Irish Democrat August - September 1996

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At last! Connolly statue unveiled
in Dublin
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Time to talk peace says Sinn
Fein's Mitchel McLaughlin
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Peter Berresford Ellis on Bram
Stoker, Dracula and social reform
I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I | | | • I | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | I I I I I I I I I I I
toish Demcxmt
August/September 1996 • Price 50p
ConnoHy Association: campaigning for a united and independent Ireland
Plea for action
on marches
• The RUC caves in to unionist thuggery and gives Orange marchers safe passage where they weren't wanted...
Photo: Pacemaker Press International
Parity of esteem?
• ...but it's open season on anyone who complains
Democrat reporte
The RUC's deci
sion to give in to
the Orange
mobs at Drum
cree, and the
. sectarian violence Unleashed
against the
nationalist community of
the North, have highlighted
the need for
urgent action to protect
communities from intimidation,
triumphalism
and violent, bigoted at
tacks.
The inter-community
tensions which have
been stoked by the
Orange Order's insistence
on flaunting what's
left of unionism's tarnished
and flagging
supremacy can only hinder
efforts to rebuild the
peace process.
The Connolly Association
has therefore called
upon the British government
to ensure that no
marches are allowed
through areas where
there is substantial and
legitimate opposition
from local residents.
Such a measure would
also have to apply to the
routeing of nationalist
marches through
residential areas where
objections are raised by
local protestants.
While having no objections
to the setting up
of an international commission
to look into the
Photo: Pacemaker Press International issues of marches, immediate
action is needed if
the current distrust and
antipathy is to be overcome
and the security of
local communities guaranteed.
The Association welcomes
the dialogue
between some marching
organisations and local
community representatives.
However,
additional measures will
almost certainly be
needed where agreement
cannot be reached.
It is also clear that
questions must be
answered as to why the
decision to ban the
Orange march from the
Garvaghy Road was
overturned, and what action
the security forces
are taking against those
responsible for holding
the Six Counties to ransom.
If the police have information
about a
conspiracy to endanger
lives, what is the source
of this information, and
what action have they
taken in response to it?
The issue of Orange
marches through predominantly
catholic
areas has huge implications
for the peace
process. So far the actions
of the RUC and the British
government have
done little to convince
catholics that parity of esteem
and equality of
treatment are anything
more than warm words.

Parity of
esteem?
If there are two lessons to be learned from the
events of Drumcree and their aftermath, the first is
that they have served to expose to the world what
the British Government and the RUC really mean
by 'parity of esteem' and 'equality of treatment 7 .
That the British government and the RUC were
publicly seen to cave in to threats to intensify violence
against catholics has caused widespread anger throughout
the nationalist community and beyond.
However, whatever the disquiet experienced by Sir
Patrick Mayhew and John Major over the role played
by David Trimble at Drumcree, they showed no desire
even to upbraid him for breaking the law or breaching
the Mitchell principles on the use of violence and
force to attain political ends, let alone threaten his
party with exclusion from the talks process.
Just in case any of us missed the point, a few days
later John Major, legitimately concerned about a
possible breakdown in the loyalist ceasefire, invited
members of the new unionist parties for talks at Number
10 Downing Street. The involvement in political
and sectarian violence of some of those involved was
well known to Mr Major and his colleagues.
Whatever our reservations about the PUP or the
UDP, we welcome any genuine commitment to work
for a political solution to the conflict. What is both offensive
and politically suspect, given the unravelling
peace process, is what the meeting says about the British
government's idea of equality of treatment After
all, this is a prime minister who refused to meet Sinn
Fein after the IRA ceasefire and who placed endless
precondition in the way of its inclusion in all-party
talks.
It is a matter of record that the British government
neither insisted that the loyalist paramilitaries hand in
their weapons, nor asked them to guarantee that their
ceasefire was permanent, before allowing them to take
up their place in the Northern Ireland assembly.
Even more galling is the growing belief, at least outside
of the RUC, that at least four recent killings in the
North, including that of catholic taxi driver Michael
McGoldrick, are linked to loyalist paramilitaries. The
disparity of esteem here is manifest.
A second important lesson resulting from Drumcree
is that unionists are attempting to assert their supremacy
from a position of weakness rather than
strength. The Drumcree showdown and the eruption
of violence against catholics and nationalists is all part
of their desperate attempts to hang on to what remains
of their ascendency position. The tide of history is not
flowing their way, and they know it Politically backward-looking,
unionism offers no lasting hope for
protestants. In time, Drumcree may eventually be seen
as the beginning of the end for unionism's supremacy
in the North, rather than the victory some are so keen
to crow about.
Unfortunately, the resumption of the IRA's military
campaign has thrown a life-line to divided unionists
and the sorry remnants of a fading, and increasingly
inept, Tory administration. There is again tremendous
potential for political advance on the Irish question in
both Britain and Ireland following the events of Drumcree.
However, any advances today could just as
quickly be swept aside tomorrow by the next IRA
bombing, particularly if it's target like Manchester.
Republicans should be in no doubt that those of us
in Britain who have consistently supported and campaigned
for a political solution to the Irish crisis see
no justification for a resumption of the IRA's military
campaign. It undermines the need to build the maximum
unity between nationalist, republican and progressive
forces in Ireland and hinders all attempts to
broaden the campaign for Irish democracy in Britain.
• DG
toish DeraocuAc
BI-MONTHLY NEWSPAPER OF
THE CONNOLLY ASSOCIATION
Founded 1939. Volume 51, number 2
Editorial board: Helen Bennett; Gerard Curran;
David Granville (editor); Jonathan Hardy; Peter
Mulligan; Alex Reid Moya Fenz St Leger.
Production: Derek Kotz
PUBLISHED BY: Connolly Publications Ltd, 244
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HEADLINES
Connolly statue unveiled
Dublin trades
unionists and
people throughout
Ireland can feel
proud in
honouring the
great labour leader
James Connolly,
reports CHARLIE
CUNNINGHAM
JAMES CONNOLLY was
not just a trade union organiser,
for that is how he
earned his living, but also a
political analyst, one of the
foremost socialist thinkers of
this century, a poet, historian,
playwright, songwriter, and
revolutionary who paid the ultimate
price for his act of patriotic
defiance.
Recognition of his importance
and influence continues
to grow, both at home and
abroad. His name is revered
throughout Ireland with
schools, roads squares, railway
stations, office buildings
and hospitals named after him,
and now, eighty years since his
execution, a fine statue has
been erected outside Liberty
Hall at the place where Connolly
addressed many meetings
of Dublin's trade
unionists and socialists.
In Britain, Connolly quotes
have also appeared on the
notepaper of striking Merseyside
dockers, on the member-
Fine Gael gains support
Opinion poll
Democrat reporter
JOHN BRUTON and Fine
Gael have achieved their
highest ratings, and the
Labour Party its lowest, since
the last Irish general election
according to a recent opinion
poll.
The general support for the
Irish Labour Party has plummeted
to ten per cent. If this
were maintained at the next
general election, Labour
would lose half its Dublin
seats.
According to the poll, Fianna
Fail has 47 per cent support,
Fine Gael 26 per cent,
Labour 10 per cent, Progressive
Democrats seven per
cent, Democratic Left two per
cent, Green Party three per
cent, others five per cent.
The poll exemplifies the
pattern of the old law established
in 1948,1973 and again
in 1995, — that by joining with
Fine Gael in coalition Labour
revives the latter, while dooming
itself to decline. On the last
occasion Labour ministers
were all inclined to soldier on
government with Fianna Fail,
after Albert Reynold's resignation.
But Dick Spring said no.
Spring's nose was out of
joint because of the kudos Fianna
Fail seemed to be getting
from the peace process, and he
wanted to have sole charge of
running that. The opinion
polls already show what a mistake
he made.
Eighth Desmond Greaves Summer School
Sessions include: Professor Terry Eagleton, Oxford, on The
Ideology of Irish Studies; Di C hristopher Woods, Maynooth,
on Tone and Russell, The Parting of Friends; Frankie
Watson, Lei trim, on Teaching Irish History in Schools;
Kevin McCorry, Belfast, on The Way Forward Now in the
Six Counties.
