Social Items

TPQ
Showing posts with label Ciarán Cunningham. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Ciarán Cunningham. Show all posts

Ciaran Cunningham ✍ Twenty-five years ago, in May 1998, myself and young Darren Mullholland walked the Holylands district of Belfast, leafleting Nationalist students in a call to reject the Good Friday Agreement in the following day’s referendum.

Initially people thought we were the DUP, when they realised that we were Republicans their reception was no warmer. The GFA deal had been done. The ‘Yes’ campaign was in full swing, funded as it was by the still anonymous pro-business lobby group ‘The Portland Trust’.

In the minds of nationalist youth - and in line with the message of the nationalist parties - the GFA was peace itself. Our people were tired of war, prisons and poverty. In the shadows, Billy Wrights active and murderous sectarian counter gang the LVF were providing the stick that complimented the GFA’s promised carrot that was, jobs, the release of prisoners and an end to armed conflict.

For our part we were just militant minded students; me dipping my toe into Republican Marxism wherever I could find it, and Darren (an exceptionally intelligent theoretical physics student) a passionate advocate of the Irish sovereignty position as had been espoused within Sinn Féin until approximately that point.

Probably numbed to normality somewhat, having grown up on steady diet of shocking headlines, I am not proud to say that the word ‘peace’ meant nothing to me in 1998. It was a British state propaganda term pure and simple; churned out by numerous London politicians who as policy reserved any condemnation for armed republicans while openly supporting the crown forces and their right to forcibly occupy our country.

The position set out in our leaflets was adamant and straightforward. The GFA - if accepted by the Republican base - would be an unmitigated disaster for the revolutionary position in Ireland.

Every word, objective and aspiration contained within its pages ran contrary to the objective of a ‘32 County, sovereign, socialist republic’, an aspiration that was sacrosanct for us both; and which until then, was still the mainstream republican demand, cited even by Sinn Féin.

In the decades before demographic shifts, Catholic majorities and the chaos of Brexit, the absence of any prospect even of basic Irish Unity made the GFA not only counter revolutionary in our minds, but downright idiotic. At that age we weren’t waiting twenty-five years for anything.

Life would become noticeably more hostile for us both from that day on, but for Darren much more so than me. He would receive a 22-year prison sentence at the Old Bailey having been arrested with others for republican activity in London that July. It was a gargantuan sacrifice for his political position, in comparison to the tea break of a sentence that I myself would go onto receive some years later. Appallingly, I have only spoken to Darren a few times since then, if he reads this, I hope he is well.

A lot has happened to Irish republicanism since then. Several immeasurable tragedies of various descriptions, the superficial normalisation of the British security apparatus in the north, constant Internment by remand, the twist and turns of decades long political manoeuvrings and the aging and deaths of many relevant political figures; making space for a new generation of young activists for whom I wouldn’t even attempt to speak now.

Everything that mainstream leaders assured the grass roots would not happen has happened. So much so, that ‘Irish Republicanism’ arguably means something else in the public mind today than it did in the twentieth century.

In 1998 the EU was spoke of with utter disdain by mainstream Irish Republicanism. Denounced regularly as a pro colonial, counter revolutionary capitalist meat market, whose ethos was at complete odds with the Irish Republican goal. Today it has taken on the roll of a political life raft that constitutional nationalism would have us all cling on to in a bid to secure a ‘Yes’ vote in a border poll. A clever strategy? most certainly. A revolutionary one? most certainly not.

Writing in this series of TPQ, Martin Galvin indicated that (love it or hate it) the GFA is what we’re left with and that all republicans should try to make the most of opportunities that now arise within its dynamic. Dissatisfaction at Brexit and opportunities for Irish Unity being the obvious example.

Martin has every right to say this. Like us, he warned of the dangers of the GFA back in 1998 and for some years afterwards. Indeed, he worked on the ground to try and explore and assist viable political alternatives to it all, when, no doubt, he had the opportunity to become a transatlantic hero of the peace process had he only been willing to shut his eyes to the glaring anomalies that were screaming from the pages of the ’98 agreement.

For my own part, I have accepted that there is probably going to be a unity referendum of some sort in the future. If it comes, I will be walking the streets urging working class people to Vote ‘Yes for Unity’.

I am tired of London rule in Ireland, direct or otherwise. Tired of losing friendships to opposing political arguments that I couldn’t be bothered taking part in but which I feel that I must. I’m tired of partition generally and the perpetual madness that follows it. Who wouldn’t vote to end that?

Most of all, I’m tired of seeing salt of the earth political friends and comrades living under the spectre of a police force and prison system that hates them, and which would gladly gaol them for their mere perspectives and political aspirations, even in the dying hours of a failed northern state.

