For what it’s worth, my personal reaction, and advice to Jeremy Corbyn et al from the western side of the Irish Sea : prepare a split from the British Labour Party now – show firm and decisive leadership – study the Stalin anti-Bolshevik manual of the early 1920’s, and compare it with the salami tactics used today by the Starmer gang – do not try to reason with the Starmer-Stalin gang, that’s a waste of time – gather together the willing fighters and fight, fight, fight – nothing to lose, everything to gain – the Starmer-Stalin purge is coming – John Meehan
British Labour Party Boss Sir Keir Starmer Purges Socialists, Promotes anti-SocialistsAn Ex British Labour Leader “Ed Miliband has denied a purge is taking place against the Labour left under Keir Starmer’s leadership.” – He would say that, wouldn’t he?Boris Johnson instructs obedient butler Keeves
“Jeremy Corbyn, the former left-wing leader of Britain’s Labour party, is once again making headlines over an “antisemitism problem” he supposedly oversaw during his five years at the head of the party.
This time, however, the assault on his reputation is being led not by the usual suspects – pro-Israel lobbyists and a billionaire-owned media – but by Keir Starmer, the man who succeeded him.
Since becoming Labour leader in April, Starmer has helped to bolster the evidence-free narrative of a party plagued by antisemitism under Corbyn. That has included Starmer’s refusal to exploit two major opportunities to challenge that narrative.
Had those chances been grasped, Labour might have been able to demonstrate that Corbyn was the victim of an underhand campaign to prevent him from reaching power.
Starmer, had he chosen to, could have shown that Corbyn’s long history as an anti-racism campaigner was twisted to discredit him. His decades of vocal support for Palestinian rights were publicly recast as a supposed irrational hatred of Israel based on an antipathy to Jews.
But instead Starmer chose to sacrifice his predecessor rather than risk being tarred with the same brush.
As a result, Labour now appears to be on the brink of open war. Competing rumors suggest Corbyn may be preparing to battle former staff through the courts, while Starmer may exile his predecessor from the party.”
Bunreacht na hÉireann states: “The Government shall consist of not less than 7 and not more than 15 members.”
The FFFGGG coalition has a deserved reputation for letting ministerial piggies 🐷 loose to slurp at a trough stuffed with Euros 💶. Greed causes the party leaders to ignore clear and simple rules about how many ministers can be appointed – the constitution states the maximum number is 15 – and no other politicians can attend cabinet meetings. Three “super junior” mini-ministers – already in hot water for getting a pay 💰 hike – are attending cabinet meetings – according to the attached article this practice is probably unconstitutional and illegal. This might look like an obscure technical point – but it might be a gift 🎁 to radical left deputies denied 🙅 decent speaking rights in the current Dáil. Revenge is a dish best served cold.
FFFGGG super-junior ministers Chambers Naughton and Hackett
The legal side: ‘Crystal clear’ and confidentiality
“Most of the time with constitutional law, there’s a great deal of ambiguity and it’s really unclear what the constitutional answer is,” says David Kenny, Assistant Professor of Law at Trinity College Dublin and co-author of the leading text on Irish constitutional law.
“This is one of those ones where I think it’s very clear that there’s essentially no scope for having more than 15 members of government. The Constitution is crystal clear about that, there’s just no way to have more than that.”
Confidentiality is also enshrined in the Constitution, meaning that you can’t have non-Cabinet members involved in the deliberations of Cabinet.
Article 28.1 of Bunreacht na hÉireann states simply:
“The Government shall consist of not less than seven and not more than fifteen members who shall be appointed by the President in accordance with the provisions of this Constitution.”
Article 28.4 alludes to the confidentiality and collective responsibility of Cabinet:
“The Government shall meet and act as a collective authority, and shall be collectively responsible for the Departments of State administered by the members of the Government.
The confidentiality of discussions at meetings of the Government shall be respected in all circumstances save only where the High Court determines that disclosure should be made in respect of a particular matter.”
Kenny continues: “So the question is how are these junior ministers both allowed to be subject to these confidential discussions and involved in these meetings, where only 15 people are supposed to collectively wield the executive power of the State?”
So I think it’s fairly obviously unconstitutional.
Readers are urged to examine the stark facts below.
The British State was caught running the loyalist sectarian murder of Miami Showband musicians returning in the wee small hours from a music gig at Castle Ballroom, Banbridge, County Down on July 31 1975, 45 years ago.
My friend Stephen Travers knows all too well about remembering. He was a member of the Miami Showband who survived that atrocity.
They were travelling home from a gig at the Castle Ballroom in Banbridge, Co Down, when they were flagged down at what appeared to be a routine British army checkpoint outside Newry. They were ordered to stand by the road with their hands on their heads, while the men in uniform checked their van.
Stephen recalls being concerned about what was taking so long. “My guitar was in there. I had a very unusual guitar, a transparent Dan Armstrong Plexiglas bass, and I was very protective of it. I was damned if I was going to let some awkward soldier manhandle it. I loved my guitar.”
Two of the uniformed men – later revealed as members of the Ulster Defence Regiment – were planting a bomb under the driver’s seat when it exploded, killing both of them. The other assailants opened fire, killing the band’s frontman, Fran O’Toole, its trumpet player, Brian McCoy, and its lead guitarist, Tony Geraghty. Read the rest of this entry »
A Weekend School: Saturday/Sunday 12/13 September 2020
The radical left faces major challenges following the defeat of Corbynism and the consolidation of a new Labour leadership under Starmer. We also face a resurgent far right following Brexit, an unprecedented economic crisis, and the existential threat of climate chaos. Many left organisations and activists, inside and outside the Labour Party, are uncertain of the way forward. This is a moment of reflection and potential realignment. We must learn the lessons of the past and apply them in creating new socialist organisation fit for purpose in the 21st century.
The aim of this weekend school is to analyse the political situation we face and to consider launching a new, united, anti-capitalist organisation in England and Wales. (The political situation in Scotland is very different, though we wish to work closely with Scottish anti-capitalist organisations.)
What we stand for
We seek revolutionary transformation to meet the compound crisis of ecological disaster, economic collapse, social decay, grotesque inequality, mass impoverishment, growing militarisation, and creeping authoritarianism.
• We are internationalists, ecosocialists, and anti-capitalist revolutionaries. We oppose imperialism, nationalism, militarism, racism, misogyny, and homophobia. We stand in solidarity with all the oppressed at home and abroad, and we support all struggles from below against the system.
Excellent News!🙋♀️ Well done 👍 Neasa Hourigan TD Dublin Central.
Neasa Hourigan TD, Green Party Dublin Central, votes against FFFGGG Housing Bill – “Eviction due to sale is directly in conflict with Green Party policy and so I am unable to support this bill”
Hopefully a case of 1 Green deputy down, 11 to go.
There were 12 green bottles🍾 sitting 🪑 on the wall, and if 1 green bottle 🍾should accidentally fall, There were 11 green bottles 🍾….
Nessa Hourigan the Backtracking Green ?
“The Dublin Central TD voted against the Bill as a whole after 6pm, which could lead to her being stripped of the whip by her party. Another Green Party TD abstained in the final vote. There was criticism this week that the Bill was not discussed at the Cabinet sub-committee on housing, which only met today for the first time. “
The abstaining Green TD was Junior Minister Joe O’Brien, Dublin Fingal.
“Wow! Well done to the Green TD with the courage to vote against government on the Residential tenancies and valuation bill 2020.
This bill is: A. Not included in the pfg B. Not in line with green party policy C. Completely immoral and unjust in the context of a housing crisis pic.twitter.com/WaYDP90AKd — Lorna Bogue (@LornaBogue) July 30, 2020” Source: Lorna Bogue/Twitter
“The bill is not contained in the programme for government. Sinn Fein has also put down an amendment that would ensure that no notice to quit can be placed on grounds of a landlord seeking vacant possession to sell a property during the emergency period. The Green Party manifesto committed to a ban on evictions due to sale. Legal advice received by the Simon Communities states the original ban was brought in as a response to a public health crisis, which is not yet over. The dissent in government ranks will raise alarm bells for Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael. https://www.thejournal.ie/neasa-hourigan-rent-vote-5163999-Jul2020/
Irish FFFGGG coalition government ministers continue to fumble in the greasy till and get caught.
FFFGGG Ministers Line Their Pockets
THE PUBLIC has doffed its cap to the government in appreciation of its attempt to pull a fast one with its selfless decision to institute a 10% pay cut for ministers, but added ‘we ain’t falling for this bullshit’.
“It’s the sort of tokenistic gesture that I actually might have appreciated were it not for the fact Taoiseach Martin and some of his ministers will still actually be earning more than the previous government’s salaries,” explained one member of the public.
“Sorry, what was that? Could you speak up,” asked the Taoiseach when it was put to him his government have taken being tone deaf to new inaudible highs.
The Taoiseach had been hoping the 10% cut would have distracted from Junior Minister pay bumps, welfare hunters at airports and reemerging focus on the treatment of victims of the Cervical Check scandal among 400 other things, however, the move has gone down like a dozen lead balloons strapped with explosives.
“Fair play, only this clown car of a government could take a pay cut and still end up earning more money, and that’s before expenses even come into play,” shared one member of the public, who as a healthcare worker, will have to settle for saving up all the applause they received to pay the bills in lieu of any pay increases.
In a last ditch attempt to secure a positive PR win for his government the Taoiseach stated Jack Chambers is worth every penny of the €140,000 he is paid.
The period before and since the general election has produced a renewed interest in left unity. There have been many contributions on it from across a wide sweep of the left.
There are several direct proposals for unity, or more unity.
As a small assistance to all this I have compiled links to and extracts from most of the leading interventions, since the general election, in the new round of interest in left unity. The collection is below.
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Irish Left Unity: a new round of engagement in a year of change, 2020.
Links to and extracts from selected articles, posts, podcasts and interviews.
1. Jacobin; Michael Taft: ‘This Month’s Elections in Ireland Are a Historic Opportunity’, 2nd January 2020
3. Paul Murphy TD, speaking at the ‘Stop the Stitch Up’ rally, Dublin 7th March 2020.
“We need to build a mass political party of the left which is open to different trends, to be organised within, and to represent working class people.”
