On the 22nd February, 1796, an 'Insurrection Act'* for Ireland was introduced in Westminster and, on the 24th March, 1796 - 225 years ago, on this date - that piece of paper 'received the royal assent' and became 'law' :
'AN ACT MORE EFFECTUALLY TO SUPPRESS INSURRECTIONS, AND PREVENT THE DISTURBANCE OF THE PUBLIC PEACE :
Whereas traitorous insurrections have for some time past arisen in various parts of this kingdom, principally promoted and supported by persons associating under the pretended obligation of oaths unlawfully administered...be it enacted...that any person or persons who shall administer, or cause to be administered, or be present, aiding and assisting at the administering, or who shall by threats, promises, persuasions, or other undue means, cause, procure, or induce to be taken by any person or persons, upon a book, or otherwise any oath or engagement, importing to bind the person taking the same, to be of any association, brotherhood, society, or confederacy formed for seditious purposes, or to disturb the public peace, or to obey the orders or rules, or commands of any committee, or other body of men, not lawfully constituted, or the commands of any captain, leader, or commander (not appointed by his majesty, his heirs and successors) or to assemble at the desire or command of any such captain, leader, commander or committee, or of any person or persons not having lawful authority, or not to inform or given evidence against any brother, associate, confederate, or other person, or not to reveal or discover his having taken any illegal oath, or done any illegal act, or not to discover any illegal oath or engagement which may be tendered to him, or the import thereof, whether he shall take such oath, or enter into such engagement, or not, being by due course of law convicted thereof, shall be adjudged guilty of felony, and suffer death without benefit of clergy, and every person who shall take any such oath or engagement, not being thereto compelled by inevitable necessity, and being by due course of law thereof convicted, shall be adjudged guilty of felony and be transported for life...' (from here.)
In short, the 'authorities' empowered themselves to impose the death penalty (some of the other such 'Acts' replaced that penalty with 'transportation for life/penal transportation') and allowed for the political representatives of 'polite society' to declare specific districts in Ireland as "disturbed", thereby permitting curfews to be announced.
Also, trial by jury (as 'honest' as that was) was suspended and local 'law enforcers' were given full permission to search and detain any individual they wanted to.
*Overall (so far, that is) at least half-a-dozen such 'Insurrection Acts' have been imposed in Ireland by the British ; all eventually failed to obtain the objective that Westminster sought - a passive Ireland. And the British (or their proxies in Leinster House) can, if they so desire, impose another half-a-dozen similar 'Acts' in Ireland and they, too, will fail.
A passive Ireland will never exist as long as the the British continue to claim political and military jurisdiction over any part of this country.
'THE TWO-NATIONS THEORY...'
From 'The United Irishman' newspaper, June, 1955.
Act of 1920 :
The Act of 1920, which set up the Stormont Parliament, was a purely British Act passed in a British Parliament - Westminster - by British votes, with not a single Irish representative having voted for it.
A separate parliament for the Six Counties was never demanded by the people of those counties, their press or their political leaders. When it became clear to British politicians that the Irish national demand could not much longer be resisted, the Act of 1920 was passed with the object of giving the minority a privileged position.
Pressure From Without :
From this brief summary of the origin of the Stormont Parliament it is clear that the parliament is not a national parliament in any real sense. National parliaments in all countries and at all times have come into being in response to dynamic forces acting from within. The Belfast Parliament is probably the only assembly in the world which owes its existence to an attitude of negation and to pressure from without.
Such a parliament may express a mood, a temper, a prejudice, a fear or a denial, but it certainly is not the expression of a national will.
(END of 'The Two-Nations Theory' ; NEXT - 'Reflection', from the same source.)
ON THIS DATE (24TH MARCH) 101 YEARS AGO : BRITISH SPY EXECUTED BY 'THE SQUAD'.
From 'Hansard' : 'Mr. IRVING asked the Chief Secretary for Ireland whether the man who was shot in Exchequer Street, Dublin, on the 24th instant, was identified by the police as bearing the name of Molloy ; whether, in fact, this name was correct ; whether there was any deliberate concealment of the real name ; if so, can he state the reason ; and whether the man had at one time been in the Dublin Metropolitan Police?'