Friday to Sunday, August 23-25; Irish Labour History Society
Museum, Beggars Bush, Dublin 4; Full School £12. Enquiries
to Micheal O Loingsigh, Summer School Director,
82 Barton Road East, Dublin 14; Tel: 298 5315.
IRISH DEMOCRAT A u g u i t / S i p t i m b i r 1 9 9 6 page 2
Photo: Charlie Cunningham
ship card of the Socialist Labour
Party and in the programme
of the Chesterfield
May Day event
Unveiling the statue, Irish
President Mary Robinson
stressed that Connolly, a
champion of women's rights,
would have been happy that
she would have the honour of
unveiling the statue.
Connolly had recognised
the value of the full participation
of women and young
people in society. In 1902 he
had delivered an election address
to Jewish workers in
Yiddish as a mark of respect to
an important minority, she
said.
Connolly's testament was
"a challenge to us to move forward,
not as a society where
the divide was widening, but
as a people with a strong sense
of community".
Other speakers at the ceremony
included senior representatives
from the American
trade union centre AFL-CIO,
Irish trade unions organisations
and James' grandson,
Ross Connolly.
Special consideration was
also given to members of the
Connolly family and to the surviving
members of the Connolly
Column who fought with
the republican forces in the
Spanish Civil War.
As heirs to the aspirations
of Connolly — that working
people should be masters of
their own destiny, and if this is
not yet attainable, that they
should at least be the main contenders
for power — it remains
evident that the
overriding barrier to progress
in Ireland remains imposed
disunity.
In 1914 Connolly correctly
predicted that partition would
unleash a 'carnival of reaction',
set back the oncoming unity of
the Irish Labour movement
and paralyse all advanced
movements while it endured.
Recent events have only
served to reinforce how much
of what he said remains true
today.
Irish in Britain die younger
Health
Democrat reporter
Irish men and women born in
Britain are less healthy and
die younger than the rest of
the population, according to a
recent British Medical Journal
report.
The early death-rate among
first-generation Irish immigrants
exceeds that of British
men by 30 per cent and British
women by 20 per cent, with the
majority dying from cancer
and heart problems.
Some of this is due to lifestyle
factors such as smoking
and heavy drinking, but the
BMJ article suggests that the
ease of migration from Ireland
to Britain may have encouraged
less healthy people to
move.
The curious thing is that the
adverse pattern among firstgeneration
Irish immigrants
continues into the second
generation, who number more
than two million people.
Among the reasons the article
suggests are poverty and
poor housing, as well as exposed
and dangerous employment
on building sites.
Donations to the Connolly Association and the
Irish Democrat May 12 — July 111996
J. Morrissey £29; G.F. £15; A. Higgins £11.60; E. Doyle £20; M.
Melly £5; J. Egan £2.50; C.C. Knight £2.50; M. Brennan; £10;
G.C. Campbell £5; F. Jennings £15; A. Barron £10; H. Smith
£12.50; Paisley supporters £7; J.C. Delage £25; W. Booth £10;
J. Grace £15;; K. Galley £5; R. Doyle £5; O. Cahn £5; Cllr R.
McCormick £10, R. Smith £5; M. Loughran £15; J. Flemming
£20; S MacLennan £5; B. Feeney £5; J.& M. Nolan £6; M. Folan
£5, AJ. Kenny £15; P.C. Walsh £10; Liz Goulding (in memory
of Harry Goulding) £5; P. McLoughlin (In memory of Desmond
Greaves & Paddy Bond) £10; Anon £3.50; Customers
donations £16.80; Collection at London meeting £16.
Bankers' orders £335.05 (2 montsh)
TOTAL £692.45
HEADLINES
Labour movement looks
towards options for peace
• Ken Livingstone and Ann! Marjoram at July's Agreed Ireland Forum conference
Pic: David Granville
Labour movement
Democrat reporters
THE IRISH peace process is
not over, but it will be
long, slow and painful,
Labour MP Cli ve Soley told the
Options for a Lasting Peace in
Ireland conference held in London
recently.
Organised by the Agreed
Ireland Forum, the conference,
which was sponsored by a
number of trade unions, the
Scottish TUC and the Irish
Post, successfully brought
together around 200 participants
from the British and Irish
labour movements and campaign
organisations.
Issues discussed by delegates
included policing in a
divided society, women's
rights and peace, economic regeneration
in an all-Ireland
context, prisoners, employment
equality, sectarianism in
the workplace, civil liberties
and the experience of the Irish
in Britain.
Speaking at the opening
session, Clive Soley said that
the explosions and the arms
find in County Laois had been
a serious setback to the peace
process.
He defended Labour's policy
of 'unity by consent' as one
of the few party policies that
had survived since 1981. "Labour's
task will be to address
the real lack of trust between
the two communities," he said,
adding that no party should
have a veto.
SDLP vice chair Marietta
Farrell condemned the Manchester
bombing, but said that
her party would continue to
talk to Sinn Fein. In common
with many contributors from
both Britain and Ireland she
criticised Labour bi-partisan
policy on Ireland.
Sinn Fein national chair
Mitchel McLaughlin reiterated
his party's commitment to
democratic and peaceful
methods. He called on both
governments to direct their energies
into creating the political
conditions that could lead
to a renewal of the IRA ceasefire
and the start of meaningful
and inclusive talks.
Identifying the political
weakness of the Tory government
as the key obstacle to ensuring
a viable peace process
he appealed to Tony Blair to
negotiate with John Major to
secure a new, positive bi-partisan
approach to Ireland. "An
irrevocable peace process
could be put in place within a
matter of months if all of us
take our mutual responsibilities
seriously," he told delegates.
Mr McLaughlin's contribution
followed a vitriolic attack
on the Republican Movement
by Brian Fitzgerald TD, speaking
on behalf of the Tanaiste
Dick Spring.
Blaming republicans for the
breakdown in the ceasefire, his
200 mark Chartist leader's life
Bronterre O'Brien
Democrat reporter
THE WORST thing anyone
can do in the face of oppression
is submit to it,
British miners' leader Arthur
Scargill told 200 people gathered
in east London's Abney
Park cemetery in June to commemorate
the life of Bronterre
O'Brien.
As the grandson of an Irish
immigrant, Mr Scargill said
that the great Chartist leader,
who died in poverty in 1864,
held a special place in his affections.
He told the gathering at
O'Brien's graveside of his
growing disillusionment with
Tony Blair's 'new Labour',
which he said had rejected socialism.
He added that Labour policy
on Ireland was now no different
than that of the Tories.
Peter Berresford Ellis, the
historian, novellist and Irish
Democrat columnist, reminded
the audience of the support
that the National Union of
Mineworkers had given to Ireland's
long struggle against
imperialism.
He recalled that an earlier
miners' leader, Arthur Horner,
as a young man was one of a
contingent of South Wales
miners who offered their services
to the Irish Citizens'
Army during the War of Independence.
Some had died, while
others, including Homer, were
contribution was in marked
contrast to the majority of participants,
even those critical of
Sinn Fein and the IRA, and received
little support from delegates.
.
Labour MP Ken Livingstone
told the conference that
the mortar bomb attack in Osnabruck
signalled the end of
the peace process.
"The opportunity for peace
had been lost due to the machinations
of John Major," he told
delegates.
Mr Livingstone urged the
Labour left to 'establish a dialogue'
with working-class
unionists' in much the same
way that dialogue had been established
previously with republicans.
Fianna Fail spokesperson
on prisoners Eamon O Cuiv
TD reminded delegates that
the struggle of the past 27 years
"had not been a one-sided
catalogue of IRA atrocities, but
a two-sided problem" which
had arisen as a result of partition.
While accepting that nothing
could change without the
consent of the unionist people,
he stressed that, "nothing
could remain the same without
the consent of the nationalist
people of Ireland, north and
south."
"That means that we as a
. people north and south have to
come to a new mutual accommodation,"
he said. "We have
to come up with a unique solution
for our particularly
unique problem." This would
require inclusive talks with the
only preconditions being set
by independent, international
arbiters.
Shadow Northern Ireland
secretary Mo Mowlam MP,
who had been scheduled to attend,
backed out at the last
minute to attend another engagement
in Manchester.
