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Showing posts with label Decade of Centenaries. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Decade of Centenaries. Show all posts
Tommy McKearney ☭ on the spectre of a democratic and progressive country.


What on earth was that event last month in St. Patrick’s Cathedral, Armagh, all about? We were told that it wasn’t a celebration of partition, nor a commemoration of the hundredth anniversary of the foundation of the Six-County political entity. Rather, it was – the organisers informed us – an occasion to reflect on and mark the formation of Northern Ireland and, thereafter, offer hope for the future.


Yet in spite of the highfalutin talk that preceded the service, little or nothing of substance was said during the event: no serious or incisive reflection on the nature of the brutal and sectarian Northern state; no concrete proposals on which to base hope for the time to come; no good reason offered for why the North’s non-unionist population would care to mark their abandonment by Dublin and decades of subjection in an Orange state.

Nevertheless, and notwithstanding the notable absence of Michael D. Higgins, Queen Elizabeth II of England, and Sinn Féin, the ecumenical church service for partition was attended by a number of senior political figures. The British prime minster, Boris de Pfeffel Johnson, the leader of the SDLP, Colum Eastwood, the first minister, Paul Givan (DUP), and Simon Coveney and Jack Chambers of the Dublin government were among the elected representatives who joined the congregation.


All very anodyne and harmless, one might say. And one would be wrong; because the Armagh event was not only a power play by the establishment, North and South, but also revealed a deep-seated insecurity that affects the ruling class in both jurisdictions.

Displaying their ability to mobilise the secular authorities and oversee the entire event were the five main Christian churches in Ireland, fronted at times by the unctuous Eamon Martin, Catholic Archbishop of Armagh. Having taken a well-deserved trashing over recent decades, the Catholic Church was anxious to flex its muscles. It could take some satisfaction not only from the fact that it had been party to convening a powerful gathering in Armagh but that very day had also influenced Sinn Féin and the SDLP to abstain on a DUP motion delaying the introduction of abortion legislation in the Six Counties.

Simultaneously we were treated to the spectacle of the Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael coalition demonstrating its authority by rejecting the lead set by President Higgins when he refused to attend. They were joined in the cathedral by the SDLP, trying to appear indifferent to censure by their critics in Sinn Féin; and then there was the Tory prime minister, Johnson, flaunting his unionism while emphasising his mandate to govern Britain’s Irish colony.

So, steady as she goes, there. The ruling class throughout the country can breathe a sigh of relief; and with church and state in such close embrace the status quo is surely set in concrete.

But is it? Was this pantomime the display of a confident and secure established order? or was it another desperate gambit to prop up and maintain, for as long as possible, partition – an institution that remains essential for the sustainability of two failed states and the privileges reaped by beneficiaries of this debased system.

The 26 Counties is far from the confident political entity that its governing bodies like to portray. The neoliberal free-market economic model to which the Southern state slavishly adheres has created a housing crisis, a costly two-tier health service, and repressive industrial relations legislation, along with gross and growing inequality among the citizenry.

Consequently, Sinn Féin is leading in the opinion polls, because so many want to change this broken model. Whether Sinn Féin is capable of answering the need for fundamental change remains in doubt. The party’s support for the EU, coupled with its economic spokesperson assuring big business of a safe future, raises the question of what exactly they might change.

Meanwhile, north of the border, the very political institutions are in constant jeopardy, and the constitutional position of Northern Ireland within the United Kingdom has never been less secure. Unionism is fractured, demographic changes are threatening the Union; and, in spite of Johnson’s jingoistic posturing, the British establishment cares little for the North, as evidenced by its willingness to sacrifice it in order to “get Brexit done.”

Attempts are being made in both jurisdictions to contain discontent, or neutralise demands for a better alternative. Their efforts are nevertheless failing to definitively address the issues, because of the impossibility of squaring so many circles.

An adequate supply of housing, a national health service or progressive legislation guaranteeing workers’ rights would go some way towards restoring the fortunes of the Republic’s coalition government. Yet none of these remedies is compatible with strict adherence to free-market dictates, nor would they be in accord with EU regulations regarding state aid, a dilemma epitomised in the person of that master of inertia and indecisiveness Micheál Martin.

