" DON'T LET THEM BREAK YOU , LOVE " .......
First published in the booklet ' STRIP SEARCHES IN ARMAGH JAIL' , produced , in February 1984 , by 'The London Armagh Group' .
I thought of the women waiting for me on the prison wing ; they had gone through this . I thought of the Blanket Men of Long Kesh - they had been forced to remain naked for five years .
I thought of my sister , sixteen years of age , and dreaded this ever happening to her . I thought of my mother's face on the morning of my arrest , trying so hard not to cry , and her shouts of support - " Don't let them break you , love... " and " Be strong..." And I thought of her face that morning in the court - ashen , aged ; prepared to run to Armagh Prison for the next decade , just as she had run to various jails to visit my father and brother .
And I thought of all the women , striving everywhere to achieve their freedom . Aye ! I thought of a lot of things - anything to block out what was happening to me . I was stripped naked to confront me with their 'control' , to enforce on me my own vulnerability , to degrade me . But they were not going to succeed .
I saw my nakedness as an indictment against them - they thought my womenhood would serve to help defeat me . They did not understand that the strength of ideals cannot be stripped from one's mind .......
(MORE LATER).
THE HEROIC PRISON STRUGGLE .......
1981 was dominated by the grim and heroic struggle of Republican prisoners for political recognition - which they undoubtedly received from millions all over the world , yet which few governments , least of all London or Dublin , would grant them .
From 'AP/RN' , 31st December 1981 .
By Teresa Kelly .
After two postponements , the Free State government had fixed a date for general elections in that jurisdiction ; it was to be June 11th , 1981 . H-Block activists actively campaigned for nine prisoners , four of them on hunger-strike at that time : Joe McDonnell , Kevin Lynch , Martin Hurson and Kieran Doherty - and five other prisoners , Mairead Farrell , Tony O'Hara , Tom McAllister , Sean McKenna and Paddy Agnew .
Proving all the pundits wrong , the prisoners polled extremely well , and two were elected : Kiernan Doherty for the Cavan/Monaghan constituency , with 15 per cent first preference votes , and Paddy Agnew for Louth with 18 per cent first preference votes . These two seats prevented the Charles Haughey administration from gaining a majority in Leinster House , and a Fine Gael-Labour coalition took over , with Garret Fitzgerald as 'premier' .
However , in spite of the widespread support for the prisoners' demands in the twenty-six counties , in spite of the fact that a sizeable fraction of that support was translated into votes , the pressure was not sufficient to force an intervention by the Fine Gael/Labour administration in favour of the prisoners . Since the beginning of June 1981 , the Irish Commission for Justice and Peace , composed mainly of Catholic clerics , middle-class politicians , academics , lawyers and other 'pillars of the Establishment' , had begun to make noises signifying to the prisoners and the British government that it saw a role for itself in mediating between the two parties .
After a tentative statement on what they saw as necessary prison reforms to resolve the issue , a statement which the British government ignored and which the prisoners studied and answered two weeks later , the Commission started a series of meetings with various political parties , hunger-strikers' relatives , and the National H-Block/Armagh Committee .......
(MORE LATER).
IN THE SHADOW OF A GUNMAN .......
The aspirations of SINN FEIN THE WORKERS PARTY towards socialist respectability are undermined by the continued military operations of the OFFICIAL IRA and that Party's own ideoligical contortions .
From ' MAGILL' magazine , April 1982 .
By Vincent Browne.
The Ardmonagh Gardens eviction :
The Official IRA moved another family into a house in which Seamus Smith and his family were in the process of moving in to : the PIRA had 'secured' the previously empty house for the Smith family . The OIRA made it clear that if any attempt were made to dislodge the second family , those responsible would have to deal with the Official IRA . One of the men taking part was the brother of one of the most prominent members of the 'Republican Clubs' in Belfast .
[End of 'Evictions' section.]
The Official IRA has less than 50 operatives in Belfast : these are organised into Units based around the drinking Clubs in Cyprus Street in the Lower Falls area , in New Lodge Road , in the Markets , in the Short Strand , in Turf Lodge and in Bawnmore . The OIRA Officer Commanding in Belfast until recently was a very prominent figure who has apparently stepped aside , with his place taken by a person who is not significantly less prominent . The Official IRA is known to have members in the Craigavon area . On a national level it is not clear what re-organisation has taken place but it is a certainty that the OIRA Chief of Staff is a member of SFWP ; so too is the OIRA Finance Officer and the OIRA Adjutant General . The Dublin Unit Officer Commanding is also a member of SFWP .
There are about 30 active members on call in the Dublin area ; these are engaged almost exclusively in robberies . Some of these are not members of SFWP or at least deny membership . By all accounts the organisation is well armed , with Russian Kalashnikov AK 47 carbines and sophisticated 357 Magnum revolvers .......
(MORE LATER).
Tuesday, November 29, 2005
" DON'T LET THEM BREAK YOU , LOVE " .......
First published in the booklet ' STRIP SEARCHES IN ARMAGH JAIL' , produced , in February 1984 , by 'The London Armagh Group' .
I was arrested under the infamous 'Section 12 of the PTA' and then 'stitched-up' by the British 'Paid Perjurer' System . I maintained my silence , knowing that within the week I would join those women whose very existence denies every atrocity inflicted by their oppressors . I was charged , and taken from the court to Armagh .
I remember a tremendous feeling of unreality about my arrival in Armagh Jail ; detached , I entered the prison , thinking wryly of my next forthcoming encounter with British rule : photographed , weighed , then brought into the 'reception room' where eight screws were present , standing silently , waiting , hoping to see another one 'break' . Then the dreaded words - " RIGHT ! STRIP ! "
I was hustled into a small cubicle and slowly began to undo the buttons of my shirt .... " This can't be happening to me ..it can't...." - but of course it could . Item by item , I removed my clothes , each article taken from me and scrutinised . I knew there was no need to search me - I had been in custody for over a week , I had'nt seen one friendly face or heard one word of kindness since 'leaving' the house : dragged out , shoeless and coatless , by a mixed force of British troops and RUC men .
As I stood there naked , I grasped my ideals to my heart . They were'nt going to succeed . I would NOT break .......
(MORE LATER).
THE HEROIC PRISON STRUGGLE .......
1981 was dominated by the grim and heroic struggle of Republican prisoners for political recognition - which they undoubtedly received from millions all over the world , yet which few governments , least of all London or Dublin , would grant them .
From 'AP/RN' , 31st December 1981 .
By Teresa Kelly .
Over forty thousand copies of 'The Writings Of Bobby Sands' and 'The Diary Of Bobby Sands' were sold through the campaign : extracts were quoted in the world press . Sentences appeared on the walls of Belfast and Derry , and the lark has now become the symbol of the jailed freedom fighters . Bobby Sands gave the prisoners a voice .
Francis Hughes died on May 12th 1981 after fifty-nine days on hunger-strike : Raymond McCreesh and Patsy O'Hara died on May 21st 1981 after sixty-one days on hunger-strike . huge crowds of mourners attended their funerals , pickets were organised all over Ireland , mock coffins were carried by thousands of protestors to British embassies or consulates all over Europe , in America , Australia , New Zealand ; vigils and pickets were organised in Britain .
On May 23rd 1981 , local elections took place in the Six Counties and , although Sinn Fein did not field any candidates , in Belfast , two IRSP and two 'People's Democracy' candidates , standing on anti-H-Block manifestos , were elected to the city council . Gerry Fitt , who had despicably sided with Margaret Thatcher on the prison issue , lost the seat which he had held for twenty-three years . Paddy Devlin scraped through on the last count .
The 'Irish Independence Party' , which had publicly supported the prisoners demands , gained twenty-one seats , an increase of eleven .......
(MORE LATER).
IN THE SHADOW OF A GUNMAN .......
The aspirations of SINN FEIN THE WORKERS PARTY towards socialist respectability are undermined by the continued military operations of the OFFICIAL IRA and that Party's own ideoligical contortions .
From ' MAGILL' magazine , April 1982 .
By Vincent Browne.
The Official IRA is still very visible in Belfast as the incident in Ardmonagh Gardens on January 29 this year (1982) shows : this incident occurred in the Turf Lodge area of Belfast , when about 20 members of the Official IRA took part in an eviction of a family from a house : the OIRA members carried rifles and short arms openly on the street in broad daylight and they pursued a man in a manner that suggested that they intended to cause him serious injury at least .
The incident started when members of Provisional Sinn Fein (actually probably PIRA members) went around to families living in flats in Ardmonagh Gardens , asking if any of them would like to move into a house which was about to become vacant . A Seamus Smith said that he would like to move his wife and three young children in , and this was agreed . A few days later he started cleaning the vacant house and began some re-decoration , and moved some of the furniture from his flat into the house . A knock came to the door of the house on the evening of Thursday , January 28 1982 and , when he answered it , there were two men standing on the doorstep with their hands inside their coats , suggesting that they were armed .
They said to him - " You had better be out of here tomorrow at six o' clock or you're going to be shot . " They said they were from the Official IRA but he did'nt recognise either of them . Naturally frightened by the visit , he approached the local PIRA and was told later that night that they (the Provos) had been in touch with the Official IRA and that the matter had been sorted out - that he could continue moving into the house . The following evening at around six o' clock (Friday , January 29 , 1982 : the second day of the recent general election campaign) , Seamus Smith left the house to go across the road for his tea to his mother-in-law's home ; immediately after he did so he was informed by a neighbour that armed men had broken into the house . Two Ford vans had driven into Ardmonagh Gardens and about twenty men had got out ; about six of them held rifles and several others were carrying short arms .
These men effectively took over the street , manning corners , standing in the centre of the road and even taking up positions in the fields at the back of the street : three of them dashed into the flats where Seamus Smith and his family had lived and smashed down the front door and then kicked in the sitting-room sliding door . Neither Smith nor any of his family were there , so the men left .......
(MORE LATER).
First published in the booklet ' STRIP SEARCHES IN ARMAGH JAIL' , produced , in February 1984 , by 'The London Armagh Group' .
I was arrested under the infamous 'Section 12 of the PTA' and then 'stitched-up' by the British 'Paid Perjurer' System . I maintained my silence , knowing that within the week I would join those women whose very existence denies every atrocity inflicted by their oppressors . I was charged , and taken from the court to Armagh .
I remember a tremendous feeling of unreality about my arrival in Armagh Jail ; detached , I entered the prison , thinking wryly of my next forthcoming encounter with British rule : photographed , weighed , then brought into the 'reception room' where eight screws were present , standing silently , waiting , hoping to see another one 'break' . Then the dreaded words - " RIGHT ! STRIP ! "
I was hustled into a small cubicle and slowly began to undo the buttons of my shirt .... " This can't be happening to me ..it can't...." - but of course it could . Item by item , I removed my clothes , each article taken from me and scrutinised . I knew there was no need to search me - I had been in custody for over a week , I had'nt seen one friendly face or heard one word of kindness since 'leaving' the house : dragged out , shoeless and coatless , by a mixed force of British troops and RUC men .
As I stood there naked , I grasped my ideals to my heart . They were'nt going to succeed . I would NOT break .......
(MORE LATER).
THE HEROIC PRISON STRUGGLE .......
1981 was dominated by the grim and heroic struggle of Republican prisoners for political recognition - which they undoubtedly received from millions all over the world , yet which few governments , least of all London or Dublin , would grant them .
From 'AP/RN' , 31st December 1981 .
By Teresa Kelly .
Over forty thousand copies of 'The Writings Of Bobby Sands' and 'The Diary Of Bobby Sands' were sold through the campaign : extracts were quoted in the world press . Sentences appeared on the walls of Belfast and Derry , and the lark has now become the symbol of the jailed freedom fighters . Bobby Sands gave the prisoners a voice .
Francis Hughes died on May 12th 1981 after fifty-nine days on hunger-strike : Raymond McCreesh and Patsy O'Hara died on May 21st 1981 after sixty-one days on hunger-strike . huge crowds of mourners attended their funerals , pickets were organised all over Ireland , mock coffins were carried by thousands of protestors to British embassies or consulates all over Europe , in America , Australia , New Zealand ; vigils and pickets were organised in Britain .
On May 23rd 1981 , local elections took place in the Six Counties and , although Sinn Fein did not field any candidates , in Belfast , two IRSP and two 'People's Democracy' candidates , standing on anti-H-Block manifestos , were elected to the city council . Gerry Fitt , who had despicably sided with Margaret Thatcher on the prison issue , lost the seat which he had held for twenty-three years . Paddy Devlin scraped through on the last count .
The 'Irish Independence Party' , which had publicly supported the prisoners demands , gained twenty-one seats , an increase of eleven .......
(MORE LATER).
IN THE SHADOW OF A GUNMAN .......
The aspirations of SINN FEIN THE WORKERS PARTY towards socialist respectability are undermined by the continued military operations of the OFFICIAL IRA and that Party's own ideoligical contortions .
From ' MAGILL' magazine , April 1982 .
By Vincent Browne.
The Official IRA is still very visible in Belfast as the incident in Ardmonagh Gardens on January 29 this year (1982) shows : this incident occurred in the Turf Lodge area of Belfast , when about 20 members of the Official IRA took part in an eviction of a family from a house : the OIRA members carried rifles and short arms openly on the street in broad daylight and they pursued a man in a manner that suggested that they intended to cause him serious injury at least .
The incident started when members of Provisional Sinn Fein (actually probably PIRA members) went around to families living in flats in Ardmonagh Gardens , asking if any of them would like to move into a house which was about to become vacant . A Seamus Smith said that he would like to move his wife and three young children in , and this was agreed . A few days later he started cleaning the vacant house and began some re-decoration , and moved some of the furniture from his flat into the house . A knock came to the door of the house on the evening of Thursday , January 28 1982 and , when he answered it , there were two men standing on the doorstep with their hands inside their coats , suggesting that they were armed .
They said to him - " You had better be out of here tomorrow at six o' clock or you're going to be shot . " They said they were from the Official IRA but he did'nt recognise either of them . Naturally frightened by the visit , he approached the local PIRA and was told later that night that they (the Provos) had been in touch with the Official IRA and that the matter had been sorted out - that he could continue moving into the house . The following evening at around six o' clock (Friday , January 29 , 1982 : the second day of the recent general election campaign) , Seamus Smith left the house to go across the road for his tea to his mother-in-law's home ; immediately after he did so he was informed by a neighbour that armed men had broken into the house . Two Ford vans had driven into Ardmonagh Gardens and about twenty men had got out ; about six of them held rifles and several others were carrying short arms .
These men effectively took over the street , manning corners , standing in the centre of the road and even taking up positions in the fields at the back of the street : three of them dashed into the flats where Seamus Smith and his family had lived and smashed down the front door and then kicked in the sitting-room sliding door . Neither Smith nor any of his family were there , so the men left .......
(MORE LATER).
Monday, November 28, 2005
" DON'T LET THEM BREAK YOU , LOVE " .......
First published in the booklet ' STRIP SEARCHES IN ARMAGH JAIL' , produced , in February 1984 , by 'The London Armagh Group' .
My first arrest set a precedent for the next few years of my life : every time I encountered a British Army foot patrol I was searched . My demands for the search to be carried out by a female British soldier always ended with my arrest . I was forced to leave school after being shot , and was arrested when I left hospital and told not to go to court or ' I'd get it right in the head the next time' . I was at this stage seventeen years of age .
Eventually , a few months ago , the British forces of occupation arrested me at 5.30 in the morning . I was informed that I was being arrested under the infamous 'Section 12 of the PTA' and was taken to Castlereagh Interrogation Centre . There followed seven days of repeated interrogations by Special Branch detectives : I was told I could end my ordeal by 'picking' a charge , making a statement , such as - " At an unspecified time , on an unspecified date , I was in possession [of a weapon] at an unspecified place.." 'Evidence' such as dates , times and places are trivialities in the Special Diplock Courts .
Your guilt is not established at your trial . Mine was established at birth . I was Catholic . Worse , I was a Republican . I refused to make any statements , I refused to speak one word , from my arrest . Four days later I became another victim of the Paid Perjurer System - a man 'identified' me as being a Republican activist ; they told me they knew I was innocent of the charges but that they were delighted at this opportunity to 'stitch me up' .......
(MORE LATER).
THE HEROIC PRISON STRUGGLE .......
1981 was dominated by the grim and heroic struggle of Republican prisoners for political recognition - which they undoubtedly received from millions all over the world , yet which few governments , least of all London or Dublin , would grant them .
From 'AP/RN' , 31st December 1981 .
By Teresa Kelly .