In a message to the conference
Ms Mowlam said the
Labour Party was committed
to building reconciliation
within Northern Ireland and
building "unity of the peoples"
of Ireland.
captured and imprisoned.
"That was true internationalism.
That was the workingclass
solidarity envisaged by
Bronterre O'Brien," said Mr
Berresford Ellis.
To laments on the uilleart
pipes playeu by Wexfordman
Paul Garten, wreaths were laid
on behalf of the Connolly Association,
the Bronterre
O'Brien Committee, the Longford
Exiles, the Longford Association
in London, Conradh na
Gaeilge and the Abney Park
Cemetery Trust.
OPINION
On not keeping
our heads down
CAN I press you to a Wolfe Tone mug?" I was
chancing my luck for the fifth time at the
Four Provinces bookstall at this year's Irish
Book Fair. The tall aesthetic-looking Irish
man laughed. He was casting a discerning
eye over the Irish-language manuals.
Our ensuing conversation was different from most
at the bookstall, when the customer relaxes into a personal
saga of life in Britain or a scholarly reflection on
Irish history and literature, always intriguing for sales
staff but bad for turnover! My irresponsibly long conversation
with the aforesaid Irishman, a plasterer by
trade, sparked off a train of thought I'd like to share
with Democrat readers.
Like so many of his generation he had no university
education, but demonstrated the comprehensive
understanding of Irish history and sophisticated
powers of political analysis which mark out the Irishman
of integrity. I asked if he belonged to any group.
He did not. Years ago in London he had been a regular
reader of the Irish Democrat but had moved away to a
town where it was not on sale.
I suggested he might like to join the Connolly Association,
receive the paper and keep in touch with
people who were as well informed as himself. He prevaricated
but began explaining his hesitation in lowered
tones. "You've got to understand," he said,
"how do you think the Irish have survived over here?
By keeping our heads down. A long time ago I didn't
and they put me in prison for seven years."
I caught my breath. It was the old story. "Was it political?"
I asked. "They charged me with conspiracy to
rob...to fund terrorism." I did not need any more detail.
All I felt again was gratitude and respect. You are
innocent until proved Irish: the old maxim remains as
true today as it ever was.
But let us reflect for a moment on the notion that
the Irish have to keep their heads down 'to survive'.
At some point in life, every man and women, both
fiist and second generations, living in what they call
the UK has to take a decision which, once taken, affects
the quality of life. The question every Irish man
and woman has to face is this: do I stand up for the ending
of British sovereignty in Ireland, or do I keep my
head down for a quiet life?
Facing this question poses a lifelong challenge for
many Irish people, and when it crops up justification
is rife: 'we have to think of the children'; 'it wouldn't
do if their father was a known troublemaker'; 'I have
to think of my job...promotion...pension'; 'I'm not political'.
Understandable, but I have yet to meet an Irish
man or woman who adopts a genuinely neutral stance
on the political future of Ireland.
The scene has changed. Eighteen months of ceasefire
have created, for the first time in a quarter of a century,
a period of respite from the underlying fears
which keep Irish heads below the parapet. The end of
the ceasefire should not be allowed to rob the Irish
community of the relief that has enabled us to speak
openly and unambiguously to our friends about the urgent
political necessity for a constitutional settlement
establishing a united and independent Ireland.
The great challenge of the Connolly Association
and other organisations have to meet in the coming
months is that of encouraging Irish people and the
friends of Ireland to take a more active stance.
Enabling Irish people and their allies in this
country to cling to and build upon this new-found
openness, despite the sudden downturn of hope,
needs the co-operation of every individual member of
the Irish community and our friends in the labour
movement We must support anyone who in the last
18 months has peeped out of the safety of his or her
home to wave a metaphorical tricolour in support of
Irish unity.
For an Irish-born citizen to raise his or her head
above the parapet is an act of supreme courage in a
country where the PTA keeps the whole community
disenfranchised from democracy.
Support can be given in simple, personal ways
which CA members might like to suggest by writing
in to the Democrat There is talk of a return to the status
quo of the last 25 years. We cannot allow this to happen.
Political empowerment is not dispensed from
above but nurtured at home, in the workplace and in
pub and club. It is for us to ensure that the years of life
my new plasterer friend spent in prison ultimately
prove to be witness, not waste.
• Moya Frenz St Leger
IRISH DEMOCRAT Augu• t / September 1 9 9 6 page 3

DEBATE
BEHIND THE HEADLINES
J Mitchel McLaughlin
Photo: David Granville
Time to talk -
time for peace
Sinn Fein chair
MITCHEL
MCLAUGHLIN
outlined his
party's stance on
reviving the peace
process at the
recent Agreed
Ireland Forum
event in London.
On this page is an
edited account of
what he said
WE MEET at a particularly
difficult time and
it would be easy to despair,
but I think that those who
want to see democratic structures
emerge from the scenario
of conflict that has lasted for
many generations in Ireland
must never say surrender.
We have all been challenged
and credibility is an
issue for all parties. The failure
to consolidate the opportunity
that emerged so dramatically
in August 1994 is a collective
failure.
Sinn Fein always knew that
making peace, attempting to
undo the wrongs of centuries,
was never going to be easy.
What we are attempting to do
is very ambitious, as well as
risky and dangerous. We are
seeking for the first time in
Irish history, and in the relationship
between Ireland and
Britain, to successfully resolve
the deep-rooted issues that lie
at the heart of the conflict.
The unity and independence
of Ireland as a sovereign
state is the first aim of
Irish republicans. It is a considered
preference of a clear
majority of the people of Ireland
and is a reasonable, legitimate
and identified option,
one that has been denied us as
a matter of British policy, and
as a people, for far too long.
Sinn Fein is absolutely committed
to democratic and
peaceful methods of resolving
these problems and is resolutely
determined to achieve an
equitable and lasting agreement
which can command the
allegiance and consent of all
the people of Ireland.
We remain hopeful that a
meaningful negotiation process
will commence. The challenge
for all parties, and for
both governments, is to create
the political conditions where
the necessary negotiations will
be conducted in both a peaceful
environment and manner.
Clearly these conditions do
not exist at present Equally
clearly, they will not be created
by discriminating against any
constituency or by excluding
whole sections of the electorate.
Republicans, quite
properly, and loyalists have
acknowledged the hurt for
which they have been responsible.
In order for us all to move
towards a new beginning, it is
time that the mainstream
unionist parties acknowledged
their responsibilities
for the institutionalised violence
and injustices in the
North.
The British Government
must also accept responsibility
for the hurt that they have inflicted
on the Irish nation, particularly
during the last 27
years when over 1,000 Irish
people have been killed by uniformed
servants of the British
crown.
When we can all accept responsibility
for our part in the
conflict and recognise the hurt
of others, instead of apportioning
blame to others, then we
will be able to sit down
together and reach a democratic
accommodation.
All parties, including Sinn
Fein, accept that the only way
to achieve a lasting peace is
through inclusive and intensive
negotiations. With the
entry to negotiations election
over, the Irish and British government's
remain deadlocked
with the mainstream unionist
parties over what is being portrayed
as a dispute over the details
of procedure and agenda.
In fact, it is simply the latest
attempt by the unionists to dictate
and dominate every aspect
of the proceedings.
Surely all of the energies,
especially those of both governments,
should be directed
towards restoring confidence
in the political process to those
who have despaired, or those
who, because of the failure of
the past two years, have had
their views on armed struggle
reinforced rather than challenged.
THE QUESTION of politically
motivated violence is
clearly an issue which
must be resolved, as all other
issues, to the satisfaction of all
sides. Dialogue and negotiations
between all of the parties
and both governments is
surely the most reasonable and
realistic means of resolving
these matters.
When one considers the
shambles and squabbles at
Stormont it is obvious that the
Irish and British governments
have failed to revive the peace
process. Indeed, they have created
additional problems by
imposing elections as a socalled
gateway to negotiations
and then refusing to accept the
democratic result of the ballot
box.
Sinn Fein represents, not
the IRA, but 15.5 per cent of the
electorate in the north of Ireland
. To shut out Sinn Fein's 17
elected negotiators is the equivalent
of locking 100 MPs out
of the House of Commons. Is
this a democratic peace process?