Further north we have the hand-wringing of the SDLP in one corner and the UUP, their unionist counterparts, agonising in the other nook. Both recognise that the world has changed from the days of Basil Brooke and Bill Craig, yet both are incapable of acting decisively in the light of the new dispensation lest they unsettle their middle-class electorate. The DUP, naturally, is not afflicted with any such ambivalence, but seemingly Oliver Cromwell is refusing to return their calls.

In essence, the situation on both sides of the border is unsettled. Nothing near breakdown or anything close to an existential crisis, yet the establishment has cause for concern. Political equilibrium is finely balanced at the moment and is unlikely to withstand something as transformational as the ending of partition, accompanied inevitably by a plethora of measures necessary to accommodate the change.

A national health service free at the point of entry would undoubtedly be an unavoidable demand, as would public housing; and, in order to address years of sectarian segregation in the field of education, it would be imperative to remove church influence from the classroom.

Such a scenario would clearly alarm the ruling class, its supporters and its ideologues, both secular and religious, on each side of the border. It would also disturb the hedge funds, vulture funds and transnational corporations operating here, which, incidentally, are a crucial source of income for many in the most privileged strata of society.

Little wonder, therefore, that conservatives of every hue and persuasion from around the country would congregate in St. Patrick’s Cathedral in Armagh to pray that partition might endure and that they be delivered from a spectre haunting them: the spectre of a democratic and progressive Ireland.

Now all the powers of Old Ireland have entered into a holy alliance to exorcise this spectre: archbishop and prime minister, Frost and Coveney, British Labour Party and the Special Branch.

That, in reality, was what the Armagh prayer service was all about. What can one say but – well, Amen.

Tommy McKearney is a left wing and trade union activist. 
Follow on Twitter @Tommymckearney 

A Spectre Is Haunting Ireland

Davy Clinton ✒ Some, contrived, furore today over the non-attendance of the Irish President, though not my President as I can't vote for him or any other candidates. 

But leaving that aside - and I'll not be surprised if there is some backtracking on this, what concerns me is that Church leaders are rushing to this event. It's not a celebration we are told. Yes it fucking is. It's a celebration of this rotten undemocratic state. A state that for its first 50 years was openly run by a Protestant parliament for Protestant people. Where Catholic working classes were second class citizens controlled by the most Draconian laws in the world. Where the Catholics were refused jobs and housing. Where tens of thousands of them were forced to leave their homes in pogram after pogram. And when these people said Stop, that they wanted basic human rights they were batoned off the streets and then murdered in the streets.

And now we find " the great and the good" going to head soon to Armagh in celebration of all this.

I would never have doubted for a minute the the Protestant church leaders would be there. They never raised their voices when their Catholic neighbours were being treated as second class citizens. They stood square behind the status quo .... I would expect nothing less. But for the leader of Ireland's Catholics to attend this event is scandalous. But you know what, I expect nothing less from him either. That church will always support the status quo too.
 
Imagine all those Catholics over decades, driven from homes and workplaces, discriminated against in every facet of live, arrested, tortured interned, shot down in peaceful protest and treated as complete second class citizens. And now their supposed religious leader supports the status quo and the normalisation of all that happened. 

He is a disgrace.  

⏩Davy Clinton is a life long Glasgow Celtic supporter. 

A Thundering Disgrace

Des Dalton ✒ writing at the beginning of May probes behind the discourse on the centenary of the Orange State.

The very fact that the birth date of the Six-County State is a site of contestation reflects the wider and even more fundamental questions that surround its very legitimacy as a political entity. Monday, May 3, was flagged this week as marking the centenary of the foundation of the Six-County State. 

The logic being that it was on this date in 1921 that the “Government of Ireland Act 1920” formally became law. However, other dates also vie for this lamentable accolade. These are; December 23, 1920, the date when the Act was formally passed by the British Parliament at Westminster; and June 25, 1921, when the Six-County Parliament was formally opened by the King of England, George V at Belfast’s City Hall. What is incontestable is that this piece of British legislation sowed the seeds of sectarian discrimination, division and recurring conflict and death which continue to bedevil the Irish people a century on.

On December 23, the British “Government of Ireland Act”, or to give it its long title, “An Act to provide for the better government of Ireland”, was enacted as law. The act was the fruit of the Long Committee which had been set up by Lloyd George to draft a Fourth Home Rule Bill. The committee was chaired by Walter Long, First Lord of the Admiralty and a former chairman of the Ulster Unionist Council. It therefore came as no surprise that the outlook of the committee would be decidedly unionist.