Is my support for a referendum a contradiction of the leaflets that me and Darren handed out in 1998? It probably is yes! But do I still stand by what we said about the GFA back then? Absolutely yes and without hesitation.

The GFA was indeed an unmitigated disaster for the revolutionary republican position in Ireland. One glance at the forces now taking a major sudden interest in Irish Unity, and the manoeuvres being pulled to make it appear palatable to the forces of reaction, tells us that when and if a United Ireland comes from a GFA style border poll; the type of country that emerges will probably be as far away from the ‘32 County Sovereign Socialist Republic’ as middle-class Ireland, America and the European Union can possibly drag it.

Which is precisely why those of us who remain loyal to the revolutionary goal cannot afford to absent ourselves from the process. The aspiration and demand for ‘32 county sovereign socialist republic’ must survive and thrive in modern Ireland and not become a relic of the past; to be sang of by the new property class, the rich, the powerful, before being forgotten about and scoffed at when all have sobered up and settled for less.

If the aspiration is to survive, those of us who carry it cannot afford to be accused of having played no part in the unification of our country. Which will be the chief argument and propaganda of those who plan to retire by putting old wine in new bottles. We must be there; we must be seen to be there and our successors must be able to say we were there.

This is the hand we have been dealt. It is a bad hand but the trick now is to play it cleverly.

⏩ Ciarán Cunningham is a West Belfast republican

Opposing The GFA ✑ May 1998

Ciarán Cunningham, remembers a volunteer from the INLA who died in May.

Marty McElkearney
Social Capital Theory suggests that the settings into which we are born and raised, by and large determine our opportunities and, as such, the course of our life.

Marty McElkearney was born into Bedeque Street in 1962, one of Belfast’s now long since demolished red brick streets of sprawling proportions, just off the Crumlin Road in what is now roughly the Lower Shankill area. It was in settings that could not, by any social standards be considered normal.

Born into a quasi-fascist state, the leaders of which resented his very existence (by virtue of his religion) and who regularly concocted novel social schemes designed to encourage Catholics to leave “Northern Ireland”, Marty Mac’s Donegall-born mother and Tyrone father would have faced subtle discrimination of varying degrees on a daily basis and were most likely ‘tolerated’ in their district at best.

Soon into Marty’s childhood, that tolerance would evaporate before his eyes; in August 1969 along with so many others, the McElkearny family were forced to flee their home as it was torched by Paisley’s mobs, determined to stem the growing confidence of the Nationalist population in the wake of the ongoing Civil Rights initiatives of that year. His younger brother James still remembers staring down from his bedroom at the hats of disinterested RUC men who refused to prevent Orange gangs from engaging in the pogrom that was being played out across Belfast and beyond.

James kindly related to me over Christmas the situation they found themselves in following the pogroms, describing firstly the makeshift camp that his family (and 49 other families) were forced to live in as a “shanty town of old caravans”.By all accounts the conditions at the Beechmount evacuation camp were appalling and its occupants' anger was becoming fast palpable. Conditions in the nearby camp at Cullingtree Road were no better as scores of families squeezed into no more than 9 makeshift huts there.

From the Beechmount camp, Marty’s parents were allocated a house in the poorly constructed Springhill Avenue area of West Belfast, an area designated for attention by Mother Theresa and the Missionaries of Charity due to its impoverished status. It would soon also become a warzone.

Marty McElkearny was nine years old when, within earshot of his home, an occupying British Army slaughtered eleven unarmed civilians, including Father Hugh Mullen in a two day operation of deliberate terror designed to inflict an atmosphere of total fear, complementing the ongoing Internment operation that was affecting every family in the district.

Less than a year later, outside his own front door, five more neighbours, including Fr Noel Fitzpatrick, would lose their lives as Paratroopers opened fire again on locals and homes for 90 minutes, on a warm summer evening. This was again an attempt to create total fear amongst the populace and in response to the breakdown of the IRA ceasefire earlier in the day.

The McElkearny boys went on to become close friends with the McWilliams brothers who lived directly across the street from them. Together they did (or tried to do) all of the things that young lads everywhere else would do. And while one can only speculate today upon the various social and political pressures that pulled their collective psychology and ultimately shaped their respective life choices, there can be no doubt that successive British governments were determined that none would enjoy any greater social or economic opportunities for personal development than Stormont had granted their parents' generation before them.

Much has been written and said about the Springhill and Westrock areas in the 1970s. Attempts (with the help of Father Des Wilson who we also sadly lost this year) to create indigenous industries as a substitute to the lack of investment into the area, such as a local bakery, car repair workshops, and even a local cinema, were actively targeted from outside by the British state and again internally by the Catholic Church hierarchy. Between these economic factors and the ongoing British military occupation, avenues for existing with dignity, beyond militant physical struggle must surely have appeared few and far between to many young men and women.