From April 1981 , seven people were killed by plastic bullets - 3 children and 4 adults : none of them taking part in a riot . Several hundreds were injured and required hospital treatment , with injuries mostly to the head or chest , causing in some cases paralysis or blindness .
The beleaguered nationalist people were to experience in a few months the death of ten hunger-strikers , and of many more on the streets of the occupied Six Counties , callous British disregard for their democratic voice , and the closing of ranks of the Irish 'establishment' behind the British government .
Bobby Sands' remains were carried on Thursday 7th May 1981 from his Twinbrook home in Belfast to the Republican Plot in Belfast's Milltown cemetery , flanked by a huge crowd . Estimates ranged from fifty to one-hundred thousand people .
Through his sixty-six days on hunger-strike , Bobby Sands had become a household name , and his literary talent contributed in no little way to making the world understand what kind of people the British were keeping behind bars in the occupied Six Counties .......
(MORE LATER).
IN THE SHADOW OF A GUNMAN .......
The aspirations of SINN FEIN THE WORKERS PARTY towards socialist respectability are undermined by the continued military operations of the OFFICIAL IRA and that Party's own ideoligical contortions .
From ' MAGILL' magazine , April 1982 .
By Vincent Browne.
On many building sites 'lump labour' is employed on a contractual basis ; the firms which provide this contracted lump labour are provided with tax exemption forms by the authorities , which means that workers do not pay PAYE (ie 'Pay As You Earn' : income tax stopped at source on a weekly basis) but rather their tax contributions are paid on an annual basis . The scope for abuse is considerable and this is exploited by paramilitary organisations all over the North .
The building sites on which the paramilitaries can conduct these rackets obviously can be only in those areas where they have a measure of control ; thus , for the Official IRA , the building sites where they operate the tax exemption rackets are in the Lower Falls , The Markets , Twinbrook and Bawnmore areas of Belfast . Actually their area of influence has diminished recently with the defection of one of their major racketeers to the IRSP .
When these rackets were working well for the Official IRA it was estimated that they were 'earning' up to £3,000 per week from them . They also got involved in another and more 'exotic' form of racketeering : the 'massage parlour' business . Up to about two years ago they were running three 'massage parlours' in Belfast ; one of these , incredibly , was run in conjunction with the UVF but this was closed down after a disagreement between the two organisations - the UVF and the Official IRA often co-operated in recent years and , reportedly , exchanged information .
Another of those 'parlours' was firebombed by the Provos and a third was closed down by the RUC . One of the candidates for Sinn Fein the Workers Party in the local elections of May last year was convicted of running brothels in the Ormeau Road area of Belfast .......
(MORE LATER).
First published in the booklet ' STRIP SEARCHES IN ARMAGH JAIL' , produced , in February 1984 , by 'The London Armagh Group' .
My first arrest set a precedent for the next few years of my life : every time I encountered a British Army foot patrol I was searched . My demands for the search to be carried out by a female British soldier always ended with my arrest . I was forced to leave school after being shot , and was arrested when I left hospital and told not to go to court or ' I'd get it right in the head the next time' . I was at this stage seventeen years of age .
Eventually , a few months ago , the British forces of occupation arrested me at 5.30 in the morning . I was informed that I was being arrested under the infamous 'Section 12 of the PTA' and was taken to Castlereagh Interrogation Centre . There followed seven days of repeated interrogations by Special Branch detectives : I was told I could end my ordeal by 'picking' a charge , making a statement , such as - " At an unspecified time , on an unspecified date , I was in possession [of a weapon] at an unspecified place.." 'Evidence' such as dates , times and places are trivialities in the Special Diplock Courts .
Your guilt is not established at your trial . Mine was established at birth . I was Catholic . Worse , I was a Republican . I refused to make any statements , I refused to speak one word , from my arrest . Four days later I became another victim of the Paid Perjurer System - a man 'identified' me as being a Republican activist ; they told me they knew I was innocent of the charges but that they were delighted at this opportunity to 'stitch me up' .......
(MORE LATER).
THE HEROIC PRISON STRUGGLE .......
1981 was dominated by the grim and heroic struggle of Republican prisoners for political recognition - which they undoubtedly received from millions all over the world , yet which few governments , least of all London or Dublin , would grant them .
From 'AP/RN' , 31st December 1981 .
By Teresa Kelly .
From April 1981 , seven people were killed by plastic bullets - 3 children and 4 adults : none of them taking part in a riot . Several hundreds were injured and required hospital treatment , with injuries mostly to the head or chest , causing in some cases paralysis or blindness .
The beleaguered nationalist people were to experience in a few months the death of ten hunger-strikers , and of many more on the streets of the occupied Six Counties , callous British disregard for their democratic voice , and the closing of ranks of the Irish 'establishment' behind the British government .
Bobby Sands' remains were carried on Thursday 7th May 1981 from his Twinbrook home in Belfast to the Republican Plot in Belfast's Milltown cemetery , flanked by a huge crowd . Estimates ranged from fifty to one-hundred thousand people .
Through his sixty-six days on hunger-strike , Bobby Sands had become a household name , and his literary talent contributed in no little way to making the world understand what kind of people the British were keeping behind bars in the occupied Six Counties .......
(MORE LATER).
IN THE SHADOW OF A GUNMAN .......
The aspirations of SINN FEIN THE WORKERS PARTY towards socialist respectability are undermined by the continued military operations of the OFFICIAL IRA and that Party's own ideoligical contortions .
From ' MAGILL' magazine , April 1982 .
By Vincent Browne.
On many building sites 'lump labour' is employed on a contractual basis ; the firms which provide this contracted lump labour are provided with tax exemption forms by the authorities , which means that workers do not pay PAYE (ie 'Pay As You Earn' : income tax stopped at source on a weekly basis) but rather their tax contributions are paid on an annual basis . The scope for abuse is considerable and this is exploited by paramilitary organisations all over the North .
The building sites on which the paramilitaries can conduct these rackets obviously can be only in those areas where they have a measure of control ; thus , for the Official IRA , the building sites where they operate the tax exemption rackets are in the Lower Falls , The Markets , Twinbrook and Bawnmore areas of Belfast . Actually their area of influence has diminished recently with the defection of one of their major racketeers to the IRSP .
When these rackets were working well for the Official IRA it was estimated that they were 'earning' up to £3,000 per week from them . They also got involved in another and more 'exotic' form of racketeering : the 'massage parlour' business . Up to about two years ago they were running three 'massage parlours' in Belfast ; one of these , incredibly , was run in conjunction with the UVF but this was closed down after a disagreement between the two organisations - the UVF and the Official IRA often co-operated in recent years and , reportedly , exchanged information .
Another of those 'parlours' was firebombed by the Provos and a third was closed down by the RUC . One of the candidates for Sinn Fein the Workers Party in the local elections of May last year was convicted of running brothels in the Ormeau Road area of Belfast .......
(MORE LATER).
Friday, November 25, 2005
" DON'T LET THEM BREAK YOU , LOVE " .
First published in the booklet ' STRIP SEARCHES IN ARMAGH JAIL' , produced , in February 1984 , by 'The London Armagh Group' .
This is the first time I have put pen to paper to try and document some of the crimes I have been subjected to .
You'll forgive me if I don't feel the need to ask you to understand just what is happening here in the occupied Six Counties . Rather I demand your realisation of what is being done in your name , to me , and to countless hundreds of my sisters . You have read of us , some of you have even met us , but you have never 'lived' us . Maybe this will help. Think of it as 'A Day In The Life ...' :
I am the eldest daughter of four children , born to working-class parents in a Catholic ghetto in Belfast . In August 1971 the British Government introduced internment . My father evaded arrest until December 1971 , then was taken by British troops to Castlereagh Interrogation Centre and held there incommunicado : witnesses to his arrest testified to the savage and brutal beating he received . We were denied access , and were denied a writ of habeus corpus . At this stage we just wanted his body , as we believed him to be dead .
Our home became a regular haunt of the British occupation forces - early morning raids , dawn arrests , these were our examples of 'British impartiality' . I was first arrested on the morning of my birthday in June 1974 , forced to stand 'spread-eagle' against a brick wall for four hours , subjected to a continual barrage of insults , rubber batons run up the inside of my leg , enquiries as to my sexual preferences , physically searched again and again by British troops , insulted , degraded , humiliated . I was sixteen that day .......
(MORE LATER).
THE HEROIC PRISON STRUGGLE .......
1981 was dominated by the grim and heroic struggle of Republican prisoners for political recognition - which they undoubtedly received from millions all over the world , yet which few governments , least of all London or Dublin , would grant them .
From 'AP/RN' , 31st December 1981 .
By Teresa Kelly .
On Sunday 26th April 1981 , twenty thousand marchers demonstrated on the Falls Road in Belfast . The size of the crowd , the many speakers who addressed the rally - US Attorney-General Ramsey Clark , Massachusetts State Representative Marie Howe , American Jesuit pacifist Fr. Daniel Berrigan , Kerry GAA football celebrity Joe Keohane , Bernadette McAliskey (who was making her first public appearance since the UDA's attempt on her life and on that of her husband on January 16th 1981) and , finally , the dozens of telegrams from all over Europe , the USA and Britain , that were read to the demonstrators : all these elements pointed to an unprecedented support for the prisoners' cause , a hitherto unequalled world interest in the plight of the Irish people .
Yet the British were to remain unmoved ; as the H-Block prisoners pointed out much later , in their October 3rd 1981 statement drawing the lessons of the hunger strike they had just ended - " The nationalist community is politically inconsequential and impotent in the context of the six-county statelet . "
Bobby Sands died at 1.17AM on Tuesday 5th May 1981 : as an angry nationalist community took to the dark streets , some women with bin lids , others with rosary beads , youths with stones and petrol bombs , the British Army and the RUC indulged in an orgy of attacks on by-standers , driving armoured cars at groups of women who were praying , shooting on small children with plastic bullets . On April 19th 1981 , in Derry , two youths had been savagely run over and killed by British Army vehicles - Gary English , aged nineteen , and Jimmy Brown , aged eighteen . Tensions were already high in the North over this incident .
The unadulterated violence displayed by British troops and the RUC would cause many more deaths and permanent injuries , causing even 'moderate' politicians and churchmen to condemn the use of plastic bullets , concerned as they were by the rising popular indignation and wishing that the British troops would 'behave' in a more 'acceptable' manner....... ('1169...' Comment - there is no 'acceptable' manner to Republicans for any British soldier to behave in on this island .)
(MORE LATER).
IN THE SHADOW OF A GUNMAN .......
The aspirations of SINN FEIN THE WORKERS PARTY towards socialist respectability are undermined by the continued military operations of the OFFICIAL IRA and that Party's own ideoligical contortions .
From ' MAGILL' magazine , April 1982 .
By Vincent Browne.
The Official IRA was always used to control Sinn Fein the Workers Party and this did not end certainly until well after 1978 , if even then . The OIRA Convention used to be held regularly prior to the SFWP Ard Fheis and at those Conventions it would be decided how the OIRA should vote en bloc at the Ard Fheis . Therefore military discipline was effectively deployed at the party level to influence decisions .
The level of robberies stepped up considerably after the OIRA ceasefire , especially when the ceasefire became effective . The robberies took place across the North and in the South : a gang formed in Belfast especially for robberies , which became known as ' The Dirty Dozen' (initially comprised of 12 men and later of 13 ) , it reputedly stole £200,000 in one 4-month period : targets were mainly post offices , post office vans and security vans .
The Official IRA became primarily a fund-raising organisation but it served other purposes too - it kept order in the vast drinking clubs that the Officials own in the North and in Dublin ; it maintained internal discipline through intimidation and beatings , and provided the means of 'self-defence' for the party which got into feuds from time to time with the Provos . The Official IRA has also been responsible for running rackets in Belfast particularly . This involved primarily the operation of tax exemption fraud , which the Provos have also perfected .
On many building sites 'lump labour' is employed on a contractual basis - a 'weakness' in the method of collection of income tax from these workers was spotted .......
(MORE LATER).
First published in the booklet ' STRIP SEARCHES IN ARMAGH JAIL' , produced , in February 1984 , by 'The London Armagh Group' .
This is the first time I have put pen to paper to try and document some of the crimes I have been subjected to .
You'll forgive me if I don't feel the need to ask you to understand just what is happening here in the occupied Six Counties . Rather I demand your realisation of what is being done in your name , to me , and to countless hundreds of my sisters . You have read of us , some of you have even met us , but you have never 'lived' us . Maybe this will help. Think of it as 'A Day In The Life ...' :
I am the eldest daughter of four children , born to working-class parents in a Catholic ghetto in Belfast . In August 1971 the British Government introduced internment . My father evaded arrest until December 1971 , then was taken by British troops to Castlereagh Interrogation Centre and held there incommunicado : witnesses to his arrest testified to the savage and brutal beating he received . We were denied access , and were denied a writ of habeus corpus . At this stage we just wanted his body , as we believed him to be dead .
Our home became a regular haunt of the British occupation forces - early morning raids , dawn arrests , these were our examples of 'British impartiality' . I was first arrested on the morning of my birthday in June 1974 , forced to stand 'spread-eagle' against a brick wall for four hours , subjected to a continual barrage of insults , rubber batons run up the inside of my leg , enquiries as to my sexual preferences , physically searched again and again by British troops , insulted , degraded , humiliated . I was sixteen that day .......
(MORE LATER).
THE HEROIC PRISON STRUGGLE .......
1981 was dominated by the grim and heroic struggle of Republican prisoners for political recognition - which they undoubtedly received from millions all over the world , yet which few governments , least of all London or Dublin , would grant them .
From 'AP/RN' , 31st December 1981 .
By Teresa Kelly .
On Sunday 26th April 1981 , twenty thousand marchers demonstrated on the Falls Road in Belfast . The size of the crowd , the many speakers who addressed the rally - US Attorney-General Ramsey Clark , Massachusetts State Representative Marie Howe , American Jesuit pacifist Fr. Daniel Berrigan , Kerry GAA football celebrity Joe Keohane , Bernadette McAliskey (who was making her first public appearance since the UDA's attempt on her life and on that of her husband on January 16th 1981) and , finally , the dozens of telegrams from all over Europe , the USA and Britain , that were read to the demonstrators : all these elements pointed to an unprecedented support for the prisoners' cause , a hitherto unequalled world interest in the plight of the Irish people .
Yet the British were to remain unmoved ; as the H-Block prisoners pointed out much later , in their October 3rd 1981 statement drawing the lessons of the hunger strike they had just ended - " The nationalist community is politically inconsequential and impotent in the context of the six-county statelet . "
Bobby Sands died at 1.17AM on Tuesday 5th May 1981 : as an angry nationalist community took to the dark streets , some women with bin lids , others with rosary beads , youths with stones and petrol bombs , the British Army and the RUC indulged in an orgy of attacks on by-standers , driving armoured cars at groups of women who were praying , shooting on small children with plastic bullets . On April 19th 1981 , in Derry , two youths had been savagely run over and killed by British Army vehicles - Gary English , aged nineteen , and Jimmy Brown , aged eighteen . Tensions were already high in the North over this incident .
The unadulterated violence displayed by British troops and the RUC would cause many more deaths and permanent injuries , causing even 'moderate' politicians and churchmen to condemn the use of plastic bullets , concerned as they were by the rising popular indignation and wishing that the British troops would 'behave' in a more 'acceptable' manner....... ('1169...' Comment - there is no 'acceptable' manner to Republicans for any British soldier to behave in on this island .)
(MORE LATER).
IN THE SHADOW OF A GUNMAN .......
The aspirations of SINN FEIN THE WORKERS PARTY towards socialist respectability are undermined by the continued military operations of the OFFICIAL IRA and that Party's own ideoligical contortions .
From ' MAGILL' magazine , April 1982 .
By Vincent Browne.
The Official IRA was always used to control Sinn Fein the Workers Party and this did not end certainly until well after 1978 , if even then . The OIRA Convention used to be held regularly prior to the SFWP Ard Fheis and at those Conventions it would be decided how the OIRA should vote en bloc at the Ard Fheis . Therefore military discipline was effectively deployed at the party level to influence decisions .
The level of robberies stepped up considerably after the OIRA ceasefire , especially when the ceasefire became effective . The robberies took place across the North and in the South : a gang formed in Belfast especially for robberies , which became known as ' The Dirty Dozen' (initially comprised of 12 men and later of 13 ) , it reputedly stole £200,000 in one 4-month period : targets were mainly post offices , post office vans and security vans .