Not only were nationalists not represented on the committee but they were not even consulted on its deliberations. The only Irish political representative consulted during the drafting of the bill was the leading Ulster Unionist, James Craig. The bill was never about solving the Irish question, merely the Ulster Question, as the historian Cormac Moore points out.

Throughout the decade of centenaries, the Leinster House political establishment has variously dated the foundation of their state to either Easter 1916 or the establishment of the First Dáil on January 21, 1919. The reality of course is that the foundation moment of the 26-County State lies in neither of those events. Rather its foundation moment is to be found in the enactment of the “Government of Ireland Act.” In essence the bill proposed the partition of Ireland and the establishment of two parliaments, north and south: Stormont and Leinster House. Both parliaments were intended to usurp the democratically elected All-Ireland Parliament, the First Dáil Éireann. Despite the democratic mandate given to the First Dáil by the Irish people, the British Government never accepted its legitimacy, or that of its lawful successor the Second Dáil, as representative assemblies of the Irish people.

A Council of Ireland, comprising 20 members of the Northern, Southern and Westminster Parliaments was also proposed as a fig leaf to distract from the effective sundering of the historic Irish nation. Significantly the new northern state would not be based on the nine counties of Ulster. The bill proposed the exclusion of Donegal, Cavan, and Monaghan. The leader of Irish Unionism, Sir Edward Carson did not mince his words in spelling out the sectarian rationale behind this decision: 

There is no use our undertaking a Government which we know will be a failure. […] If we were saddled with these three counties…you would bring in from these three counties into the Northern Province (Sic) an additional two hundred and sixty thousand Roman Catholics.

The effect was to leave 70,000 Protestants, the vast majority of whom were unionist, within the proposed Southern Irish State. Ulster Unionist MP, Thomas Moles likened their abandonment to a sinking ship with lifeboats sufficient for only two-thirds of the crew. Cormac Moore argues that this decision shattered any semblance of unity within unionism throughout Ireland.

The British government sent out overtures to the government of the All-Ireland Republic suggesting their willingness to begin negotiations. Their real intent was exposed in the new act, dubbed by the Freeman’s Journal, “The Dismemberment of Ireland Bill”. Despite the opposition of the vast majority of the Irish people to partition in any form, the British Government pressed ahead with preparations for the establishment of the new Six-County State, even before The Government of Ireland Act became law in December 1920. In September, a new post of “assistant under-secretary” for the Six-County area was setup with the task of creating the structures for a functioning government for the Six-County area. Likewise, permission was given to set up a new police force, the Ulster Special Constabulary, to police the new state. This new police force would draw many of its recruits from the ranks of the UVF.

Nationalist Ireland would ignore the new act, with even the unionist Irish Times declaring “The bill has not a single friend in either hemisphere outside Downing Street.” The Irish Independent was adamant that the new act “was no basis for peace.” In less than a year the full ramifications of the act would become all too apparent.

One hundred years on we can see all too clearly what those ramifications were. The Decade of Centenaries is now arriving at some of the most potent and politically charged centenaries in our historical calendar. They mark the events which would so profoundly impact the Irish people for the rest of the 20th Century and into the 21st. The iniquitous “Government of Ireland Act 1920” ignored the democratically expressed will of the Irish people for national sovereignty and independence, sowing the seeds of a century of conflict resulting in the deaths of thousands of our people. The partition of Ireland and the creation of the gerrymandered Six-County State set in train 50 years of sectarian discrimination, coupled with political and economic oppression the legacy of which a new generation is still grappling with today.

⏭Des Dalton is a long time republican activist.

“Government of Ireland Act 1920” Sowed The Bitter Fruits Of Sectarian Discrimination, Division And Conflict

Tommy McKearney sees neither rhyme nor reason in suggestions to celebrate the founding of the partitioned state of Northern Ireland.  
When society fails to perform its duty and fulfil its office of providing for its people, it must take another and more effective form, or it must cease to exist. - James Fintan Lalor

The Six-County state of Northern Ireland will reach its hundredth birthday in May. The British government, with enthusiastic support from Northern unionists, is making preparations to celebrate the anniversary.

Though claiming to emphasise the future rather than its history, it is inevitable that the nature of the Northern state, past, present, and future, must come under scrutiny. With even the best will in the world it is impossible not to conclude that an objective analysis must record a sorry tale of sectarianism, facilitated and encouraged by imperialism.

