⏩Geordie Morrow is a Belfast artist.
Bobby Sands paced the length of his cell deep in thought. As he did so he repeatedly stroked his thick beard with the cup of his hand. It was something he did out of habit. His long fair hair was lank and matted as he hadn’t washed in well over a year. The blanket which covered his naked body from the waist down was filthy, as was the foam mattress he slept on. This he had propped up against the wall so as to give him more space to walk back and forth from his cell window to the steel door. His cellmate sat on his own foam mattress with his back against the wall and remained silent as he knew Bobby was trying to find the words with which he could complete yet another poem. Just a few more lines was all he needed.
Bobby’s cellmate didn’t realise it then but he was in fact baring witness to a period in the life of a man; a deeply convicted Irish Republican, whose name, while it was still relatively unknown beyond the walls of these H-Blocks, would become as synonymous with freedom as that of the revolutionary Che Guevara or Martin Luther King Jr. There would come a time when streets would be named after him. Sadly he would die on hunger strike, along with nine brave comrades, for that to happen.
The sun shone that day and the birds sang to their hearts content, which lifted the spirits of the prisoners a little, but they were denied even the feel of it's warmth. They could only peer through the concrete pillars of their cell windows and remember how it had felt. Bobby stopped his pacing and looked out at the yard between the two wings, then he turned his attention to the clear blue sky and a wisp of white cloud which seemed reluctant to move on. He was searching for inspiration.
He imagined what it would be like to be a bird, free to go where he wished, being able to soar high into that blue sky with the wisp of cloud and out over the barbed wire topped fences and the high concrete wall which separated the H-Blocks from the Cages. In his mind's eye he could see Lough Neagh off to his left, the water's surface shimmering in the sunlight. He hung in the air then turned and flew over Black Mountain and Divis, with the city sprawled out below hugging the shoreline of Belfast Lough.
He swooped down and flew below the ridgeline of Cave Hill, along it's basalt cliffs and the feature known as 'Napoleon's Nose' with the ringfort known locally as McArt's Fort at its highest point. It was there back in 1795 that Wolfe Tone, Henry Joy McCracken and the other Presbyterian members of the Society of United Irishmen gathered and pledged “never to desist until we had subverted the authority of England over our country and asserted our independence”.
Bobby spotted the three large caves on the face of the cliffs and with the eye of a poet he envisaged the ancient inhabitants of McArts Fort storing food in them for the cruel months of a winter which lay ahead. Close to the lowest of the three caves he saw 'The Devil's Punchbowl'. This steep hill, strewn with rocks and boulders, was where they had sheltered their livestock from the elements. He glanced down the slopes of Cave Hill at Belfast Castle surrounded by woodland. It had once been the residence of the Chichester family, landed gentry who had come to Ulster, during the Plantation, forced the Gael off their land and took it for themselves.
He could see Glas na Bradan wood and remembered how, as a child, he had played along the river of the same name, which flows through it and into Belfast Lough. The English translation being 'Stream of the Salmon.' The M2 motorway, with traffic rushing to and from the city was like a scar on the face of the beautiful landscape. Then he was looking down on Carnmoney Hill. It was as he had remembered it, carpets of bluebells, the whin bush with their distinctive yellow flowers and remnants of ancient woodland.
Always the Gaelgeoir, Bobby thought of it's Gaelic name, 'Cairn Monaidh' meaning 'carn of the bog’. That carn had long ago disappeared but there are several raths or ringforts in or around the hill. Overlooking Carnmoney Cemetery on the southern face of Carnmoney Hill are what little remains of Dun Áine meaning ‘Áine’s fort’. He loved the view from up there and imaged the beautiful Celtic sun goddess Áine admiring the same view with the wind in her hair. At least two souterrains, man-made underground tunnels, had also been discovered on the hill. Ancient hedgerows, mostly hawthorn and hazel, border some of the pathways which wind up and across the top of the hill. In the 1800s these pathways would have led to isolated farmhouses.
Above the cacophony of birdsong Bobby heard children's laughter which frightened an Irish hare lazing in the shade of the undergrowth. It took off and bounded across the open ground. Bobby then saw a group of children making their way to the top of the hill along a pathway and the memories came flooding back to him of how he had done the same thing as a child during beautiful sunny days such as this.
One of the children, a boy with fair hair, looked up and saw a Lark hanging in the sky. It's song was so enthralling that he instantly felt an affinity with that little bird. That boy was Bobby himself. His sisters Bernadette and Marcella were also there, as were the friends he hadn't seen since childhood. He remembered looking up at that Lark as it sang in celebration of it's freedom. Bobby knew in his heart that he was only reliving the past through his memories and that freedom was the dream which gave him strength during the darkest days and nights in the H-Blocks.