The Official IRA became primarily a fund-raising organisation but it served other purposes too - it kept order in the vast drinking clubs that the Officials own in the North and in Dublin ; it maintained internal discipline through intimidation and beatings , and provided the means of 'self-defence' for the party which got into feuds from time to time with the Provos . The Official IRA has also been responsible for running rackets in Belfast particularly . This involved primarily the operation of tax exemption fraud , which the Provos have also perfected .
On many building sites 'lump labour' is employed on a contractual basis - a 'weakness' in the method of collection of income tax from these workers was spotted .......
(MORE LATER).
Thursday, November 24, 2005
A HISTORY OF ARMAGH JAIL .......
The women's prison in the North of Ireland is situated in the centre of the Protestant/Loyalist city of Armagh .
It was built in the 19th century , a huge granite building which today sports all the trappings of a high-security jail such as barbed wire , guards , arc-lamps , and closed circuit television cameras .
First published in the booklet ' STRIP SEARCHES IN ARMAGH JAIL' , produced , in February 1984 , by 'The London Armagh Group' .
NO LET UP IN REPRESSION .
Arrested on active service in April 1976 and sentenced at her 'trial' eight months later to 14 years imprisonment , Belfast Republican Mairead Farrell became one of the first women POW's to take part in the protest for political status .
" The prison administration formally deny that we are in a separate category but we nonetheless merit special treatment as high security risks . It is obvious that these ordinary prisoners feel as uncomfortable with republicans as we do with them . Hence their decision to remain in their cells , reardless of the screws' attempts to shift them out by coercion and threats .
It is plain to see that there is a need for segregation along these lines in Armagh . It is true to say that we do not have a republican/loyalist-type situation here , as is the case in the H-Blocks , but the need for segregation is still a major issue . In my opinion , the future ahead for republican POW's in Armagh looks grim because of the attitude we are met with on these important issues . It is such a small jail with a low population of inmates that one would think a reasonable existence would be possible with little difficulty .
It is , of course , but not under the present circumstances , as for the past year the prison regime has been , continues to be , geared towards punishment alone and there is no sign that this will change . "
[END of ' A HISTORY OF ARMAGH JAIL' .]
(Tomorrow - " Don't let them break you , love ..." - from 1984.)
THE HEROIC PRISON STRUGGLE .......
1981 was dominated by the grim and heroic struggle of Republican prisoners for political recognition - which they undoubtedly received from millions all over the world , yet which few governments , least of all London or Dublin , would grant them .
From 'AP/RN' , 31st December 1981 .
By Teresa Kelly .
On April 23rd 1981 , Free State premier Charles Haughey (who had refused to speak-up on behalf of the political prisoners) made his move - he advised Bobby Sands' distraugh relatives to call for the intervention of the European Commission on Human Rights ; he also led them to believe that that intervention would take place immediately , and produce quick results . Yet it later appeared that the Commission needed Bobby Sands' signature to intervene , that they would see him alone , without his chosen advisors , that they would need two weeks to present their findings , and that the matter of political status was completely outside their competence .
The Free State government had shown itself as a shrewd and deceitful accomplice of the British (' 1169 .... ' Comment - ...as , indeed , they still are , even if some 'republicans' have thrown their lot in with them ) and , like them , more interested in ending the 'embarrassment' of the hunger-strike than in resolving the issue .
On April 20th 1981 , three Free State Euro-MP's - Neil Blaney (Independent Fianna Fail) , Sile de Valera (Fianna Fail) and Dr. John O' Connell (Independent) , were allowed to visit Bobby Sands : O ' Connell had previously stated that he would try to convince Sands to come off his fast ; upset by their visit to the dying MP , they requested a meeting with Margaret Thatcher who , in a press conference in Saudi Arabia , publicly humiliated the three Euro-MP's by saying - " It is not my habit or custom to meet MP's from a foreign country about a citizen of the United Kingdom resident in the United Kigdom ."
On April 25th 1981 , Sands' 56th day on hunger-strike , a three-member delegation of the European Commission on Human Rights flew to Belfast in a blaze of publicity ; they left the following day without having met Bobby Sands , who by then lay on a waterbed , still lucid but close to death . They had managed to create an impression of movement , and lent some 'respectability' to the British and Free State governments in their callous exercise in brinkmanship and media manipulation .......
(MORE LATER).
IN THE SHADOW OF A GUNMAN .......
The aspirations of SINN FEIN THE WORKERS PARTY towards socialist respectability are undermined by the continued military operations of the OFFICIAL IRA and that Party's own ideoligical contortions .
From ' MAGILL' magazine , April 1982 .
By Vincent Browne.
Seamus Costello established the 'Irish Republican Socialist Party' (IRSP) and the 'Irish National Liberation Army' (INLA) on the same day , Sunday 8th December 1974 , in the Spa Hotel in Lucan , Dublin . Costello was to insist first that there were no links between the IRSP and the INLA but in fact the manner of their 'birth' suggested otherwise . About 90 people assembled in the hotel in Lucan - they broke for tea , then reconvened as a separate group to form the INLA . Actually some of the people who disapproved from the outset with Costello's plans for a military organisation left during the tea break .
Costello was to insist that the two organisations were entirely separate and that the political organisation would have no control over the military one - it was this insistence that eventually led to the resignation of Bernadette McAliskey from the party . The formation of the IRSP/INLA posed a very severe threat to the Official IRA/Sinn Fein the Workers Party because its Northern members had been in the main unhappy with the Official's ceasefire and the strict enforcement of same . Entire Units of the Official IRA , such as that at Divis Flats in Belfast , immediately defected to the INLA . Anxiety over the possible decimation of the Official IRA must have been a contributory factor in the fued that subsequently broke out between the two organisations - IRSP members remembered chillingly repeated expressions of regret on the part of senior members of the Official IRA that they had not wiped out the Provisional IRA at their infancy .
Following the IRSP split with the Officials , the proposed organisational changes in the Official IRA did not go through , at least not until after 1978 , if at all . The significance of the Official IRA declined significantly , however - OIRA Army Council meetings which used to take place on a monthly basis began to take place only on a three monthly basis . Its main topic of discussion was proposed robberies and the control of the political organisation.......
(MORE LATER).
The women's prison in the North of Ireland is situated in the centre of the Protestant/Loyalist city of Armagh .
It was built in the 19th century , a huge granite building which today sports all the trappings of a high-security jail such as barbed wire , guards , arc-lamps , and closed circuit television cameras .
First published in the booklet ' STRIP SEARCHES IN ARMAGH JAIL' , produced , in February 1984 , by 'The London Armagh Group' .
NO LET UP IN REPRESSION .
Arrested on active service in April 1976 and sentenced at her 'trial' eight months later to 14 years imprisonment , Belfast Republican Mairead Farrell became one of the first women POW's to take part in the protest for political status .
" The prison administration formally deny that we are in a separate category but we nonetheless merit special treatment as high security risks . It is obvious that these ordinary prisoners feel as uncomfortable with republicans as we do with them . Hence their decision to remain in their cells , reardless of the screws' attempts to shift them out by coercion and threats .
It is plain to see that there is a need for segregation along these lines in Armagh . It is true to say that we do not have a republican/loyalist-type situation here , as is the case in the H-Blocks , but the need for segregation is still a major issue . In my opinion , the future ahead for republican POW's in Armagh looks grim because of the attitude we are met with on these important issues . It is such a small jail with a low population of inmates that one would think a reasonable existence would be possible with little difficulty .
It is , of course , but not under the present circumstances , as for the past year the prison regime has been , continues to be , geared towards punishment alone and there is no sign that this will change . "
[END of ' A HISTORY OF ARMAGH JAIL' .]
(Tomorrow - " Don't let them break you , love ..." - from 1984.)
THE HEROIC PRISON STRUGGLE .......
1981 was dominated by the grim and heroic struggle of Republican prisoners for political recognition - which they undoubtedly received from millions all over the world , yet which few governments , least of all London or Dublin , would grant them .
From 'AP/RN' , 31st December 1981 .
By Teresa Kelly .
On April 23rd 1981 , Free State premier Charles Haughey (who had refused to speak-up on behalf of the political prisoners) made his move - he advised Bobby Sands' distraugh relatives to call for the intervention of the European Commission on Human Rights ; he also led them to believe that that intervention would take place immediately , and produce quick results . Yet it later appeared that the Commission needed Bobby Sands' signature to intervene , that they would see him alone , without his chosen advisors , that they would need two weeks to present their findings , and that the matter of political status was completely outside their competence .
The Free State government had shown itself as a shrewd and deceitful accomplice of the British (' 1169 .... ' Comment - ...as , indeed , they still are , even if some 'republicans' have thrown their lot in with them ) and , like them , more interested in ending the 'embarrassment' of the hunger-strike than in resolving the issue .
On April 20th 1981 , three Free State Euro-MP's - Neil Blaney (Independent Fianna Fail) , Sile de Valera (Fianna Fail) and Dr. John O' Connell (Independent) , were allowed to visit Bobby Sands : O ' Connell had previously stated that he would try to convince Sands to come off his fast ; upset by their visit to the dying MP , they requested a meeting with Margaret Thatcher who , in a press conference in Saudi Arabia , publicly humiliated the three Euro-MP's by saying - " It is not my habit or custom to meet MP's from a foreign country about a citizen of the United Kingdom resident in the United Kigdom ."
On April 25th 1981 , Sands' 56th day on hunger-strike , a three-member delegation of the European Commission on Human Rights flew to Belfast in a blaze of publicity ; they left the following day without having met Bobby Sands , who by then lay on a waterbed , still lucid but close to death . They had managed to create an impression of movement , and lent some 'respectability' to the British and Free State governments in their callous exercise in brinkmanship and media manipulation .......
(MORE LATER).
IN THE SHADOW OF A GUNMAN .......
The aspirations of SINN FEIN THE WORKERS PARTY towards socialist respectability are undermined by the continued military operations of the OFFICIAL IRA and that Party's own ideoligical contortions .
From ' MAGILL' magazine , April 1982 .
By Vincent Browne.
Seamus Costello established the 'Irish Republican Socialist Party' (IRSP) and the 'Irish National Liberation Army' (INLA) on the same day , Sunday 8th December 1974 , in the Spa Hotel in Lucan , Dublin . Costello was to insist first that there were no links between the IRSP and the INLA but in fact the manner of their 'birth' suggested otherwise . About 90 people assembled in the hotel in Lucan - they broke for tea , then reconvened as a separate group to form the INLA . Actually some of the people who disapproved from the outset with Costello's plans for a military organisation left during the tea break .
Costello was to insist that the two organisations were entirely separate and that the political organisation would have no control over the military one - it was this insistence that eventually led to the resignation of Bernadette McAliskey from the party . The formation of the IRSP/INLA posed a very severe threat to the Official IRA/Sinn Fein the Workers Party because its Northern members had been in the main unhappy with the Official's ceasefire and the strict enforcement of same . Entire Units of the Official IRA , such as that at Divis Flats in Belfast , immediately defected to the INLA . Anxiety over the possible decimation of the Official IRA must have been a contributory factor in the fued that subsequently broke out between the two organisations - IRSP members remembered chillingly repeated expressions of regret on the part of senior members of the Official IRA that they had not wiped out the Provisional IRA at their infancy .
Following the IRSP split with the Officials , the proposed organisational changes in the Official IRA did not go through , at least not until after 1978 , if at all . The significance of the Official IRA declined significantly , however - OIRA Army Council meetings which used to take place on a monthly basis began to take place only on a three monthly basis . Its main topic of discussion was proposed robberies and the control of the political organisation.......
(MORE LATER).
Wednesday, November 23, 2005
A HISTORY OF ARMAGH JAIL .......
The women's prison in the North of Ireland is situated in the centre of the Protestant/Loyalist city of Armagh .
It was built in the 19th century , a huge granite building which today sports all the trappings of a high-security jail such as barbed wire , guards , arc-lamps , and closed circuit television cameras .
First published in the booklet ' STRIP SEARCHES IN ARMAGH JAIL' , produced , in February 1984 , by 'The London Armagh Group' .
NO LET UP IN REPRESSION .
Arrested on active service in April 1976 and sentenced at her 'trial' eight months later to 14 years imprisonment , Belfast Republican Mairead Farrell became one of the first women POW's to take part in the protest for political status .
" This repressive attitude is mirrored in all areas , and in none more so than in the area of prison work . Throughout Europe , many prisons have abolished prison work due to the economic recession - for since work is so scarce on the outside , it is impossible to secure contracts for work within the prisons .
The same position applies to Armagh , with no industry prepared to supply a contract ; yet instead of the administration taking a sensible view of the situation by providing educational and vocational training during the day , they demand that POW's sit at sewing machines all day every day , doing nothing but stitching prison-issue jeans which are'nt even in use . Such work is monotonous , and one would think that the administration's interest would be in keeping minds occupied and in providing some type of mind-stimulating alternative to demeaning work which can only increase tension and discontent throughout the jail .
It is hypocritical of the British 'Northern Ireland' Office to even speak of work inside the prisons when tens of thousands in the Six Counties remain unemployed . The facilities are available in Armagh Jail for the implementation of a full-time education programme . It would not need a major shift in policy but basically would be an acknowledgement of the reality that there is no work to be done in the prisons and that an alternative needs to be found . Eventually the 'NIO' are going to have to look at this problem realistically - they are only avoiding the inevitable .
With so much monitoring of Republicans , the constant strip-searching and the introduction of new rules every day under the guise of 'security' , it seems very contraductory to me that the prison administration would even consider housing ordinary prisoners in the same area as us ....... "
(MORE LATER).
THE HEROIC PRISON STRUGGLE .......
1981 was dominated by the grim and heroic struggle of Republican prisoners for political recognition - which they undoubtedly received from millions all over the world , yet which few governments , least of all London or Dublin , would grant them .
From 'AP/RN' , 31st December 1981 .
By Teresa Kelly .
Bobby Sands had been elected as an MP by a majority of voters in Fermanagh-South Tyrone : ' A Mandate for the IRA !' , screamed the newspaper headlines : " Thirty Thousand Murderers! " , shriked Loyalist politicians . " Traditional anti-unionist voting pattern ... " , pontificated John Hume , whose party (SDLP) had semi-offically called for abstention right up to election day .
" A freak result due to sympathy and emotion ... " , ('1169....' Comment - WHAT ! No "intimidation" ... ? ) was all the dumb-founded British 'official' voice could come up with . " They can't let him die now ... " , supporters of the prisoners thought : they were all wrong . The result was not "... a freak.. " - it was repeated four months later , and even improved on . It was not so much a mandate for the IRA but for political status , and was understood as such by all concerned , Republicans or not . And , not a month later , on Tuesday 5th May 1981 , Bobby Sands died .
The British government had seen its room for political manoeuvring considerably reduced by the election of a hunger-striker ; first , the world's attention had been suddenly focused on the occupied North of Ireland , to an extent unseen since 'Lord' Mountbatten's death and the Warrenpoint ambush in 1979 . And this time the British government could not play its old tune about " terrorists and gangsters " , as the game had been 'played' according to their rules , through the ballot box . The world's press flocked to Belfast : from local 'folk heroes' , Bobby Sands and his comrades were becoming media events . And most of all , the British government's lie that "...the prisoners had no support.. " lay in tatters at their feet .
Free State premier , Charles Haughey , who had consistently refused requests that he approach Margaret Thatcher and officially ask her to grant the prisoners their demands , made his move on April 23rd 1981 .......
(MORE LATER).
IN THE SHADOW OF A GUNMAN .......
The aspirations of SINN FEIN THE WORKERS PARTY towards socialist respectability are undermined by the continued military operations of the OFFICIAL IRA and that Party's own ideoligical contortions .
From ' MAGILL' magazine , April 1982 .
By Vincent Browne.
Differences were coming to a head within the Official movement : proposals emerged for the restructuring of the organisation and a commission was set up in early 1973 to examine proposals . One paper dealt with Sean Garland's concern of " ...the revolutionary party.. " which he had first postulated the previous June in Bodenstown : the main aspect of this proposal was that one organisation , the party , would be responsible for all the activities of the Official movement ie military as well as political . Seamus Costello had a strong case for retaining the existing structure of two organisations , one political and one military , but with greater cohesion between the two .
A third paper was prepared by Eoin O Morchu who was editor of the 'United Irishman' newspaper at the time but who was later to leave the Officials and join the Communist Party ; he argued for the effective disbanding of the OIRA and its incorporation into the political organisation for 'certain specialised activities' .