To convince the IRA to reinstate
the cessation will require,
not threats and exclusion and
blackmail, but a consistent
defence by the sponsoring governments
of democratic principles
and an unqualified
respect for the electoral mandate.
In addition, explicit guarantees
should be issued by both
governments that the negotiations,
which the IRA is on record
as calling for and
supporting, will be inclusive,
meaningful and focussed. The
statements by John Major and
his ministers in recent weeks
blatantly set aside these elements
which are crucial motivating
arguments
THE RESUMPTION of the
IRA campaign has obviously
created additional
difficulties in achieving proper
negotiations. But responsibility
for the continuing impasse
in the peace process can
be traced back directly to the
stance adopted by John Major
and his colleagues.
These issues remain at the
heart of the difficulties in arguing
for a restoration of the
cessation and must be addressed
in a realistic fashion.
The extent of John Major's
reliance on the unionist block
vote, and what that represents,
is an infinitely greater obstacle
to achieving peace in Ireland. It
is a matter which British politicians,
including those in the
British Labour Party, will have
to address and resolve.
In the event of a Labour victory
at the next election, what
are the prospects of a Labour
government pursuing a democratic,
practical and flexible
course?
Labour front bench spokespersons
have been at pains to
emphasise that no party in the
north of Ireland should be
waiting for a Labour administration
to embark upon a radical
departure from John
Major's policy on the peace
process. Their present bi-partisan
policy, which seems to indicate
that this present
miserable government, having
done everything else so disastrously
wrong has somehow
got it right on Ireland, defies
common sense and logic.
The bi-partisan policy has
been a sham and a fraud which
has made no credible contribution
to resolving the peace process.
Ireland is the only issue
on which John Major and Tony
Blair have identical positions.
This might be understandable,
or at least defensible, if the policy
was working but it is hard
to justify when it manifestly is
not.
If Labour is perverse
enough to follow the Tories up
what is clearly a political blind
alley in opposition, what will
they do in government?
Over the last two years John
Major has not been without options,
unfortunately he has
been without the imagination
to realise this; consequently it
has become more and more obvious
that he and his government
are the fatal weak link in
a chain of political forces that
are necessary to make up a
viable peace process.
If the Tories won't move an
election date will Tony Blair
think the unthinkable and
negotiate with John Major?
Would Labour put an overriding
priority on peace in Ireland,
even if it meant accepting
that for the remaining nine
months of this government,
that there is only the very outside
possibility that they can
face an election on their terms?
Such an extension of bi-partisanships,
whilst unprecedented,
would not be
impossible or unreasonable,
and, I believe, would be in Labour's
interest. The immediate
benefits being that the leverage
of the Tory backbenchers and
the unionists would be
removed at a stroke, while the
Tory rebels would be neutralised
on European issues
and the Irish peace process for
the remainder of this government.
It would strengthen the
authority of the British government
at a crucial moment in
Irish political affairs and
would prevent the unionists
and their Tory allies from sabotaging
the possibility of a
renewed IRA cessation by imposing
ever escalating preconditions.
Such a radical departure for
British politicians would inject
enormous confidence to all
those striving to rebuild the
Irish peace process.
The recent co-operation of
the government and the opposition
parties ensured the swift
passage of the entry to negotiations
legislation, which was
achieveded despite the stalling
actions of the unionists and
their supporters on the right
wing of the Tory party. Why
not then extend and deepen
the existing bi-partisan policy
if it can create the dynamic
which has up to now been missing
in Westminster on the
Irish peace process
UNTIL ALL sides recognise
and accept that they
cannot dictate either the
present or the future on their
own exclusivist terms terms
nothing is going to change for
the better in the north of Ireland.
The future of Ireland belongs
to the people of Ireland.
It is not something which can
be bartered, bordered, proscribed
or consented to in any
formula that ignores the
wishes and the aspirations of
any sector of our people.
Consent will be founded on
consensus, not majoritarianism,
no matter how camouflaged.
Sinn Fein is convinced
that peace is attainable, and in
a relatively short time, if all
sides work creatively towards
it.
We are ready for peace and
will discuss every option, explore
every issue with every
other participant to the conflict.
If we all want peace we
are all going to have to make
commitments to others as well
as ourselves, to our communities
and our children's future.
None of us can afford to
squander what may be the last
opportunity for this generation
to reach a democratic
compromise in Ireland.
Now is the time for the posturing
on all sides to stop. No
more violence, no more exclusion,
no more coercion when
persuasive argument will attain
the same. It's time for all
sides to be pragmatic and
generous. It's time to talk. It's
time for peace.
Paisley rules UK?
It would be a
mistake to label the
British
government as
wimps for its
craven submission
to the Orangemen
at Drumcree
argues our Six
County
correspondent
BOBBIE
HEATLEY
SETTING ASIDE the feeble
excuse of blaming the
chief constable of the
RUC, Major and Mayhew's response
to the events at Drumcree
has provided the history
of English/Irish relations with
yet another defining moment;
one, this time, which cannot be
misunderstood, misrepresented,
or excused away.
Their double-dealing and
hypocrisy has been exposed in
one fell swoop. They want the
Six Counties as it is, uniformed.
Yet to describe their behaviour
as wimpish is to suggest
that they are in a different and
superior political camp to the
quagmire occupied by Paisley
and Trimble. It would imply
that at Drumcree they were
forced to do something which
went against their will.
How anyone can still believe
this nonsense after the
'achievements' of successive
British governments over the
past 27 years is beyond understanding.
July 111996 ought to
have changed all that.
This particular Tory government
is especially indictable.
It squandered 18 months
of an IRA ceasefire by refusing
to bring about all-party talks
and then, when it had caused
the collapse of the ceasefire,
used this as an excuse not to
talk.
Instead, it set up a ridiculous
assembly in the North —
another arena for squabbling
over nothing — which after
more than a month registered
as its sole achievements prolonged
rows over who should
sit where, the suitability or not
of a stand-in chairperson, and
whether or not the 'union' flag
should be flown over the
building during sittings.
The British government's
money-saving exchequer is
uncomplainingly funding this
farce to the tune of £100 per
sitting for each of the 110 delegates,
plus overhead costs.
• Paisley: rabble-rousing support for colonial rule
The other great Mayhew/Major
contribution has
been to achieve by a slick
sleight of hand the transformation
of all-party talks into
multi-party talks.
Again, after more than a
month, their achievement
speaks for itself: a bitter row
over who should chair the proceedings,
coupled with unionist
attempts to hijack both the
procedures and the agenda.
With nothing achieved on
these issues, Trimble and Paisley
felt a compelling necessity
to walk out and attend to other
matters at Drumcree. Not even
Tory politicians like Andrew
Hunter could describe these
actions as intended to foster social
harmony and promote
'parity of esteem'.
The all-party had become
multi-party talks through the
exclusion of Sinn Fein, despite
its 15 per cent vote in the government-rigged
election which
was held ostensibly as a 'direct
route into talks'. The reason:
Sinn Fein is associated with
those involved in violence.
The 'pacifists' who organised
the siege of Drumcree
and the street terror and pogroms
throughout the rest of
the month could not possibly,
according to Mayhew and
Major, sit down with those
who use violence for political
ends.
British security forces in the
North, including reservists,
amounting to 18,500 military
and 13,000 police were unable
to protect and uphold the civil
rights of a small nationalist
community which was threatened
by coat-training
Orangemen whose purpose,
according to Trimble was symbolic
— the exercise of supremacy.
All the Orangemen were
being asked to do was to make
a small detour so as to avoid
giving offence. The Metropolitan
police would safeguard the
residents of Brixton in the face
of a National Front march, but
for the British government to
act with consistency in Northern
Ireland would be to
threaten the existence of the
British state itself.
THE CLIMB-DOWN was
not a mere matter of
wimpishness; it involved
cold, calculated, political rationale.
The apparent inconsistency
of the British
government when consent 4nd
non-coersion is involved is explainable:
consent and noncoersion
only apply to
Orangemen and unionists, as
does its objection to the use of
violence for the achievement of
political ends.