John Sands married Rosaleen Kelly on March 28th 1951. Shortly afterwards they moved from the overcrowded streets of Belfast out to Abbots Cross a newly built village and shopping centre in the Glas na Bradan valley between Cave Hill and Carnmoney Hill, five miles to the north of the city. Unfortunately any hope John and Rosaleen had of finding happiness in the countryside was short-lived. They were soon to discover that Abbots Cross had been built for Protestants. Uniformed members of the RUC and B-Specials casually walked past their home each day going to and from work, which mainly entailed keeping the Catholic citizens of Belfast in their place. John's Ulster-Scots surname was likely the reason they managed to slip through the sectarian net and into number 6 Abbots Cross. For a long time their neighbours believed that they were Protestants and they certainly weren't going to let them know any different.
On March 9th 1954, two years after their move to Abbots Cross, Rosaleen gave birth to their first child, a boy who they named Robert Gerard. Just under a year later in April 1955 Bobby's sister Marcella was born. There was a three-year gap before the birth of his sister Bernadette in November 1958. His brother Sean would be born in June 1962.
When their neighbours in Abbots Cross came to realise that John and Rosaleen were Catholics, they made life intolerable for them. Their next-door neighbour, a woman, started hammering incessantly on the walls of their home after John left to go to work. Anytime Rosaleen went out to hang the washing on the line, that neighbour would do the same thing while sneering over the fence at her. The same thing would happen while she cleaned her windows. This woman would go out and clean her windows and again she would be sneer across at Rosaleen. It eventually got so bad that she would take the children out for long walks during the day to get away from the strain. The mental torture she endured during the day would have stopped by the time John got back home from work. Rosaleen became so ill with stress that John and herself eventually decided that they had no other option but to leave.
In December 1961 the family moved into a new home in a newly built housing estate beside Abbots Cross called Rathcoole. This new home, 68 Doonbeg Drive, was at the foot of Carnmoney Hill. Seven-year old Bobby could look out their front window at an uninterrupted view of the hill so it was hardly surprising that he, his sisters and their newfound friends from other nearby streets would climb the paths which wound up the hill, build themselves a hut and then light a fire. They would throw raw potatoes into this fire and watch them burn before attempting to eat them. Needless to say they were always hungry by the time they got back home again.
Bobby’s education began at Stella Maris primary school and he went on to attend the secondary school of the same name which was next door to it. He was only ever interested in playing football so himself and his best friend Tommy O’Neill joined the youth team of Stella Maris, the local football club. This club was remarkable for the times because it attracted Protestant boys from surrounding areas despite the fact that the team trained in the gym of Bobby’s school. It mattered not if a player was a Catholic or a Protestant, if they were anyway good at playing football they got on the team. Bobby also took part in other sports like swimming and cross-country running for which he won quite a few medals.
By 1966 things began to change as Rathcoole became the centre of Protestant intolerance when the religious demagogue, Ian Paisley established the area as his power base. He spat sectarian hatred from the pulpit and wherever else he could find a platform from which to vent it. In his ignorance neither he nor his followers realised that whenever they said Rathcoole they were speaking a bit of Irish. Rathcoole is Ráth Cúil in Gaelic, meaning the ‘Fort of Coole’ and it is pronounced the same in English as it is in Irish. Hanging on his every poisonous word Loyalists began to launch attacks on Catholic homes, schools and shops.
The UVF’s first actual killing during this period was an unfortunate old Protestant lady because they had mistaken her for a Catholic. The parents of a Protestant he had befriended in the Stella Maris team told him to stop bringing Bobby around to their house.
Bobby finished secondary school in 1969 at the age of fifteen and enrolled in Newtownabbey Technical College. The following year in March 1970 he began working as an apprentice bus builder with Alexander’s Coach Works earning eighteen pounds a week. However, the ugly face of sectarian hatred wasn’t long in coming to the surface on the factory floor, but Bobby endured it as he wanted to learn a trade. One morning he turned up at work to find some of his workmates cleaning guns. One of them pointed a gun at him and told him to go or he’d be shot. He refused to be intimidated and stayed until his boss called him into his office and told him that there would be staff cuts and that he was being laid off.
Bobby would soon find another job, working nights as a barman in the Glen Inn, a pub in Glengormley. He became friendly with an older barman called Gerry Noade who lived beside the Sands family home in Rathcoole. He soon started dating Gerry’s daughter Geraldine. The couple would eventually get married after Geraldine became pregnant, but the wedding would be held in the chapel of Crumlin Road jail on March 3rd 1973 just six days before Bobby's 19th birthday, as he would be arrested on October 16th 1972 and put on remand. Geraldine gave birth to a baby boy, Gerard, on 8th May 1973.