The result has been an unbroken century of maladministration and misgovernance. Given its origins and the rationale underlying its foundation, it could hardly have been otherwise.

Contrary to a certain tendentious narrative, Northern Ireland was not simply the unaided creation of stalwart Ulster unionists. Though a section of the local population was obviously integral to its establishment, the Northern political entity was the result of cynical British state manoeuvring, an action carried out to ensure that the empire would retain a physical military presence on its western flank. To secure this end the British ruling class facilitated and fostered the establishment of a political entity actively practising antagonistic religious sectarianism.

By doing so, the well-practised British imperial machine provided for the continuing alienation of one million people from others living in Ireland, ensuring that the minority unionist constituency, now in charge of its own mini-state, would be left in a condition of depending for survival on their London guarantors.

For those who doubt the ability of British imperialism to be so mendacious, one example among many should suffice. At or about the same time, the Sykes-Picot Agreement, which has caused havoc in the Middle-East, was being put into effect. Interestingly, today imperialist support for hostility between Israel and its larger neighbours has created a result similar to that of Northern Ireland: loyalty to the imperial centre arising from dependence on it for security.

The cynical selection of the Northern state’s boundary illustrated its founders’ intentions. By discarding the three Ulster counties of Monaghan, Cavan and Donegal they avoided having a finely balanced electorate. That these staunchly unionist communities were so casually abandoned in 1921 was not necessarily from a fear that their inclusion would threaten a permanent unionist majority. If that were the sole consideration, Cos. Tyrone and Fermanagh would have been excluded as well.

Difficult as it may be to envisage now, those three excluded counties contained significant firmly unionist communities. In recognition of their loyalty to the union and the empire, Edward Carson himself spoke at several rallies in each. Consequently, by June 1912 more that 17,000 people in Co. Donegal had signed the Ulster Covenant, while in Co. Monaghan the number was over 10,000. A few months later, in 1913, each of these counties mustered 2,000-plus men for the UVF.

However, opting for the long-recognised nine-county entity could have given rise to the “risk” that practical political necessity would dictate agreeing to a working consensus both within the new entity and with the neighbouring Free State—a condition inimical to the imperial design, requiring divide and rule.

To reinforce this design, the newly founded Northern state embarked on the application of systemic institutional discrimination, coupled with coercion. While recently there has been a retelling of the story of the burning of Cork by the Black and Tans in December 1920, much less attention has been afforded to events in Belfast in the same period. Oddly enough, while Cork was a Sinn Féin stronghold, Belfast’s nationalists were still solidly Redmondite. Nevertheless this did not save them. Thousands were driven from their employment and thousands more left homeless over the course of a few days in July 1920.

The expulsions from places of employment were more cynical than simply being the actions of mindless anti-Catholic bigots. This was evidenced by the simultaneous and forcible removal from their work of hundreds of left-wing Protestant trade unionists, or “Rotten Prods,” as they were named at the time. The authors of the Six-County state were not prepared to allow working-class solidarity to undermine their creation. That it also left a legacy of a divided work force was a bonus for unscrupulous employers.

Systemic discrimination punctuated by occasional bouts of repression continued over the following five decades, leading to the traumatic events of the final twenty-five years of the last century. A facile analysis of those years, insisting that the North would have been transformed into a liberal social democracy had it not been for the Provisionals’ campaign, overlooks the degree of resistance to reform emanating from within the ranks of unionism. After all, the Sunningdale Agreement was not forcibly brought down by republicans, nor was it Sinn Féin that organised violent opposition to the Anglo-Irish Agreement of 1985.

Nor, indeed, have events of the past decade done much to alter the essential nature of the Northern state. An unprecedented opportunity arose in 1998 when Sinn Féin agreed to operate within the constitutional arrangement built upon partition. Unionism, however, was unable to change or adapt, when doing so would surely have been in its best long-term interests. Defining itself by dogmatic opposition to all things republican or even nationalist, it ensured that there would be no shared vision for a “New” and possibly viable “Northern Ireland.”

Having obstinately vetoed every proposal that might have made its politics more palatable across the board, unionism crowned its long history of negativity during the crisis of the covid-19 pandemic. Being eager to appear more British than the Tower of London, the largest unionist party, the DUP, refused to endorse an all-Ireland strategy to combat the virus. The party even refused to follow the example of other devolved administrations in the United Kingdom and temporarily stop travel between England and the Six Counties. This they did in the face of a virulent mutant strain of the virus emerging in the Greater London area. By doing so, the DUP failed the fundamental test for any administration or political entity: the protection and well-being of its citizenry.