The militarists within the Officials perceived this debate in terms of great alarm - they believed that it was not only Eoin O Morchu who was in favour of doing away with the OIRA but also Sean Garland who effectively wanted to emasculate the organisation and thereby abandon entirely the struggle for national unity . This debate , which effectively centered on whether there should be an open resumption of the military campaign waged through 1973 and early 1974 - Seamus Costello was suspended from the OIRA for 'factional activity' . He was in fact attempting to win support for his position throughout the Officials in a manner that apparently contravened the procedures for such debate . He was courtmartialed at the party's educational centre at Mornington , County Meath : he was found guilty of charges and dishonourably dismissed from the OIRA .
Undaunted , Costello continued his campaign within Sinn Fein the Workers Party but was resoundingly defeated at the SFWP Ard Fheis of 1974 when a resolution calling for his re-instatement was thrown out - he had been suspended from membership by the SFWP Ard Comhairle , amidst allegations of vote rigging in connection with the Ard Fheis but it is clear that he would have been routed anyway .......
(MORE LATER).
The women's prison in the North of Ireland is situated in the centre of the Protestant/Loyalist city of Armagh .
It was built in the 19th century , a huge granite building which today sports all the trappings of a high-security jail such as barbed wire , guards , arc-lamps , and closed circuit television cameras .
First published in the booklet ' STRIP SEARCHES IN ARMAGH JAIL' , produced , in February 1984 , by 'The London Armagh Group' .
NO LET UP IN REPRESSION .
Arrested on active service in April 1976 and sentenced at her 'trial' eight months later to 14 years imprisonment , Belfast Republican Mairead Farrell became one of the first women POW's to take part in the protest for political status .
" This repressive attitude is mirrored in all areas , and in none more so than in the area of prison work . Throughout Europe , many prisons have abolished prison work due to the economic recession - for since work is so scarce on the outside , it is impossible to secure contracts for work within the prisons .
The same position applies to Armagh , with no industry prepared to supply a contract ; yet instead of the administration taking a sensible view of the situation by providing educational and vocational training during the day , they demand that POW's sit at sewing machines all day every day , doing nothing but stitching prison-issue jeans which are'nt even in use . Such work is monotonous , and one would think that the administration's interest would be in keeping minds occupied and in providing some type of mind-stimulating alternative to demeaning work which can only increase tension and discontent throughout the jail .
It is hypocritical of the British 'Northern Ireland' Office to even speak of work inside the prisons when tens of thousands in the Six Counties remain unemployed . The facilities are available in Armagh Jail for the implementation of a full-time education programme . It would not need a major shift in policy but basically would be an acknowledgement of the reality that there is no work to be done in the prisons and that an alternative needs to be found . Eventually the 'NIO' are going to have to look at this problem realistically - they are only avoiding the inevitable .
With so much monitoring of Republicans , the constant strip-searching and the introduction of new rules every day under the guise of 'security' , it seems very contraductory to me that the prison administration would even consider housing ordinary prisoners in the same area as us ....... "
(MORE LATER).
THE HEROIC PRISON STRUGGLE .......
1981 was dominated by the grim and heroic struggle of Republican prisoners for political recognition - which they undoubtedly received from millions all over the world , yet which few governments , least of all London or Dublin , would grant them .
From 'AP/RN' , 31st December 1981 .
By Teresa Kelly .
Bobby Sands had been elected as an MP by a majority of voters in Fermanagh-South Tyrone : ' A Mandate for the IRA !' , screamed the newspaper headlines : " Thirty Thousand Murderers! " , shriked Loyalist politicians . " Traditional anti-unionist voting pattern ... " , pontificated John Hume , whose party (SDLP) had semi-offically called for abstention right up to election day .
" A freak result due to sympathy and emotion ... " , ('1169....' Comment - WHAT ! No "intimidation" ... ? ) was all the dumb-founded British 'official' voice could come up with . " They can't let him die now ... " , supporters of the prisoners thought : they were all wrong . The result was not "... a freak.. " - it was repeated four months later , and even improved on . It was not so much a mandate for the IRA but for political status , and was understood as such by all concerned , Republicans or not . And , not a month later , on Tuesday 5th May 1981 , Bobby Sands died .
The British government had seen its room for political manoeuvring considerably reduced by the election of a hunger-striker ; first , the world's attention had been suddenly focused on the occupied North of Ireland , to an extent unseen since 'Lord' Mountbatten's death and the Warrenpoint ambush in 1979 . And this time the British government could not play its old tune about " terrorists and gangsters " , as the game had been 'played' according to their rules , through the ballot box . The world's press flocked to Belfast : from local 'folk heroes' , Bobby Sands and his comrades were becoming media events . And most of all , the British government's lie that "...the prisoners had no support.. " lay in tatters at their feet .
Free State premier , Charles Haughey , who had consistently refused requests that he approach Margaret Thatcher and officially ask her to grant the prisoners their demands , made his move on April 23rd 1981 .......
(MORE LATER).
IN THE SHADOW OF A GUNMAN .......
The aspirations of SINN FEIN THE WORKERS PARTY towards socialist respectability are undermined by the continued military operations of the OFFICIAL IRA and that Party's own ideoligical contortions .
From ' MAGILL' magazine , April 1982 .
By Vincent Browne.
Differences were coming to a head within the Official movement : proposals emerged for the restructuring of the organisation and a commission was set up in early 1973 to examine proposals . One paper dealt with Sean Garland's concern of " ...the revolutionary party.. " which he had first postulated the previous June in Bodenstown : the main aspect of this proposal was that one organisation , the party , would be responsible for all the activities of the Official movement ie military as well as political . Seamus Costello had a strong case for retaining the existing structure of two organisations , one political and one military , but with greater cohesion between the two .
A third paper was prepared by Eoin O Morchu who was editor of the 'United Irishman' newspaper at the time but who was later to leave the Officials and join the Communist Party ; he argued for the effective disbanding of the OIRA and its incorporation into the political organisation for 'certain specialised activities' .
The militarists within the Officials perceived this debate in terms of great alarm - they believed that it was not only Eoin O Morchu who was in favour of doing away with the OIRA but also Sean Garland who effectively wanted to emasculate the organisation and thereby abandon entirely the struggle for national unity . This debate , which effectively centered on whether there should be an open resumption of the military campaign waged through 1973 and early 1974 - Seamus Costello was suspended from the OIRA for 'factional activity' . He was in fact attempting to win support for his position throughout the Officials in a manner that apparently contravened the procedures for such debate . He was courtmartialed at the party's educational centre at Mornington , County Meath : he was found guilty of charges and dishonourably dismissed from the OIRA .
Undaunted , Costello continued his campaign within Sinn Fein the Workers Party but was resoundingly defeated at the SFWP Ard Fheis of 1974 when a resolution calling for his re-instatement was thrown out - he had been suspended from membership by the SFWP Ard Comhairle , amidst allegations of vote rigging in connection with the Ard Fheis but it is clear that he would have been routed anyway .......
(MORE LATER).
Tuesday, November 22, 2005
A HISTORY OF ARMAGH JAIL .......
The women's prison in the North of Ireland is situated in the centre of the Protestant/Loyalist city of Armagh .
It was built in the 19th century , a huge granite building which today sports all the trappings of a high-security jail such as barbed wire , guards , arc-lamps , and closed circuit television cameras .
First published in the booklet ' STRIP SEARCHES IN ARMAGH JAIL' , produced , in February 1984 , by 'The London Armagh Group' .
NO LET UP IN REPRESSION .
Arrested on active service in April 1976 and sentenced at her 'trial' eight months later to 14 years imprisonment , Belfast Republican Mairead Farrell became one of the first women POW's to take part in the protest for political status .
" When the 'no work' protest ended , punishment techniques were put into operation immediately in an orchestrated attempt to break the POW's . In the first fortnight , most Republican prisoners had received more punishment than would have been possible during a month on protest . This punishment reached the heights in severity with many women spending days , and in somecases months , in solitary confinement .
With the failure of this two-fold tactic the prison authorities have to content themselves with continuous punishment meted out on petty pretexts , trying to beat the Republican spirit into submission . A prime example of this is the continuation of strip-searching , despite the public outcry it provoked . The British 'Northern Ireland Office' have attempted to play down this degrading practice by saying that it is necessary when moving high security-risk prisoners to and from the jail , while a notice displayed in the strip-search area states that all prisoners must be stripped naked leaving and entering the jail because of 'prohibited artices' being smuggled in .
This refers to the incident last November which sparked of the strip-searching when two 'YOP's ' (ordinary prisoners) stole the keys of a magistrates car "for a laugh" while in RUC custody and brought them back into the jail . The two 'YOP's' have since been released . Ironic ? Maybe , but having listened to three women who have endured this disgusting practice daily for months , as have those in the 'Black informer' trial , I can only think of the enormous mental effect this must have at what is already a stressful period .
Each of these women has been stripped over 135 times . This is not 'in the interests of security' , it is psychological torture . The prison administration have agreed it is an un-necessary practice , yet it continues because it is a new-found weapon in the attempt to rob Republicans of dignity ....... "
(MORE LATER).
THE HEROIC PRISON STRUGGLE .......
1981 was dominated by the grim and heroic struggle of Republican prisoners for political recognition - which they undoubtedly received from millions all over the world , yet which few governments , least of all London or Dublin , would grant them .
From 'AP/RN' , 31st December 1981 .
By Teresa Kelly .
The March 1st 1981 hunger strike was to last 217 days ; 23 Republican prisoners engaged in it , of whom ten were to die , in a calvary of false hopes , anguish and pain for themselves , their relatives and friends ; lies and deceit from the British government , slander and blackmail from the Catholic hierarchy .
Support activities slowly gathered momentum , as if weary supporters had needed longer this time to face up to the awful reality of a fast to the death : on March 1st 1981 , Bobby Sands refused his first meal . Between five and ten thousand people marched up the Falls Road in Belfast in support of the five demands . After a slow start , events speeded up when , sadly , Frank Maguire , MP for Fermanagh-South Tyrone died of a heart attack on March 5th 1981 . His untimely death caused local H-Block activists to consider fielding a hunger-striker candidate . ( '1169....' Comment - The idea/proposal to field Bobby Sands as a candidate came from Daithi O Conaill and was seconded by Ruairi O Bradaigh .)
Fearless South Derry soldier Francis Hughes had begun fasting on March 15th 1981 . Raymond McCreesh from South Armagh and Patsy O' Hara from Derry had joined him and Bobby Sands on March 22nd 1981 . The SDLP , under pressure from rank-and-file supporters on the ground , decided not to field Austin Currie . Noel Maguire , brother of the late MP , after a visit from Bobby Sands' parents , withdrew his nomination papers minutes before the deadline for nominations , on Monday , March 30th 1981 .
Bobby Sands , political prisoner and anti-H-Block/Armagh candidate , and old-time Unionist and 'landlord' Harry West found themselves locked in an electoral battle on Thursday 9th April 1981 , as Sands lay on a hospital bed , forty days into his hunger-strike . Hundreds of thousands of people held their breath that day , as counting was going on in Enniskillen Technical College : then the magic moment , the magic figure - 30,492 ! Bobby Sands had been elected MP . Nationalists all over the Six Counties were elated . Constitutional politicians were stunned . Journalists were breathless . The British government was shattered .......
(MORE LATER).
IN THE SHADOW OF A GUNMAN .......
The aspirations of SINN FEIN THE WORKERS PARTY towards socialist respectability are undermined by the continued military operations of the OFFICIAL IRA and that Party's own ideoligical contortions .
From ' MAGILL' magazine , April 1982 .
By Vincent Browne.
It is true that from the middle of 1973 onwards , the 'screws' were put on OIRA military activity ; this was done not by any formal decision but by the more rigid interpretation of the terms of the ceasefire - OIRA operatives were finding it harder and harder to get clearane for jobs and even when clearance was given the delay involved meant that the operation often could'nt be carried out anyway .
Also there was a problem of equipment ; while the OIRA leadership repeatedly promised new , more and better arms and explosives , the actual provision of these was a very different matter - there were always excuses why something could not be delivered and it was only in retrospect that OIRA Volunteers recognised this as a means of stopping the military campaign altogether . Thus the OIRA armed campaign was stopped not by fiat following the ceasefire announcement but by a gradual process which effectively choked off military activity without any accompanying major decision to that effect .
That amounted to a masterstroke on the part of Cathal Goulding who for the most part did not want a military campaign at any stage . Yet he managed to bring the Official movement with him into 1974 without any major rift , having effectively hoodwinked the organisation into a real ceasefire to which it never really consented . But , in spite of the cleverness by which this plan was manoeuvred , it was inevitable that it would give rise to tensions and these surfaced in the latter part of 1972 : a convention of the Official IRA was held in October 1972 and a document was presented jointly by Seamus Costello and another senior member - this clearly defined the objectives of the Official movement in traditional Republican terms , in contrast to the more 'civil rights' emphasis of Cathal Goulding .
The Costello 'line' won through and Costello followed this up with a detailed proposal for a resumption of the military campaign officially : in this he was heavily defeated at a resumed OIRA Army Convention the following month . This led to more tensions .......
(MORE LATER).
The women's prison in the North of Ireland is situated in the centre of the Protestant/Loyalist city of Armagh .
It was built in the 19th century , a huge granite building which today sports all the trappings of a high-security jail such as barbed wire , guards , arc-lamps , and closed circuit television cameras .
First published in the booklet ' STRIP SEARCHES IN ARMAGH JAIL' , produced , in February 1984 , by 'The London Armagh Group' .
NO LET UP IN REPRESSION .
Arrested on active service in April 1976 and sentenced at her 'trial' eight months later to 14 years imprisonment , Belfast Republican Mairead Farrell became one of the first women POW's to take part in the protest for political status .
" When the 'no work' protest ended , punishment techniques were put into operation immediately in an orchestrated attempt to break the POW's . In the first fortnight , most Republican prisoners had received more punishment than would have been possible during a month on protest . This punishment reached the heights in severity with many women spending days , and in somecases months , in solitary confinement .
With the failure of this two-fold tactic the prison authorities have to content themselves with continuous punishment meted out on petty pretexts , trying to beat the Republican spirit into submission . A prime example of this is the continuation of strip-searching , despite the public outcry it provoked . The British 'Northern Ireland Office' have attempted to play down this degrading practice by saying that it is necessary when moving high security-risk prisoners to and from the jail , while a notice displayed in the strip-search area states that all prisoners must be stripped naked leaving and entering the jail because of 'prohibited artices' being smuggled in .
This refers to the incident last November which sparked of the strip-searching when two 'YOP's ' (ordinary prisoners) stole the keys of a magistrates car "for a laugh" while in RUC custody and brought them back into the jail . The two 'YOP's' have since been released . Ironic ? Maybe , but having listened to three women who have endured this disgusting practice daily for months , as have those in the 'Black informer' trial , I can only think of the enormous mental effect this must have at what is already a stressful period .
Each of these women has been stripped over 135 times . This is not 'in the interests of security' , it is psychological torture . The prison administration have agreed it is an un-necessary practice , yet it continues because it is a new-found weapon in the attempt to rob Republicans of dignity ....... "
(MORE LATER).
THE HEROIC PRISON STRUGGLE .......
1981 was dominated by the grim and heroic struggle of Republican prisoners for political recognition - which they undoubtedly received from millions all over the world , yet which few governments , least of all London or Dublin , would grant them .
From 'AP/RN' , 31st December 1981 .
By Teresa Kelly .
The March 1st 1981 hunger strike was to last 217 days ; 23 Republican prisoners engaged in it , of whom ten were to die , in a calvary of false hopes , anguish and pain for themselves , their relatives and friends ; lies and deceit from the British government , slander and blackmail from the Catholic hierarchy .
Support activities slowly gathered momentum , as if weary supporters had needed longer this time to face up to the awful reality of a fast to the death : on March 1st 1981 , Bobby Sands refused his first meal . Between five and ten thousand people marched up the Falls Road in Belfast in support of the five demands . After a slow start , events speeded up when , sadly , Frank Maguire , MP for Fermanagh-South Tyrone died of a heart attack on March 5th 1981 . His untimely death caused local H-Block activists to consider fielding a hunger-striker candidate . ( '1169....' Comment - The idea/proposal to field Bobby Sands as a candidate came from Daithi O Conaill and was seconded by Ruairi O Bradaigh .)
Fearless South Derry soldier Francis Hughes had begun fasting on March 15th 1981 . Raymond McCreesh from South Armagh and Patsy O' Hara from Derry had joined him and Bobby Sands on March 22nd 1981 . The SDLP , under pressure from rank-and-file supporters on the ground , decided not to field Austin Currie . Noel Maguire , brother of the late MP , after a visit from Bobby Sands' parents , withdrew his nomination papers minutes before the deadline for nominations , on Monday , March 30th 1981 .