During his time working as a barman Bobby made the decision that the time had come for him to fight back against the tyranny of the sectarian state which had, for decades, made life unbearable for Catholics in the North of Ireland and the British military which had been sent over to defend it. The peaceful protests of the Civil Rights Movement had been met with state violence during the 1960s. He witnessed the murderous events in Ballymurphy and a few months later in Derry, which would come to be known as Bloody Sunday. The Parachute regiment murdered innocent people during both massacres but the real orders had come from the British government.
Bobby knew that IRA volunteers drank in the Glen Inn so he waited for the right moment to approach one of them and ask about becoming a member himself. He noticed that one of them seemed to have more authority than the others so one night toward the end of 1971 he walked over to him while he was sitting alone, sat down and asked him straight out about joining the IRA. The man was impressed but he counselled Bobby to think carefully before joining. Bobby had his mind made up and nothing the man said could change it so he told him he’d think about it and get back to him.
It wouldn’t take too long until he did get back to Bobby. The IRA man needed to move a gun from Rathcoole to Glengormley but the volunteer who was supposed to do it hadn’t turned up. As he passed a football pitch he noticed that Bobby was playing in one of the teams. He called him over and asked him if he would do something for him. Without asking what it was Bobby changed clothes and took the gun the IRA man produced from inside his coat and handed to him. He was in.
Bobby's cellmate wondered why he was spending so much time standing at the window of their cell just staring out through the concrete pillars as he was normally pacing the length of the cell deep in thought. He got up and stood beside him little realising that he had just interrupted Bobby’s memories bringing him back to the reality of their present-day situation. He remained silent for a while and just stared out the cell window. Then he asked Bobby did he think that they'd ever see freedom, real freedom when the British would have left Ireland for good. Bobby turned to him and said, "Tiocfaidh ár lá,” (Our day will come). Then he went over to the wall and began putting the finishing touches to the poem he had been composing. Having done so he memorised the lines until he had it word perfect.
Later that night Bobby went to his cell door and announced to the men in the wing that he had just finished another poem. The lads were all excited as they were aware that he had been writing one and couldn't wait to hear it.
"It’s called ‘A Place to Rest', began Bobby before reciting his poem from the side of his cell door...
'As the day crawls out another night crawls in
Time neither moves nor dies.
It's the time of day when the lark sings,
The black of night when the curlew cries.
There's rain on the wind, the tears of spirits
The clink of key on iron is near,
A shuttling train passes by on rail,
There's more than God for man to fear.
Toward where the evening crow would fly, my thoughts lie,
And like ships in the night they blindly sail,
Blown by a thought - that breaks the heart -
Of forty women in Armagh jail.
Oh! and I wish I were with the gentle folk,
Around a hearthened fire where the fairies dance unseen,
Away from the black devils of H-Block hell,
Who torture my heart and haunt my dream.
I would gladly rest where the whin bush grow,
Beneath the rocks where the linnets sing
In Carnmoney Graveyard 'neath its hill
Fearing not what the day may bring!'
There was a hushed silence when he finished, then his comrades erupted into cheers and shouted words of praise from one end of the wing to the other.
At 1.17am on the morning of Tuesday May 5th, forty-five years ago, brave Bobby Sands MP took his final breath in the prison hospital after 66 days on hunger-strike. He was 27 at the time of his death.
Fuair sé bás ar son saoirse na hÉireann.
Note: I used Bobby’s biography, Nothing But An Unfinished Song by Denis O’Hearn to reference the early days of his life.
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Thomas Dixie Elliot is a Derry artist and a former H Block Blanketman. Follow Dixie Elliot on Twitter @IsMise_Dixie |
Ten links to a diverse range of opinion that might be of interest to TPQ readers. They are selected not to invite agreement but curiosity. Readers can submit links to pieces they find thought provoking.
Before We Conform, Or Condemn, Let Us At Least Be Curious
♜One recognizes one's course by discovering the paths that stray from it - Albert Camus♞
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| Photo: GOL: Cocaine laboratory, Catatumbo. |
The drugs issue is never far from the news in Colombia, nor from political, economic, peace proposals and so forth. But there are rarely real debates on how to proceed. They are limited on the one hand to continuing with the prohibitionist model and all that it entails: prison, fumigations, military operations, the destruction of lives and a fake discourse that is used to justify counterinsurgency operations. And on the other hand there is the proposal for legalisation, which can be heard from time to time but as it has never been a central element of the debates in Colombia, it remains undeveloped.
I would like to explore some of the implications of breaking with the prohibitionist model and I would like to state beforehand that I am in favour of doing so, but it what it means and how to do it has to be discussed. I begin with a brief history of the prohibitionist paradigm, to then go on to put forward some aspects to bear in mind when we propose to bury the rotten corpse of more than a century of attempts to reduce the consumption of some, though not all drugs, through repression. This article is partly motivated by the statement from the ELN that for the second time proposes the legalisation of drugs. However, it is not a response to the ELN. What it puts forwards is for all of society and many elements dealt with have been discussed in other settings around the world, though in Colombia it is a nascent debate.