While unionism may be resistant to change, it cannot prevent conditions and circumstances changing. Britain, no longer the primary global superpower it was a century ago, has different defensive and political requirements today. The Northern six counties are not the strategic asset they were in the past. Ironically, Dublin is now of greater value to London than the North.

This, coupled with inexorably changing demographics, means that the Stormont-fronted political entity is unlikely to celebrate a second centenary. In reality, its ending will be more worthy of celebration than its foundation.


Tommy McKearney is a left wing and trade union activist. 
Follow on Twitter @Tommymckearney

Little Reason To Celebrate The State Of Northern Ireland

For Sinn Fein to have real power and relevance in the post Brexit Ireland of 2021, there has to be a reconciliation between republicanism and the Catholic Church, according to political commentator and author, Dr John Coulter.

There is no doubt in my mind that republicans will try and put a dampener at the least, or rewrite history at the most, concerning the centenary of the foundation of Northern Ireland in 2021.

In doing so, Sinn Fein will be spinning the ‘results’ of an imaginary all-Ireland General Election and how it will emerge as the largest party on the island.

Sinn Fein will point to recent opinion polls which show growing support for the republican movement’s political wing south of the Irish border.

Shinner spin doctors will trot out the line it could have won more TDs in Leinster House had it run more candidates in last year’s Dail General Election.

Sinn Fein will boast that given its Dail representation, coupled with its support at Stormont, clearly makes the party heads on to be the biggest on the Emerald Isle in the event of Irish unity.

Historically, Sinn Fein could point to the outcome of the 1918 Westminster General Election when Sinn Fein won almost 80 of the 105 Commons allocated to Ireland seats when the island was still all under British rule.

But if Sinn Fein is to repeat its 1918 performance and be taken seriously as a truly democratic movement, it must make its peace with the Roman Catholic Church. Likewise, it must also engage in a massive political charm offensive with the liberal Protestant denominations.

Mention republicanism and religion in the sentence and you could be heading for an immediate political divorce.

However, just as the pro-Union community in Northern Ireland will have to seriously consider an all-island dimension, which I have outlined in an ideology I penned known as Revolutionary Unionism, so too, will republicanism have to face the potentially unpalatable reality that the post Brexit island of Ireland from January 2021 will necessitate an accommodation between the republican movement and the Irish Catholic Church.

As a ‘no deal’ Brexit sparking a hard border creeps up the political options ladder, this rekindling of republicanism and religion becomes ever more important.

Personally, I have been a life-long eurosceptic, so as well as developing the ideology of Revolutionary Unionism, the flip side of the political coin was to devise a new ideology for republicanism which sought to heal the rift between republicans and religion.

To this end, in 2014, two years before the European Referendum in the United Kingdom, I published an ebook entitled An Saise Glas (The Green Sash): The Road to National Republicanism.

The book focuses on a non-violent way forward for the republican movement in Ireland. This new ideology I have entitled National Republicanism. Chapter Two is entitled ‘Putting Christ Back Into Republicanism.’

National Republicanism needs to spark a revival of the concept of Holy Mother Ireland instead of becoming swamped in a secular sea of atheism, agnosticism, pluralism, humanism and especially Marxism.

Old-style republicanism has always enjoyed some sort of partnership with the Irish Catholic Church. This Church/State bond was at its most influential when Eamon de Valera was President of Ireland.

However, while the republicanism which led to the Treaty in the 1920s, and the republicans who ran the old Irish Free State, even the republicans who secured full status for the 26 Counties as a full-blown republic developed the concept of Holy Mother Ireland, the republican movements which emerged after the defeat of the IRA in the 1956-62 Border campaign seemed to want to permanently scrap the ethos of Church and State.

During the conflict known as the Troubles, the Official republican movement of the Official IRA and Workers’ Party, and the various factions of the republican socialist movement (such as the IRSP and INLA) had an exceptionally fractious relationship with the Irish Catholic Church and leadership.

The republican movements which evolved in the late Sixties onwards developed at a time when Left-wing revolutionary politics was becoming a world phenomenon.

The modern republican movements wanted to see themselves as part of a global revolutionary organization, rather than a sectarian anti-Protestant movement on a tiny island on the fringe of the European continent.