One August day in 1977, young Jason (Paul) McWilliams, a Fianna Volunteer who was on temporary release from St Pat’s boys home having been convicted of rioting a year earlier, was shot in the back and killed by a British Army sniper as he walked to his home along Springhill Avenue with his brother Christopher (Crip). James McElkearny describes how from that point on, his brother Martin viewed every wheel and turn of his life through the prism of militant revolutionary struggle: his people were clearly at war with the British State and so was he. An inevitability surely!

By the time Marty McElkearney had moved with his clan to the Divis area of the Falls Road a virtual war of daily attrition was taking place between the wider community and the British Army; house raids were a daily occurrence for Marty’s clan who in the main were staunchly loyal to the Politics and ongoing campaign of the IRA. For Martin McIlkearny however, mere circumstances saw him become a Volunteer within the Irish National Liberation Army, alongside his comrade Matt McClarnon (husband to Marty’s sister) who was shot and killed by the British Army while on active service on May 12th 1981, the day on which IRA Hunger Striker Francis Hughes passed away.

By all accounts, the Divis unit of the INLA were a formidable group of fighters, who on a daily basis conducted a ‘hit and run’ Guerrilla campaign against the British Army and the RUC when and where they could find them. It is a matter of record that in the course of one such operation in 1982 two young local lads; Stephen Bennet (aged 14) and Kevin Valliday (aged 12) were accidentally and tragically killed alongside a patrolling British soldier; an immeasurable loss to their families and to their community.

By virtue of that action, Marty Mac was sentenced to life imprisonment in the H-Blocks of Long Kesh, from where he would not be released until the Good Friday Agreement early release scheme in 1999. Marty Mac lived on the outside under the shadow of a ‘life licence’ until the day he died.

I first met Marty having taken the decision to join the Irish Republican Socialist Party around five years ago; earlier intentions to join the party way back in 1996 failed when nobody turned up to a pre-arranged meeting with a Socialist friend of mine, a school teacher whom I had met some years previously. I could have tried again to join but chose not to, alternative political pressures then pulled me in another direction altogether.

By the time I sat talking politics in Marty’s kitchen I had long since come to a position of progressive realism on the issue of Armed actions, as had he, there was no need for them in the current environment, and we both agreed that we were glad of that fact.

Upon release from prison, Marty lived and breathed the Irish Republican Socialist Party, although it was very clear to all who knew him that despite his obvious and passionate preference for a peaceful path towards Irish Unity and Socialism, he still viewed the world through the same prism of revolutionary struggle that he had formulated in his mind since those tragic events of the mid 1970s. He passionately sought to establish the IRSP as a bona fide, legitimate and effective political party, immediately setting about (upon his release) to persuade former and current supporters of Republican Socialism to get involved in party structures, often in an environment wherein people were extremely reluctant, be it though fear of demonisation in the press or through fear of real physical consequences to their person.

His commitment to this end was quite remarkable as he was fully aware of the efforts of others who had tried the same thing only a few short years earlier, not least his good friend and comrade Gino Gallagher who was murdered for his efforts to assert the primacy of politics within militant Republican Socialism. A particular gift of patience and calm was required in the process of rebuilding the party of Seamus Costello, but luckily for the IRSP, patience and calm were something that Marty Mac had in abundance.

Ironically, despite his passion around rebuilding the party, having attended only a few branch meetings with Marty Mac, it appeared evident and obvious to me that he had little time for talking unless something really needed to be said. If somebody else was saying it Marty was content to let them carry on. It was later explained to me that this was a deliberate tactic of his, designed to ensure that all party comrades (in particular younger ones) became used to speaking their minds and finding the skills to do so with confidence. Only if a pressing matter was being neglected or ignored would Marty pop into verse, he had seen & heard it all before.

But where Marty McElkearny firmly came into his own, was when there was a crisis at hand, a skill he learned firmly within the H-Blocks with all the twists and turns of horrific reality that occurred within their walls. Described accurately by friends and comrades across Ireland as ‘the safe hands’ and ‘the cool head’ of the IRSP, Marty Mac was famous within Republican Socialism for having a natural talent of restoring calm in situations wherein others would easily panic and potentially go astray, often prescribing to others a mere suggestion that they ‘go home and get a good nights sleep’, before returning and revisiting the source of panic the next day with a clearer head. For this reason he was taken seriously by both friends and political opponents and competitors alike. Examples are too numerous to recall here.

‘Go and see Marty Mac’ is something that every IRSP member in Belfast has heard at one stage or another. No doubt, many political activists within other republican organisations have heard the very same thing, testimony if anything to the gift of patience and calm that could, and indeed was often, called upon at all hours of the day and night.