This is because Northern
Ireland is a part of the British
state and the Orangemen and
unionists are its staunchest
supporters in the vestige
which it has in Ireland.
Although perfectly capable
of facing-down the unionists,
this would sow divisions in the
state itself, possibly with unforeseen
consequences.
Only a British government
prepared to countenance a
fundamental restructuring of
the historical colonialist relationship
between England and
Ireland would be prepared to
take this step. The current government
clearly is not.
After Drumcree and the
other events of July, the question
is: where do we go from
here? Seamus Mallon MP of
the SDLP has remarked that it
is futile to go on engaging with
an untrustworthy British government
which, by its recent
actions, has demonstrated that
nothing has changed in its governance
of Northern Ireland
since the commencement of
the civil rights agitations in
1969. At that time, modest reformist
demands threatened
the existence of the state.
Twenty seven years later Westminster
cannot even enforce
'parity of esteem'.
The danger now is that
those who have ridiculed
politics will have a strong case
for saying "we told you so".
Increasing anti-state violence,
accompanied by an intensification
of state repression, including
internment, could now lie
ahead. The future looks grim.
But there is an alternative and
within a year or so new governments
could be elected in
both Ireland and Britain.
From the Irish perspective,
the answer to a wholesale return
to violence is for the nationalist
democracy in the
North to reconstruct a unified
extra-parliamentary movement
along civil rights lines
which would be the basis upon
which a resuscitated
SDLP/SF/Irish government
alliance could develop. This alliance
should then pursue the
Irish struggle for democracy in
the international sphere; enhancing
the American campaign,
but not restricting
efforts to that quarter.
The British government
needs to be by-passed in its
own jurisdiction by direct apf
>roaches to the non-estabishment
political democracy
which exists both inside and
outside the labour movement.
Mr. Mallon is right, you
have been talking to the wrong
people. Meanwhile Paisley, at
Major's behest, will continue to
rule, not only Northern Ireland
but the UK itself —OK!
JOHN MURPHY'S KEYWORDS
Unemployment
and capitalism
UNEMPLOYMENT IS endemic to capitalism. No
other mode of production depends on it so fundamentally.
For no other — whether based on
slavery, serfdom or independent farm proprietorship
— is so permeated by the need to maximise
surplus value, that is, the profit that can be
squeezed out of employing workers over and above the
cost of maintaining them in being.
Capitalist competition impels each firm to apply new
technology, so as to increase the output and productivity
of its employees, and hence the surplus value that can be
extracted from them. The fewer workers overall in a firm
at the prevailing level of technology, the more the output
can be raised, the more profit can be extracted from each
one. Hence the phenomenon of mass unemployment, as
advances in science and technology lead capitalists to
throw their workers on the scrapheap. So capitalism
makes the mind's achievements a bane rather than a
boon.
Of course society has an interest in raising labour productivity,
and the rise in output and living standards that
makes possible, so long as the gain is not appropriated to
a class of private owners. But that requires planning and
the political will to plan. In other words it requires the lineaments
of a socialist society.
There is a clear contradiction between the desire of individual
capitalists, under the pressure of competition, to
reduce the number of their employees, paying them as
little as possible so as to squeeze the maximum profit out
of each one, and the desire of capitalists as a group for a
buoyant market where people have money to buy the
goods that are produced. After all, the worker-producers
in the factory turn into consumers when they go home at
the end of the day. Yet capitalism sets them at war with
one another.
Socialism can achieve full employment in a number of
ways. It can lay down rules for phasing in new technology
gradually, so there id no sudden disruption of existing
jobs, and workers given time to retrain for new ones.
Or it can maintain the existing number of jobs, but shorten
the average working day or week, in effect a form of
work-sharing. Both these policies require restraint on
competition from foreign firms, where capitalist principles
of raising productivity per worker and throwing
workers on the scrapheap, continue to prevail.
Mass unemployment is
the clearest sign of the
irrationality of capitalism
Or planners can accept reduced employment in 'downsizing'
firms but tax the higher profits of capitalists and the
higher income of the workers still at work, with a view to
giving others some benefit from the increase in social productivity.
Such taxes can then finance forms of social income
for everybody. That can be done in the form of
social service transfers, providing everyone with good
quality education, health, public transport and cultural
services, or a basic income for all with which people can
buy things for themselves.
Mass unemployment is the clearest sign of the irrationality
of capitalism and why socialist planning is needed
to build on capitalism's achievement in raising labour
productivity and to restrain the abuse of workers it gets
up to. There is no need to fear society will run out of
work.
It is undoubtedly a good thing if assembly lines, computers,
robots and new technology take over more and
more of the mechanical and tedious tasks. That only frees
labour to move into areas where results improve and output
is better the more human beings are employed, rather
than fewer — personal care, education and health work,
domestic service, many areas of entertainment. For robots
will never set your hair, look after baby or granny, teach
Johnny the tin-whistle or how to do craftwdrk!
To a significant degree this is work in public services,
which brings enormous benefit to society. Again planning
is called for, to ensure that jobs in these areas are expanded
as they decline in agriculture, private
manufacturing and capital intensive rather than labour intensive
services. Clearly, state planning is the only way to
deal with unemployment. It is the economic essence of socialism,
whether people use that word or not.
IRISH D E M O C R A T A u g u i l / S e p l t m b i r 1 9 9 6 page 4
IRISH D E M O C R A T A u g u • t / S e p t e m b • r 1 9 9 6 page 5

IRISH
BOOKS
What a civilised country?
GERARD CURRAN
reviews Forever lost,
forever gone by Paddy Joe
Hill and Gerard Hunt,
Bloomsbury, 292pp,
£6.99 pbk.
This excellent book
gives an insider's account
of a gruesome miscarriage
of justice. It presents a remarkable
insight into the psychology
of prison life, includes a
damning critique of the British
legal system, and tells us much
about the human spirit.
However, what is particularly
gripping is not the plot,
but the personality of Paddy
Joe Hill.
Hill describes the desolation
of his situation and the effect
it had, not just on himself,
but on the remainder of his
family. He describes this as his
worst torture. With extraordinary
power he tells of his visit
to his dying father. All of us
can perhaps imagine what it is
like to visit a dying patient in
hospital. Few can imagine
what it is like for a wrongly
convicted prisoner with all the
additional confused feelings of
lost contact, guilt, remorse,
despair and helplessness.
He describes his relationship
with his family during
those terrible years. When he
was arrested for the Birmingham
pub bombing his eldest
child was eight. When he was
released, lie had grandchildren.
He enables the reader to understand
what he went
through and appreciate the
evil done to him, his co-defendants
and all their families.
But this is not just the story
of one man. He uses it to point
the finger of blame at those responsible,
including the police,
defe: ice lawyers and, above all,
the judges — the noble lords
Bridge, Denning and Lane,
analysing the events which led
to the imprisonment of innocent
men while the guilty were
allowed to escape.
The writer's analysis of
Lord Denning is particularly
sharp, pointing out that Denning
inadvertently revealed
what the British legal system
and the prime function of the
courts was about.
Denning, Master of the
Rolls and the second most senior
judge in England, observed
in the Court of Appeal that it
was far more important that
public confidence in the police
and the judiciary be maintained
than the six wrongly im-
Revisionism goes
back in time
PETER BERRESFORD
ELLIS
reviews
Understanding the universe
in 7th-century Ireland by
Marina Smyth, The
Boydell Press, 431 pp £35
WE'VE SEEN 'revisionists'
at work on recent
centuries of Irish history.
I had thought the 7th century
«might be immune from
the virus. I was wrong. This
title is a case in point.
Dr Smyth is a librarian at
Notre Dame University, Indiana,
and this is an expansion
of her 1984 doctoral thesis. Her
basic idea is hardly original.
We have, it seems, had a 'regrettable
tendency in Irish
studies' to think of the 6th-10th
centuries as a golden age of
Irish scholarship — the age of
saints and scholars!
In fact, in spite Of the evidence,
in spite of a Saxon like
Bede specifically stating that
students from all over Europe,
including Anglo-Saxon
princes, flocked to Irish colleges
for their learning, Dr
Smyth assures us that the Irish
were rather primitive, their
scholarship only 'elemental'
Dr Smyth quotes HO Taylor
who, in 1911, tried to ease
the conscience of English imperialism
by arguing the backwardness
of the Irish.