Bobby Sands , political prisoner and anti-H-Block/Armagh candidate , and old-time Unionist and 'landlord' Harry West found themselves locked in an electoral battle on Thursday 9th April 1981 , as Sands lay on a hospital bed , forty days into his hunger-strike . Hundreds of thousands of people held their breath that day , as counting was going on in Enniskillen Technical College : then the magic moment , the magic figure - 30,492 ! Bobby Sands had been elected MP . Nationalists all over the Six Counties were elated . Constitutional politicians were stunned . Journalists were breathless . The British government was shattered .......
(MORE LATER).
IN THE SHADOW OF A GUNMAN .......
The aspirations of SINN FEIN THE WORKERS PARTY towards socialist respectability are undermined by the continued military operations of the OFFICIAL IRA and that Party's own ideoligical contortions .
From ' MAGILL' magazine , April 1982 .
By Vincent Browne.
It is true that from the middle of 1973 onwards , the 'screws' were put on OIRA military activity ; this was done not by any formal decision but by the more rigid interpretation of the terms of the ceasefire - OIRA operatives were finding it harder and harder to get clearane for jobs and even when clearance was given the delay involved meant that the operation often could'nt be carried out anyway .
Also there was a problem of equipment ; while the OIRA leadership repeatedly promised new , more and better arms and explosives , the actual provision of these was a very different matter - there were always excuses why something could not be delivered and it was only in retrospect that OIRA Volunteers recognised this as a means of stopping the military campaign altogether . Thus the OIRA armed campaign was stopped not by fiat following the ceasefire announcement but by a gradual process which effectively choked off military activity without any accompanying major decision to that effect .
That amounted to a masterstroke on the part of Cathal Goulding who for the most part did not want a military campaign at any stage . Yet he managed to bring the Official movement with him into 1974 without any major rift , having effectively hoodwinked the organisation into a real ceasefire to which it never really consented . But , in spite of the cleverness by which this plan was manoeuvred , it was inevitable that it would give rise to tensions and these surfaced in the latter part of 1972 : a convention of the Official IRA was held in October 1972 and a document was presented jointly by Seamus Costello and another senior member - this clearly defined the objectives of the Official movement in traditional Republican terms , in contrast to the more 'civil rights' emphasis of Cathal Goulding .
The Costello 'line' won through and Costello followed this up with a detailed proposal for a resumption of the military campaign officially : in this he was heavily defeated at a resumed OIRA Army Convention the following month . This led to more tensions .......
(MORE LATER).
Monday, November 21, 2005
A HISTORY OF ARMAGH JAIL .......
The women's prison in the North of Ireland is situated in the centre of the Protestant/Loyalist city of Armagh .
It was built in the 19th century , a huge granite building which today sports all the trappings of a high-security jail such as barbed wire , guards , arc-lamps , and closed circuit television cameras .
First published in the booklet ' STRIP SEARCHES IN ARMAGH JAIL' , produced , in February 1984 , by 'The London Armagh Group' .
NO LET UP IN REPRESSION .
Arrested on active service in April 1976 and sentenced at her 'trial' eight months later to 14 years imprisonment , Belfast Republican Mairead Farrell became one of the first women POW's to take part in the protest for political status .
" The whole atmosphere is hostile and oppressive , with every movement , spoken word and general habit chronicled by screws on the landings and scrutinised by the prison administration daily . One cannot help feeling like a caged animal walking up and down with every twitch monitored , analysed and filed away for future use against us .
It's a popular boast of the present regime that they know all we say and do , but they choose to forget that their mania for surveillance does not reveal what is in our minds , and that's what counts ! Since the installation of the present regime a year ago , there has been a marked increase in pettiness and severe punishments . The manner in which this is employed I can only describe as a two-fold tactic designed to divide Republican POW's and break their resistance to the system .
The first technique is obvious - constant punishment by long spells in solitary confinement , loss of remission and all so-called 'privileges' , so as to inflict as much suffering as possible in preparation for the second technique ; this involves a relaxation in the situation with a promise of more to come provided "you keep your nose clean..." . It is as though the prison regime have modeled their treatment of prisoners on the principle of 'teaching a dog new tricks' - do what we tell you and the reward will be yours , with the possibility of bigger and better rewards in the pipeline .
Then suddenly the 'breathing space' is over and things revert to the more familiar pattern of harsh punishments , leaving the taste of what life could be like if only Republicans would stop being Republicans ....... ! "
(MORE LATER).
THE HEROIC PRISON STRUGGLE .
1981 was dominated by the grim and heroic struggle of Republican prisoners for political recognition - which they undoubtedly received from millions all over the world , yet which few governments , least of all London or Dublin , would grant them .
From 'AP/RN' , 31st December 1981 .
By Teresa Kelly .
After the earlier hunger strike had ended , on December 18th , 1980 , and the British government had allowed the H-Block prisoners to read a thirty-four page document of proposed prison reforms , the prisoners , their relatives and their friends sat waiting and hoping that commen sense on the part of the British would once and for all resolve this five-year-old crisis .
The prisoners were willing to end all forms of protest provided the promised reforms were implemented , and their elected Officer Commanding , Bobby Sands , negotiated with prison governor Stanley Hilditch a phasing-out of the 'no-wash' protest , with ten men from H3 and ten from H5 as a 'test case' . On January 20th , 1981 , those twenty prisoners , having washed themselves , sat waiting in their clean cells for the clothes their families had brought . But this was refused .
From the prison warders right up to the British government there had never been the slightest intention to resolve the crisis : what Margaret Thatcher wanted was total humiliation for the Republican prisoners - what the warders wanted was their fat bonus at the end of each month resulting from the prisoners' protest . January 20th 1981 was the last chance for the British government to settle to everyone's advantage , and with minimum cost to themselves . On February 5th , 1981 , the prisoners released a statement announcing that a second hunger-strike would commence on March 1st 1981 , the fifth anniversary of the removal of 'special category' status .
As February 1981 drew to a close , it was learnt that Bobby Sands would begin the fast alone , and that others would join him at regular intervals .......
(MORE LATER).
IN THE SHADOW OF A GUNMAN .......
The aspirations of SINN FEIN THE WORKERS PARTY towards socialist respectability are undermined by the continued military operations of the OFFICIAL IRA and that Party's own ideoligical contortions .
From ' MAGILL' magazine , April 1982 .
By Vincent Browne.
The issue of legitimate targets for the Official IRA was discussed by the OIRA Army Council some weeks previous to the shooting dead of British soldier , Ranger Best , on May 21 , 1972 ; the local OIRA Unit had managed to set up a brothel in the Waterside area and it was proposed to entice British Officers there and poison them : explicit authorisation for this action was obtained by the Derry Staff OIRA for this operation from a very senior member of the Official IRA at the time , now a senior member of the 'Sinn Fein the Workers Party' Ard Comhairle .
There was heated discussion at OIRA Army Council level on the ceasefire - it was vigorously opposed by Seamus Costello and others ; however , the terms of the ceasefire were deliberately qualified in a manner that allowed a continuance of the campaign more or less as before . A statement issued at the time said - " The (O)IRA has agreed to this (ceasefire) proposal reserving only the right of self-defence and defence of areas if attacked by the British Army or sectarian forces . "
Throughout the rest of 1972 and the early part of 1973 , the OIRA military campaign continued more or less as before : this fact is best illustrated by just two incidents in this period - on December 5th 1972 , a massive mortar attack blitz was launched throughout the North - British Army installations and camps and RUC stations were fired on in Blight's Lane in Derry , Kilrea , Coalisland , Croagh , Co. Tyrone , Lurgan and in Belfast at Silver City , Fort Monagh , Ardoyne and North Queen's Street . It was a huge undertaking and , because of it's size , was co-ordinated by the OIRA GHQ Staff in Dublin and explicitly supported by the OIRA Army Council . Those mortar attacks took place over six months after the announcement of the ceasefire .
The other illustration of the extent to which the ceasefire initially was in name mainly was a statement issued by the Command Staff of the Official IRA in Belfast on May 2nd 1973 , almost a year after the ceasefire announcement , claiming responsibility for the deaths of 7 British soldiers "...during recent retaliatory action in the North of Ireland . " Thus the pretence that the OIRA military campaign came to an abrupt halt in the middle of 1972 is entirely false : the campaign continued for at least a year afterwards .......
(MORE LATER).
The women's prison in the North of Ireland is situated in the centre of the Protestant/Loyalist city of Armagh .
It was built in the 19th century , a huge granite building which today sports all the trappings of a high-security jail such as barbed wire , guards , arc-lamps , and closed circuit television cameras .
First published in the booklet ' STRIP SEARCHES IN ARMAGH JAIL' , produced , in February 1984 , by 'The London Armagh Group' .
NO LET UP IN REPRESSION .
Arrested on active service in April 1976 and sentenced at her 'trial' eight months later to 14 years imprisonment , Belfast Republican Mairead Farrell became one of the first women POW's to take part in the protest for political status .
" The whole atmosphere is hostile and oppressive , with every movement , spoken word and general habit chronicled by screws on the landings and scrutinised by the prison administration daily . One cannot help feeling like a caged animal walking up and down with every twitch monitored , analysed and filed away for future use against us .
It's a popular boast of the present regime that they know all we say and do , but they choose to forget that their mania for surveillance does not reveal what is in our minds , and that's what counts ! Since the installation of the present regime a year ago , there has been a marked increase in pettiness and severe punishments . The manner in which this is employed I can only describe as a two-fold tactic designed to divide Republican POW's and break their resistance to the system .
The first technique is obvious - constant punishment by long spells in solitary confinement , loss of remission and all so-called 'privileges' , so as to inflict as much suffering as possible in preparation for the second technique ; this involves a relaxation in the situation with a promise of more to come provided "you keep your nose clean..." . It is as though the prison regime have modeled their treatment of prisoners on the principle of 'teaching a dog new tricks' - do what we tell you and the reward will be yours , with the possibility of bigger and better rewards in the pipeline .
Then suddenly the 'breathing space' is over and things revert to the more familiar pattern of harsh punishments , leaving the taste of what life could be like if only Republicans would stop being Republicans ....... ! "
(MORE LATER).
THE HEROIC PRISON STRUGGLE .
1981 was dominated by the grim and heroic struggle of Republican prisoners for political recognition - which they undoubtedly received from millions all over the world , yet which few governments , least of all London or Dublin , would grant them .
From 'AP/RN' , 31st December 1981 .
By Teresa Kelly .
After the earlier hunger strike had ended , on December 18th , 1980 , and the British government had allowed the H-Block prisoners to read a thirty-four page document of proposed prison reforms , the prisoners , their relatives and their friends sat waiting and hoping that commen sense on the part of the British would once and for all resolve this five-year-old crisis .
The prisoners were willing to end all forms of protest provided the promised reforms were implemented , and their elected Officer Commanding , Bobby Sands , negotiated with prison governor Stanley Hilditch a phasing-out of the 'no-wash' protest , with ten men from H3 and ten from H5 as a 'test case' . On January 20th , 1981 , those twenty prisoners , having washed themselves , sat waiting in their clean cells for the clothes their families had brought . But this was refused .
From the prison warders right up to the British government there had never been the slightest intention to resolve the crisis : what Margaret Thatcher wanted was total humiliation for the Republican prisoners - what the warders wanted was their fat bonus at the end of each month resulting from the prisoners' protest . January 20th 1981 was the last chance for the British government to settle to everyone's advantage , and with minimum cost to themselves . On February 5th , 1981 , the prisoners released a statement announcing that a second hunger-strike would commence on March 1st 1981 , the fifth anniversary of the removal of 'special category' status .
As February 1981 drew to a close , it was learnt that Bobby Sands would begin the fast alone , and that others would join him at regular intervals .......
(MORE LATER).
IN THE SHADOW OF A GUNMAN .......
The aspirations of SINN FEIN THE WORKERS PARTY towards socialist respectability are undermined by the continued military operations of the OFFICIAL IRA and that Party's own ideoligical contortions .
From ' MAGILL' magazine , April 1982 .
By Vincent Browne.
The issue of legitimate targets for the Official IRA was discussed by the OIRA Army Council some weeks previous to the shooting dead of British soldier , Ranger Best , on May 21 , 1972 ; the local OIRA Unit had managed to set up a brothel in the Waterside area and it was proposed to entice British Officers there and poison them : explicit authorisation for this action was obtained by the Derry Staff OIRA for this operation from a very senior member of the Official IRA at the time , now a senior member of the 'Sinn Fein the Workers Party' Ard Comhairle .
There was heated discussion at OIRA Army Council level on the ceasefire - it was vigorously opposed by Seamus Costello and others ; however , the terms of the ceasefire were deliberately qualified in a manner that allowed a continuance of the campaign more or less as before . A statement issued at the time said - " The (O)IRA has agreed to this (ceasefire) proposal reserving only the right of self-defence and defence of areas if attacked by the British Army or sectarian forces . "
Throughout the rest of 1972 and the early part of 1973 , the OIRA military campaign continued more or less as before : this fact is best illustrated by just two incidents in this period - on December 5th 1972 , a massive mortar attack blitz was launched throughout the North - British Army installations and camps and RUC stations were fired on in Blight's Lane in Derry , Kilrea , Coalisland , Croagh , Co. Tyrone , Lurgan and in Belfast at Silver City , Fort Monagh , Ardoyne and North Queen's Street . It was a huge undertaking and , because of it's size , was co-ordinated by the OIRA GHQ Staff in Dublin and explicitly supported by the OIRA Army Council . Those mortar attacks took place over six months after the announcement of the ceasefire .
The other illustration of the extent to which the ceasefire initially was in name mainly was a statement issued by the Command Staff of the Official IRA in Belfast on May 2nd 1973 , almost a year after the ceasefire announcement , claiming responsibility for the deaths of 7 British soldiers "...during recent retaliatory action in the North of Ireland . " Thus the pretence that the OIRA military campaign came to an abrupt halt in the middle of 1972 is entirely false : the campaign continued for at least a year afterwards .......
(MORE LATER).
Friday, November 18, 2005
A HISTORY OF ARMAGH JAIL .......
The women's prison in the North of Ireland is situated in the centre of the Protestant/Loyalist city of Armagh .
It was built in the 19th century , a huge granite building which today sports all the trappings of a high-security jail such as barbed wire , guards , arc-lamps , and closed circuit television cameras .
First published in the booklet ' STRIP SEARCHES IN ARMAGH JAIL' , produced , in February 1984 , by 'The London Armagh Group' .
NO LET UP IN REPRESSION .
Arrested on active service in April 1976 and sentenced at her 'trial' eight months later to 14 years imprisonment , Belfast Republican Mairead Farrell became one of the first women POW's to take part in the protest for political status .
" During the last seven years that I have been imprisoned in Armagh Jail , my comrades and I have endured much from the prison administration's ever-changing attitude . Now , three months after the termination of our 'no work' protest , the conditions have deteriorated , the regime is more repressive and the punishments more severe and excessive .
I hope here to give you an insight into this present-day situation in Armagh , where the new prison regime has resorted to the familiar tactic of 'divide and conquer' in every aspect of prison routine . Considering the overall prison population of the North , there are very few women prisoners - all of these are held in Armagh . Republicans form the vast majority of the total , and at present there are 28 sentenced Republicans and seven on remand , scattered throughout the jail .
Within the prison building there are three separate structures housing prisoners - 'A' , 'B' and 'C' wings - each of which is completely isolated from the others . Inside each of these wings there are two landings , one blocked off from the other with no contact possible between the two . This is geared to further isolating Republicans in the jail , with the number of prisoners on each landing not exceeding nine . This in fact is not a prison , but many prisons within a prison . The purpose of dividing Republicans into small units is one of surveillance and control , it is not primarily a security measure but more a means to determine any weaknesses in individuals which the administration hope to exploit for their own ends ....... "
(MORE LATER).
USEFUL POLITICAL INTERPRETATION OF IRISH REPUBICANISM.......
' Irish Nationalism - A History Of Its Roots And Its Ideology' by SEAN CRONIN (The Academy Press , Dublin, 1980) .
A book on Irish Nationalism by a one-time Republican is bound to attract attention . Cronin's study deals with the roots , history , growth and development of Nationalist thinking in Ireland , particularly its revolutionary form - Irish Republicanism .
From 'IRIS' magazine , November 1981 .
No by-line.