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4. RISE website: ‘After Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael, what next?’ by Diana O’Dwyer, 20th February 2020
There is a desperate need for a mass political party of the left. Because of Sinn Féin’s acceptance of the capitalist market and its hesitancy to engage with people-power movements, it will not be that party.
None of the existing radical left parties are likely to grow directly into that mass left party either. Instead, we need a left party that is anti-capitalist, anti-coalition and anti-oppression, while being open for different groups to organise within it.
RISE and our TD, Paul Murphy, wants to work with others to build such a party. While fighting for every reform in the here and now, we are a revolutionary socialist group that sees the need to end the rule of the bosses and big corporations.”
Left Unity Needed for Socialist Green New Deal
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6. RISE website: ‘No going back, but what’s ahead’ by Cian Prendiville, 1st May 2020.
“This new era will pose new challenges and opportunities for the socialist left.
The recent general election was a brush with fate. The fractured socialist left took blows, but kept on our feet, holding onto most of our seats. This shows that a certain base of support for socialist TDs has been built. A Sinn Fein surge squeezed our vote, and we struggled to respond in a positive and principled way. In too many places the left split its vote, costing perhaps two seats and putting a third at risk. We should learn from that, and strengthen the left for the future.RISE’s proposals for a combined left challenge are a good starting point.
The truth is, this isn’t a bad place to begin. Just before the 2008 crash, Sinn Fein had 5 Dail seats, now it is the largest party in the state. Crisis changes everything.
Back then the socialist left had no seats. Now on the cusp of another major turn, we are the ones with 5 seats. We are the ones with the ideas to change the world. A desire for a radically different and better world is growing every day.
Let’s make this the decade of that revolution.”
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7. Irish Broad Left blog: ‘Uniting the Left to fight for an ecosocialist united Ireland’ by Cian McMahon, 6th June 2020.
IN recent days, Fianna Fail and Fine Gael have been forced to move fast, in the open. We’ve seen with unusual clarity the underbelly of their type of politics.
A minor speculative comment can be added to Gene Kerrigan’s splendid article below. We do not (yet?) know who shafted Fianna Fáil’s Barry Cowen, making the Offaly TD an ex-minister after only 17 days in office. We do know that details of a Garda file were shown to journalists from the Irish Independent and the Sunday Times. The leaker (or leakers) are unknown, are probably “jealous, revengeful or whatever” – but the shafter (or shafters) may not have been Fianna Fáilers. Rivals of Cowen from the Laois-Offaly Dáil constituency, not in FF, are delighted about the back-stabbing of the former Minister for Agriculture.
“They couldn’t give a toss if doctors worked a 48-hour shift. But take away one of their goodies, give it to a lefty woman… good God, Fine Gael are as angry…”
And what we’ve seen has been petty, cynical and avaricious.
We’re seldom angered to see politicians filling their pockets. It’s become just part of what they do.
But, after what we saw last week, we have to wonder if “centrist” politics is now about anything other than grabbing cash and stroking each others’ tumescent egos?
A revolution i.e. a break with the capitalist system, as in “A conscious working-class movement is needed to organise a rupture with capitalism”
A break with the past (especially with the failed methods of the old left, the reformism of social democracy and the sectarianism that has impaired the revolutionary left).
Disrupting dogma, thinking again (and admitting we don’t know everything).
Ireland’s new eco-socialist quarterly produced by RISE.
From all corners of the world, the working class will respond with explosive movements. Furious worldwide protests against racist police violence are a harbinger of things to come. We face an ideologically weakened, politically fractured, and debt-burdened capitalist class that will not hesitate to devour the earth and all life on it in its pursuit of profit.
How should Marxists respond?
A new period demands new strategy, new tactics, and new forms of organisation. We must shake off the outdated schema and rid ourselves of ineffective and anachronistic methods. While working to construct a mass revolutionary party, we must strive to be more democratically organised and organically connected to all the real movements of workers and the oppressed.
So too with our theory and analysis. While developing Marxist methods, we must broaden the terrain upon which we apply them – from capitalist social relations to the metabolic rift that capitalism has forced between nature and humanity.
Rupture is a contribution to that effort from RISE. In each issue, we aim to analyse current trends in capitalist society, explore new ideas and research to expand our understanding, and attempt to answer the question facing all revolutionaries – what is to be done in the 21st century?
A lot of tit-for-tat politicking is on the international political agenda. Shooting the messenger is a big temptation. Donald Trump is a hypocrite because he condemns China’s terrible human rights assaults on the Muslim Uighurs – while organising military tear-gassing assaults on “Black Lives Matter” street protests in his own country, the USA.
A correspondent notes the big problem with “shoot the messenger” politics (promoted by nocoldwar.org) :
Oppose all imperialist wars, hot or cold, but I think we can be safe in assuming that nothing will be said at this in solidarity with the Uighurs or independence movement in Hong Kong, unless they are denounced as agents of imperialism that is.
Do not mention the Muslim Uighurs in China, or Police Brutality on the streets of Hong Kong
What is a good collective noun to describe this sort of 21st Century politics? Pierre Rousset offers “Campism” and presents a clear example :
“campism” remains present in this field, like a Pavlovian reflex: satisfied for example to condemn imperialist intervention in Iraq and Syria (which it is certainly necessary to do), but without saying what Islamic State represents or calling to resist it. http://internationalviewpoint.org/spip.php?article3669
“Stalinism”is out of date – the decrepit megalomaniac dictator of the Soviet Union, Stalin, died in 1953. Stalin’s leftwing fan club loyally defended every anti-worker crime performed by the Moscow Régime – “Socialism in One Country” in action.
The Soviet Union collapsed in 1989, and no serious person on the revolutionary left bickers today about the class character of Putin’s Russia and Xe Jinping’s China – both are capitalist world powers. The fan club listed in the attached notice is of interest to trainspotters since it includes ex-Trotskyist renegades – a name which jumps out is the British China-based academic John Ross.
Let’s work on a positive alternative. We can take inspiration in Ireland from Easter 1916 Rising Rebel Roger Casement’s exemplary 19th and early 20th century campaign against Belgian imperialist brutality in the Congo. Similarly, the 21st century radical left needs to make principled alliances in support of the oppressed Uighur Muslims and the mass pro-democracy movement in Hong Kong, oppressed by capitalist China.
Roger Casement’s lesson “when the status quo is injustice, the right thing to be is a rebel.”Read the rest of this entry »
A publication in India, the Radical Socialist, offers a timely warning to radical socialists in every part of the globe :
Unless the lessons of the repeated political collapses in Sri Lanka are learnt, not only Sri Lankan Marxists, but those elsewhere in South Asia, who have learned also from the achievements of the Sri Lankan Marxists, may suffer politically. There is a need to examine, not merely in terms of mid 20th century history, but in terms of today’s class struggle, why the politics of electoralism, and of alliances with bourgeois parties (under the disguise that they are petty bourgeois parties, or ‘democratic’ parties, etc) can only lead to damages for the Trotskyist forces. We urge the Fourth International leadership to take it up as a burning political and educational issue, and take firm action. Collaborating with bourgeois oppositions is hardly restricted to Sri Lanka, and serious political discussions will benefit revolutionaries in India, at least. http://www.radicalsocialist.in/articles/statement-radical-socialist/899-radical-socialist-statement-on-sri-lankan-elections
What is the story in Ireland?
Gaining significant electoral victories is a key achievement of the radical left in Ireland since 1997, when Joe Higgins of the Socialist Party won a Dublin West Dáil seat. This electoral victory significantly helped to defeat government water charges plans promoted by the then main capitalist parties Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael, which were aided by their serial coalition partners, the Labour Party.
Ups and downs in Irish radical left electoral fortunes have occurred from 1997 to 2020. This was an open question in 1997 : could the Dublin West victory of Joe Higgins be a minor Trotskyist blip on a stable bourgeois election landscape dominated by FFFG? It turned out this was not a blip. Higgins was the first TD who openly promoted a “Women’s Right to Choose” Abortion policy. He himself and members of his party actively promoted various pro-choice campaigns. The election of numerous radical left pro-choice deputies in 2011 and 2016 eventually forced the main right wing parties to allow a referendum repealing the anti-abortion 8th constitutional amendment. The result : a landslide victory for the pro-choice movement in Ireland and abroad. Here is one report written by USA activist Sarah Jaffe : http://www.internationalviewpoint.org/spip.php?article5823
Today there is a 5 TD SPBP radical left bloc in Dáil Éireann. Three other deputies – Joan Collins, Catherine Connolly and Thomas Pringle – adopted the same anti-FFFGGG governmental policy as the SPBP bloc. This scenario was historic – it had never happened before, since the foundation of two partitioned states in Ireland nearly 100 years ago.
Government Coalition with the Right? : Ghastly Results Revealed
The policy of the Irish radical left on coalition with right wing parties is clearly explained here by RISE Dublin South-West TD Paul Murphy :
McHugh signed a “Just Transition Greens” (JTG) statement which did not address a key question : rejection of coalition with Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael – actively opposing the current FFFGGG government. Active Opposition to the Maradkar-Ryan coalition is the accelerating direction of travel. Saoirse McHugh signed the the JTG statement, and has left the Green party. She directly calls on the JTG to break off from the Ryan-Greens and form “an actual eco-Socialist party”.
Reviewing a week in the so-far short life of the Fianna Fáil/Fine Gael/Green/Gombeen (FFFGGG) government readers may have missed some interesting details. Twenty mini-ministers are behaving worse than piglets at a trough. RTÉ News did not notice a connection between human events at the Dáil (Leinster House and the Convention Centre) – and piglet events at a midlands farm.
Only 16 of the Longford piglets out of 20 can feed from the mother. Special arrangements are needed for the remaining four.
In Leinster House three piglet mini-ministers out of 20 are demanding improved feeding facilities – even though they slurp from the same source as their colleagues.
