARTLAND....... !

Dessie O'Malley would expect to draw his support almost exclusively from middle-class areas , but if he is to succeed in getting the twenty seats he hopes for that support base would also have to include working-class areas , especially in Dublin . On the evidence of one day spent with PD leader O'Malley ,that working-class support is unlikely to be forthcoming.
From 'IN DUBLIN' ELECTION SPECIAL , 1987.
By Derek Dunne.

In Kilbarrack , Dublin , Dessie delivers himself , in response to a question , of the opinion that he is against capital punishment . PD party workers are good on the ground here , and a good crowd is out and about . Dessie tells all that coalition is now a possibility , and states that whether the PD's enter into such an arrangement or not "will depend..." , but he doesn't say on what it will 'depend' .

A woman replies that she will not vote for him on that 'depend' answer , while another voter did not like the PD policies on privatisation . And so on it goes . As he prepares for his next stop , Dessie says - once more - that if he was doing the whole election again , he would run more candidates .
[END of 'KING OF THE YUPPIE HEARTLAND']
(Next : 'TOXIC WASTE IN KILL , COUNTY KILDARE' - from 1983)




REPUBLICAN MOURNERS DEFEAT RUC.......
Between December 1983 and May 1987 , over 25 republican or nationalist funerals were systematically attacked by the RUC as a matter of deliberate British policy . The objective was to drive mourners off the streets so that later Britain could claim dwindling support for republicanism as 'evidenced' by the small numbers attending IRA funerals . As Jane Plunkett reports , the opposite happened . More and more people came out to defend the remains of republican dead , the RUC were exposed as being as brutal and sectarian as ever , and these two factors , combined with damaging international news coverage , eventually forced the British government to reverse its policy of attacking republican funerals .
From 'IRIS' magazine , October 1987.

For many nationalists , the RUC's use of plastic bullets between the years 1983 and 1986 was reminiscent of the way they were used during the 1981 hunger-strike* (* 29,665 fired) , when they were fired at the heads of people taking part in street-corner Rosary groups , at young children such as Julie Livingstone and Carol-Ann Kelly, and at mourners at the funeral of Joe McDonnell.

The RUC's aim at that time was to terrorise protestors off the streets and crush nationalist resistance . That was to be their futile aim , too , when attacking republican funerals .

The British government decided to systematically attack republican funerals as a direct response to the upsurge of nationalist consciousness which took place through the hunger-strike and which was expressed in October 1982 in the success of five Sinn Fein candidates in the Assembly elections. In June 1983 , Gerry Adams was elected MP for West Belfast , the first republican* ever to hold that 'honour'...... ( * '1169...'Comment - ....which philosophy he abandoned in 1986.)
(MORE LATER).

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WHERE DOES THE TIME GO....?

On A Walk Through Rebel Dublin with the Patriot and Heroine Anne Devlin and Charles Stewart Parnell ,
Charlie Kerins , Charlotte Despard, and Che Guevara , we talked ,with A Servant of the Queen , about A Compact History of Ireland .

It was a Courious Journey, this Oral History of Ireland’s Unfinished Revolution and many of the Milestones in Irish History were discussed , as we passed through Dublin Tenement Life . We had No Faith in the System , so we agreed on a Secret Map of Ireland but promised that , despite the Partition of Ireland and all of the ensuing Raids and Rallies , we would not strive for same On Another Man’s Wound....
.....see what else is available here!
Finally - in answer to the question asked at the top of this post -
keep an account of next years time with one of these -
(Front[right] and back of the RSF 2008 Calendar)
- a 2008 Republican calendar,available from here for a fiver (Euro or Sterling) !
Calendars, books, pamphlets, CD's, tapes, T-Shirts etc - all of a Republican 'flavour' - make great 'stocking fillers' and , indeed , make great presents all year round. Visit the Dublin shop at 223 Parnell Street ('phone 01-8729747) or the Belfast shop at 229 Falls Road ('phone 90319004) to make your choice .
Thanks !
Sharon.

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REPUBLICAN MARTYRS OF 1957.......
From 'The United Irishman' newspaper, January 1958 .

Sean Sabhat was from Limerick . One of the last things he wrote before going north to join his fellow-countrymen in the battle for national liberation was that " ...the time for foolish talk is past . " He died manning a machine-gun at Brookeborough in Occupied Ireland some weeks later , on January 1,1957 .

Feargal Ó hAnnluain was from Monaghan . He too died at Brookeborough in County Fermanagh (where the majority of the people want an Ireland united and free) on New Year's Day , 1957 .

(MORE LATER).





KING OF THE YUPPIE HEARTLAND....... !

Dessie O'Malley would expect to draw his support almost exclusively from middle-class areas , but if he is to succeed in getting the twenty seats he hopes for that support base would also have to include working-class areas , especially in Dublin . On the evidence of one day spent with PD leader O'Malley ,that working-class support is unlikely to be forthcoming.
From 'IN DUBLIN' ELECTION SPECIAL , 1987.
By Derek Dunne.

One of the last stops of the day is at a bakery where there are 500 workers : Mr O' Malley , however , does not meet them . Instead , he goes up to the office and is introduced to management . There are twenty-four people in the room - journalists , 'handlers' , hangers-on , 'suits' . But there is an enbarrassed silence surrounding the visit , with darting looks of ' What is he doing here..?'

At around 5.30pm , Dessie is reported as having gone home 'for a bit' . The remainder of the PD entourage is dropped off at the Marino Hotel , where the party itself was founded . The hotel boasts , amongst other things , an indoor swimming pool . A 'High Tea' is laid-on for the PD people , and it is during this that Dessie walks in - he 'has words' with one of his candidates over some personal differences , and the shouting can be heard far and wide . When he comes back to the table he looks very angry .

The working-class area of Kilbarrack is next on the agenda.......

(MORE LATER).






REPUBLICAN MOURNERS DEFEAT RUC.......
Between December 1983 and May 1987 , over 25 republican or nationalist funerals were systematically attacked by the RUC as a matter of deliberate British policy . The objective was to drive mourners off the streets so that later Britain could claim dwindling support for republicanism as 'evidenced' by the small numbers attending IRA funerals . As Jane Plunkett reports , the opposite happened . More and more people came out to defend the remains of republican dead , the RUC were exposed as being as brutal and sectarian as ever , and these two factors , combined with damaging international news coverage , eventually forced the British government to reverse its policy of attacking republican funerals .
From 'IRIS' magazine , October 1987.

Funerals became massive , intimidatory displays of British military might , with hundreds of heavily armed , riot-clad RUC men, two or more British Army helicopters and scores of armoured Land Rovers. During the burial of Volunteers Charlie Breslin and Michael and David Devine, Strabane resembled nothing so much as Red Square on May Day - except that this was a funeral . Journalists counted at least 130 RUC Land Rovers parading the streets , sent in from as far afield as Belfast .

Significantly , Finbarr McKenna's funeral was by no means the first at which plastic bullets were used . Those bullets , fired by the RUC during the funeral of Ciaran Fleming in December 1984 inflicted serious head injuries on two people , one of them a BBC Radio Foyle journalist .

In three years of attacks on funerals , many scores of nationalists have been injured by RUC batons , plastic bullets or jackboots . And the sight of scores of RUC men , plastic-bullet guns held at the ready , has been an ever-present threat.......
(MORE LATER).

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