Mr. MACPHERSON (replied) - 'This man was identified by the military authorities as Bryan Fergus Molloy, under which name he enlisted, and, as far as is known, this was his correct name. He was at no time a member of the Dublin Metropolitan Police...' (from here.)
Bryan Fergus Molloy aka Frederick McNulty was a British intelligence operative in Dublin who was placed there by Westminster to locate Collins or other IRA operatives ; he attempted to integrate himself with the Republican Movement by offering to procure weapons for use against the British but his cover was blown when the IRA's people in Dublin Castle warned them about Molly/McNulty's true intentions.
On the 24th March, 1920, he was located by the IRA and was executed - he was followed by at least three IRA members and was shot to death, in broad daylight, on South William Street in Dublin, by members of 'The Squad'.
'The shooting of the mysterious Bryan Fergus Molloy, a suspected spy who had been trying to make contact with the rebels, took place on the 24th of March, 1920. The operation didn't go smoothly. Passersby tried to detain the assassins and a cyclist blocked one gunman's getaway outside St. Andrew’s Church...the identity of the young spy may be that of Frederick Vernon Maximilian McNulty, a Manchester-born son of Irish parents with a chequered career in the British Army. Having been discharged from the Army Service Corps in 1914 for being underage, McNulty joined the RAF in 1917 before apparently deserting the following year to re-join the ASC under the assumed name, B.F. Molloy...' (from here.)
'Oh I am the man, the slimey man, that listens at yer door,
For I belong to the Special Branch and that's what I'm paid for.
If you're singing songs of protest or against repressive law,
I'll put yer name in me little black book,
And I'll see that yer done for...'
NO RIGHT OF APPEAL...
Why the media consensus on a broad range of issues is increasingly disturbing.
By John Drennan.
From 'Magill' Annual, 2002.
But things began to change again after the arrival of the 'Appeasement Process' ; our restoration to the status of being members of the 'Fourth Estate' - such notions, begob! - brought new responsibilities.
Once again it was a case of 'forget about the facts, Ma'am, the age of moral equivalence has arrived' and, in this brave new world, the duty of the 'good journalist' was to always keep the sunny side up. If the IRA had to be coaxed into the political process, so be it. And if the right stick was needed to keep those hard-line democrats of the UUP on the right road, then flay away - and give 'em plenty of it.
The problem with the journalism of consensus, whether it concerns the North of Ireland, striking teachers, or the Church, is that it wears the mask of rebelliousness whilst hiding the frozen grimace of intolerance underneath.
It is seen as 'responsible' of the good bourgeois liberal hack to root out and punish the non-house-trained journalist who defecates on the carpet of consensus. All the dissidents have to go. Only then would the field be open for the liberal bourgeois 'sociology in UCD' autocracy to reform the greatest problem of all - Fianna Fáil... (MORE LATER.)
ON THIS DATE (24TH MARCH) 98 YEARS AGO : DUBLIN IRA MEMBER SHOT DEAD BY STATERS.
On the 24th March, 1923 - 98 years ago on this date - the two republican operatives placed a bomb at the front door of the cinema. As they were leaving the premises, the device detonated, setting the doors on fire. The flames and smoke were noticed almost immediately by a Free State Army patrol which attempted to intervene ; the two IRA men opened fire on the Staters in an attempt to make good their escape but, as they reached near-by North Earl Street, one of the men, Patrick O'Brien, IRA First Dublin Battalion, was shot dead.
However, less than one month later, he was 'arrested' in Dublin by the Staters and had eleven bullets fired into him, in the Drumcondra/Whitehall part of the capital.
His girlfriend, who first tried to find him in one of the prisons, was told to enquire at Oriel House (CID headquarters), where she was told to "try the morgue".
His body was eventually found in a ditch in Drumcondra. He is buried in the family grave in Killodiernan Graveyard, Puckane, in his native County of Tipperary.