16 Piglets in Longford offer ecological example to Leinster House mini-ministers (especially Greens)Green Party Leader Éamon Ryan
Eamon Ryan’s sleep-in 💤 wasn’t a mortal sin. In another life, I spent many an hour crouched on the Dáil press gallery. It can be difficult to listen to that stuff and stay awake. Ryan was one of at least two TDs seen sleeping during Thursday’s proceedings. – Gene Kerrigan
I first met Mary Muldowney in the early 1990’s in pro-choice radical left circles, discovering both of us attended Sandymount High School around the same time – we did not personally meet then – we moved in different circles and (school) classes! We attended the same Dublin marches against the Vietnam War and the Apartheid South Africa Rugby Tour of 1970. https://comeheretome.com/2015/02/03/45-years-ago-the-controversial-visit-of-the-springbok-team-to-dublin/
Mary, a Dublin City Council Historian, vividly describes the late 1960’s and 1970’s – events which also made me a socialist, feminist, and pro-choice activist.
Muldowney’s talk offers the unlikely suggestion that arch-bigot John Charles McQuaid, then boss of the Dublin Archdiocese and the Catholic Church in Ireland, turned a teenage Sandymount High School pupil into a socialist. Recommended listening
Dublin Archbishop, Catholic Primate of Ireland, 1940-1972 John Charles McQuaid
Dublin City Historian Mary Muldowney – Socialist and Feminist
Mary Muldowney’s talk is part of the Sarah Lundberg Summer School 2020, an online event.
A very unstable start to the FFFGGG coalition – statement by Paul Murphy TD, RISE.
Barry Cowen has been sacked as Minister for Agriculture by Michéal Martin after he refused to answer questions in the Dáil. It was the socialist left who led the calls for accountability for Ministers.
However, this should not be the end of the matter. Michéal Martin knew about the Garda report referring to Cowen attempting to evade a Garda checkpoint. He knew about it before Cowen made a statement which didn’t make reference to it. He clearly agreed with Cowen that he would not include this very important information. It also part of the reason they voted against having any questions.
Martin has emphasised the fact that he only “saw” the report today. But that is a distraction. Whether he had actually seen the report or not, he knew about its contents more than a week ago.
I have no sympathy with Cowen – he should have simply agreed to answer questions in the Dáil.
But the sacking is an attempt by Martin to avoid blame spreading to him. He knew about this very important information, and colluded in not informing the Dáil or his coalition partners, about it.
“The verdict in the Apple Tax case is due tomorrow. The Irish government has already spent millions trying to NOT get this money from Apple. They shouldn’t waste any more money fighting for the billionaire’s right to dodge taxes. Green TDs shouldn’t just ‘query’ this – they should draw a line in the sand. This is €14.6bn that could be used on a Green New Deal to rebuild the economy with socialist policies.”
There has also been some coverage of the fact that Charlton along with a number of other footballing figures including Brian Clough & Terry Venables signed the founding statement of the Anti-Nazi League in 1977.
In Ireland Jack Charlton is celebrated – he was the most successful ever manager of the Republic of Ireland soccer team. There was a political side to this cultural phenomenon – it is well explained in the Keith Flegg blog below. Months before the opening 1990 game between Ireland and England in Cagliari a small group of Dublin people met in a Dublin pub, the Teachers’ Club. They wondered : how they could raise funds for a cash-strapped campaign seeking freedom for the Birmingham Six and other Irish political hostages in British jails. The venue, largely because of the example set by this campaign, has become home to many left-wing, trade union, feminist and human rights social movements.
A couple of the men in the group focused on the forthcoming Battle of Cagliari – Ireland’s Game Versus England, our Italia 90 opener. We were overcome by a brainwave : let’s organise a big screen showing. In those days that was a novel idea – we booked the scarce equipment months in advance. The staff in the Teachers’ Club did a great job installing the required technology. As the big day approached many large pubs and hotels offered to buy the equipment from the campaign, allowing us a huge profit. We refused – the event was going ahead. The venue was overwhelmed by the crowd – mainly young, male, Dublin working class, and proudly Irish. A number of women activists joined in – a little bemused, entertained, and deeply moved.
The Diceman, Thom McGinty, Symbolises British Justice and the Birmingham Six
A follow-up
“It begins with a man getting to shake the hands of some of the football heroes he’d only ever previously been able to see on television in prison. It ends with one of those same football heroes, having partied well but not wisely, fast asleep at a table in a motorway café and being prodded awake by a couple of passing Welsh supporters. And in between is one of the defining games of the Jack Charlton era, a 1-1 draw with England in a European Championship qualifier at their national stadium which should, in truth, have been a victory for an Irish side playing at something close to the peak of its powers.
For one Irish supporter in particular, the experience was bound to be memorable, whatever the result. Hugh Callaghan was one of the Birmingham Six, innocent men who had served 16 years of a life sentence for the IRA’s 1974 Birmingham pub bombings. With those convictions finally quashed after a long-running campaign and, having been released amid scenes of unbridled joy only 13 days before the game at Wembley, Callaghan found himself walking the famous turf as a guest of the Irish team at their eve of match training session.
Niall Quinn, the striker who would have such a significant say in the game itself, has vivid memories of meeting a man who had endured one of the most infamous miscarriages of justice in British legal history.
“He came on the bus with us from the hotel and stood with Jack and watched the training,” he recalls today.
“We had a good chat with him first on the pitch and then he had a cup of tea with us in the dressing room. He was a football fan, very proud of what we’d achieved over in Italy. He spoke about how he used to listen intently on the radio and saw bits and pieces on TV. I think Paul [McGrath] was his favourite – but then Paul was everybody’s favourite. It’s one of those nice memories that stay with you. It was a thrill to meet him and my memory of the meeting is that he was thrilled to meet us, and it was a very happy occasion.” https://www.irishexaminer.com/sport/soccer/we-felt-a-little-bit-robbed-232294.html
Jack Charlton who has sadly died at 85 was an iconic figure in post-1945 British culture as part of the 1966 World Cup winning England team, and a football manager most significantly with the Ireland team
The media rightly carries a range of appreciations and obituaries
There has also been some coverage of the fact that Charlton along with a number of other footballing figures including Brian Clough & Terry Venables signed the founding statement of the Anti-Nazi League in 1977. Charlton had some criticisms. While the ANL was about building a broad united front to isolate the fascists of the National Front it also confronted their attempts to whip up racism when they held deliberately provocative actions.
Charlton was clear in his opposition to fascism but not happy about confronting the NF physically. This of course was a tactical not an…
‘Kill All Taigs’ on a ‘children’s’ bonfire in Belfast. That’s not family fun, it’s a hate crime. Was there nobody in the community to show leadership & remove it? Shameful.
“Kill All Taigs” Belfast BonfireNo social Distancing at a Racist Belfast Bonfire
Hang on a second, I hear people say. The 12th was postponed in 2020 because of the CoronaVirus Crisis. That is the “Official Version” (OV):
There will be no official Orange Order parades after the organisation announced their cancellation earlier this year.
Grand Secretary of the Orange Order, Mervyn Gibson, urged people to stay at home, while the Order have launched a ‘Twelfth at Home’ campaign to urge people to celebrate safely.
OV is not the real world – it has become a “talking point”. Hundreds of thousands of residents of the Six Counties leave their homes and travel far away to avoid the tyranny of the “OrangeFest”. Not this year due to travel restrictions. But residents of Andersonstown and other areas like it do not have to worry about flags; Lambeg Drums; blocked streets; 11th night bonfire parties in their public parks. A new partition within partition exists in the Six County State today.
An update :
The Belfast Telegraph suggests “community relations” have “taken a hit” :
There had been a surge in the number of bonfires being organised by loyalists following the contentious west Belfast funeral of former IRA man Bobby Storey on June 30 – in defiance of an Orange Order plea for no pyres because of the coronavirus threat.
Scrap wood and furniture with messages mocking Bobby Storey written on them were placed on some bonfires along with tricolour flags and the sectarian abbreviation KAT. Pictures also emerged in social media of an anti-Black Lives Matter placard at Whitehill bonfire in Bangor.
Yesterday afternoon cops confirmed they were investigating a separate loyalist banner which also ridiculed the funeral of Bobby Storey.
The ghoulish banner was circulated on social media as preparations for the bonfires ramped up last week and the PSNI said it was being investigated as a hate crime. The banner, which carried images of Bobby Storey and his funeral, carried the caption: “Bobby Storey raised in west Belfast, burnt in Loyalist east Belfast.”
Former British soldier and UUP MLA Doug Beattie condemned the banner, saying: “I’ll be clear – I think this is wrong and only targets the grieving family.
“There are issues to explore in respect to the funeral but this is not the way to do it.”
Meanwhile unsuccessful Green Party European Parliament candidate Saoirse McHugh has said she will vote in this month’s leadership election but she will quit afterwards, regardless of the outcome.Many of the 76 per cent who voted in favour of the “waffle fest” for government deal were pressurized into accepting by the fear of an unclear alternative.
Predicting the Greens’ membership will fall, McHugh said she does not believe people who share her views are now particularly welcome in the party.
Saoirse McHugh leaving Irish Green Party – Left Wing Opponent of FFFGGG Coalition
A People Before Profit TD attacked ‘democracy itself’, former minister for justice claims.
The deputy who made the complaint against Bríd Smith TD (Dublin South-Central) is Charlie Flanagan, who dumped his Fine Gael Party in very hot water in January 2020. The ex Minister for Justice, attempted to sponsor a government ceremony celebrating the Royal Irish Constabulary/Black and Tans. These were ruthless gangsters in a notorious uniform of the RIC during the War of Independence 100 years ago. Splendid language was spoken by deputies in the first Dáil, elected in 1919, about the Black and Tans and other props of British rule in Ireland such as judges, who were very effectively shunned and boycotted.
Ex Irish Justice Minister Charlie Flanagan with British Premier Boris Johnson
RIC/Black and Tan Recruitment Public Letter
Bríd Smith TD campaigning for Repeal of the Anti-Abortion 8th Amendment to the Irish Constitution
Hats off to Manus O’Riordan, a tireless researcher – retirement from SIPTU has not dimmed his energy – O’Riordan’s lengthy demolition of Charlie Flanagan’s political and historical hypocrisy about the Black and Tans should assist Bríd Smith TD :
A CUMANN NA NGAEDHEAL REBUKE TO FINE GAEL!