On May 16th this year, a non-political friend of mine speaking with some shock stated aloud, “Jesus, Martin McElkearny has been shot in the graveyard.” He had just read of the incident on a Belfast News internet site and was thinking out loud. Strangely, at first it did not dawn on me who he was referring to as I had never once heard anybody refer to him as ‘Martin McElkearney,’ My mind only registered him as ‘Marty Mac’.

Of course within seconds it became real though and through that strange cloud of adrenalin induced confusion that comes over people when shocking news arrives I struggled with my phone in an attempt to make a call to party colleagues in West Belfast who could clarify and hopefully deny the reality of what I had just heard. Before I could even find the correct contacts however my mobile began ringing with others trying to establish the same thing from me. Marty Mac’s death was becoming real.

Later in the day I heard at first hand the heart-breaking accounts from Marty Mac’s closest and most trusted friends and party colleagues, whom he had trusted enough to make a final phone call to from the Republican Socialist plot in Belfast’s Milltown cemetery before finally and tragically taking his own life.

Martin’s family are aware of this event and the belief of his friends that he done so in order to avoid any inaccurate and potentially dangerous speculation as to who could have been behind his death. Again, the safe hands and the cool head, total commitment to the wellbeing of his party, friends, family and community.

In this call, Marty made one friend aware that he was happy with the direction that the party had been going on in recent times and directed him to ensure that they stayed confidently on that path, assuring him further that ‘everything will be fine’ if they did so. Prior to making the short journey to Milltown, he had gone into Costello House, the headquarters of the IRSP, there he made observations about various structural needs of the building and left directions with other members regarding damp proofing and other matters around the deeds to the building. Nobody had any idea that anything was wrong, there were no signs of distress whatsoever.

Unbelievably, Marty Mac, (having made his friends and party colleagues fully aware of his intentions) it was he who sought to calm them, as they passionately pleaded with him to reconsider, while scrambling to start cars and fight their way through traffic to try and physically prevent what was unfolding. One woman later described on Twitter how she was in a Taxi driving down the Falls Road, when its driver pulled over and told her she had to get out as his friend was about to take his own life, before watching him speed off in the direction of Milltown.

Tragically however, Marty had taken his own life. By the time his friends had arrived there was nothing they could do. Heartbroken they called the Ambulance services, who by all accounts did a sterling job in trying to preserve the life of Martin McElkearney, all of whose working organs were donated to others in need, as per his instructions.

Early on a blistering hot morning shortly after his death, I was asked by the IRSP to set up a Public Address system in Milltown cemetery, to provide the sound for Marty Mac’s funeral ceremony. A lack of available cars and subsequent logistics meant that I had to remain in the cemetery with the expensive and bulky equipment for around four hours, getting badly sunburned in the process. To be honest I was honoured to have been asked and to have taken the task.

But while sitting there in the sun baked silence, pondering on the strange reality that this was the spot where Marty Mac had tragically taken his own life just days earlier, I noticed first the presence of a Military or Police spotter plane which went onto circle perpetually overhead. Not long afterwards it was replaced by the intense buzzing of a Police chopper, and by the time Republican Belfast had entered Milltown cemetery en masse to pay its respects, it was clear that the state operation to prevent or dissuade Martin McElkearny’s friends and comrades from burying him in peace was in full swing.

The same state which through oppressive tactics had created the prism through which Marty Mac had made militant decisions in life were determined to maintain the pressure upon him and his friends in death. Whether or not they were aware that he passionately sought a peaceful solution to Ireland’s political affairs is a matter of speculation. If you ask me, it is unlikely that they would have cared. Regardless, he would have wanted all of us to persevere, for a better future for everybody and for the Socialist Republic ultimately.

Martin McElkearney, faithful to the last!

⏩ Ciarán Cunningham is a West Belfast republican

Marty McElkearney

West Belfast. Socialist Republican, Ciarán Cunningham highlights what he feels are deficiencies in the Left perspective on abortion and the right to choose.

Abortion: Left Are Not Right

Ciaran Cunningham recalls the Provisional IRA slaying of his friend Joe O'Connor in Ballymurphy 15 years ago tomorrow.


IRA Volunteer Joe O'Connor

15 Years On. Joe O’Connor. No Need For An Admission

Ciarán Cunningham writes on the journey of a historic radical banner. Ciarán Cunningham lives in the Clonard area of West Belfast. Since coming to Belfast as a student in the mid 90s he has campaigned on political issues relating to the Social and National question here. After his release from Maghaberry Prison in 2006 he has worked as a benefits adviser and Tribunal Representative on a Voluntary and full time basis. He is currently involved in campaigning against Tory/Stormont cutbacks, and benefits cuts in particular.

Follonsby Wardly Banner Coming To Ireland

Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)