Also, a brief mention here, for the record, of an IRA man, William Walsh, from the Coombe, in Dublin who, on the 24th March in 1923, was badly wounded during an ambush at Whitehall, Dublin of a Free State troop lorry. He presented himself to the Mater Hospital but died that night. Unfortunately, we are unable to furnish more information about that brave individual as, it seems, history has forgotten him. As we said, just a name-check here of the man, for the record.
'OUR STEWARDSHIP...'
'The United Irishman' newspaper became, therefore, a considerable menace to British rule in Ireland and had to be put down. Last month, and the preceeding month, however, the steady and consistent increase in the sales of the paper has been maintained, and in the Six Counties a spark has been kindled that is not likely to be extinguished even if there is not another copy of 'The United Irishman' seen there and, if I know our Northerners, an edict of Mr. Hanna will not prevent them from reading the newspaper.
To the pioneers who set out 'to blot out the handwriting that was against us' we raise our hats ; to the disinterested and generous who answered that ininial appeal - "funds are ungently needed" - we give our heartfelt thanks ; to the people of the North we say "hold on!", it isn't a forlorn hope or a lost cause, for the men and women of the South respond, they do not say with the politicians 'we can see no solution' ; they organise and work so that together we can, in the name of God, re-enthrone the Irish Republic.
(END of 'Our Stewardship' ; NEXT - 'Comments', from the same source.)
ON THIS DATE (24TH MARCH) 99 YEARS AGO : McMAHON FAMILY WIPED-OUT BY BRITISH MURDER GANG.
On 23rd March 1922, USC officers Thomas Cunningham, aged 22, and William Cairnside, aged 21, were patrolling along Great Victoria Street when they were approached by IRA gunmen on foot who shot them both dead at close range. This event would provoke a ferocious response which would be carried out in a cool, calm and exceptionally cold manner. Initially, two innocent Catholics were shot dead in the Short Strand. However, much worse was to come for the Nationalist community.
At 1am on the morning of 24th March a worksite at Carlisle Circus was approached by two men in Police uniform. A City council volunteer was guarding it, and he was persuaded by these Policemen to hand over his sledgehammer. These two men met up with three others at the grounds of a large local residence known as Bruce’s Demesne and proceeded towards the large Victorian home where the McMahon family were resident. The assailants hammered at the front door, then smashed the glass panel enabling them to open the locks and break through a secondary door which led to the hallway. Owen and his wife Eliza were awakened by this commotion and attempted to run downstairs when both were confronted by a man in Police uniform.
The male members of the McMahon family and their lodger were taken into the downstairs living room whilst the females, who included Owens wife Eliza, daughter Lily and niece Mary, were ushered into the first-floor drawing-room. The male members of the family were told abruptly by the gang to say their prayers before firing was commenced. Frank McMahon aged 24; Patrick McMahon aged 25 and Thomas McMahon aged just 15 were killed almost instantaneously. Edward McKinney, their lodger, aged 25, was also killed.
Owen McMahon would die in hospital a few hours later. His son Bernard would die on 2nd April meaning only John aged 30 and Michael aged 12 survived. Michael in fact had a lucky escape hiding under the dining table and then the sofa before being found by neighbours in a "most frightful state".
The female members of the family tried to raise the alarm by screaming murder but by the time help arrived the massacre was over. Indeed an RIC patrol was close by and quickly on the scene. The scene they encountered was indescribable. The gang responsible had made a quick getaway into the darkness from whence they came...' (from here.)
The father, Owen McMahon, was shot in the abdomen and the head, Patrick was shot in the head, chest and abdomen, Frank was shot in the chest and the face, Bernard was shot in the spinal cord and lung, Thomas was shot in the head and chest and the family lodger, Edward McKinney, was shot in the lungs and abdomen.
The political administration that was responsible, in the first instance, for that outrage - Westminster - is still 'calling the shots', literally, in that part of Ireland, and the foot soldiers in their 'police force' - albeit it with a new name and uniform - are still on the ground there. And both entities remain capable of the atrocities that they inflicted, between them, on the McMahon family.
The only way to remove their ability to do something like that again is to remove them, politically and militarily, from Ireland.
Thanks for reading,
Sharon.