EOIN MACNEILL ON THE RIC WAR AGAINST IRISH DEMOCRACY
In the Irish Republic’s democratic assembly of Dáil Éireann on April 10, 1919, the following address on RIC atrocities was delivered by the Minister for Industries, Eoin MacNeill:
“It is impossible for us to escape having our blood stirred at the recital of the details laid before us here to-day. While all that we have heard stirs the indignation, there is not a single one of us who is surprised. There is nothing in it that surprises us. We know that only for fear of the consequences such infamous things as have been detailed here to-day would be thrown into the shade. We cannot allow our feelings of indignation to be uppermost in dealing with these matters when we come together in common council. In our homes we give full voice to what we think. The responsibility for these things rests on the heads of the rulers of England (and not on such vague abstracts as the English Government or the English State) from Lloyd George down to Macpherson and those others who are employed by them who are personally engaged in committing atrocities. They are the men we have to defeat. I hope that any potentate who has been guilty of atrocities will be punished. It will be a wholesome precedent.”
“If they fix the precedent of bringing the ex-Kaiser to trial, we may yet have an opportunity of having other persons brought to the bar of international justice. I have been watching the development of the English Government’s policy. That policy aims at making the police our masters in Ireland, and we often do not realise that with the single exception of Russia under the Government of the Czar there never was a country so police-governed as this country is.” Read the rest of this entry »
This is an excellent post from the Cedar Lounge Revolution Blog.
The author is a former member of the Socialist Party, who highlights the need for an organisation which is internally democratic and is not ultimately controlled by privileged components which make all the decisive decisions – in other words a significant departure from the SWN controlled PBP and the SP controlled Solidarity.
Here is the introduction :
Thanks to Shane Faherty for allowing this to be reposted. Much appreciated. Originally posted on
Modern DistortionsCulture, society and history, at the beginning of the month.
In keeping with the spirit of our times, on Tuesday I watched an online ‘meeting’ with Paul Murphy TD of RISE (formerly of the Socialist Party/ Solidarity) and Brid Smith TD of People Before Profit. It was a virtual version of the public meeting that most of us on the left know, but may not necessarily love.
Paul Murphy TD RISE – Leaflet, General Election, February 8 2020
Campaigners supporting Paul Murphy TD, February 8 2020 General Election
I wanted to know whether the new party being mooted was a runner and what form it would take. Paul’s organisation RISE have been making overtures to members of the Green Party who may be disillusioned with their party entering government with Fianna Fail and Fine Gael. He argues that they should leave the party and, along with other groups on the left, launch a new party. Similarly, People Before Profit released a statement proposing the formation of a new left party. Another small group called Independent Left, many of whom are former PBP members, released a statement welcoming the move. The elephant in the room in all of this is that Rise and People Before Profit are part of a parliamentary grouping called Solidarity – People Before Profit. Solidarity have said nothing on all of this. Solidarity and People Before Profit operate a marriage of convenience for electoral and parliamentary purposes. Until last year, they were evenly matched electorally, with 3 TDS and just under 30 councillors each, based on significant gains made at the previous local and general elections. The local elections of 2019 reduced the numbers of councillors for each party. There were gains for Sinn Fein and the Greens, and this was an indication of things to come.
New Fianna Fáil taoiseach Mícheál Martin rejects a border poll about the partition of Ireland – People Before Profit has issued a good political statement on the issue.
The welcome statement highlights a number of issues the radical left needs to address, urgently. The looming threat of Brexit – a right-wing British Exit from the European Union – should be a wake-up call.
He has only been a week in office but already Micheál Martin has ruled out a border poll, saying that it would be ‘divisive’.
Under the provisions of the Belfast Agreement, the British government has the power to call a border poll. But with the Irish government saying they do not want one, they have got cover to refuse.
This is a disgraceful rejection of democracy.
People have every right to aspire to a United Ireland and they should be able to put their case before the people of the North – and the South. Read the rest of this entry »
Green Party deputy leader Catherine Martin wants the job of current numero uno Eamon Ryan.
Her pitch looks blatant : do her quoted comments mean that, if elected Green Party leader, she will replace male Green Party Ministers and mini-Ministers with females? If so, Martin has a limited choice – the only available female Green TD who can be promoted is Dublin Central deputy Neasa Hourigan, who voted against coalition with FFFG. Martin could also give ministerial promotions to two female Green Party Senators.
12 Irish Green Party TD’s Elected in February 2020 – Scramble for Ministerial Promotion
This takes bribery and careerism in Irish politics to previously uncharted waters. The FFFGGG coalition is tainted because so many overpaid ministerial piggies are slurping at its trough, most of them male. The Green Party in coalition is careering downhill to the gutter inhabited by the likes of Willie O’Dea.
Limerick’s Willie O’Dea TD – Squeals from a piglet muscled away from the trough
Green Party opponents of the anti-woman FFFGGG coalition should prepare an exit strategy.
Will a real problem of government misogyny be remedied if there are extra Green Party females at the top table? The answer is No.
“We should always seek to promote because young girls cannot aim to be what they cannot see. We should always be seeking to do that, to promote women.”
The Minister for Media, Tourism, Arts, Culture, Sport and the Gaeltacht said she congratulated all the male Ministers.
“They’re all able for the job, but I think there was a missed opportunity to promote women and from our side there was also a missed opportunity to unite the party as well, that nobody who voted no or advocated no to the programme for Government was promoted to ministerial position and I think that was a missed opportunity to unite.
“We are a party that respects and cherishes debate and challenge and having those voices inside and within government at the ministerial table would have been welcome.”
When asked about an accusation of misogyny within the party by Cork Green Party councillor Lorna Bogue, Ms Martin said: “I think we have to be seen to do more — as a party we talk the talk in relation to promoting diversity and inclusivity, but if we’re not acting on it I think that’s regrettable and that’s something I would like to see changed.”
This Australian TV documentary tells a sharp accurate story in 30 minutes.
US Attorney Audrey Strauss explains case against Ghislaine Maxwell in New York
Virginia Roberts Giuffre confidently tells her frightening story
Contrast this account with tedious fluff elsewhere camouflaging the likely crimes of British Royal Prince Andrew. Follow the facts, ignore conspiracy theories.
There is a host of unanswered questions. We should be clear that a number of people make direct specific child abuse allegations against the English Prince Andrew, ex Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak, ex US Senator George Mitchell (an architect of the Irish 1998 Good Friday Agreement), ultra-Zionist Alan Dershowitz and some others. While the Clintons, the Trumps et al were close personal associates of Epstein/Maxwell they are not accused of child abuse. The police probably look on the Clintons et al as people who can be very helpful with their investigations. The carrot for Bill Clinton is : help the cops, and embarrassing information might not enter the public domain. The stick is : obstruct the cops and you are back in Monica Lewinsky territory.
In Dublin Sinn Féin is the largest Dáil opposition party up against the new right-wing FFFGGG Coalition. In Belfast the same party is part of a coalition headed by the far-right Democratic Unionist Party at Stormont.
The Northern Ireland State is almost a world-leader for practicising racism, bigotry, and discrimination. The “Protestant State for a Protestant People” spent decades discriminating against a nationalist minority. That still happens, but has been scaled down. Rebellions helped – and mass struggle caused progressive legal change – for example the lifting of legal bans on abortion and gay rights. But, in 2020, this state discriminates vigorously against other minorities, especially immigrants.
Derry People Before Profit highlights Sinn Féin moving in the wrong direction on these issues :
Despite Sinn Féin’s claim to be a party interested in fundamental change – they are headed in the opposite direction.
In the North, Sinn Féin support the PSNI crackdown on Black Lives Matter rallies in Derry and Belfast. In the Stormont Assembly Sinn Féin MLAs voted with the DUP and others for Amendment 5 of the Health Regulations to approve the PSNI’s political policing of the Black Lives Matter rally including prosecution threats and fines. By backing Amendment 5 Sinn Féin voted to give the PSNI more enforcement powers even though no other incidents or events – including mass rallies of loyalists and racists to ‘protect statues’ – have been targeted by the PSNI.
Sinn Féin President and Vice-President Mary Lou McDonald and Michelle O’Neill
In the South, by abstaining on the vote Sinn Féin gave the greenlight to legislation empowering the Special Criminal Court. Throughout its history Sinn Féin has voted against and called for the non-jury Special Criminal Court to be abolished. They’ve now turned their back on this position.
The Sinn Féin organisers of Bobby Storey’s West Belfast funeral on June 30 2020 got plenty of advance warning – which they chose to ignore.
Suzanne Breen set the scene in the pages of the Belfast Telegraph :
Sinn Fein has adopted an uncompromising approach to fighting coronavirus in Northern Ireland. On school closures, workplace regulations and much more, the party has rightly insisted that health and safety trumps all else.
The funeral of Bobby Storey should be no different. No ifs, buts or maybes. It doesn’t matter that he was Sinn Fein’s northern chairman, spent 20 years in jail, or has heroic status for some in the republican community.
Dominic Cummings moments in the six county statelet :
Bobby Storey’s Funeral in Belfast
PBP Belfast Councillor Matt Collins observes
At the risk of sounding repetitive I will make the point again….
The only people in Belfast who have been systematically targeted with fines, cautions and prosecution threats from the PSNI for breaching the regulations during this crisis have been BAME protestors taking part in safe, socially distant Black Lives Matter protests.
Such a fact— in a majority white city with tonnes of examples of proportionally different police treatment to other gatherings — is discrimination by definition.
People should be shouting loudly about this. Those in power keeping quiet about it are increasingly becoming part of the problem in my opinion.
The double standards were also highlighted by Vincent Doherty.
This is a savage witty attack on USA President Donald Trump.
Europeans, like North Americans, are resisting buffoonish and stupid racist leaders – Viktor Orban of Hungary, Boris Johnson of Britain – and outright leader of the pack, Arlene Foster from the north of Ireland.