The root cause of how republicanism has got itself bogged down with the secular movement goes back to the failed Easter Rising of 1916. In the immediate aftermath, Britain had the high ground. The Irish Volunteers had been defeated, and even spat upon by some Dublin Catholics as they were marched into captivity.

If Britain had boxed clever in 1916, it would have given the leaders a jail term and told them to grow up politically. Instead, it allowed General ‘Bloody’ Maxwell to take charge of ‘mopping up’ the aftermath of the failed Rising.

It was Maxwell who insisted that the Rising leaders be executed. At that time, because Britain was bogged down in the an equally bloody trench campaign of the Great War, the British political leadership agreed to Maxwell’s assertion that the Rising leaders should be executed by firing squad.

By giving the leaders a soldier’s death, he immediately and substantially raised their status from troublesome rebels to international anti-colonial martyrs. James Connolly’s death was particularly gruesome. Although wounded in the Rising, he was strapped into a chair for his execution as he was unable to stand.

Until those British bullets dispatched him into eternity, Connolly was not a republican hero, but a largely insignificant Scottish communist dabbling in Irish politics. Connolly was first and foremost a Marxist, not a Catholic nationalist. His political vehicle was the Irish Socialist Republican Party, not to be confused with the IRSP, the INLA’s political wing.

But his execution elevated his writings, beliefs and actions to a new level in Irish nationalism. Connolly’s communism became a significant factor in the rapidly emerging Irish Republican Army which fought the War of Independence a few years after the doomed Rising.

The fallout from the Treaty meant that the Irish Catholic hierarchy largely supported the Free State forces rather than the anti-Treaty IRA. The images as portrayed in the hit 2006 film, The Wind That Shakes The Barley, of the priest hearing IRA confessions and blessing the terrorists before they left to attack the British in the War of Independence, had long since faded into mythology and folklore.

It should not be forgotten that more IRA prisoners were executed by the Free State forces during the Irish Civil War than killed by the Black and Tans during the War of Independence. When republican goes to war against republican, the ensuing bloodshed can be even more sadistic than republican terror campaigns against the British state.

The Free State victors and subsequent Dails for generations to come guaranteed the Irish Catholic hierarchy a central role in the political life of the 26 Counties.

Clerical sex abuse, whether by individuals or by institutions, went unchecked and unpunished. On this point, how much did the modern day Provisional republican movement know about the activities of paedophile priests? The Provisionals were very quick to expose – and punish – people it deemed to be ‘guilty’ of informing, or anti-social behaviour.

But is there any known record of the Provisionals ‘knee-capping’ a Catholic priest or nun suspected of known sexual abuse against children? Surely the Provisionals must have known about allegations of clerical abuse in their republican heartlands? If they did, why did the Provisionals remain silent over these generations?

Connolly’s atheistic Marxism within republicanism became a viable alternative to the sexual crimes of Irish Catholicism’s institutionalized religion. For many Catholics in Ireland, the Catholic Church came to symbolize Christianity.

Connolly’s atheistic Marxism became a vehicle to challenge the previously unquestionable power of the Catholic priests. This naturally led to friction between republicans loyal to the Connolly tradition and the Catholic hierarchy, especially during the Eamon de Valera years. It was he who maximized the concept of Church and State.

It has become a matter of some debate that Connolly recanted from his atheistic Marxism in the hours before his brutal execution.

The main ethos of my National Republicanism is to re-introduce true Biblical Christianity, especially the teachings of Jesus Christ Himself, back into republican ideology.

A major stereotype which National Republicanism will seek to eradicate is the false perception that Biblical Christianity is the institutionalized litany of the Catholic Church and bishops under another name.

Biblical Christianity is not the priests trying to shake off the stigma of the clerical abuse scandals. Biblical Christianity is precisely what its title states – the true Christian beliefs as stated by Jesus in the Bible.

National Republicanism will dismantle the structures of the Irish Catholic Church in Ireland and establish a Biblically-based Christian Church which is free of Vatican control. This new Church will be based on Biblical principals.

A perfect example of this type of new Church sweeping the 26 Counties is the Pentecostal denomination, which was founded in Co Monaghan in the early 1900s. In spite of a fall in attendances at mainstream Christian denominations throughout Ireland north and south, the Pentecostal movement is bucking the trend and is increasing in numbers, especially in the Dublin area.