Sean Cronin , the author , stated - " The Officials blame the Catholic middle class , not British rule , for Ireland's failure to industrialise . They favour devolved government in the North (ie return to Stormont's Orange State) and they have been accused (rightly) of betraying the National question by adopting the 'two nations' theory (ie Protestant and Catholic) . Finally , they support industrialisation via the multinationals . "
Cronin does not draw out all the conclusions from his obvious disillusionment with the Sticks (SFWP) but it is a clear sign that their one time 'radical' credentials are well and truly tarnished . Cronin ends up with a brief look at Republicanism proper , quoting from Sinn Fein vice-president Gerry Adams , and concluding that - "...his political ideas reflect a natural radicalisation of an armed struggle conducted among the Catholic ghettoes of Belfast and Derry . He seems much closer to Connolly's analysis than other voices . "
One wonders what has happened to the 'Hibernian gunmen' we used to hear of ! Cronin and his ilk never understand that pure republicanism has always been radical , in the sense that it looks to the roots of our problems - in our case , British imperialism and partition .
[END of ' USEFUL POLITICAL INTERPRETATION OF IRISH REPUBICANISM ' .]
(Monday , 21st - ' THE HEROIC PRISON STRUGGLE' : from 1981.)
IN THE SHADOW OF A GUNMAN .......
The aspirations of SINN FEIN THE WORKERS PARTY towards socialist respectability are undermined by the continued military operations of the OFFICIAL IRA and that Party's own ideoligical contortions .
From ' MAGILL' magazine , April 1982 .
By Vincent Browne.
March 6 , 1972 : Marcus McCausland , a former Officer in the UDR , was shot dead by the Official IRA - the coldblooded nature of this shooting as well as the fact that this was a middle-class target provoked particular outrage .
March 12 , 1972 : a woman was fatally injured in crossfire in Leeson Street , Belfast , between the Official IRA and the British Army .
March 24 , 1972 : the Official IRA announced that it would continue its campaign in spite of the prorogation of Stormont ; this statement was almost as hardline as that issued at the time by the Provisional Chief of Staff , Sean MacStiophain , which is much better remembered .
April 10 , 1972 : the Official IRA killed two soldiers in a booby trap .
May 10 , 1972 : a fifteen-year-old girl was beaten , tarred and feathered by the Official IRA in the Leeson Street area of Belfast .
May 21 , 1972 : an off-duty British soldier , Ranger Best , who was at home on leave in the Creggan in Derry was shot dead by the Official IRA . This incident led to the Official IRA ceasefire which was announced on May 29 , 1972 . Prior to the announcement of the ceasefire there was heated debate at OIRA Army Council level on the issue of the Ranger Best killing - several members of the Council condemned it and said that public support had been devastated by it , others pointed out that an explicit OIRA Army Council order had been made some months previously stating that British soldiers , in or out of uniform , were legitimate targets .......
(MORE LATER).
The women's prison in the North of Ireland is situated in the centre of the Protestant/Loyalist city of Armagh .
It was built in the 19th century , a huge granite building which today sports all the trappings of a high-security jail such as barbed wire , guards , arc-lamps , and closed circuit television cameras .
First published in the booklet ' STRIP SEARCHES IN ARMAGH JAIL' , produced , in February 1984 , by 'The London Armagh Group' .
NO LET UP IN REPRESSION .
Arrested on active service in April 1976 and sentenced at her 'trial' eight months later to 14 years imprisonment , Belfast Republican Mairead Farrell became one of the first women POW's to take part in the protest for political status .
" During the last seven years that I have been imprisoned in Armagh Jail , my comrades and I have endured much from the prison administration's ever-changing attitude . Now , three months after the termination of our 'no work' protest , the conditions have deteriorated , the regime is more repressive and the punishments more severe and excessive .
I hope here to give you an insight into this present-day situation in Armagh , where the new prison regime has resorted to the familiar tactic of 'divide and conquer' in every aspect of prison routine . Considering the overall prison population of the North , there are very few women prisoners - all of these are held in Armagh . Republicans form the vast majority of the total , and at present there are 28 sentenced Republicans and seven on remand , scattered throughout the jail .
Within the prison building there are three separate structures housing prisoners - 'A' , 'B' and 'C' wings - each of which is completely isolated from the others . Inside each of these wings there are two landings , one blocked off from the other with no contact possible between the two . This is geared to further isolating Republicans in the jail , with the number of prisoners on each landing not exceeding nine . This in fact is not a prison , but many prisons within a prison . The purpose of dividing Republicans into small units is one of surveillance and control , it is not primarily a security measure but more a means to determine any weaknesses in individuals which the administration hope to exploit for their own ends ....... "
(MORE LATER).
USEFUL POLITICAL INTERPRETATION OF IRISH REPUBICANISM.......
' Irish Nationalism - A History Of Its Roots And Its Ideology' by SEAN CRONIN (The Academy Press , Dublin, 1980) .
A book on Irish Nationalism by a one-time Republican is bound to attract attention . Cronin's study deals with the roots , history , growth and development of Nationalist thinking in Ireland , particularly its revolutionary form - Irish Republicanism .
From 'IRIS' magazine , November 1981 .
No by-line.
Sean Cronin , the author , stated - " The Officials blame the Catholic middle class , not British rule , for Ireland's failure to industrialise . They favour devolved government in the North (ie return to Stormont's Orange State) and they have been accused (rightly) of betraying the National question by adopting the 'two nations' theory (ie Protestant and Catholic) . Finally , they support industrialisation via the multinationals . "
Cronin does not draw out all the conclusions from his obvious disillusionment with the Sticks (SFWP) but it is a clear sign that their one time 'radical' credentials are well and truly tarnished . Cronin ends up with a brief look at Republicanism proper , quoting from Sinn Fein vice-president Gerry Adams , and concluding that - "...his political ideas reflect a natural radicalisation of an armed struggle conducted among the Catholic ghettoes of Belfast and Derry . He seems much closer to Connolly's analysis than other voices . "
One wonders what has happened to the 'Hibernian gunmen' we used to hear of ! Cronin and his ilk never understand that pure republicanism has always been radical , in the sense that it looks to the roots of our problems - in our case , British imperialism and partition .
[END of ' USEFUL POLITICAL INTERPRETATION OF IRISH REPUBICANISM ' .]
(Monday , 21st - ' THE HEROIC PRISON STRUGGLE' : from 1981.)
IN THE SHADOW OF A GUNMAN .......
The aspirations of SINN FEIN THE WORKERS PARTY towards socialist respectability are undermined by the continued military operations of the OFFICIAL IRA and that Party's own ideoligical contortions .
From ' MAGILL' magazine , April 1982 .
By Vincent Browne.
March 6 , 1972 : Marcus McCausland , a former Officer in the UDR , was shot dead by the Official IRA - the coldblooded nature of this shooting as well as the fact that this was a middle-class target provoked particular outrage .
March 12 , 1972 : a woman was fatally injured in crossfire in Leeson Street , Belfast , between the Official IRA and the British Army .
March 24 , 1972 : the Official IRA announced that it would continue its campaign in spite of the prorogation of Stormont ; this statement was almost as hardline as that issued at the time by the Provisional Chief of Staff , Sean MacStiophain , which is much better remembered .
April 10 , 1972 : the Official IRA killed two soldiers in a booby trap .
May 10 , 1972 : a fifteen-year-old girl was beaten , tarred and feathered by the Official IRA in the Leeson Street area of Belfast .
May 21 , 1972 : an off-duty British soldier , Ranger Best , who was at home on leave in the Creggan in Derry was shot dead by the Official IRA . This incident led to the Official IRA ceasefire which was announced on May 29 , 1972 . Prior to the announcement of the ceasefire there was heated debate at OIRA Army Council level on the issue of the Ranger Best killing - several members of the Council condemned it and said that public support had been devastated by it , others pointed out that an explicit OIRA Army Council order had been made some months previously stating that British soldiers , in or out of uniform , were legitimate targets .......
(MORE LATER).
Thursday, November 17, 2005
A HISTORY OF ARMAGH JAIL .......
The women's prison in the North of Ireland is situated in the centre of the Protestant/Loyalist city of Armagh .
It was built in the 19th century , a huge granite building which today sports all the trappings of a high-security jail such as barbed wire , guards , arc-lamps , and closed circuit television cameras .
First published in the booklet ' STRIP SEARCHES IN ARMAGH JAIL' , produced , in February 1984 , by 'The London Armagh Group' .
A new type of criminalisation policy was launched - this was aimed at denying the legitimacy of Sinn Fein as a political party : increasingly , Sinn Fein election workers and advice centre workers who were identified with openly political activity rather than military organisations , began to be arrested and processed into jail on the Diplock conveyor belt . Intimidation and bribery were used to 'persuade' people to testify at the mass show trials which have become the latest feature of injustice in the North of Ireland system of 'justice' .
Despite the ending of the 'no-work' protest in Armagh Jail , as Mairead Farrell explains in the following piece , there was an increase in the amount of everyday harassment , which continues to this day .
NO LET UP IN REPRESSION .
Arrested on active service in April 1976 and sentenced at her 'trial' eight months later to 14 years imprisonment , Belfast Republican Mairead Farrell became one of the first women POW's to take part in the protest for political status .
Later on she was involved in the 'no wash' escalation of the protest in Armagh Jail and , in December 1980 , was one of three women prisoners to join the first hunger strike . Here , in a smuggled communication , she writes about the strip-searches , prison work and isolation that are features of the prison regime's repression in Armagh.......
(MORE LATER).
USEFUL POLITICAL INTERPRETATION OF IRISH REPUBICANISM.......
' Irish Nationalism - A History Of Its Roots And Its Ideology' by SEAN CRONIN (The Academy Press , Dublin, 1980) .
A book on Irish Nationalism by a one-time Republican is bound to attract attention . Cronin's study deals with the roots , history , growth and development of Nationalist thinking in Ireland , particularly its revolutionary form - Irish Republicanism .
From 'IRIS' magazine , November 1981 .
No by-line.
Current debates and discussions within the Republican Movement find interesting parallels in the discussions going on in the 1930's : Father Michael O' Flanagan , President of Sinn Fein in 1934-1935 noted how " ...the immediate task that lies before us is to clarify our minds on the essential principles of pure Republicanism , to apply them with unswerving consistency in the daily activities of our organisation , to show how their general application would solve all the pressing problems of the whole people of Ireland , and work out , in detail , a plan of governmet . "
A governmental programme was in fact worked out , which said of Republicans - " Not only must they be the organised and armed vanguard but they must also supply leadership and guidance in directing the thoughts of the people along constructive revolutionary lines . "
The lessons for the 1980's are obvious - we must move beyond abstract policies and pious declarations , to provide constructive revolutionary leadership in the day-to-day struggles of the people of no property . A 'Plan of Government' should aim at taking us from the real , concrete situation of today towards the united democratic-socialist Republic we are committed to .
Sean Cronin , the author , has not become converted overnight into an ardent supporter of the Republican Movement , but the pressure of events has forced him to recognise the bankruptcy of 'Sinn Fein The Workers Party' : as Cronin has said - " In their efforts to unite Protestant and Catholic workers , they seemed to have abandoned the small farmers , North and South . The Officials have come to some surprising conclusions on the National question , given their tradition and history....... "
(MORE LATER).
IN THE SHADOW OF A GUNMAN .......
The aspirations of SINN FEIN THE WORKERS PARTY towards socialist respectability are undermined by the continued military operations of the OFFICIAL IRA and that Party's own ideoligical contortions .
From ' MAGILL' magazine , April 1982 .
By Vincent Browne.
The course of the campaign began to go sour on the Official IRA from an early stage and in fact it was the Officials who were most associated in the public mind with atrocities rather than the Provisionals in early 1972 . The following is a sequence of incidents which caused considerable public outrage and pressure on the Officials to halt their campaign :
December 12 , 1971 - Senator Jack Barnhill was shot dead when he resisted attempts to burn down his house . Although it seems that there was no intention to kill him , in fact , his name had appeared on a death list of prominent individuals , compiled by the leadership of the Official IRA , to be assassinated at some future date . The list included several resident magistrates and prominent Unionist politicians .
February 22 , 1972 - Seven people , including five cleaning women , a priest and a gardener , were killed when bombs went off at the Headquarters of the British Parachute Regiment at Aldershot . The Official IRA planted the bomb in retaliation for the killing of the civilians in Derry during Bloody Sunday . The Official leadership approved the operation believing that over 20 senior Parachute Officers would be killed .
February 25 , 1972 - The Official IRA gunned down the Unionist politician , John Taylor on a pavement in Armagh . Relations now between SFWP and the Official Unionists are very close , thus this incident seems all the more bizarre in retrospect . However , Cathal Goulding seemed quite dismissive about the incident when interviewed some years later on March 8 , 1975 , by 'The Irish Times' newspaper : referring to the Taylor shooting , he said - " I suppose you could say that , well , Brian Faulkner should have been the target . He was in charge , but, like everything else , availability of the target matters , too . "
(MORE LATER).
The women's prison in the North of Ireland is situated in the centre of the Protestant/Loyalist city of Armagh .
It was built in the 19th century , a huge granite building which today sports all the trappings of a high-security jail such as barbed wire , guards , arc-lamps , and closed circuit television cameras .
First published in the booklet ' STRIP SEARCHES IN ARMAGH JAIL' , produced , in February 1984 , by 'The London Armagh Group' .
A new type of criminalisation policy was launched - this was aimed at denying the legitimacy of Sinn Fein as a political party : increasingly , Sinn Fein election workers and advice centre workers who were identified with openly political activity rather than military organisations , began to be arrested and processed into jail on the Diplock conveyor belt . Intimidation and bribery were used to 'persuade' people to testify at the mass show trials which have become the latest feature of injustice in the North of Ireland system of 'justice' .
Despite the ending of the 'no-work' protest in Armagh Jail , as Mairead Farrell explains in the following piece , there was an increase in the amount of everyday harassment , which continues to this day .
NO LET UP IN REPRESSION .
Arrested on active service in April 1976 and sentenced at her 'trial' eight months later to 14 years imprisonment , Belfast Republican Mairead Farrell became one of the first women POW's to take part in the protest for political status .
Later on she was involved in the 'no wash' escalation of the protest in Armagh Jail and , in December 1980 , was one of three women prisoners to join the first hunger strike . Here , in a smuggled communication , she writes about the strip-searches , prison work and isolation that are features of the prison regime's repression in Armagh.......
(MORE LATER).
USEFUL POLITICAL INTERPRETATION OF IRISH REPUBICANISM.......
' Irish Nationalism - A History Of Its Roots And Its Ideology' by SEAN CRONIN (The Academy Press , Dublin, 1980) .
A book on Irish Nationalism by a one-time Republican is bound to attract attention . Cronin's study deals with the roots , history , growth and development of Nationalist thinking in Ireland , particularly its revolutionary form - Irish Republicanism .
From 'IRIS' magazine , November 1981 .
No by-line.
Current debates and discussions within the Republican Movement find interesting parallels in the discussions going on in the 1930's : Father Michael O' Flanagan , President of Sinn Fein in 1934-1935 noted how " ...the immediate task that lies before us is to clarify our minds on the essential principles of pure Republicanism , to apply them with unswerving consistency in the daily activities of our organisation , to show how their general application would solve all the pressing problems of the whole people of Ireland , and work out , in detail , a plan of governmet . "
A governmental programme was in fact worked out , which said of Republicans - " Not only must they be the organised and armed vanguard but they must also supply leadership and guidance in directing the thoughts of the people along constructive revolutionary lines . "
The lessons for the 1980's are obvious - we must move beyond abstract policies and pious declarations , to provide constructive revolutionary leadership in the day-to-day struggles of the people of no property . A 'Plan of Government' should aim at taking us from the real , concrete situation of today towards the united democratic-socialist Republic we are committed to .
Sean Cronin , the author , has not become converted overnight into an ardent supporter of the Republican Movement , but the pressure of events has forced him to recognise the bankruptcy of 'Sinn Fein The Workers Party' : as Cronin has said - " In their efforts to unite Protestant and Catholic workers , they seemed to have abandoned the small farmers , North and South . The Officials have come to some surprising conclusions on the National question , given their tradition and history....... "
(MORE LATER).
IN THE SHADOW OF A GUNMAN .......
The aspirations of SINN FEIN THE WORKERS PARTY towards socialist respectability are undermined by the continued military operations of the OFFICIAL IRA and that Party's own ideoligical contortions .
From ' MAGILL' magazine , April 1982 .
By Vincent Browne.
