Showing posts with label Commemorative event. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Commemorative event. Show all posts
A commemoration for six New Lodge men shot dead by British and loyalist forces in 1973 shall take place this Saturday.

Date: 3 February.

Venue: Donore Court Mural.



New Lodge Six Commemoration

Martin RaffertyIt would be remiss of any Irish republican, standing at the gravesides or memorials of our patriot dead, not to relate to the plight and sufferings of the Palestinian people as they fight for their very survival and struggle to end the ongoing violation of their national sovereignty.

The parallels between our struggles are stark, both in their historic origins and nature and their current and deeply flawed approach to their political and constitutional resolution. We too have faced attempted genocide at the hands of our occupier. We to have faced the clearing of our lands to make way for settlers. And in those dark days of our history other colonised peoples from around the world reached out to help us.

Ireland, like Palestine, is occupied. The partition of Ireland was a two-state solution imposed by the British under the threat of immediate and terrible war. It hasn’t worked. It can’t work, because at its core is a fundamental denial of sovereign and democratic rights that each generation it is imposed upon will struggle relentlessly to end .

The Israeli state was founded to serve the strategic self-interests of the United Kingdom and the United States of America. It had nothing to do with safe homelands for victimised people. Those self-interests found a useful vehicle in the form of Zionism and they have funded, armed and given political cover to its deliberate aim of destroying the Palestinian nation and its people.

What the world witnessed on October the seventh was a prison revolt by the imprisoned people of Gaza. What the right-wing wailings of the Western powers would have us believe is that October the 7th was an unprovoked attack on a benign Israel.

As the genocidal slaughter continues on the civilian population of Gaza these same so-called champions of democracy cannot even bring themselves to call for a ceasefire as the death toll rages past 14800 thousand including 6150 children and that’s not taking into account the many thousand buried alive under the rubble of their own homes that have been destroyed by the Zionists using USA and British bombs.

The grotesque and almost farcical attempts by the Israeli Defence Forces to plant munitions at hospital sites to justify their bombing of the sick and injured are reminiscent of the British Army’s efforts to portray the innocent victims of Bloody Sunday as gunmen and bombers. or the murder of unarmed volenteer Pasty Duffy who we gather here today to commemorate, by heavily armed British crown forces. Pastys friends and family, like so many other, have been denied the truth of what happened to their love one on that day in 1978 and we support them in their fight to get truth and justice for Pasty.

Irish republicans must stand firm with the people of Palestine. We must reject the quisling stance of Irish politicians who speak and act out of both sides of their mouths.

Irish republicans must engage with and become part of Palestinian solidarity groups both here and abroad to drive home the urgent lesson of solidarity. Conflicts are not resolved by peace accords such as Good Friday or Oslo. They are resolved when national sovereignty is recognised and respected.

We say to our Palestinian friends do not listen to so-called Irish republicans who urge you to learn from their so-called peace process. As a result of their slavish engagement with the British Government the partition of Ireland has been sanitised in the eyes of an up-coming generation.

This will be your fate also if you choose to pursue the Two State solution. The Good Friday Agreement serves British interests just as the Oslo Accords serve the interests of Israel and their imperial backers.

Irish republicans chose the correct route by declaring our right to national sovereignty in international law before the United Nations. We urge our Palestinian brothers and sisters to do likewise and make this stance the first and final position in any negotiations on the future of your country.

Like Volunteer Pasty Duffy, whom we honour here today, we urge republicans to action. The cause of Ireland is the cause of Palestine. And the cause of both is the restoration of our mutual national sovereignty.

Beir Bua!

Martin Rafferty, a member of the 32 CSM, is an activist with the BDS movement, campaigning for the sovereignty of the Palestinian people.

Patsy Duffy Commemoration Derry 2023

Mallow Republican Commemoration Committee ⚑ has organised a commemorative event for Saturday 25 November.

Venue: Hibernian Hotel, Mallow, Co Cork.

Time: 2000.

Live Music: Paddy Bhoys & Myles Gaffney.

Book Launch: No Greater Love by blanketman Seamus Kearney.

Guest Speaker: Seamus Kearney.


Volunteer Andy O"Sullivan Centenary Function

 

Independent Dublin Republicans ✊ will this weekend remember those republicans who lost their lives on hunger strike in the British prison system.

Former IRA volunteer and republican prisoner, John Crawley, will be the main speaker at the commemoration at Dublin's Garden Of Remembrance.


Remembering The Hunger Strikers

Liam Lynch National Commemoration Associationis hosting a commemorative event to mark the 100th anniversary of the death of IRA chief of staff, Liam Lynch. 