This is not a case of Catholics converting to Protestantism, but a case of Catholics – disillusioned with their Church and the sexual abuse scandals – looking to a new expression of their Christian faith.

National Republicanism will revise the concept of Church and State in Ireland – north and south. Instead of the bond of Church and State, National Republicanism seeks a rebirth of the concept of Holy Mother Ireland through the strategy of Christ and State. National Republicanism wants to see a revival of Biblical Christianity – which our patron Saint, Patrick, introduced to the Emerald Isle – as our national personal faith.

I emphasise the term ‘personal faith in Christ’ as opposed to ‘institutionalized religion’, which the Catholic Church represented.

The modern republican movement, especially those who see themselves as republican socialists, want to see the development and expansion of a pluralist and secular society in Ireland under the supposed banner of a democratic socialist 32-county republic.

In reality, many modern republicans despise the Catholic Church hierarchy, seeing many clerics and nuns as the modern-day equivalents of the Biblical Pharisees.

National Republicanism seeks to restore republican confidence in the Biblical Christian faith. Ironically, the same crisis is facing modern loyalism. One of its most famous slogans is ‘For God And Ulster.’

Yet many loyalists were influenced in prison by the writing and words of the late Gusty Spence and David Ervine, who followed a progressive socialist path. Many loyalist prisoners found themselves in jail because they followed the ‘blood and thunder’ sermons of Protestant fundamentalism, a fundamentalism which largely deserted them once those loyalists found themselves on the wrong side of the law.

Just as loyalism abandoned the Christian God in ‘For God And Ulster’ so too, many republicans turned their back on the Catholic concept of Holy Mother Ireland.

Modern loyalism and republicanism are – ironically – both trying to cut religion out of their respective ideologies. Both seem to be singing from the same hymn sheet that Marxism and extreme socialism hold the keys to the future development of the respective communities.

This is a huge error of judgment, especially for republicanism. Having read Karl Marx’s ‘Das Capital’ from start to finish, I can only conclude there is a startling similarity between the type of ideal society which Marx is trying to create, and the Biblical Christian society which Jesus wished to create.

National Republicanism is seeking a return of Biblical Christianity as a central core of republican thinking by getting republicans to focus on the New Testament account of the Sermon on the Mount by Jesus Christ as told in St Matthew’s Gospel Chapter Five.

In this aspect, Christ outlines a series of attributes, commonly known as The Beatitudes. There is a school of ideological thinking – to which I personally belong – which maintains that Marx based ‘Das Capital’ on The Beatitudes and his overt criticism of religion was merely a tactic ploy to disguise the fact that he had pinched his ideas from the Bible, and the words of Jesus Himself.

In reality, Jesus Christ was the first real communist – not Karl Marx. National Republicanism’s Christ and State ideology is, therefore, based on St Matthew’s Gospel chapter 5, verses 1 to 12. Many of the Beatitudes begin (using the Authorized King James translation) “Blessed are …”

However, when the words of Jesus are taken in a modern context, they make the basis for a realistic political agenda for National Republicanism. Here are the key points which the Beatitudes highlight:

The poor in spirit (verse 3) – the need to restore national pride in society;

Those who mourn (verse 4) – the need to remember and help the victims of the conflict in Ireland;

The meek (verse 5) – the need to help the working class, and for the rich to invest their wealth in helping those less well off in society;

They which do hunger (verse 6) – the need to combat growing poverty in society, and also provide a sound educational and health system for all;

The merciful (verse 7) – the need for a fair and accountable justice system;

Pure in heart (verse 8) – the need to restore the moral fabric of society, to encourage family values and implement the concept of society’s conscience;

Peacemakers (verse 9) – the need for compromise and respect of people’s views based on the concept of accommodation, not capitulation;

Persecuted (verse 10) – the need for National Republicans to have the courage to stand up for their beliefs;

When men shall revile you (verse 11) – the need for a free press with responsible regulation.

National Republicanism is about the creation of the concept of Christian citizenship. Under this concept, compulsory voting – as exists in the Commonwealth nation of Australia – would be introduced to Ireland.

A key emphasis of National Republicanism is Christian pride in the nation under the banner of ‘Ireland for the Irish’. National Republicanism wants to combat the so-called ‘Brain Drain’ where Ireland’s young people feel the need to leave the nation and not return.

National Republicanism would not only seek to keep this generation on the island, but to encourage those who have emigrated to return with their skills to the island.