“Europeans often look down on Americans and make fun of us. That in itself may be more of a stereotype and a joke than it is real…or at least it was before Donald Trump became president. The idea of Donald Trump being president was a joke. The Simpsons had it as a joke in one episode because it was so ridiculous. Lisa Simpson was president, who is a cartoon and not a real person, and that’s less ridiculous than a Trump presidency. Though in that episode, Lisa had to rebuild the nation after a Trump presidency. But yeah, Donald Trump is a joke. But Europe, like American liberals and the few Republicans who put their nation before a cult, recognize he’s more than a joke. He’s dangerous. However, as dangerous as he is, gatherings of world leaders are still caught on hot mics mocking the guy who claims he’s restored international respect to our nation. Europe has done a much better job with the coronavirus than our nation. While we have 4 percent of the world’s population, we have 25% of coronavirus cases. The virus is spiking in the deep south and our more liberal states in the northeast are enacting quarantines for visitors from those states. Europe may take it one step further. Europe looks at us and they see our president, the ultimate ugly, stupid, arrogant American. And what do they see now? They see an ugly American denying a virus isn’t as bad as it is. They see a stupid American telling people to drink bleach and take a medication that can kill them (Hey, if Europe is afraid of a drug, you don’t wanna go near it). They see an arrogant American mock people for wearing facemasks. They see an incredibly ugly, stupid, arrogant American president (sic) say we have fewer cases of coronavirus when we have fewer tests. They see an idiot who believes tests create cases. And now, the entire continent is considering banning each of us from entering. What’s next? Stiffed by Canada? Will Mexico build a wall and make us pay for it (probably)? Europe may not like us very much but they love our money and for us to come over and eat their snails. But when they see our leader (sic) exhibit the very worst of us, Europe is all like, “Nope!” They don’t want dirty Americans to re-contaminate their nations where people actually believe in science. I don’t blame them.”
Paddy Holohan suspended by Sinn Féin for remarks about women and underage girls during #ge2020 tonight nominated for Mayor of South Dublin by Sinn Féin councillors.
“Paddy Holohan
@PaddyHolohanMMA
County Council Annual General Meeting.
Honoured to be nominated in the running for Mayor of South Dublin by my sinn_fein comrades, Congratulations to the incoming mayor and a job welldone to the outgoing Mayor… https://instagram.com/p/CB5_3LFFiU3/?igshid=uy8eg795a10b
Mr Holohan made a number of racist and woman-hating statements, prompting his party leader Mary Lou McDonald to take swift disciplinary action in January 2020 :
Speaking in Bray, Co Wicklow, described the comments about women as “beyond offensive” and “very upsetting”.
Over the last week, Green Party members who opposed the Programme for Government waged an impressive fight against entering a right-wing coalition with Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael. Unfortunately, with the assistance of an immense campaign by the media, and enormous pressure from the pro-coalition TDs, the Yes side has won. Tomorrow, Green TDs will become Ministers and begin to implement a neoliberal Programme for Government.
We appreciate that as we are not members of the Green Party, we don’t have the detailed understanding of the internal dynamics that you have. However, the decisions you make in the coming days can have a significant impact on the development of the left that we need. We therefore offer some ideas here, which hopefully you will find helpful while you discuss your next steps. Read the rest of this entry »
While the rest of the world is rocked by an anti-racist uprising, sparked by a the actions of a USA cop Derek Chauvin
– murdering George Floyd, the killer-cop kneeling on his victim’s neck for nearly nine minutes, choking him to death live on camera
A British political leader sacks a colleague who draws attention to Derek Chauvin style police misbehaviour in a faraway country which is a strong political ally of the USA – Israel.
Pictures, a thousand words…
Routine Derek Chauvin Police Behaviour in Israel
Palestinian Lives Matter
Could a copy of Sir Keir Starmer get away with this shite in most parts of Ireland?
Probably not, unless you were a leading light in the Fine Gael Party – for example Charlie Flanagan TD.
This sort of political shite might go down well with Stormont First Minister Arlene Foster of the Democratic Unionist Party.
They are part of a “taskforce” established by unelected right-wing Government Minister Shane Ross, who lost his Dublin Rathdown Dáil seat in the February 2020 General Election.
And who are these worthies on this “taskforce”?
Minister for Transport, Tourism and Sport, Shane Ross, appointed the task force, whose members represent the industry, workers and Government.
Businessman Chris Horn chairs the group whose members include: Dalton Philips, chief executive of DAA, the company responsible for Cork and Dublin airports; Patricia King, general secretary of the Irish Congress of Trade Unions; Aer Lingus chief executive Sean Doyle; David O’Brien, commercial director at Ryanair; and Conor McCarthy, chief executive of aircraft maintenance group Dublin Aerospace.
Questions arise over the presence of ICTU General Secretary Patricia King on this “taskforce”, and her implied support for this committee’s woefully dangerous recommendations.
Irish Congress of Trade Unions General Secretary Patricia King
Mainstream USA politics is dominated by the Republican and Democratic parties, which are a Tweedledee-Tweedledum option.
An antidote for the radical left can be an erupting mass movement – a factor largely absent from the American continent for decades, but suddenly back in play since police officer Derek Chauvin choked gentle giant George Floyd to death in Minnesota.
The Black Lives Matter Movement has swept through the American continent, and detonated anti-racist protests across the globe, including Ireland.
First example : a wonderful mural in Tallaght, a working class district of Dublin, the constituency of RISE radical left TD Paul Murphy.
Annemarie Blake’s Mural Honouring George Floyd, Tallaght, Dublin
Second example : large Black Lives Matters demonstrations at the Ballsbridge American Embassy, a prosperous part of Ireland’s capital city.
Black Lives Matter Demonstration, USA Embassy, Ballsbridge, Dublin
Before the eruption of mass street-level struggle in the States, many sectors of the radical left made a valiant effort to break their isolation by critically supporting a left-wing candidate, Bernie Sanders, using the label of a Tweedledee party, the Democrats. Read the rest of this entry »
A deadline of June 30 2020 approaches – if a government is not formed by then, the non-jury Special Criminal Court, will die.
Paul Murphy TD has a clear policy :
Abolish the Special Criminal Court
This no-jury court has been responsible for numerous false convictions, it has no place in a democratic society. It has allowed the state to abuse its power to frame innocent people for crimes they have not committed.
It is an affront to the right to a fair trial. It is an affront to the right to be tried by a jury of your peers. It is an affront to the idea of equality before the law. It is an affront to basic civil liberties. It is an affront to human rights as a whole. There are many ways to deal with potential jury intimidation which don’t require a subversion of our fundamental democratic rights.
But, hold on – cavalry are charging to the rescue!
An update from a Cedar Lounge Revolution correspondent : “A watershed moment in Irish politics today: Sinn Fein for the first time in its history did not vote against the Offences Against the State Act and the attendant emergency powers, including the non jury Special Criminal Court. It is hard to imagine them sending a stronger signal that their house training has been completed and the state does not have to fear their involvement in government.
“With the Greens also abandoning their traditional civil liberties opposition to the OASA, the only voices against were Solidarity – People Before Profit and the SocDems. Strong speeches as you would expect from Paul Murphy (Rise) and Brid Smith (PBP). Fair play to Catherine Murphy (Soc Dems) for being the only liberal speaker to show some backbone when it comes to civil liberties.” https://cedarlounge.wordpress.com/2020/06/24/what-you-want-to-say-24-june-2020/#comment-771420
Members of the Irish Senate are on manoeuvres to the right of Leo Varadkar’s lame duck Fine Gael government.
The linked article below clarifies that if the Michael McDowell led legal challenge succeeds, the grossly undemocratic non-jury Special Criminal Court will not die on June 30 next.
It makes sense that the right-wing McDowell, a former government minister belonging to the extinguished Progressive Democrat party, takes legal action to extend the life-span and powers of the lame duck Varadkar régime. McDowell is joined by legal colleague Ivana Bacik of the Labour Party and assorted gombeens from Seanad Éireann!
Is this part of the final political epitaph of the Irish Labour Party and Sinn Féin – we saved the Special Criminal Court with Michael McDowell?
During the 1978 Sallins Train Robbery Special Criminal Court Frame Up Trial of 4 IRSP Members one of the 3 Judges constantly fell asleep. Defence counsel protests were dismissed. Then the judge died. Justice still sleeps in the Special Criminal Court in 2020.Read the rest of this entry »
Most lives contain a mix of the Good, Bad, and Ugly. The long war in the bit of Ireland 🇮🇪 directly controlled by Britain 🇬🇧 finished in the 1990’s, and was, according to the Official Version (OV), replaced by peace. We are all expected to go along with the OV, while the British and Irish ruling classes protect their own interests. We are supposed to Keep Up Appearances (KUA)!
OV’s and KUA are politically lethal. People rise to the top who are masters of loyalty to leadership hierarchies, which protect reactionary unethical behaviour. Bobby Storey was a very talented man. According to former Long Kesh prisoner Anthony McIntyre Storey held his nerve during a daring 1983 prison escape :
McIntyre said that when the 1983 escape started going wrong after the prisoners reached the Maze tally lodge Storey took control of the situation. “He held it together, thought on his feet, and directed people as to what to do. I later asked him how he’d managed that. He said he had been as terrified as everybody else, but the trick lay in overcoming those feelings and getting the job done.”
Storey probably masterminded the 2004 Northern Bank robbery and a 2002 IRA raid of British Secret Service Headquarters in Castlereagh. In both instances the Peace Process motored along very smoothly. KUA triumphed. The organisation which robbed the bank raid and broke into Castlereagh was supposed to be on a ceasefire. And there was a dark side – Bobby Storey was totally loyal to a party leadership which protected its own interests. Gerry Adams never had to account for the disappearance of Jean McConville. How much else is hidden from view?
Keeping Up Appearances – the Chuckle Sisters
Bobby Storey, and his organisation, prop up a Stormont Parliament in Belfast, run by a corrupt politician called Arlene Foster, responsible for a major financial scandal, the Renewable Heat Initiative (RHI). Keeping Up Appearances.
Leo Varadkar’s Fine Gael is doing well in current opinion polls, and is threatening a fresh Irish General Election if Green Party members reject coalition with Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael and several right-wing gombeens.
The President Michael D Higgins is entering stage left, and is refusing to play Varadkar’s game.