Taylor thought it unjustifiable
to regard the scholarship
of some gifted Irishmen who
lived in Europe as evidence of
scholarship in Ireland at the
time: "We do not know where
these men obtained their
knowledge; there is little reason
to suppose that they got it
in Ireland."
Dr Smyth is at pains to
show that Irish scholarship
w.is 'rudimentary' compared
with 'classical education'. She
is particularly denigrating
about the Irish knowledge of
astronomy.
As a colleague of mine at
Trinity College, Dublin, who
has studied astronomy in Ireland
at this period, laconically
commented: "On that one
basis alone, you can't take this
work seriously."
Dr. Daibhi O Croinin's
Early Medieval Ireland AD 400-
1200 (Longman) is the necessary
corrective to this
ponderous propaganda. And
his book, price-wise, is far
cheaper.
prisoned men receive justice.
In other words, miscarriages of
justice should be allowed to
run their course and the six
should have been left in prison
until they died.
The author has a sting in his
tale, acknowledging that during
his time in prison he met
many more innocent people
languishing in British goals.
He intends to devote some of
the compensation money that
he will eventually get to building
an organisation to rectify
miscarriages of justice. He believes
others will contribute
from their compensation. Such
an organisation could become
an even bigger thorn in the side
of the English establishment
that the IRA ever was.
It is worth pointing out that
four years after his release Hill
has not been compensated and
nobody has apologised. It is
also worth pointing out that
since his wrongful imprisonment,
Lord Bridge has been
paid £2 million by the taxpayer,
some £500,000 since
Hill's release.
I leave the last word to the
English judge who was regarded
by some as the greatest
of the post-war period. When
asked to comment on the release
of the Six, Lord Denning
said: "The case shows what a
civilised country we are.
• Paddy Joe Hill: much to say about rotten British justice
Cromwell's ethnic cleansing
Jim Savage reviews The
White Slaves of Barbados
by Sean O'Callaghan,
£18.50
AN ENGLISH protestant
bishop recently stated
that Britain would never
be able to repay the wrongs
committed over the centuries.
Sean O'Callaghan tells the
story of one such injustice, of
how 50,000 Irish men, women
and children were 'ethnically
cleansed' by Cromwell, banished
to Barbados in the Caribbean,
and forced to work as
slaves on the colonial plantations.
The book tells of how, after
the fighting in Ireland had
ended in 1652, the descendants
of the 40,000 Irish soldiers who
had surrendered and who
were allowed to leave the
country were rounded up and
sold to English slave dealers in
Bristol for between £4 and £10
each. Transported in the notorious
slave ships, temporarily
diverted from their usual
routes to West Africa, where
they were then resold at auction
for between £25 and £30.
Around 400 descendants of
those expelled continue to live
in grim poverty in the West
Indies. Known locally as 'red
legs' they represent the poorest
of the island's small poor white
community. A far cry from the
opulence of the island's rich
white residents and tourists,
they remain a much overlooked
reminder of Cromwell's
barbaroi s treatment of
the Irish people
A collection of Belfast songs
GERARD CURRAN
reviews Songs of Belfast,
edited by David
Hammond, Mercier Press,
63pp, £3.50.
THE MOST accurate description
of this collection
is to say it does not include
any nationalist songs. The
children's songs could be sung
by children of any religion or
none.
Work songs are not specific
to any particular tradition.
There are some which are specifically
Orange rather than
Unionist. The most interesting
one of these is the South Down
Militia.
This shows very clearly the
anti-democratic nature of
Orangeism. It seems amazingly
naive to keep going a
song, which has the refrain
The South Down Militia is the
terror of the land.'
According to other lines
this force intimidated most of
the rulers in the world.
But we are told not to take it
seriously, like Paisley's remark
on radio recentl. When asked
why he had said. "We've got
Paddy on the run," Paisley replied:
"Sure, I was only joking."
The regiment was absorbed
into the Ulster Rifles during
the first world war, and we
know what happened to them
in July 1916. Six thousand went
to their deaths in the battle of
the Somme — Lions led by
Donkeys!
My favourite work song is
You might easy know a Doffer,
made famous by the
McPeakes. The best comic one
is The Labour Boro, relating the
dream of a man on the dole in
which he is treated with lavish
hospitality by the manager of
the labour exchange
A novel,
a brace of
histories
and a book
of words
ENDA FINLAY reviews a
selection of summer
paperbacks
PATRICK McCABE has a
unique style and is undoubtedly
on of the most
original Irish writers in years.
His latest offering, The Dead
School, (Picador, £6.99), hot on
the heels of The Butcher Boy,
continues McCabe's study of
the darker side of human emotion
and relationships.
Two fascinating books —
Before the Famine Struck: life in
West Clare 1834-1845 and /4
People Starved: life and death in
West Clare 1845-1851 by Ignatius
Murphy, (Irish Academic
Press, £7.95 each) highlight the
awful effect of the Great
Hunger on this rural community.
Local historian Ignatius
Murphy charts the changes
wrought over this 17-year
period with excellent accounts
that can be applied to countless
other areas of Ireland.
Dairmuid O'Muirithe's The
Words We Use (Four Courts
Press, £6.95) is an absorbing
collection of unusual phrases
and words from the popular
eponymous Irish Times column.
The Four
Provinces
Bookshop
FOR BOOKS and
pamphlets on Irish
history, politics and
literature and a wide
range of Irish language
material.
The Four Provinces
Bookshop, 244 Gray's
Inn Road, London
WC1X 8JR, telephone
0171833 3022.
Open 10am-4 pin Monday
to Saturday.
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fiction and poetry.
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in representing our
interests with publishers in
relation to their forthcoming
publications.
IRISH
You might easy know a doffer
This is one of the many work songs made famous by the
McPeake family. It illustrates how the hierarchies of the
linen trades established their own rivalries. The song is
taken from Songs of Belfast, reviewed on the book page.
Vou might easy know doffer
When she comes into town
With her long yellow hair
And her pickers hanging down
With her rubber tied before her
And her scraper in her hand
You will easy know a doffer
For she'll always get a man
Oh, she'll always get a man
Oh, she'll always get a man
You might easy know a doffer
For she'll always get her man.
You might easy know a weaver
When she comes into town
With her old greasy hair
And her scissors hanging down
With a shawl around her shoulders
And a shuttle in her hand
You will easy know a weaver
For she never gets her man
No, she'll never get her man
No, she'll never get her man
You will easy know a weaver
For she'll never get a man.
Redmond O'Hanlon
Redmond O'Hanlon had served in the French Army
before he became a sort of Robin Hood highwayman in
County Tyrone. The French gave him the title Count for
his services, After his exploits back in Iretdnd, related in
the ballad, he was assassinated in his sleep in 1681, no
doubt the work of the English secret service of those days.
A Shepherd that lives on Slieve Gullion
Came down to the county Tyrone,
And told us how Redmond O'Hanlon
Won't let the rich Saxon alone!
He rides over moorland and mountain,
By night, till a stranger is found,
Saying: 'Take your own choice to be lodging
Right over or under the ground!'
If you whistle 'Whoo!' like native
He leaves you the way to go clear;
If you squeal out a 'Hew!' like a Scotsman,
You will pay him a guinea a year,
But if you cry 'Haw!' like a Saxon,
Och, then, 'tis your life or your gold!
By stages Count Redmond O'Hanlon
Gets back what they plundered of old!
Old Coote of Cootehill is heartbroken;
And Johnston beyond in the Fews
Has wasted eight barrels of powder
Upon him, but all to no use!
Although there's four hundred pounds sterling
If Redmond you'd put out of sight;
Mind if the heart's dark in your body,
'Tis Redmond will let in the light.
The great Duke of Ormond is frantic —
His soldiers got up with the lark
To catch the bold Redmond by daylight;
But Redmond caught them in the dark.
Says he when he stripped them and bound them:
'Take back my best thanks to his Grace
For all the fine pistols and powder
He sent to this desolate place!'
Then here's to you Redmond O'Hanlon!