It will take place on 16 July at 1430 in the Knockmealdown Mountains. 

Dr Tim Horgan is billed as the main speaker.



Liam Lynch Commemoration 2023

A Commemorative event to remember IRA volunteer George McBrearty, his comrades and the republican hungers strikers is to take place this weekend in Derry.

The event will be chaired by former republican prisoner Frankie Quinn.

The main speaker will be former republican prisoner John Crawley.

42nd Anniversary George McBrearty Commemoration

Tipperary Independent Republican Association ✒ 

is to host a commemoration for IRA volunteers Dinny Lacey & Paddy McDonagh.

The venue is St Michael's Cemetery, Tipperary town.

Oration to be delivered by Tom Hennessy.


Dinny Lacey & Paddy McDonagh Commemoration

John Crawley delivered the eulogy at the centenary anniversary of  Liam Mellows, executed by Free State forces.

At 3:30 am on Friday, the 8th of December 1922, IRA volunteers Liam Mellows, Rory O’Connor, Dick Barrett, and Joe McKelvey were informed they were to be summarily executed by the Free State government in retaliation for the killing of Sean Hales, the previous day. Hales had voted for the ‘Murder Bill’ permitting the execution of those bearing arms in defence of the Irish Republic. The Free State made great play of the fact Hales was a T.D. even though the first T.D. slain in the Civil War had been shot by Free Staters when they killed Cathal Brugha, who presided over the first meeting of Dáil hÉireann in January 1919 and had served as Minister for Defence. Free Staters had murdered Harry Boland T.D. in August, and of course, Liam Mellows was a T.D.

Captured as part of the Four Courts garrison the previous June, these four IRA volunteers had been in prison since then. They held no responsibility for IRA operations on the outside.

Those Free Staters who hadn’t the resolve to stand by the Republic demonstrated vicious zeal in proving to the British they had the cruelty to murder those who did. They attempted to justify these killings by claiming they were implementing the will of the Irish people who approved the Anglo-Irish Treaty under Britain’s threat of immediate and terrible war if it were not ratified. But it was not the will of the Irish people that led to the bombardment of the Four Courts the previous June with artillery provided by the British army. It was the will of British Prime Minister Lloyd George and Winston Churchill.

The firing squad that shot Rory, Liam, Dick, and Joe that cold December morning was manned by Irishmen who had all served in the British army. They carried rifles and wore uniforms supplied by the British government.

The Free State government called its armed wing the National Army, but it was no national army. It was an exclusively 26-County force set up under Article 8 of the Anglo-Irish Treaty to fight the only war they ever engaged in – the war to overthrow the Irish Republic. Had it been a national army, the British government would never have permitted it to exist.

Bernard Law Montgomery, who became a Field Marshall during the Second World War and had commanded British forces in Cork during the Irish civil war, wrote in 1923:

We [the British Army] could probably have squashed the [IRA 1919-21] rebellion as a temporary measure, but it would have broken out again like an ulcer the moment we removed the troops… The only way, therefore, was to give them [the Irish] some form of self-government, and let them squash the rebellion themselves; they are the only people who could really stamp it out, and they are still trying to do so and as far as one can tell they seem to be having a fair amount of success.

By May 1923, the Free State Army would have 58,000 men who were armed, equipped, and uniformed by the British government. Of this number, more than 30,000 were Irishmen who were former British soldiers, approximately 3,000 were IRA deserters who had defected from the Republic, and the remaining 25,000 had no prior experience on either side.

James Connolly had written in 1915:

When a foreign invader plants himself in a country which he holds by military force his only hope of retaining his grasp is either that he wins the loyalty of the natives, or if he fails to do so that he corrupts enough of them to enable him to disorganise and dishearten the remainder … The chief method of corruption is by an appeal to self-interest.

The self-interest of the Free Staters lay in the opportunity to achieve managerial control of a state with the pay, pensions, patronage, and prestige that went with it. A state whose parameters had been determined by a Tory-dominated cabinet committee that consulted nobody in Ireland except unionists.

Contrary to what partitionist propagandists would have us believe, the Treaty was not the result of a decision that had to be taken for pragmatic reasons in the face of overwhelming odds that any rational person in Ireland could recognise and accept. Nor was the Dáil split down the middle. The Treaty passed by only seven votes in January 1922. Had the vote been taken before the Christmas recess, as many had expected, the Treaty would almost certainly have been rejected. Unfortunately, the Christmas break gave powerful pro-Treaty interests like the Catholic Church, big farmers, big business, and an assortment of gombeen men the opportunity to wear down the resolve of a number of T.D.s

Liam Mellows presided over an IRA convention held in the Mansion House in Dublin in March 1922. The IRA voted more than 80% against the Treaty and passed a resolution declaring, ‘That the Army reaffirms its allegiance to the Irish Republic…’

Cumann na mBan voted overwhelmingly against the Treaty by 419 votes to 63, and the vast majority of the active IRA units in the field also rejected it.