The course of the campaign began to go sour on the Official IRA from an early stage and in fact it was the Officials who were most associated in the public mind with atrocities rather than the Provisionals in early 1972 . The following is a sequence of incidents which caused considerable public outrage and pressure on the Officials to halt their campaign :
December 12 , 1971 - Senator Jack Barnhill was shot dead when he resisted attempts to burn down his house . Although it seems that there was no intention to kill him , in fact , his name had appeared on a death list of prominent individuals , compiled by the leadership of the Official IRA , to be assassinated at some future date . The list included several resident magistrates and prominent Unionist politicians .
February 22 , 1972 - Seven people , including five cleaning women , a priest and a gardener , were killed when bombs went off at the Headquarters of the British Parachute Regiment at Aldershot . The Official IRA planted the bomb in retaliation for the killing of the civilians in Derry during Bloody Sunday . The Official leadership approved the operation believing that over 20 senior Parachute Officers would be killed .
February 25 , 1972 - The Official IRA gunned down the Unionist politician , John Taylor on a pavement in Armagh . Relations now between SFWP and the Official Unionists are very close , thus this incident seems all the more bizarre in retrospect . However , Cathal Goulding seemed quite dismissive about the incident when interviewed some years later on March 8 , 1975 , by 'The Irish Times' newspaper : referring to the Taylor shooting , he said - " I suppose you could say that , well , Brian Faulkner should have been the target . He was in charge , but, like everything else , availability of the target matters , too . "
(MORE LATER).
Wednesday, November 16, 2005
A HISTORY OF ARMAGH JAIL .......
The women's prison in the North of Ireland is situated in the centre of the Protestant/Loyalist city of Armagh .
It was built in the 19th century , a huge granite building which today sports all the trappings of a high-security jail such as barbed wire , guards , arc-lamps , and closed circuit television cameras .
First published in the booklet ' STRIP SEARCHES IN ARMAGH JAIL' , produced , in February 1984 , by 'The London Armagh Group' .
The protesting Irish POW's , men and women , came off both the dirty protest and the blanket protest to highlight the situation of the hunger strike - one by one , ten hunger strikers died . The five demands were ignored . Mass mobilisation and public support met derision and increased repression .
Before his death , Bobby Sands had been elected as a Westminster MP ; the British Government changed the law to ensure that no other prisoner could be elected . Two more Republican prisoners , Kieran Doherty and Paddy Agnew were elected to the Free State parliament . A Sinn Fein member , Owen Carron , was elected to replace the dead Bobby Sands : the British Government dug in its heels despite severe international pressure .
The strategy of using the ballot box to demonstrate the support amongst Catholics for a total British withdrawal from Ireland menaced the British Government . In the 1982 North of Ireland Assembly elections and the 1983 General Election , Sinn Fein , the largest Republican organisation in the North , got almost one half of the total Catholic vote .
A new type of criminalisation policy was launched by Westminster - this time aimed at denying the legitimacy of Sinn Fein as a political party .......
(MORE LATER).
USEFUL POLITICAL INTERPRETATION OF IRISH REPUBICANISM.
' Irish Nationalism - A History Of Its Roots And Its Ideology' by SEAN CRONIN (The Academy Press , Dublin, 1980) .
A book on Irish Nationalism by a one-time Republican is bound to attract attention . Cronin's study deals with the roots , history , growth and development of Nationalist thinking in Ireland , particularly its revolutionary form - Irish Republicanism .
From 'IRIS' magazine , November 1981 .
No by-line.
One could be forgiven for dismissing this book as the product of a renegade Republican turned academic , and , even worse , one whose books are published by the mis-named Sinn Fein The Workers' Party's company , ' Repsol Publications ' . That would be mistaken on two counts :
1) The book is a generally useful political interpretation of Irish Republicanism , superior in that sense to Bowyer Bell's history of the IRA ;
2) In spite of repeating the standard slanders on the 1970 split in the Republican Movement it provides a damning indictment of those reactionaries masquerading behind the 'SFWP' label .
The history that author Sean Cronin takes us through is a familiar one - Wolfe Tone and the United Irishmen , Thomas Davis and Young Ireland , the Fenians and the Land War , and the great Easter Rising . He then traces the IRA through the Tan and Civil Wars , the difficulties of the 1930's , the war years , and the Border Campaign of the 1950's where Cronin of course played an important role himself .
His last chapter is entitled significantly ' The Final Rebellion in the 1970's ' , presumably an admission that this is the final , inevitably victorious phase of the struggle . Sean Cronin gives us one quite valid conclusion - " The lesson of Irish history is that England never yields to right , reason or justice , only to force . Consequently , armed rebellion is an essential element in any attempt to win Irish independence . " (Today , those that wrote those words , and those that so favourably quoted from them at the time , have had their minds changed by offers of a 'political career' within the British and/or Free State system and now favour a different 'solution' ) .......
(MORE LATER).
IN THE SHADOW OF A GUNMAN .......
The aspirations of SINN FEIN THE WORKERS PARTY towards socialist respectability are undermined by the continued military operations of the OFFICIAL IRA and that Party's own ideoligical contortions .
From ' MAGILL' magazine , April 1982 .
By Vincent Browne.
The IRA was run down during the 1960's with the main emphasis on civil rights - the belief was that concentration on civil rights would have the effect of destabilising the 'state' in the North of Ireland ; but when violence flared on the streets of Belfast in August 1969 , the Republican Movement re-acted instinctively in the traditional Republican manner . Although its rhetoric did'nt catch up for a while and the split with the Provisionals confused the issue , the Official IRA got caught up in a military campaign against the British presence in the North as much as did the Provos .
Although SFWP now seeks to minimise the significance of the issue , the Battle of the Lower Falls was a major 'macho boost' to the Officials in July 1970 . They boasted at the time that it was "...the first major battle between the forces of the Republic and the British Army since 1921 .. " - some enthusiasts even went so far as to claim that it was the heaviest military engagement involving the British Army since the Second World War - nowadays Tomas MacGiolla refers to it merely as a confrontation between the people of the Falls Road and the British Army : " Slates were thrown from the roofs .. " , he says , minimising the degree of military engagement * that occurred . ('1169...' Comment* - ...similar to the way that the Provos now refer to "a 30-year campaign.." , in the hope of convincing their new members that the struggle was a thirty-year one for 'civil rights' , instead of what it is - a freedom struggle which has been on-going for over 830 years .)
The military campaign of the Official IRA stepped up considerably in the months after the introduction of internment in August 1971 ; local OIRA O/C's were encouraged to 'out-do' the Provos in militancy - the Derry OIRA Officer Commanding at the time recalls being berated by very senior members of the Official IRA for not shooting enough British soldiers .......
(MORE LATER).
The women's prison in the North of Ireland is situated in the centre of the Protestant/Loyalist city of Armagh .
It was built in the 19th century , a huge granite building which today sports all the trappings of a high-security jail such as barbed wire , guards , arc-lamps , and closed circuit television cameras .
First published in the booklet ' STRIP SEARCHES IN ARMAGH JAIL' , produced , in February 1984 , by 'The London Armagh Group' .
The protesting Irish POW's , men and women , came off both the dirty protest and the blanket protest to highlight the situation of the hunger strike - one by one , ten hunger strikers died . The five demands were ignored . Mass mobilisation and public support met derision and increased repression .
Before his death , Bobby Sands had been elected as a Westminster MP ; the British Government changed the law to ensure that no other prisoner could be elected . Two more Republican prisoners , Kieran Doherty and Paddy Agnew were elected to the Free State parliament . A Sinn Fein member , Owen Carron , was elected to replace the dead Bobby Sands : the British Government dug in its heels despite severe international pressure .
The strategy of using the ballot box to demonstrate the support amongst Catholics for a total British withdrawal from Ireland menaced the British Government . In the 1982 North of Ireland Assembly elections and the 1983 General Election , Sinn Fein , the largest Republican organisation in the North , got almost one half of the total Catholic vote .
A new type of criminalisation policy was launched by Westminster - this time aimed at denying the legitimacy of Sinn Fein as a political party .......
(MORE LATER).
USEFUL POLITICAL INTERPRETATION OF IRISH REPUBICANISM.
' Irish Nationalism - A History Of Its Roots And Its Ideology' by SEAN CRONIN (The Academy Press , Dublin, 1980) .
A book on Irish Nationalism by a one-time Republican is bound to attract attention . Cronin's study deals with the roots , history , growth and development of Nationalist thinking in Ireland , particularly its revolutionary form - Irish Republicanism .
From 'IRIS' magazine , November 1981 .
No by-line.
One could be forgiven for dismissing this book as the product of a renegade Republican turned academic , and , even worse , one whose books are published by the mis-named Sinn Fein The Workers' Party's company , ' Repsol Publications ' . That would be mistaken on two counts :
1) The book is a generally useful political interpretation of Irish Republicanism , superior in that sense to Bowyer Bell's history of the IRA ;
2) In spite of repeating the standard slanders on the 1970 split in the Republican Movement it provides a damning indictment of those reactionaries masquerading behind the 'SFWP' label .
The history that author Sean Cronin takes us through is a familiar one - Wolfe Tone and the United Irishmen , Thomas Davis and Young Ireland , the Fenians and the Land War , and the great Easter Rising . He then traces the IRA through the Tan and Civil Wars , the difficulties of the 1930's , the war years , and the Border Campaign of the 1950's where Cronin of course played an important role himself .
His last chapter is entitled significantly ' The Final Rebellion in the 1970's ' , presumably an admission that this is the final , inevitably victorious phase of the struggle . Sean Cronin gives us one quite valid conclusion - " The lesson of Irish history is that England never yields to right , reason or justice , only to force . Consequently , armed rebellion is an essential element in any attempt to win Irish independence . " (Today , those that wrote those words , and those that so favourably quoted from them at the time , have had their minds changed by offers of a 'political career' within the British and/or Free State system and now favour a different 'solution' ) .......
(MORE LATER).
IN THE SHADOW OF A GUNMAN .......
The aspirations of SINN FEIN THE WORKERS PARTY towards socialist respectability are undermined by the continued military operations of the OFFICIAL IRA and that Party's own ideoligical contortions .
From ' MAGILL' magazine , April 1982 .
By Vincent Browne.
The IRA was run down during the 1960's with the main emphasis on civil rights - the belief was that concentration on civil rights would have the effect of destabilising the 'state' in the North of Ireland ; but when violence flared on the streets of Belfast in August 1969 , the Republican Movement re-acted instinctively in the traditional Republican manner . Although its rhetoric did'nt catch up for a while and the split with the Provisionals confused the issue , the Official IRA got caught up in a military campaign against the British presence in the North as much as did the Provos .
Although SFWP now seeks to minimise the significance of the issue , the Battle of the Lower Falls was a major 'macho boost' to the Officials in July 1970 . They boasted at the time that it was "...the first major battle between the forces of the Republic and the British Army since 1921 .. " - some enthusiasts even went so far as to claim that it was the heaviest military engagement involving the British Army since the Second World War - nowadays Tomas MacGiolla refers to it merely as a confrontation between the people of the Falls Road and the British Army : " Slates were thrown from the roofs .. " , he says , minimising the degree of military engagement * that occurred . ('1169...' Comment* - ...similar to the way that the Provos now refer to "a 30-year campaign.." , in the hope of convincing their new members that the struggle was a thirty-year one for 'civil rights' , instead of what it is - a freedom struggle which has been on-going for over 830 years .)
The military campaign of the Official IRA stepped up considerably in the months after the introduction of internment in August 1971 ; local OIRA O/C's were encouraged to 'out-do' the Provos in militancy - the Derry OIRA Officer Commanding at the time recalls being berated by very senior members of the Official IRA for not shooting enough British soldiers .......
(MORE LATER).
Tuesday, November 15, 2005
A HISTORY OF ARMAGH JAIL .......
The women's prison in the North of Ireland is situated in the centre of the Protestant/Loyalist city of Armagh .
It was built in the 19th century , a huge granite building which today sports all the trappings of a high-security jail such as barbed wire , guards , arc-lamps , and closed circuit television cameras .
First published in the booklet ' STRIP SEARCHES IN ARMAGH JAIL' , produced , in February 1984 , by 'The London Armagh Group' .
In October 1980 , protesting POW's in the H-Blocks of Long Kesh began a hunger strike for political status ; on December 1 , 1980 , they were joined by three Republican women prisoners in Armagh Jail - Mairead Farrell , Mairead Nugent and Mary Doyle .
These were the only three women weighing more than eight-and-a-half stone . The 'no wash' protest was halted as the hunger strikes began : Westminster was reeling under fear of a Christmas bombing campaign , which hunger strike deaths would undoubtedly spark off . On December 18th , 1980 , a 30-page document was released outlining proposals and assurances from the British Government that , step by step , the five demands would be met .
The hunger strike was called off and the fulfilment of promises was awaited . They were never fulfilled . The condition of Pauline McLoughlin (vomiting constantly and rapidly losing weight) had been deteriorating . In October 1980 , the 'British Socialist Feminist Conference' (which was attended by 1,200 women) supported the demand for political status and pledged its aid to campaign for the release of Pauline McLoughlin from Armagh Jail ; after a sustained campaign in Ireland and Britain , Pauline McLoughlin was released on licence on January 10th , 1981 .
As the British Government was claiming that there had never been an agreement with the 1980 hunger strikers , and the possibility of concessions became more remote , another hunger strike began .......
(MORE LATER).
ELECTION INTERVENTIONS.......
Despite the fact that SINN FEIN has been contesting local elections in the 26 counties for more than two decades , much comment has been passed and incorrectly interpreted about Republican involvement in elections - north and south of the British-imposed border - in the past several months .
Here we review Republican interventions in the electoral process for the past century and more .
From 'IRIS' magazine , Volume 1 , Number 2 , November 1981 .
There is not and never has been a Republican principle on the issue of intervening in the electoral process although the Republican Movement has split on a number of occasions on the issue of attendence in colonial , neo-colonial or imperialist institutions. The Movement has suffered to some degree through the years from the effects of the various tendencies which have been in the ascendency during different periods .
Whether constitutional , militaristic or revolutionary , their lack of complete success - inevitable in the absence of a proper social and political consciousess - in achieving conditions by which the Irish people can re-establish the Republic has tended to thwart and obstruct efforts to apply the proper mixture of all three strategies to this end .
Only now , with a protracted war in the Six Counties - and the increasing politicisation which flows from it - sixty-three years after 1918 , is there the start of the beginning of a realisation of the need to secure such a strategy .
SOURCES for the above article :
' Land and the National Question in Ireland , 1858-1882' , by Paul Bew .
'Revolutionary Underground' , by Leon O' Broin .
'The Modernisation of Irish Society 1848-1918' , by Joseph Lee .
'Ourselves Alone' , by Robert Kee .
'The Irish Republic' , by Dorothy McArdle .
'Northern Ireland-The Orange State' , by Michael Farrell .
[END of 'ELECTION INTERVENTIONS'.]
(Tomorrow - ' Useful political interpretation of Irish Republicanism' : from 1981.)
IN THE SHADOW OF A GUNMAN .......
The aspirations of SINN FEIN THE WORKERS PARTY towards socialist respectability are undermined by the continued military operations of the OFFICIAL IRA and that Party's own ideoligical contortions .
From ' MAGILL' magazine , April 1982 .
By Vincent Browne.
In a recent interview on RTE's 'Day By Day' programme , Tomas MacGiolla , the President of Sinn Fein The Workers Party said - " I certainly have no knowledge of them (the Official IRA) . All I know is that I am convinced and I am aware that there is no question of any military organisation in any way associated with us at the present ." He went on to say - " I have no reason to think that (the Official IRA) still exists . Certainly it does'nt exist in any way down here . There was for some years a suggestion that it may have existed in the North and I pursued that there for quite a number of years to see any evidence of its existence and I am satisfied that it certainly does not exist in any association with us . "
In the course of the same RTE programme , Sean Garland said that in his July 1972 Carrighmore speech , Tomas MacGiolla had made it clear then that "...this party wanted nothing to do with such activities from then on . " Asked if he was still a member of the Official IRA Army Council he replied - " You're talking about today and we'll say 12 years ago , which is a long time . " The official stance of Sinn Fein The Workers Party nowadays is that as far as they are concerned the Official IRA went out of existence immediately after the July 1972 ceasefire : it is also suggested that the military campaign from 1970 until the ceasefire was 'an abberation' for which only a handful of 'hotheads' were responsible , while the SFWP leadership did what it could to stop the campaign all along !
The fact is that almost all the 100 or so members of the Official IRA are members of Sinn Fein The Workers Party . Like most organisations , SFWP remains to a large extent a prisoner of its past , although it has made remarkable efforts to disengage itself from its ideological heritage . The leftward drift of Sinn Fein during the 1960's under the direction of the Trinity intellectual Roy Johnson has been well chronicled by now . However , the significance of this development in terms of Marxism has been much exaggerated - it reflected much more the very non-marxist radicalism of the 1960's , more popularist , more issue-oriented in terms of fish-ins , housing agitation etc than a strict marxist strategy would allow . It was also very Republican , in the traditional sense of that word .