Long may your excellency reign,
High-ranger of Woods and Rivers
Surveyor of mountains and plain
Examiner-in-Chief of all Traitors
Protector of all that True —
Henceforward, King Charlie of England
May take what he gets, after you.
SONGS
Johnny I hardly knew ye
July marked the 80th anniversary of the battle of the
Somme, where more than 25,000 British Army troops
walked to their deaths., including 6,000from the Ulsters'
Regiment. Although a product of the 19th century, this
anti-war ballad remains most appropriate.
While going the road to sweet A-thy, A-roo, Ha-roo
While going the road to sweet A-thy, Ha-roo, Ha-roo
While going the road to sweet A-thy, a stick in my hand
and a tear in my eye,
A doleful damsel I heard cry, Johnny I hardly knew ye!
CHORUS
With your drums and guns and guns and drums,
A-roo, Ha-roo
With your drums and guns and guns and drums,
A-roo, Ha-roo
With your drums and guns and guns and drums, the
enemy nearly slew ye
My darling dear, you look so queer, Och, Johnny I
hardly knew ye!
Where are your eyes that look so mild, A-roo, Ha-roo
Where are your eyes that look so mild, A-roo, Ha-roo
Where are your eyes that look so mild, when my poor
heart you first beguiled
Why did you run from me and the child, Johnny, I
hardly Knew ye!
CHORUS
Where are the legs with which you run, A-roo, Ha-roo
Where are the legs with which you run, A-roo, Ha-roo
Where are the legs with which you run ,when you went
to carry a gun?
Indeed your dancing days are done, Johnny, I hardly
knew ye!
CHORUS
It grieved my heart to see you sail, A-roo, Ha-roo
It grieved my heart to see you sail, A-roo, Ha-roo
It grieved my heart to see you sail, though from my
heart you took leg bail
Like a cod you're doubled up head and tail, Johnny, I
hardly knew ye!
CHORUS
You haven't an arm you haven't a leg, A-roo, Ha-roo
You haven't an arm you haven't a leg, A-roo, Ha-roo
You haven't an arm you haven't a leg, you're an
eyeless, noseless, chickenless egg
You'll have to be put in a bowl to beg, Johnny, I hardly
knew ye!
CHORUS
I'm happy to see you home, A-roo, Ha-roo
I'm happy to see you home, A-roo, Ha-roo
I'm happy to see you home, all from the Island of
Sulloon
So low in flesh, so high in bone, Johnny, I hardly knew
ye!
CHORUS
But sad as it is to see you so, A-roo, Ha-roo
But sad as it is to see you so, A-roo, Ha-roo
But sad as it is to see you so, and I think of you now as
an object of woe
Your Peggy'll still keep ye on as her beau, Johnny, I
hardly knew ye!
Music books at the Four Provinces Bookshop
The following are a selection of songbooks avaiable from the Four
Provinces Bookshop, 244 Gray's Inn Road, London WC1X 8JR, tel.
01718333022:
Songs of Belfast, £3.50; Where songs do thunder, £6.99; The
words of 100 Irish party songs (Four Volumes) including
golden oldies from The auld triangle to The Red Rose Cafe,
old favourites from Danny Boy to The fields of Athenry,
£2.75 each volume; The Troops Out songbook, £2.95; 100
Irish ballads with words music and guitar chords. £6.95;
Ceolta Gael, £2.75; Love songs of the Irish, £3.99.
PETER
PEEPSHOW
MULLIGAN'S
Abuse, sell-outs
and cover ups
GOVERNMENT SELL OU | — "It is not easy for a government
by a single act to abdicate its own moral
authority, undermine confidence in the police, insult
church leaders of four principle faiths, and boost the
acceptability of a terrorist organisation when a government
abandons the rule of law in favour of the rule of
the mob, one must be very fearful of the long term
consequences." Dr Garret FitzGerald, former Irish Prime
Minster. (The Sunday Independent)
HISTORY OF ABUSE _ — "From East Belfast's Kincora
Boys' Home, via Leicestershire, Staffordshire and London,
to the children's homes of Clwyd, we have
witnessed 25 years of cover-ups. Cover-ups not to protect
the innocent but to protect the regularly named
elements of the British establishment who surface
whenever widespread evidence of child abuse is exposed„..Part
of the Northern Ireland peace process will
have to include coming to terms with the role child
abuse played in the territory's dirty war'." Jon Snow,
journalist. (The Guardian)
SPECIAL POWERS RENEWED — The Northern Ireland
(Emergency Provisions) Act 1996 comes into effect on
August 25. The renewal maintains the provision for juryless,
single-judge courts with the burden of proof laid on
the accused. The recently created and all-embracing
"offences again public security" are maintained, as are
extraordinary police powers to arrest, search and detain
without charge. British Home Secretary Michael Howard
announced: "We've never ruled internment out and we
are prepared to do whatever we think will be effective in
combatting violence." Mr. Howard is of course speaking
of politically motivated violence by those not on his side.
LED TO SLAUGHTER BY DONKEYS — Sir Edward Carson/the
father figure of loyalism, extolled the virtues of
King and Country and thousands of the working class
flocked to fight a war that was not theirs. Considered by
the generals as cannon fodder, 20,000 died in the
Somme on the first day of battle. Over 5,500 of those
killed were from the Six Counties. As Derryman George
Lindsay, one of the few remaining survivors, said recently:
"I think most intelligent people saw the folly of
the whole thing. We were sent out there to fight against
people that we'd no grudge against and who couldn't
help being in the same position as ourselves." Unionist
leaders are still playing the jingo card.
MURDERER ON LICENCE — Six years ago paratrooper
Lee Clegg shot Karen Reilly, 18, at a road block in
Belfast. In 1993 he was found guilty of murder and
sentenced to life imprisonment. Right wing MPs and
friends in the Ministry of Defence rallied to his cause and
he appealed to the House of Lords where five law lords
confirmed his conviction for murder. However, Sir Patrick
Mayhew, the Northern Ireland Secretary, released
him on licence last July. He returned to his regiment and
was promoted to lance-corporal. He has now received
permission to appeal to the Northern Ireland Appeal
Court. The appeal will have to be held in Belfast. A
special security operation Is expected by his colleagues.
(The Daily Telegraph)
LAST
WORD
"The moment the very name of Ireland is mentioned, the
English seem to bid adieu to common feeling, common
prudence and common sense, and to act with the barbarity
of tyrants and the fatuity of idiots."
• Sydney Smith (1771-1845) Anglican journalist and
founder of the Edinburgh Review.
"I wish that the bomb in Manchester had not happened. I
wish that there weren't British soldiers on the streets of the
six counties. I wish there wasn't discriminatio 1.1 wish that
our island was not partitioned. But the reality is that we deal
with the objective situation and the conditions which exist
in making peace, and making peace is very difficult I want
to see an end to armed struggle. My conviction is that we
will get a peace settlement and that it will grow out of inclusive
dialogue and that Sinn Fein will be in there alongside
the other parties and working with the two governments to
bring about an accord".
• Gerry Adams, 19 June 1996.
IRISH DEMOCRAT A u g u s t / S e p t e m b e r 1 9 9 6 page
IRISH DEMOCRAT A u g u • t / S e p t e m b e r 1 9 9 6 page 7

ANONN IS ANALL: THE PETER BERRESFORD ELLIS COLUMN
No biographer has so far done real justice to Brain Stoker's life.
Bram Stoker,
Dracula and
social reform
NEXT YEAR —June 1997,
to be precise — will be the
centenary of the publication
of Bram Stoker's enduring
Gothic classic, Dracula. No
other novel, apart from Mary
Shelley's Frankenstein, has
seized the popular imagin-
I ation and become, of itself, a
2()th century myth.
Dracula has been translated
into some 50 languages, including
an Irish edition translated
by Sean O Cuirrin in
1933, and made into a similar
number of films, not including
sequels, prequels and other
spin-offs. This is not to mention
plays, radio adaptations,
comics and practically every
form of merchandising you
can think of.
Perhaps it's hard to imagine
that hidden along the way
would bea connection with the
Irish independence movement
and social reform.
