Beannachtaí na Féile Pádraig!
We wish all our readers an Irish Blessing....
Aitheasc an Uachtaráin Ruairí Ó Brádaigh don 85ú Ard-Fheis de Shinn Féin in Óstlann an Spa , Leamhcán , Co. Atha Cliath , 21ú agus 22ú Deireadh Fómhair , 1989 /
Presidential Address of Ruairí Ó Brádaigh to the 85th Ard-Fheis of Sinn Féin in the Spa Hotel , Lucan , County Dublin , 21st and 22nd October 1989.....
" Not only did Leinster House fail to as much as raise a flag to honour the coming into being of that democratic Irish National Assembly , which re-declared the sovereign Irish Republic proclaimed in arms by the men and women of 1916 , but they totally ignored the suppression of that parliament by the British in September 1919.
If ever there was a case in history of the imperial overlord seeking to ignore the verdict of the people and to change the goalposts in the ballot-box business as soon as it became clear that the results did not suit them , this was it.
At a time when the same issue of allowing the voice of the overwhelming majority of people in South Africa to determine the Government is in the news again , and when Mr. Haughey and company see no harm in shadow-boxing with the British about certain issues over which they know they will get no satisfaction , this substitution of cheese and wine parties for serious discussion about either the French , the Irish or even the Russian revolution , is a sad reflection on the Ireland that has evolved twenty years after the Battle of the Bogside ......."
(MORE LATER).
BETRAYAL.......
The (State) Gardaí used John Corcoran (pictured) as a (P)IRA informer. They allowed him to be killed by another (P)IRA informer, and have since refused to investigate his murder*.
From 'MAGILL' magazine, Christmas Annual 1997.
By Ursula Halligan and Vincent Browne.
(* '1169...' Comment - their word, not ours.)
The gardaí advised John Corcoran's family not to talk to the media. But 'Magill' interviewed them : when John Corcoran was murdered* he left a wife , Eileen , and eight children . One daughter , Ursula , has since committed suicide. The family saw hope in April this year (1997) when Fianna Fáil's John O'Donoghue promised to have the case fully investigated if his party was returned to power after the State general election. Six months on , they're still waiting .
"We're not looking for revenge. We're looking for answers."
The weekend before John Corcoran was murdered* was one of the happiest in his 16-year-old marriage to his wife , Eileen . St Patricks Day was on a Sunday that year , and John Corcoran had taken the three youngest of their eight children into Cork City to see the parade. Monday was a Bank Holiday , and he spent the day pottering around the house doing odd jobs for Eileen and playing with the children . He seemed relaxed and contented.
On Tuesday , 19 March 1985 , John Corcoran was getting ready to go to work in the local branch of Musgraves, where he had worked for 20 years. Before he left the house , he shouted in to his wife that he would need his dinner early and his green pullover ready when he got home that night , because he was going on to a work quiz in a local hotel after he got home. Those were the last words that Eileen Corcoran heard her husband say.......
(MORE LATER).
TRADE UNIONS AND THE HUNGER-STRIKE.......From 'IRIS' magazine, November 1981.
The 'Trade Union Campaign Against Repression'(T.U.C.A.R.) Group organised the first industrial action for many years against British repression when, in protest against the killing of Brian Maguire, it led thousands of workers from West Belfast in the first anti-British repression demonstration in the city's centre since 1969.
T.U.C.A.R. lobbied extensively , in Ireland and Britain , until it was eventually absorbed in 1979 into the National H-Block/Armagh Committee campaign - of which it was a genuinely broadly-based industrial predecessor .
Following the 'Green Briar' Belfast conference of the National H-Block/Armagh Committee , in June 1979 , at which the five demands of the prisoners were launched , a number of notable trade unionists rallied to the campaign . Michael Mullen, general secretary of the largest trade union in Ireland - the ITGWU- himself an ex-political prisoner from the 1940's , headed an eminent list.......
(MORE LATER).