President Higgins says to lame-duck Taoiseach “Good riddance Leo, at last you’re sacked”
This means Fianna Fáil, which is doing badly in opinion polls, may act in its own interest and form a coalition with Sinn Féin, trying to also attract the Social Democrats, Labour and the Greens.
We can call this the SDLP option.
FF might need to replace its leader Mícheál Martin to complete this manoeuvre.
The opinion poll data is very persuasive in a situation like this :
Paddy Healy notes :
“Irish Mail on Sunday Poll June 21
FF At Less Than Half Sinn Féin Vote!!!
FG34 SF27 FF13 GRN8 LAB4 SD3 SOL/PBP2 IND10
In Comparison with poll in Irish Mail on Sunday in May
Independents up 4%, GP up 2%, no change for SF and FG and FF slightly down. All others as it was.
In Comparison with General Election 2020
FG +13, SF +2, FF -9, Gn +1 Lab NC, SD NC, Sol/PBP-1, Ind -2” Read the rest of this entry »
This is a startling story written by Irish Examiner columnist Michael Clifford, the target of a vicious personal attack written by pro Sinn Féin blogger Jude Collins.
Sources are crucial – some are reliable, retired university lecturer Jude Collins is not reliable, despite his large online following. Beware.
Blogger Jude Collins with Sinn Féin President Mary Lou McDonald and former Stormont Deputy First Minister Martin McGuinness
I have received death threats. I have received threats that my daughter will be raped. These have come from supporters of a political party. I have not gone to the gardaí about these threats. That suggests that I am probably a liar and am manufacturing these threats and blaming a political party because I’m hopelessly biased against them.
So it goes in the parallel universe of social media.
The above statements and inferences appeared in a blog by an academic and writer a few years back. I just discovered the blog 10 days ago and contacted the blogger.
His name is Jude Collins. He is a retired university lecturer and prominent Sinn Féin supporter in which guise he writes columns and frequently contributes to radio and TV. His blog attracts thousands of like minds — up to 25,000 for the ‘most-read posts’. The blog posting that disseminated lies about me was entitled ‘Michael Clifford and the Social Media’. Read the rest of this entry »
Ed Moloney compares Bobby Storey, the lieutenant of Former Sinn Féin leader Gerry Adams with Lavrentiy Beria, the number two of Russian dictator Josef Stalin from the late 1930’s till he was executed in infamy after Stalin’s death in 1953.
Bobby Storey’s CV is not pretty, especially in relation to the people “disappeared” by the IRA in the 1970’s. Another Beria? Stalin’s lieutenant was a much more sinister figure.
I also suspected then and more so later, that such was his uncritical adoration of the Big Lad that he was either naive in the extreme about Adams, what drove him and where he was going politically, or that he chose cynically to ignore the obvious.
My suspicions in this regard were rooted in the episode I know best about Storey’s relationship with Gerry, and that was about the disappearance of Jean McConville.
In pursuit of the fiction that none of this had anything to do with him, Adams had given Storey the job of finding out what had happened to Mrs McConville, who had been involved in her disappearance and, most importantly, where her remains had been buried.
This was at a point in the peace process when clearing up the issue of the ‘disappeared’ had assumed urgency and priority, so much so that Bill Clinton had taken sides in favour of justice for the disappeared.
For Adams to ask Storey to find out what happened to Jean McConville was like Stalin asking Beria to discover who gave the order to bury an icepick in Trotsky’s skull. Gerry knew, and knows more about what happened to Jean McConville and why, and who was involved in her ‘disappearance’ and how, than anyone still living.
When Storey went to interview Dolours Price he was, according to her account to me, astonished to hear her side of the story, which was of course that Gerry had given the order to ‘the unknowns’ to send Jean McConville to her maker. Clearly Gerry had denied all knowledge and put the blame on others, especially Ivor Bell, a line the British state and their police chiefs dutifully followed in later years.
— Read on thebrokenelbow.com/2020/06/21/bobby-storey-was-gerry-adams-beria/
Many loyal Sinn Féin supporters will not care :
The RUC, who rarely made any secret of their hatred for Storey, had no doubt that he was one of the planners behind the Provos’ mass breakout from the Maze in 1983 when 38 terrorists escaped after a prison officer was killed.
Storey later described the escape as a “great achievement” for the IRA, who he said had “shafted Margaret Thatcher”.
Detectives were also convinced that Storey was the principle organiser of the Northern Bank robbery in Belfast in 2004 that netted the IRA £26million.
But he was never charged in connection with it.
And although he spent a total of 20 years behind bars, Storey had an uncanny record of eluding convictions on a litany of other terrorist charges down the years.
Police claimed witnesses were too scared in some cases to testify against him.
But Sinn Fein claimed police operated a policy of internment by remand for Storey who was a lifelong republican from a republican family.
Talking about his life in a rare interview, Storey said his family had to move when he was a child from their north Belfast home after loyalist attacks on their area.
And he claimed that it was the bombing of McGurk’s bar, where 15 people were killed in 1971 and Bloody Sunday just a few months later, that shaped his future, prompting him to join the IRA at the age of 16.
Ed Moloney offers interesting details about the material basis of the new Workers’ Party split.
The splitters, called the NI Business Committee, are 60/70 year old veterans, part of the Workers Party’s so-called ‘PLC machine’ whose careers with the WP go back to the early 1970’s. The ‘PLC Machine’ is run by a well known activist, with something of a fearsome reputation, by the name of Seamus Harrison.The ‘PLC Machine’ is a fancy way of referring to the Workers Party’s portfolio of bars and businesses, some as far away as San Francisco, that were built up over the years courtesy of scams like building site tax rackets, as well as drink licence permits discretely arranged by the Northern Ireland Office in the days when OIRA was regarded by HMG as an acceptable alternative to the Provos.
50 years ago, on June 19 1970, Bernadette Devlin, an Independent socialist candidate, retained the Mid-Ulster Westminster seat she first won in a 1969 by-election. She continued to use these impressive electoral victories as platforms for building progressive mass movements. She is still a very committed political activist.
Viva Bernadette!
Bernadette McAliskey June 2020 – Black Lives Matter!
The RTÉ report below includes one significant mistake. In North Antrim the reactionary far-right rabble-rouser Ian Paisley won the North Antrim Westminster seat for the first time, unseating the sitting Unionist MP.
Protestant Unionist Paisley won the Stormont Bannside constituency in 1969, former seat of ex-Stormont Prime Minister Terence O’Neill, a right-winger not right wing enough for the Unionist Party.
Disgraceful events in Belfast and Derry – resistance is stepped up.
The originators of a statement supporting Black Lives Matter have condemned the Derry Journal for refusing to print a paid advert for the statement in today’s issue.
Dermie McClenaghan, Bernadette McAliskey, Eamonn McCann and Kate Nash, said that they were “deeply disappointed” at the paper’s decision.
They point out that the statement had already been published in full in a paid advert in the Derry News.
The signatories went on: “The statement condemned police action at the BLM protest in Derry on June 6 and was critical of some local interests which had called for the protest to be abandoned. We supported the decision of the BAME community in Derry to go ahead with the protest. We reiterate that support.
Censorship in the Six County State, Ireland
“There are two pandemics ravaging the world – Covid-19 and racism. The anti-racist demonstrations in Derry and in Belfast were meticulously arranged to meet public health requirements. In Derry, the PSNI operation – as if for a major riot – made the arrangements difficult to uphold.
Gavin Mendel-Gleason, a supporter of the WP wing which has expelled the “northern business committee” makes a statement open to possible alarming interpretations :
While they would have been afraid to move with Sean Garland still alive, they saw their chance with his death.
A sister party in the foreign fields of North Korea is also called the Workers’ Party.
Seán Garland outside an Irish court while successfully contesting a US extradition request over alleged North Korean counterfeiting of “SupetDollars”
Was the WP northern business committee trying to avoid a fate similar to the late Kim Jong-Nam after he fell out with his brother Kim Jong-Un? Presumably Gavin Mendel-Gleason does not have the same clout as Seán Garland or the leaders of the Kim dynastic family?Read the rest of this entry »
At times readers of online political commentary despair going through useless drudge that can be found on the internet. But if you keep at it, watch for sources you know are usually solid and reliable, you find excellent material. This article came to the attention of the Tomás Ó Flatharta blog via an FB friend Suzi Weissman.
It is a devastating, withering, attack on the Biden-Democrat “hostility” to the Trump administration – which is not the same as opposition. A stunning catastrophe looms now in the USA as the Trump Government “opens up” this land to the Covid-19 Monster at the Door of New York. Now, more than ever, the USA radical left must look towards the November 2020 General Election, and attempt to offer a credible alternative to the Evil Biden-Trump Tweedledee Monster. Shame on Bernie Sanders. The article concludes :
Bernie’s consistent criticism falls flat these days as he loyally signs on to the party consensus while trying to push additions and improvements. AOC is a lone voice in the wilderness daring to cast the occasional no vote.
What’s left are endangered and desperate people daring to walk off the job and appealing to their peers for support. We the people are on our own and must find our own way forward without waiting for leadership that doesn’t exist. By shedding illusions to the contrary, we open up new possibilities.
Hostility Is Not Enough – Resistance is Not Futile
The CoVid-19 Horror Story in the USA :
An internal government document circulating in the United States projects a surge in coronavirus cases and a sharp rise in daily deaths by June 1, the New York Times reported, even as President Donald Trump urged states to lift restrictions in place to quell the pandemic.
Hostility Is Not the Same As Opposition – Resistance is Needed
There is hostility, which is not the same thing.
Opposition implies a critical analysis and an alternative program, that is, an examination of what is being done wrong, why this is so, and what should change. On all three points, the loudest non-Trump voices offer confusion, distraction, and hypocrisy, not leadership around which a movement could cohere.
The IMG was the International Marxist Group, the British Section of the Fourth International (FI) in the 1970’s. This is an interesting Phi Hearse article for anoraks (!) who study the history of radical-left political currents. It analyses the Fourth International “Turn to Industry” Policy of 1979 and following years. This policy, in my opinion, contributed to a political decline of People’s Democracy (PD) in Ireland in the 1980’s – although that was not the only factor. We live and learn.