In this respect, all Irish citizens would complete a two-year compulsory National Service in the nation’s armed forces, during which time they would also learn a vocational trade.

The Christian Churches would have a role in encouraging people of all ages to develop a community service role.

In conclusion, it must again be emphasised that National Republicanism is not seeking to re-establish the rule of the Catholic bishops. Readers of National Republicanism must not confuse having a personal faith with Jesus Christ with those who want to implement a draconian form of institutionalized, ritualistic worship. There is no role for a pope in National Republicanism.

There is a major difference between an all-island future as defined by my Revolutionary Unionist ideology, but it also requires my counter balancing ideology known as National Republicanism.

The two new ideologies must co-exist if Brexit is not to see a return to widespread violence from both dissident republicans and loyalists.

National Republicanism can lead to more positive relations with Ireland’s Unionists, Protestants, loyalists and Loyal Orders.

Slam National Republicanism if you want or must, but at least with the Taoiseach pushing his Shared Island model, I cannot be accused of not putting forward workable ideas.

An Saise Glas (The Green Sash) The Road to National Republicanism, by Dr John Coulter, is available on Amazon Kindle.
 

 Follow Dr John Coulter on Twitter @JohnAHCoulter

 Listen to Dr John Coulter’s religious show, Call In Coulter, every Saturday morning   around 9.30 am on Belfast’s Christian radio station, Sunshine 1049 FM, or listen online   at www.thisissunshine.com

Romanism And Republicanism Need To Bury The Hatchet!

Martin Galvin with a letter  that featured in the to the Irish News on 26-11-2020.

 A chara,

The six county centenary on May 3rd will be followed by the 40th anniversary of Bobby Sands' death on May 5th. There is a direct connection between the centenary some will celebrate, and next year's Hunger Strike commemorations. You cannot understand the Hunger Strikers, without understanding the British state in which they lived.

Before surrendering her post as Victims Commissioner, Judith Thompson cautioned the British government "Don't take a Westminster view of something that is so important for Northern Ireland." Her words apply as strongly to the centenary, or Brexit as to legacy justice.

There is no mystery how centenary celebrations following the "Westminster view" would go. Just analyze how successive British secretaries regard the north, with ideas customarily adopted by unionist supporters.

Westminster and their adherents will hail their "wee country", founded upon democracy, which survived Irish opposition and periodic rebellion. Any sectarian flaws can be blamed on local attitudes, provoked by disloyal opponents and rebels.

Whenever Westminster sent troops to preserve British hegemony, their killings were not crimes, but within the rule of Westminster made laws. British troopers were "acting under orders, and instruction and fulfilling their duty in a dignified and appropriate way", said Karen Bradley. Regard other views as a "pernicious counter narrative" per Theresa Villiers.

Bobby Sands MP, indeed each of the Hunger Strikers lived a different reality. The six counties were no "wee country" but two-thirds of Ulster, which Britain gerrymandered out despite a democratic vote in the Westminster run 1918 general election and Declaration of Independence .

For fifty years, Britain's Orange State used systematic sectarian discrimination denying jobs, houses and votes to keep Croppy numbers down.

Peaceful civil rights marchers threatened this sectarian system. They were beaten off the streets, eventually shot down on Bloody Sunday. British troopers backed British hegemony with Internment and the Ballymurphy Massacre.

The Hunger Strikers felt a deep moral duty, despite risking imprisonment or death, to fight to end British rule because they believed it was the only means to end British injustice.

They suffered torture and death rather than be masqueraded in a criminal costume and used so that "Britain might brand Ireland's fight 800 years of crime".

You cannot understand the Hunger Strikers without understanding the British state in which they lived. You cannot understand the truth about celebrating a centenary of partition without understanding the Hunger Strikers.  


Martin Galvin is a US Attorney-At-Law.

Celebrating Centenary Of Partition

Guest writer Mark McGregor with a piece on the Decade of Centenaries.
Saturday (29.09.12) saw the first showpiece event in what has been called a ‘Decade of Centenaries’. Tens of thousands of Orangemen, bandsmen, political Unionism and members of loyalist paramilitary groups marched en masse through Belfast to Stormont to celebrate the signing of the Ulster Covenant. While there was little trouble around event, beyond traditional disrespect outside Catholic churches, it should give pause for thought on how such commemorations are conducted, their role and purpose.

Hundred Years Sham Fights

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