Stoker, born Abraham —
called Bram to differentiate
him from his father, was born
in Clontarf in 1847. He followed
his father into the Irish
Civil Service, working in the
legal department of Dublin
Castle. Bram's first book was
The Duties of Clerks of Petty
Sessions in Ireland (1879), for
Bram rose to become Inspector
of Petty Sessions before leaving
for England at the age of 31.
The Stokers had moved to
Dublin at the start of the 18th
century from Ulster where, as
Mac an Stocaire — son of the
trumpeter — a sept of the Scottish
MacPharlane clan, they
had settled in the 17th century.
To avoid the 1705 exclusion of
Presbyterians from holding office
in law, the army, navy, customs
and excise and municipal
government, thev changed
their religion to Anglican and
left Ulster. They became medical
men and civil servants,
staid pillars of the Ascendancy
But it was Bram's mother
who introduced a radical
tradition. She was Charlotte
Matilda Blake Thornley
from Sligo. Her mother was a
Galway Blake, not one of the
Norman Caddell family (nicknamed
Le Blaca) but the descendants
of O Blathmhaic.
Charlotte was born in Sligo in
1818. It was Charlotte who instilled
into the future author of
Dracula a knowledge of Irish
history, folklore and culture.
Her mother's brother,
Bram's great-uncle, George
Blake, was a United Irishman.
When, in 1798, a French army
under General Joseph Amable
Humbert landed in Killala, Co
Mayo, to help the Irish insurgents
establish their republic,
young Blake joined them.
After the battleat Ballinamuck,
Co. Longford, on September 8,
Blake was captured, given a
drumhead courtmartial and
sentenced to be hanged.
As a token acknowledgement
to his rank, Blake
was allowed to soap the rope
before the hanging to ensure a
quicker death than mere strangulation.
Small wonder that Bram's
first novel was called The
Snake's Pass (1890), involving a
lost treasure — gold brought
by th-_ French in 1798 — lost in
a shifting bog in Connemara.
Charlotte Stoker herself
turned out to be something of
a rebel and social reformer
who, sadly, seems to have been
missed out of the pages of
studies of Irish women fighting
for social justice in the 19th
century.
Her first campaign was to
pressure the English colonial
administration to establish
state schools in Ireland for the
deaf and dumb. One of her
rousing speeches was published
as On the Necessity Ufa State
Provision for the Education of the
Deaf and Dumb of Ireland, published
by Alexander Thorn of
Dublin, 1863.
Charlotte pointed out that
in France and Prussia such
schools were established. Why
not Ireland? Why should the
deaf and dumb of Ireland be
debilitated because of their
poverty? On the same platform
at one meeting was a good
friend of the Stoker family, Dr
— afterwards Sir — William
Wilde, the eminent eye and ear
specialist, who was the father
of Oscar Wilde.
Sir William and Lady Wilde
— the famous 'Speranza' of the
Young Ireland movement —
were to keep a parental eye on
young Bram when his parents
went to live in France, then
Switzerland and Italy, following
Abraham senior's retirement
from Dublin Castle.
Close to Charlotte Stoker's
heart was the vexed question
of the situation in Dublin
workhouses. She had become a
workhouse visitor and was appalled
at these state institutions,
such as the Dublin
Union, where young women
had little hope but to fall into
vice and wretchedness.
Dublin, under the colonial
administration, had a higher
death rate than Calcutta or the
slums of Moscow. In Dublin
41.9 per cent of all deaths occurred
in pauper workhouses.
The infant mortality rate was
168 per 1,000, double that of
the nation-wide average.
Some 87,000 Dubliners, out
of a population of 300,000,
lived in dilapidated slum
housing; 20,000 families lived
in only one room, and 5,000
more families existed in two
rooms. Of the 5,000 registered
tenement buildings at least
1,500 were condemned and it
was not uncommon for such
slum tenements to fall down of
their own accord and kill or
injure their occupants. The city
had the biggest red-light district
of any western city, where
women flocked nightly to attempt
to better their standards
of living. Social standards did
not improve until Ireland was
able to take control of its own
political, social and economic
life.
"Any measure calculated to
encourage virtue and subdue
vice must be the wisest and
best policy of a nation," Charlotte
argued in another
pamphlet entitled On Female
Emigration from Workhouses.
This was also published by
Alexander Thom of Dublin in
1864, the year young Bram en-
It seems that
Charlotte
Stoker had
the effect of
'liberalising'
Bram's
opinions
tered Trinity College, Dublin.
"There is dignity in labour,
and a self-supporting woman
is alike respected and respectable.
Why should the door of
hope be closed on those poor
women, and why refuse them
the means of attaining independence?"
Curiously, however,
her husband, Bram's
father Abraham Stoker senior,
working in the office of the
Chief Secretary for Ireland,
was a Tory unionist and remained
so all his life.
It seems that Charlotte had
the effect of 'liberalising'
Bram's opinions. He only
ever mentioned one boyhood
friend and companion in later
years — Valentine Blake Dillon,
the lawyer of the Land
League who defended Charles
Parnell in 1880.
Bram's friendship with Dillon
could lie in the fact that
they were distant cousins, both
Blakes of Sligo. When Dillon
died in 1904 he was being attended
by Bram's brother, a
leading Dublin surgeon (William)
Thornley Stoker. Dillon
had been twice Lord Mayor of
Dublin and gets a mention in
James Joyce's Ulysses.
Dillon himself was the
nephew of the 1848 revolutionary
feader, John Blake Dillon
(1816-1866) whose son, also
John (1851-1927), became
leader of the Irish Party in 1918
when it was annihilated at the
polls by Sinn Fein.
Bram was a political animal
to an extent. More liberal than
his father he once addressed
the Trinity College Historical
Society on 'The Necessity for
Political Honesty'. He confessed
to being a 'home ruler'
and later supported Gladstone's
attempts to put
through his 'home rule' bills
for Ireland. Bram was acquainted
with Gladstone, who
admired Bram's fiction.
Even after Bram left Ireland
to live in London, where he became
business manager for the
actor Sir Henry Irving — the
Lord Olivier of his day — managing
the Lyceum Theatre, he
returned frequently to visit his
family. His mother had, after a
few years in Europe, returned
to live in Rathgar. His brother,
Thornley, never left Dublin
and, although a leading surgeon,
was also well acquainted
with Dublin's artistic and literary
world, his circle of friends
included George Moore and
Oliver St John Gogarty.
Bram himself joined the
Irish Literary Society in London
where he found himself
among many old Trinity class
mates, such as Alfred Perceval
Graves — father of Robert —
John Todhunter and Standish
O'Grady.
Bram had married a famous
Irish .beauty, Florence Balcombe.
Florrie was one of eight
children, six girls and two
boys.
Their father was also an
extraordinary character. Born
in Kilkenny, the son of an army
corporal, James Balcombe
joined the army himself at the
age of 14 and rose to become a
quarter-master sergeant. He
managed to transcend the
powerful Victorian class system
to become an 'officer and a
gentleman' becoming a
Lieutenant Colonel by the time
of his retirement.
Florrie had been Oscar
Wilde's first love. Indeed, it
seemed that she was going to
marry Oscar but rejected him
for Bram. Oscar Wilde seemed
to regret the ending of their relationship
— although he continued
his friendship with the
Stokers — for some years.
When Florrie made an appearance
on stage at the Lyceum
in The Cup by Lord
Tennyson, he anonymously
sent her a bouquet. He wrote to
the famous actress Ellen Terry:
"She thinks I never loved her,
thinks I forget. My God, how
could I?"
Florrie's sister Philippa
married Dr J Freeman Knott,
and their daughter was to be
Dr Eleanor Knott, the leading
authority on Middle and Early
Modern Irish.
Bram wrote a total of eleven
novels, two short-story collections,
a book about famous impostors
in history and a
two-volume biography of
Henry Irving. But no other
piece of work ever matched the
enduring quality of his weird
Gothic fantasy — Dracula.
Just published is Professor
Barbara Belford's biography of
Stoker, published by Weidenfeld
and Nicolson, a rather dilatory
work with countless
errors. This, sadly, is the fourth
biography of Bram, not one of
which has done real justice to
him.
IRISH DEMOCRAT August/September 1996 page 8