In a letter to his mother written shortly before his execution, Liam Mellows declared, ‘I die for the truth’.

That truth was spoken by James Connolly at his court martial in 1916 when he said, ‘The British Government has no right in Ireland, never had any right in Ireland, and never can have any right in Ireland . . .’

That truth was also spoken by Pádraig Pearse while inspecting Irish Volunteers at Vinegar Hill in Wexford in the early autumn of 1915 when he said, ‘We, the Volunteers, are formed here not for half of Ireland, not to give the British Garrison control of part of Ireland. No! We are here for the whole of Ireland.’

As has been shown so many times in Irish history and is being demonstrated today in a different context, in revolutionary struggle the choice one often confronts is whether to do what counts or to make what you can do count. To do what counted proved too daunting for many Free Staters, so they made the Treaty count, saved their skins, opened career paths, and shifted the goalposts from the 32-County Irish Republic to a 26-County Dominion of the British Empire moulded by British strategic interests.

In 1948 Fine Gael Taoiseach John A. Costello declared that the Irish Free State would become the Republic of Ireland - a republic that would tell the world Ireland is Ireland without the Six Counties. In the future, when any Dublin politician would proudly assert, ‘I stand by the Republic,’ they were referring exclusively to the twenty-six-county Republic of Ireland announced by this former Blueshirt in 1948, not the thirty-two-county Irish Republic proclaimed in 1916 and ratified by the First Dáil in 1919.

Again today, Britain is attempting to shape the political environment to suit its strategic interests. Just as in Liam Mellows day, former comrades who swore they would lead us to the Republic are leading us in the opposite direction.

All talk of the Republic is now gone because the Republic was never on the negotiating table in 1998. We no longer hear Ireland referred to as our country but as this island. Our country is one nation. This island has two.

Great play is made about the potential of a united Ireland as outlined in the Good Friday Agreement. We had a united Ireland during the Famine. We had a united Ireland when the Republic was proclaimed in 1916. We had a united Ireland when the United Irishmen were formed in 1791. So what did the 28 Protestants who founded the Irish republican movement mean by a United Ireland? Not territorial unity, which already existed, but the only unity that matters and the unity the British would never countenance - a unity of Irish citizens across the sectarian divide.

The united Ireland defined by the Good Friday Agreement is not a republic. It envisions a polity where the sectarian dynamic remains intact and the cleavage in national loyalties between Ireland and Britain is constitutionally enshrined. Consequently, many supporters of this strategy propose a continuing and symbolic role for the British royal family as an institutional point of reference for the loyalties of those who would prefer to see themselves as a civic outpost of Britain rather than as equal citizens of a national democracy within an all-Ireland republic. Debates and discussions are taking place on changing the Irish national flag, discarding the Irish national anthem, and re-joining the British Commonwealth. Instead of breaking the connection with England, we are being relentlessly conditioned into becoming more closely incorporated into a British sphere of influence on a national level.

When former comrades meet and greet British royalty in Ireland, they are sending out an unambiguous message that Ireland is not one nation but two. That Britain has a legitimacy in Ireland and a role to play in influencing the political trajectory of our country. Our goal as IRA volunteers was to break the connection with England. Not to convince the rest of Ireland to re-join the British Commonwealth.

There are many happy clappy euphemisms being employed to describe the Ireland of the future. A shared island, an agreed Ireland, and a new Ireland. Who in their right mind could be against the concept of sharing and new and agreed arrangements?

When we drill down into it, however, we see the trap being laid for us by the British government. A shared island means we share in Britain’s analysis of the nature of the conflict, we share in the colonial legacy of sectarian apartheid, and we share in the imperial project of divide and rule. We do this by recognising Ulster unionists as the British presence in Ireland with the right to have their Britishness enshrined in law. Republicans know that unionists are pro-British, but we do not accept they are the British presence. The British presence is the presence of Britain’s jurisdictional claim to Ireland and the civil and military apparatus that gives that effect. England invaded Ireland hundreds of years before the plantation of Ulster. They claimed sovereignty here long before a single unionist set foot on Irish soil. What was their excuse, then?

An agreed Ireland has come to mean the two traditions agreeing to disagree in peace and harmony about the constitutional source of Irish sovereignty and the legitimacy and extent of British influence in constraining Irish democracy. A muddled and subversive belief that the conquest and colonisation of Ireland shares reciprocal legitimacy with its struggle for independence.