The 'National Question' remained central to its ideology and the struggle against "British imperialism" was seen as the focus of the party's main line of activity both in economic and nationalistic terms .......
(MORE LATER).
The women's prison in the North of Ireland is situated in the centre of the Protestant/Loyalist city of Armagh .
It was built in the 19th century , a huge granite building which today sports all the trappings of a high-security jail such as barbed wire , guards , arc-lamps , and closed circuit television cameras .
First published in the booklet ' STRIP SEARCHES IN ARMAGH JAIL' , produced , in February 1984 , by 'The London Armagh Group' .
In October 1980 , protesting POW's in the H-Blocks of Long Kesh began a hunger strike for political status ; on December 1 , 1980 , they were joined by three Republican women prisoners in Armagh Jail - Mairead Farrell , Mairead Nugent and Mary Doyle .
These were the only three women weighing more than eight-and-a-half stone . The 'no wash' protest was halted as the hunger strikes began : Westminster was reeling under fear of a Christmas bombing campaign , which hunger strike deaths would undoubtedly spark off . On December 18th , 1980 , a 30-page document was released outlining proposals and assurances from the British Government that , step by step , the five demands would be met .
The hunger strike was called off and the fulfilment of promises was awaited . They were never fulfilled . The condition of Pauline McLoughlin (vomiting constantly and rapidly losing weight) had been deteriorating . In October 1980 , the 'British Socialist Feminist Conference' (which was attended by 1,200 women) supported the demand for political status and pledged its aid to campaign for the release of Pauline McLoughlin from Armagh Jail ; after a sustained campaign in Ireland and Britain , Pauline McLoughlin was released on licence on January 10th , 1981 .
As the British Government was claiming that there had never been an agreement with the 1980 hunger strikers , and the possibility of concessions became more remote , another hunger strike began .......
(MORE LATER).
ELECTION INTERVENTIONS.......
Despite the fact that SINN FEIN has been contesting local elections in the 26 counties for more than two decades , much comment has been passed and incorrectly interpreted about Republican involvement in elections - north and south of the British-imposed border - in the past several months .
Here we review Republican interventions in the electoral process for the past century and more .
From 'IRIS' magazine , Volume 1 , Number 2 , November 1981 .
There is not and never has been a Republican principle on the issue of intervening in the electoral process although the Republican Movement has split on a number of occasions on the issue of attendence in colonial , neo-colonial or imperialist institutions. The Movement has suffered to some degree through the years from the effects of the various tendencies which have been in the ascendency during different periods .
Whether constitutional , militaristic or revolutionary , their lack of complete success - inevitable in the absence of a proper social and political consciousess - in achieving conditions by which the Irish people can re-establish the Republic has tended to thwart and obstruct efforts to apply the proper mixture of all three strategies to this end .
Only now , with a protracted war in the Six Counties - and the increasing politicisation which flows from it - sixty-three years after 1918 , is there the start of the beginning of a realisation of the need to secure such a strategy .
SOURCES for the above article :
' Land and the National Question in Ireland , 1858-1882' , by Paul Bew .
'Revolutionary Underground' , by Leon O' Broin .
'The Modernisation of Irish Society 1848-1918' , by Joseph Lee .
'Ourselves Alone' , by Robert Kee .
'The Irish Republic' , by Dorothy McArdle .
'Northern Ireland-The Orange State' , by Michael Farrell .
[END of 'ELECTION INTERVENTIONS'.]
(Tomorrow - ' Useful political interpretation of Irish Republicanism' : from 1981.)
IN THE SHADOW OF A GUNMAN .......
The aspirations of SINN FEIN THE WORKERS PARTY towards socialist respectability are undermined by the continued military operations of the OFFICIAL IRA and that Party's own ideoligical contortions .
From ' MAGILL' magazine , April 1982 .
By Vincent Browne.
In a recent interview on RTE's 'Day By Day' programme , Tomas MacGiolla , the President of Sinn Fein The Workers Party said - " I certainly have no knowledge of them (the Official IRA) . All I know is that I am convinced and I am aware that there is no question of any military organisation in any way associated with us at the present ." He went on to say - " I have no reason to think that (the Official IRA) still exists . Certainly it does'nt exist in any way down here . There was for some years a suggestion that it may have existed in the North and I pursued that there for quite a number of years to see any evidence of its existence and I am satisfied that it certainly does not exist in any association with us . "
In the course of the same RTE programme , Sean Garland said that in his July 1972 Carrighmore speech , Tomas MacGiolla had made it clear then that "...this party wanted nothing to do with such activities from then on . " Asked if he was still a member of the Official IRA Army Council he replied - " You're talking about today and we'll say 12 years ago , which is a long time . " The official stance of Sinn Fein The Workers Party nowadays is that as far as they are concerned the Official IRA went out of existence immediately after the July 1972 ceasefire : it is also suggested that the military campaign from 1970 until the ceasefire was 'an abberation' for which only a handful of 'hotheads' were responsible , while the SFWP leadership did what it could to stop the campaign all along !
The fact is that almost all the 100 or so members of the Official IRA are members of Sinn Fein The Workers Party . Like most organisations , SFWP remains to a large extent a prisoner of its past , although it has made remarkable efforts to disengage itself from its ideological heritage . The leftward drift of Sinn Fein during the 1960's under the direction of the Trinity intellectual Roy Johnson has been well chronicled by now . However , the significance of this development in terms of Marxism has been much exaggerated - it reflected much more the very non-marxist radicalism of the 1960's , more popularist , more issue-oriented in terms of fish-ins , housing agitation etc than a strict marxist strategy would allow . It was also very Republican , in the traditional sense of that word .
The 'National Question' remained central to its ideology and the struggle against "British imperialism" was seen as the focus of the party's main line of activity both in economic and nationalistic terms .......
(MORE LATER).
Monday, November 14, 2005
A HISTORY OF ARMAGH JAIL .......
The women's prison in the North of Ireland is situated in the centre of the Protestant/Loyalist city of Armagh .
It was built in the 19th century , a huge granite building which today sports all the trappings of a high-security jail such as barbed wire , guards , arc-lamps , and closed circuit television cameras .
First published in the booklet ' STRIP SEARCHES IN ARMAGH JAIL' , produced , in February 1984 , by 'The London Armagh Group' .
The details leading up to a sustained assault on the women prisoners by male and female prison officers , in February 1980 , are harrowing ; male warders had been on the prison wing for three days during which time the women were not allowed access to the toilet - they began to empty their excreta out of the spyholes and windows . When these were blocked up , they smeared it on the walls .
The women prisoners were offered a return to 'normality' if they would cease their ' no-work' protest for political status - this they refused to do . ('1169.....' Comment - we wonder how many of their sons and daughters are now members of this political party which , in 1998 , signed away that same right to political status in return for a political career ?) As their own excrement was almost the only part of their lives over which they could exercise control , they used it as another form of protesting against the political nature of their imprisonment .
In March 1980 , on the anniversary of their previous picket in 1979 , 'Women Against Imperialism' called for a mass demonstration ; feminists travelled from the rest of Ireland , from England , Scotand , Wales and elsewhere to support the prisoners' claim for political status and to assert the right of 'Women Against Imperialism' to picket their local jail on International Womens Day . Those pickets are now an annual event .
Protesting POW's in the H-Blocks of Long Kesh began a hunger strike for political status in October 1980 - they were soon to be joined in the protest by the women in Armagh Jail .......
(MORE LATER).
ELECTION INTERVENTIONS.......
Despite the fact that SINN FEIN has been contesting local elections in the 26 counties for more than two decades , much comment has been passed and incorrectly interpreted about Republican involvement in elections - north and south of the British-imposed border - in the past several months .
Here we review Republican interventions in the electoral process for the past century and more .
From 'IRIS' magazine , Volume 1 , Number 2 , November 1981 .
The Free State government called a general election for August 27th , 1923 ; Sinn Fein declared its intention to contest 87 seats on an abstentionist basis - the Free Staters moved against the Sinn Feiners . Harassment of election workers , arrests and attacks on Sinn Fein members (one man was killed) seriously disrupted Sinn Fein's election machine . Despite this , the Republicans returned 44 TD's , with the Staters winning 63 .
Later , in by-elections in November 1924 , Sinn Fein increased its vote in all five constituencies contested . The Republican underground government of the Second Dail continued to meet - in consulation now with those TD's elected in 1923 and 1924 - and although the Republican vote continued to rise in every by-election contested since the general election of 1923 , massive discriminatory laws against Republicans were forcing more and more activists - released from prison or home from a life 'on the run' - into exile . The Free State government's system of patronage and its use of the oath to the Free State constitution as a condition of employment in almost every sphere of work made it most difficult for Republicans to live in Ireland : in 1925 , more than 30,000 people emigrated to countries outside Europe .
The victory of 1918 was reduced to ashes ; nine short years after the Easter Rising - exhausted and demoralised by a bloody war against the British and by a shorter but bloodier war between Irishmen - the Irish people had nothing but partition and embitterment to show for their aspirations and struggle . Republican Ireland is still recovering from the effects of that period in our history ; partition , with its effects , has become one of the single greatest obstacles to the unity of the Irish people . Republicans have contested elections since then - with varying degrees of success - in 26 County , 6 County and Westminster elections.......
(MORE LATER).
IN THE SHADOW OF A GUNMAN .......
The aspirations of SINN FEIN THE WORKERS PARTY towards socialist respectability are undermined by the continued military operations of the OFFICIAL IRA and that Party's own ideoligical contortions .
From ' MAGILL' magazine , April 1982 .
By Vincent Browne.
The man in charge of the eight-man Official IRA punishment squad is from the North and was formerly a member of Clann na hEireann (the Sinn Fein Workers Party British support organisation) and was deported from England ; he carried out several robberies in that country for the organisation prior to his deportation . It was he who led the gang of eight men to The Dockers Pub that Sunday morning and it was he who assembled that gang for the operation . They had convened earlier that morning in a house near the North Strand in Dublin , a place where the Official IRA Dubin Unit still meets regularly . Information about this incident comes primarily from one of the eight men who were involved , and from one of the victims .
People who were members of the Official IRA until recently tell us that there is no way that this incident could have happened without explicit authorisation for it from a senior Officer in the Official IRA , who is also a member of Sinn Fein The Workers Party . As the two victims had been involved with the Communist Party there were protests from the latter about this incident to the leadership of SFWP , who denied any knowledge of the attack or the involvement of any of its members in the whole affair .
In the course of an interview for this article with Tomas MacGiolla , President of SFWP , and Sean Garland , General Secretary , they both recalled hearing of the incident at the time and remembered the correspondence with the Communist Party - they both denied that members of SFWP had been involved and said that as they were unaware of the existence of the Official IRA they were not in a position to make any observations about its involvement or otherwise in the incident . Such incidents are almost unique in the South of Ireland , where SFWP is keen to project a respectable image while it competes for votes as a regular conventional politial party of the left . But those incidents are commonplace in the North of Ireland .
The leadership of Sinn Fein The Workers Party now consistently deny any knowledge of the Official IRA or any involvement by the party in military activity .......
(MORE LATER).
The women's prison in the North of Ireland is situated in the centre of the Protestant/Loyalist city of Armagh .
It was built in the 19th century , a huge granite building which today sports all the trappings of a high-security jail such as barbed wire , guards , arc-lamps , and closed circuit television cameras .
First published in the booklet ' STRIP SEARCHES IN ARMAGH JAIL' , produced , in February 1984 , by 'The London Armagh Group' .
The details leading up to a sustained assault on the women prisoners by male and female prison officers , in February 1980 , are harrowing ; male warders had been on the prison wing for three days during which time the women were not allowed access to the toilet - they began to empty their excreta out of the spyholes and windows . When these were blocked up , they smeared it on the walls .
The women prisoners were offered a return to 'normality' if they would cease their ' no-work' protest for political status - this they refused to do . ('1169.....' Comment - we wonder how many of their sons and daughters are now members of this political party which , in 1998 , signed away that same right to political status in return for a political career ?) As their own excrement was almost the only part of their lives over which they could exercise control , they used it as another form of protesting against the political nature of their imprisonment .
In March 1980 , on the anniversary of their previous picket in 1979 , 'Women Against Imperialism' called for a mass demonstration ; feminists travelled from the rest of Ireland , from England , Scotand , Wales and elsewhere to support the prisoners' claim for political status and to assert the right of 'Women Against Imperialism' to picket their local jail on International Womens Day . Those pickets are now an annual event .
Protesting POW's in the H-Blocks of Long Kesh began a hunger strike for political status in October 1980 - they were soon to be joined in the protest by the women in Armagh Jail .......
(MORE LATER).
ELECTION INTERVENTIONS.......
Despite the fact that SINN FEIN has been contesting local elections in the 26 counties for more than two decades , much comment has been passed and incorrectly interpreted about Republican involvement in elections - north and south of the British-imposed border - in the past several months .
Here we review Republican interventions in the electoral process for the past century and more .
From 'IRIS' magazine , Volume 1 , Number 2 , November 1981 .
The Free State government called a general election for August 27th , 1923 ; Sinn Fein declared its intention to contest 87 seats on an abstentionist basis - the Free Staters moved against the Sinn Feiners . Harassment of election workers , arrests and attacks on Sinn Fein members (one man was killed) seriously disrupted Sinn Fein's election machine . Despite this , the Republicans returned 44 TD's , with the Staters winning 63 .
Later , in by-elections in November 1924 , Sinn Fein increased its vote in all five constituencies contested . The Republican underground government of the Second Dail continued to meet - in consulation now with those TD's elected in 1923 and 1924 - and although the Republican vote continued to rise in every by-election contested since the general election of 1923 , massive discriminatory laws against Republicans were forcing more and more activists - released from prison or home from a life 'on the run' - into exile . The Free State government's system of patronage and its use of the oath to the Free State constitution as a condition of employment in almost every sphere of work made it most difficult for Republicans to live in Ireland : in 1925 , more than 30,000 people emigrated to countries outside Europe .
The victory of 1918 was reduced to ashes ; nine short years after the Easter Rising - exhausted and demoralised by a bloody war against the British and by a shorter but bloodier war between Irishmen - the Irish people had nothing but partition and embitterment to show for their aspirations and struggle . Republican Ireland is still recovering from the effects of that period in our history ; partition , with its effects , has become one of the single greatest obstacles to the unity of the Irish people . Republicans have contested elections since then - with varying degrees of success - in 26 County , 6 County and Westminster elections.......
(MORE LATER).
IN THE SHADOW OF A GUNMAN .......
The aspirations of SINN FEIN THE WORKERS PARTY towards socialist respectability are undermined by the continued military operations of the OFFICIAL IRA and that Party's own ideoligical contortions .
From ' MAGILL' magazine , April 1982 .
By Vincent Browne.
The man in charge of the eight-man Official IRA punishment squad is from the North and was formerly a member of Clann na hEireann (the Sinn Fein Workers Party British support organisation) and was deported from England ; he carried out several robberies in that country for the organisation prior to his deportation . It was he who led the gang of eight men to The Dockers Pub that Sunday morning and it was he who assembled that gang for the operation . They had convened earlier that morning in a house near the North Strand in Dublin , a place where the Official IRA Dubin Unit still meets regularly . Information about this incident comes primarily from one of the eight men who were involved , and from one of the victims .
People who were members of the Official IRA until recently tell us that there is no way that this incident could have happened without explicit authorisation for it from a senior Officer in the Official IRA , who is also a member of Sinn Fein The Workers Party . As the two victims had been involved with the Communist Party there were protests from the latter about this incident to the leadership of SFWP , who denied any knowledge of the attack or the involvement of any of its members in the whole affair .
In the course of an interview for this article with Tomas MacGiolla , President of SFWP , and Sean Garland , General Secretary , they both recalled hearing of the incident at the time and remembered the correspondence with the Communist Party - they both denied that members of SFWP had been involved and said that as they were unaware of the existence of the Official IRA they were not in a position to make any observations about its involvement or otherwise in the incident . Such incidents are almost unique in the South of Ireland , where SFWP is keen to project a respectable image while it competes for votes as a regular conventional politial party of the left . But those incidents are commonplace in the North of Ireland .
The leadership of Sinn Fein The Workers Party now consistently deny any knowledge of the Official IRA or any involvement by the party in military activity .......
(MORE LATER).
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