Others may make a different political judgement, and that’s OK. One of the FI people I worked closely with in the 1980’s was Gerry Foley, an early target of the American Socialist Workers’ Party (SWP), which drove the FI “Turn to Industry” Policy at that time. However, for most of the 1970’s, Foley and me were on different sides in FI debates, and did not agree about the history of that period. Some of Foley’s co-thinkers were known for endlessly going on about “the ultra-left turn” of the 1969 FI World Congress, and guerillaism. That all happened before I joined the FI in 1974, when that debate was on the way towards a reasonably amicable conclusion. Even more bizarre, rival groups went on and on about “Pabloism” – a debate belonging to the 1950’s! These days you still come across comrades endlessly droning on about the 1969 World Congress – some of these people, like me, were not directly involved in those discussions at all! So, I do not endlessly drone on about the 1979 “Turn to Industry”. – John Meehan
An update, two observations from an online discussion :
Liam Mac Uaid :
A couple of observations to supplement what Phil has written.
The turn made very little sense in Ireland at the time. It was a period of mass emigration from a country with a very small industrial base. This was accentuated in the north by the fact that most of the skilled industrial jobs were not open to Catholics.
I remember informing the branch that I’d got the job in the sewers. My mother had said to me something along the line’s of “Tommy’s niece’s husband is looking for men to work in tunnels”. I’d been reading a lot about Vietnam at the time and it seemed a useful revolutionary field of knowledge.
There were a couple of American SWP members at the meeting on the revolutionary tourist circuit and they were very impressed by this application of the line.
The American SWP’s influence was ultimately quite pernicious internationally. The Barnes leadership were imitating the Mormons and sending people all over the place. Along with the Ross group they were encouraging people in Ireland to liquidate into Sinn Fein. A complete political liquidation would have been the only way to enter an organisation controlled by the Army Council. Those who followed their advice and are still politically active became part of the Provie grantocracy. Though the political degeneration was pretty rapid.
My first few months in England were no fun. I got a job in a chemical factory where the least lumpen worker was in the National Front. It was simply what the job centre had given me. This would have been the SWP US dream, but it was grinding and futile. As Phil says, comrades who got jobs in unionised, strategic jobs were able to do useful things.
This Jim Monaghan observation adds another interesting jig saw piece to the picture we paint : “My partner, Jackie, had an argument in New York with SWPers, when they refused to accept that large sectors of industrial employment was barred for nationalists in the 6 counties.”
John Meehan :
I remember an interesting turning point at one meeting. I am unsure about the exact date. I will try to find it. I had been warning for a few years against the “turners” and the dangers of the American SWP policy. I was making little progress inside PD. Then Malik Miah and another SWP turner – I think his name was McBride – were over for a PD Conference. A group of PD comrades met these two Americans privately. This meeting was set up by two firm supporters of the American apparatus. The idea was to draw in extra supporters. The baptism and brainwash manoeuvre backfired. Quickly afterwards one particular comrade made his way to me in a very determined fashion. This was a revelation moment. This comrade, who rejected the road to political and personal doom was Trutz Haase, a German Born guy who had settled in Dublin. Trutz said to me – I did not believe what you were saying about the American SWP and the Turn up till now – but you are right! I think the Americans were advocating that comrades get jobs in “heavy industry” which a) did not exist in Ireland at that time and b) we were going through one of those regular bouts of hideous mass unemployment. Trutz became a very supportive comrade to me, but also a very close and supportive friend – that friendship endured long after he dropped out of PD.
The following was written by Phil Hearse, in April 2020, in response to comments on the Socialist Resistance discussion list. We are grateful to Phil…
Peter Drucker’s useful article examines radical left electoral initiatives in various parts of the world. It includes descriptions of the Left Bloc in Portugal and the Red-Green Alliance in Denmark. These are examples which should be compared with the experiences of radical left candidates in Ireland.
Drunker concludes with a plan of action leading up to the November 2020 USA General Election. He highlights the campaign of Green Eco-Socialist Candidate Howie Hawkins, rejecting lesser-evilists like Bernie Sanders, who lined up behind Joe Biden of the Democratic Party.
Howie Hawkins Campaign, USA Presidential Election November 2020
And what about the national election this November? Leftists are understandably preoccupied with stopping Trump. But Biden is a terribly weak reed to lean on in the fight against the racist far right.
Particularly in the forty-odd states where either Trump doesn’t stand a chance (California, New York, Massachusetts) or Biden doesn’t stand a chance, a vote by leftists for Biden – up to his knees in the shit of the Iraq war, the destruction of welfare, the growth of mass incarceration, the power plays of Big Pharma and more – is a wasted vote if ever there was one. Especially when there is a clear alternative – presumptive Green candidate Howie Hawkins – who is himself a long-time stalwart of the socialist left.
Given the groundswell on the left toward a critical vote for Biden, independent-minded socialists may be tempted to soft-pedal this debate. I think that would be a mistake. Of course, we shouldn’t push the debate to the point of alienating our allies in the movements. But neither should we imagine that what people do for a couple of minutes in the privacy of a polling booth is harmless.
In times of polarization like these, people and especially activists usually don’t keep their voting plans secret. Their declarations that of course they’ll vote for Biden to stop Trump help keep broad social milieus in the Democratic Party’s orbit. Even more serious, movement organizations’ success in delivering votes to Biden will be the currency for years of their quid pro quos with the Democrats: some crumbs for my base, some jobs for my staff, in return for lasting political allegiance.
For all their imperfections – notably their shallow roots in social movements – the Greens, who explicitly declared themselves anti-capitalist in 2016, offer the clearest possible rebuke to this kind of lesser-evilism. A vote for them is a small but meaningful step in the direction of the future new socialist party. So let’s take and advocate that step.
— Read on newpol.org/left-politics-after-sanders-think-internationally-historically-and-dialectically/
How refreshing! Howie Hawkins, an eco-Socialist candidate in the November 2020 USA Presidential General Election, recalls a funny, sarcastic and moving Country Joe McDonald song which went worldwide in 1969 after a stunning live performance at the Woodstock Rock Music Festival. The biting realism spoke to hundreds of millions, motivating them to act in thousands of ways against the Washington War Machine.
Country Joe Rouses the Woodstock Audience in 1969:Against the Vietnam War
I can’t remember when, exactly, I first heard McDonald’s brilliantly sung call to action – probably before attending my first USA Embassy Demonstration in Ballsbridge Dublin against the Vietnam War.
I was shocked, and pleasantly impressed, to meet some some fellow school students at this venue – one of those “what are you doing here? moments” – and was even more stunned to see my teacher of Italian, Sydney-Bernard Smyth, reciting his own poems from the platform.
The anti-capitalist spirit of McDonald’s song is captured here :
Come on wall street don’t be slow Why man this war is a go-go There’s plenty good money to be made by Supplying the army with the tools of its trade Let’s hope and pray that if they drop the bomb, They drop it on the Viet Cong
A strength of the Hawkins account is that the support he offered to the anti-imperialist cause is and was critical – the national liberation struggle led by the Vietnamese Communist Party and its leader Ho Chi Minh was a just cause, but it was not perfect or flawless. This practical intellectual framework is badly needed today. Many people outside Ireland watch the Donald Trump led horror story in America, and the honourable, but flawed, electoral left-flavoured opposition which was headed by Bernie Sanders. Sanders now takes sides in a useless reactionary contest between TweedleBiden of the Democrats and TweedleTrump of the Republicans, bringing to mind the dismal and barren electoral contest between Richard Nixon and Hubert Humphrey in 1968. Many enduring lessons were taught in the USA and across the globe by the mass movement against the Vietnam War. – John Meehan
“What are we fighting for?” – Country Joe McDonald
When I had to prepare for a 7th grade classroom debate on the Vietnam War in Spring 1965, President Johnson had begun escalating the war with the massive bombing of Operation Rolling Thunder and the deployment of a few thousand Marines to Da Nang, the first of what would become nearly 200,000 US troops by the end of 1965 and over 500,000 in 1968. I learned that the US had signed the 1954 Geneva Accords, which provided for an election in 1956 to unify Vietnam and establish an independent government. But I also learned that the US had prevented the election because it knew the winner would be Ho Chi Minh, the Communist leader of the Viet Minh, the nationalist coalition for independence that had defeated the Japanese and then the French imperialists. The Viet Minh controlled the North, but the French had retaken the South when the Japanese left with US military support from the Truman and Eisenhower administrations until the French were defeated at Dien Bien Phu in 1954 and gave up their colonies in Indochina. I read the 1945 “Vietnamese Proclamation of Independence from Japan and France.” Ho had drafted and modeled the proclamation after the American Declaration of Independence in consultation with operatives from the OSS (predecessor of the CIA), who had been helping the Viet Minh fight the Japanese during World War II. None of this was on the nightly news, which broadcast Johnson’s justifications for the war. I was outraged at the hypocrisy of the pro-war US political leaders who talked of democracy and self-determination but were opposing it in Vietnam. What are we fighting for?
When the Daniel Ellsberg leaked the Pentagon Papers in 1971, all of these violations of America’s professed values were more thoroughly documented by internal Pentagon documents. What also became clear in those leaked documents is that US political leaders knew the whole time that the US could not defeat Vietnamese nationalism and win the war. Yet they continued to send young Americans to die in Vietnam so they didn’t appear soft on Communism in domestic politics. What are we fighting for?
When my draft number came up in 1972, I enlisted in the Marine Corps and in the GI resistance to the war. When I got to Quantico for bootcamp for officer candidates, I was training with a lot of Vietnam combat veterans now in college on the GI bill and coming back in the Marines to become officers—and most of them opposed the Vietnam War. They loved the anti-war anthem of the Navy veteran, Country Joe McDonald. His “Feel Like i’m Fixing to Die Rag” captured the hypocrisies of the US war in Vietnam and the spirit of the anti-war movement inside as well as outside the military. For the military rank-and-file, the song gave voice to their real feelings about how they were treated as expendable pawns by the military brass and the country’s political leaders. What are we fighting for?