The new Ireland we are being asked to work towards is not new. It is predicated on all the old divisions. Divisions that Britain nurtured to retain the sectarian dynamic and resultant cleavage in national loyalties as this policy of divide and rule is the key to their control in Ireland. It is designed to prevent us from developing the national cohesion required to achieve a 32-County republic. To make us permanently susceptible to British influence and manipulation.

During the Dáil debates on the Anglo-Irish Treaty, a persistent theme was that a pro-treaty vote was a vote for peace, with the resulting implication that those who stood firmly for the Republic were out for war. Liam Mellows replied:

If peace was the only object why, I say, was this fight ever started? Why did we ever negotiate for what we are now told is impossible? Why should men have ever been led on the road they traveled if peace was the only object? We could have had peace, and could have been peaceful in Ireland a long time ago if we were prepared to give up the ideal for which we fought ...

Today those who stand resolutely for the Republic are accused of being against the peace process. Few republicans are against peace, but many are rightly critical of a process that cannot lead to the republican goals for which countless patriots sacrificed their lives. A united Ireland rooted in British/Irish identity politics cannot be a republic. That is why the British government is all over this. It is their best opportunity to retain maximum influence in Ireland with a minimum footprint when the demographics eventually prove incontestable. No one has been preparing more diligently to shape the strategic architecture of a future united Ireland than the British government.

One hundred years ago this week, Liam Mellows, Rory O’Connor, Dick Barrett, and Joe McKelvey were dragged from their cells and murdered in cold blood because they stood for what weaker and more personally ambitious Irishmen could not summon the courage to defend any longer. We honour them today. We remember with pride all Ireland’s patriots from their day to this who never forgot who they were or what they represented. Long Live the Irish Republic!

John Crawley is a former IRA volunteer and author of The Yank.

Liam Mellows 100 Years On

A new mural was unveiled in Derry at the weekend.

It was dedicated to IRA volunteer George McBrearty who died along with Volunteer Pop Maguire in May 1981 in a confrontation with the British Army.

The eulogy was delivered by former Blanketman Thomas Dixie Elliot.



Thomas Dixie Elliot is a Derry artist and a former H Block Blanketman.
Follow Dixie Elliot on Twitter @IsMise_Dixie

The Unveiling Of The New Vol George McBrearty Mural

An Independent commemoration will take place in Derry on Monday-14-March-2022 to observe the 50th anniversary of the deaths of two IRA volunteers, Colm Keenan & Eugene McGillan.

Both men were killed following a gun battle between the IRA and a British patrol, which occurred on the last day of the Widgery Tribunal into the events of Bloody Sunday. 

It was subsequently claimed at the Saville Inquiry, by a former British Army Intelligence Officer, that a group of military lawyers joined the troops on patrol in the Bogside that night and were involved in the gun battle.

The two young IRA men were taken into houses in the area after they had been shot. Local residents who attempted to assist the wounded teenagers insisted that neither was armed, despite claims of the British that they had been.

Following their killing, the IRA released a statement saying:

they were two of the finest members of the Provisional IRA in the Derry area. They were close comrades, and their deaths are deeply regretted by all those who are now proud to say they once served with them. They were brutally gunned down in cold blood.

The commemoration will be led by Gerry McGillan, with friends and comrades of Eugene and Colm. Announcing the event, Gerry said: 

my brother Eugene was a great fella, who had a love for his people, and he was courageous. His last words were, “how’s Goodly?” (a nickname he had given Colm Keenan). This typified him — loyal and thinking of others, to the end.
I would encourage anyone who knew Eugene and Colm, and those who wish to show solidarity with us to remember their killings, to come along and join us to remember them, fifty years after they were shot dead in their own community by occupying British forces.

 

Everyone Is Welcome

IRA Volunteers Colm Keenan & Eugene McGillan To Be Commemorated in Derry

Duleek 1916-1981 Monument Committee ✒ will hold a commemoration on the 40th anniversary of Michael Devine, the tenth republican volunteer to die in the H-Blocks in 1981.

The event will take place at the Station Road commemorative garden, Duleek. It will honour all those blanketmen who died in Long Kesh protesting  British state attempts to criminalise armed opposition to its role in Ireland.   



Duleek 40th Anniversary Hunger Strike Commemoration


Frank Driver Commemoration


Bodenstown 2018


Finglas Remembers

David Cotter, Committee Member, On the behalf of The Adela-Hare Centenary Commemoration Committee, invites people to an upcoming commemorative event in Dublin.

Commemoration For Hare And Adela