It took 19 years after the 1956 election that the US prevented for the Vietnamese, with the assistance of the anti-war movement and the GI resistance, to finally expel the last US forces 45 years ago on April 30, 1975. US leaders said we were fighting Communism. Washington’s aggressive war the cost of lives of nearly 4 million Vietnamese. The Communists won and today preside over a predominantly capitalist economy. What are we fighting for?
Today multinational corporations from the US, China (Vietnam’s millennial-old colonial nemesis), Japan, South Korea, and other nations locate factories in Vietnam to exploit cheap labor and environmental laws so lax and unenforced that the legendary General Vo Nguyen Giap, who had led the Vietnamese People’s Army in defeating the Japanese, French, and finally US occupiers, became Vietnam’s most prominent a environmental, pro-democracy, and anti-corruption dissident, criticizing Vietnamese state and party leaders on these issues until his dying day in 2013 at the age of 102. What were we fighting for?
And what are we fighting for now? It’s not for us regular people. We are not why the US now has over 800 foreign military bases. We are not why the US is officially engaged in 7 endless wars and covert special operations in well over 100 foreign countries. We are not why the US is continuing to impose economic sanctions on countries that need aid and trade right now to fight the coronavirus. The US war machine is not about defending Americans in our homeland. It is about making the world safe for profiteering by US-based global corporations.
What are we fighting for? We should be fighting to dismantle the US Military/Industrial Complex. Instead being the world’s military empire, we must demand that the US become the world’s humanitarian superpower. Let’s make the US use its wealth and knowledge in a multi-lateral Global Green New Deal that reverses climate change and provides for the basic needs of all. Let’s make friends, instead of enemies. Let’s make peace, instead of war.
— Read on howiehawkins.us/vietnam-45-years-after-the-war-finally-ended/
An accidental beginning :
The audience largely ignored his eight-song set. His tour manager said that since nobody was paying attention, why not do the number he was saving for tomorrow night? The singer walked back out, alone, and called to the masses, “Give me an F!”
That got their attention. They knew the routine. The crowd at Woodstock, half a million strong, rose to their feet and joined in Country Joe McDonald’s antiwar war cry, chanting along from the opening expletive all the way to the “Whoopee! We’re all going to die” capper. Captured in Michael Wadleigh’s Oscar-winning 1970 documentary “Woodstock,” the three rousing minutes of Mr. McDonald’s acoustic version of “The ‘Fish’ Cheer/I-Feel-Like-I’m-Fixin’-to-Die Rag” became the premier Vietnam War protest anthem.
“I never had a plan for a career in music, so Woodstock changed my life,” Mr. McDonald, now 75, said in an interview from his home in Berkeley, Calif. “An accidental performance of ‘Fixin’-to-Die,’ a work of dark humor that helps people deal with the realities of the Vietnam War, established me as an international solo performer, then the movie came out and the song went on to become what it still is today.” https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/10/opinion/country-joe-vietnam-woodstock.html
This online exchange is between an American Correspondent Louis N Proyect and some of Louis’s online friends including David McDonald. It makes a lot of practical political sense to me. – John Meehan
“There are two versions of Bernie Sanders – There is the old Bernie Sanders who mounted a quixotic campaign for the Democratic Presidential Nomination as a Democratic Socialist who refused corporate cash and excoriated Democrats. And there is the new Bernie Sanders who dutifully plays by the party’s rules, courts billionaires, refused to speak out in support of the lawsuit brought against the DNC for rigging the primaries against him and endorses democratic candidates who espouse the economic and political positions he once denounced.
Sanders, although he knew by September 2016 that the process was rigged, said nothing to his supporters. He was tacitly complicit in the coverup. It was left to one of the architects of the fraud, Donna Brazile, to reveal the scam. But by then it was too late.
Sanders’ capitulation in the face of overwhelming evidence of the rigging of the nomination process was political and moral cowardice. He missed the historical moment, one that should have seen him denounce a corporate-dominated party elite and walk away to build a third party candidacy.
Often at Irish funeral wakes some people say “Never speak ill of the Dead”. They do not mean a word of it. Mourners relax, dump the fake insincere bland and pious words, and talk about the real person they knew, the Good, Bad, and Ugly sides.
One period in the life of Henri Weber is celebrated in this obituary, a life of revolutionary activism shaped by the May 1968 uprising in France.
Henri Weber, a Revolutionary in the 1960’s
In the 1980’s a second period began in the political service of social liberalism, which is not celebrated. Henri Weber died from the CoronaVirus as the Great Depression of the 2020’s started to cause global havoc. We will continue to lose people who are dying before their time.
Henri Weber was born in Leninabad (now Khujand), Tajikistan, Soviet Union on 23 June 1944. His Polish-Jewish parents had left Poland at the time of the German-Soviet pact but, refusing to become Soviet citizens, were sent to labour camp where he was born. They returned to Poland after the war but four years later left because of prevailing anti-semitism and moved to France. As a student in Paris Weber was recruited by Alain Krivine and became a leading member of the Jeunesse Communiste Révolutionnaire (JCR) and of the Ligue Communiste (subsequently Ligue Communiste Révolutionnaire LCR), French section of the Fourth International. In the early 1980s he ceased political activity and in 1986 joined the Socialist Party. A member of the leadership of the Socialist Party, he held elected positions as a senator (1995-2004) and then as a member of the European Parliament (2004-2014). He died in Avignon on 26 April 2020 from coronavirus. [IVP]
I knew Henri as a JCR activist in the years 1965-67. In the period after May 68, we were fairly close, since I was a student at the university of Vincennes where he was an assistant lecturer in the philosophy department. It was at this time that I had to coordinate the student sector of what was to become the Ligue Communiste. At the end of the Mannheim congress, I became a member of the central committee of the League (1969-70) following a proposal which he initiated. But in the framework of the activities of the defence service of the League, for which I was for a time responsible along with my brother Alain, Michel Récanatti and Romain Goupil, we worked a lot on projects of demonstrations and political events which made the League well known, and it is for this double reason that I saw a lot of Henri.
Henri was one of the leading figures of the JCR, along with Daniel Bensaïd, Janette Habel, Alain Krivine, Pierre Rousset, and in a less public way Gérard de Verbizier. They were the embodiment of this organization which came from the fight against Stalinism, solidarity with the colonial revolution and systematic anti-capitalist and anti-fascist activities, which stood out by its sense of political initiative, its dynamism and its fighting spirit, without sectarianism. Henri and his comrades had anticipated, already in 1967, the role of “sensitive plate” that the student movements could play. They perceived the embers which were heating up under the leaden shell of Gaullism and the inertia of the union leaderships and the PCF. In the demonstrations, they pushed for the radicalization of struggles and supported strikes which escaped the shackles of the union bureaucracies. May 9, 1968, when the JCR opened up its meeting to the movement and where Bensaïd, Weber and Cohn-Bendit rubbed shoulders, illustrated this absence of sectarianism. Unlike the “maos” who two days later invited the students to put themselves at the “service of the people” rather than building barricades, the Lambertists of the OCI, who in their logic of pressure group on the trade union apparatuses counterposed the “general strike” to the battles of “petit-bourgeois students ”and the activists of Voix Ouvrière (ancestor of LO) who learnedly explained that the battles in the Latin Quarter were only a “straw fire” with regard to the struggle of the proletariat, they understood that the straw fire was in fact “the spark that would set the plain on fire”! And when 1968 exploded, Henri and his comrades were ready, they were the ones who could be found on the barricades and in confrontations with the cops (alongside the anarchists). They knew that going to the barricades was in fact the way to the general strike. Henri was one of those who had the political intuition to understand that the events of 1968 opened a historic moment.
— Read on www.internationalviewpoint.org/spip.php
In the service of “those who led to the catastrophe that we know”.
The loss of his convictions led to a withdrawal from militant political activity and a gradual bifurcation towards the paths of social respectability, then to an increasingly close proximity with social liberalism, from Fabius to Hollande. Even though he maintained friendly personal relations with his former comrades, he put his talent and his rhetoric, which had become an empty shell, at the service of the political apparatus of the Socialist Party , which had long since taken on board the standards proper to the Bonapartist state. Once he had changed course, he went far down this route. The saddest thing was to see him sometimes summon the ghosts of revolutionary strategy to justify submission to those who led to the catastrophe that we know.
Today we will leave the eulogy of his renouncement to the chorus of defenders of these modern times. It is the Henri of the fight for emancipation that we mourn, the comrade, Tisserand and Samuel, the one with whom we trod the streets, La Jeune Garde in his shoulder bag, the one who sang the Internationale with Jacques Higelin, the one who was part of the youth that Liebknecht said was the flame of the revolution.
Saoirse McHugh, a Green Party Candidate in the February 8 2020 Irish General Election, recommends this Carl Kinsella article opposing Green Party participation in a Fianna Fáil / Fine Gael Coalition Government.
Hey, Green Party. This might sound crazy but… I’m from the future.
And I’m here to warn you that very bad things will happen if you accept Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil’s offer to enter government as their junior coalition partners. I’m talking lose all your seats, never-trusted-again, no-more-wolves-for-Eamon-Ryan bad.
But I accept that there are plenty of people, not just Mícheál, Leo and the lads, who are ramping up the pressure for ye to simply take the climate brief you want so badly and prop up the two boys until 2025.
Their arguments go like this: Ireland is in the midst of a crisis, therefore it needs a government. The Greens have the seats to plug the gap, therefore the junior coalition partner must be the Greens. The Greens are driven by the urgency of climate change above all else, therefore they should jump at this chance.
But you haven’t. Yet.
But if it makes so much damn sense, then why has this proposal remained in early negotiations, gathering criticism for the Green grassroots, rather than seeing a delighted Eamon Ryan skipping off into the sunset as the Tánaiste, or guaranteed a few spins on the rolling Taoiseach waltzer?
It’s simple: because some Greens know that what they want, including the demographics they need to keep onside, is not compatible with five more years of centre-right governance that prioritises profits, banks, big business and economic growth over saving the actual planet.
Long story short, I’m here to warn the Greens that if they go into government with Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael, that’s it for them. Read the rest of this entry »