The origins of the prohibitionist paradigm
When we say we are in favour of legalising certain drugs we fall into a mistake that cannot be easily corrected in the public imagination. What we really mean is relegalising, as it was once the case that the recreational use of drugs such as heroin, cocaine, cannabis and other derivatives of plants such as opium, coca and cannabis was perfectly legal. Moreover, the consumption of those drugs was more commonly associated with the monied classes. It is not for nothing that the fictional detective Sherlock Holmes was portrayed as an opium and cocaine addict.
In the USA the impetus behind the prohibitionist movement came from Christians and their campaigns against alcohol in the 19th century and the later campaigns against opium. They were moralistic campaigns against all types of stimulus, a moralistic element that never quite disappeared. Realpolitik is of greater importance nowadays, but it is frequently wrapped up in a moralist and/or religious discourse and is rarely treated as a public health problem. However, the US’s own interest was not a moral crusade against what the Christians saw as a moral degeneration of society, but rather the economic and geopolitical interests of the emerging superpower that was the USA.
The British Empire carried out, not one, but two wars against China (1839-1842 and 1856-1860) for the right of its drug traffickers to import opium from India, which was at the time a British colony comprising the modern countries of Pakistan, India and Bangladesh. The US thought that promoting a prohibitionist agenda would favour them in their economic relations with China. So the first international conference was the Shanghai Conference of 1909, where the colonial powers under the auspices of the International Opium Commission met to discuss the future of the opium trade. Prior to that the US began to take internal measures against consumption such as the Pure Food Act of 1906 and then following Shanghai the Harrison Act of 1914.
After 1909 a number of international treaties on the trade in opium and other drugs were approved in the years 1912-1953, the first of them being the Hague International Opium Convention. In 1961 all these treaties were subsumed into one document, the Single Convention of 1961. As its name indicates the idea was to replace all the previously existing treaties. In the prior discussions, the prohibition of alcohol, as some Islamic countries wanted, and tobacco were discounted. The reason behind not including these two drugs had nothing to do with public health, but rather western economies made a lot of money from those two activities which they dominated. Any attempt to ban wine, beer, whiskey would have led to the negotiations failing. This point is important, as at no stage were they concerned about health as both those drugs at the time killed more people in the northern countries than any controlled substance. It continues to be the case nowadays and we can state without fear of contradiction that tobacco and alcohol kill more people in the entire world than all illegal drugs together.[1] In the USA it is calculated that around 480,000 people die from smoking per year.
So it was that the three prohibitionist conventions of the UN were passed. There are those who state that technically speaking these conventions don’t ban anything but rather regulate, and it is true, but they regulate to the point that with the exception of medicinal and scientific use there is no difference between their regulation and prohibition.
The first one is the Single Convention of 1961. This is the most relevant convention for Colombia. It prohibits various substances, such as opium and also cocaine. But, moreover the said document bans the coca plant itself and obliges states to destroy wild plants. Article 26.2 reads:
The Parties shall so far as possible enforce the uprooting of all coca bushes which grow wild. They shall destroy the coca bushes if illegally cultivated.
And Article 49.2(e) demands that “Coca leaf chewing must be abolished within twenty-five years from the coming into force of this Convention.'' Even coca tea was banned, Article 27.1 states that:
The Parties may permit the use of coca leaves for the preparation of a flavouring agent, which shall not contain any alkaloids.
No indigenous community extracts the alkaloid from the leaves they sell to make tea, nor do they have the technology to do so. However, they may be bought in many parts, but if US or European Customs finds a packet in your case it can have serious consequences, even though many tourists take the risk every year.
The second convention, that of 1972 basically regulates synthetic drugs such as LSD and pharmaceuticals and unlike the coca leaf or cocaine, the drugs covered by this convention are subject to national regulations more than anything. And lastly there is the 1988 Vienna Convention that deals with the issue of trafficking itself, the precursor chemicals and money laundering, amongst other things and obliges states to introduce national legislation to challenge trafficking, production, money laundering, possession etc. The northern countries were so concerned about the dynamics of power that it took them 27 years following the Single Convention to do something about their own role in the illegal drugs industry.
This is the international institutional set up on drugs.[2] Now when drug legalisation is being proposed, or breaking with the prohibitionist model what is being proposed is a battle with the UN institutions, the member states, particularly the most influential ones in the INCB (International Narcotics Control Board),and the CND (Commission on Narcotic Drugs such as the European countries and the USA.
There are various options. One is to unilaterally break with all of the prohibitionist institutions. It is not very feasible, it would provoke a furious reaction from not only the USA but also the European Union, the imposition of economic sanctions and even a military invasion with the eternal excuse of a war on drugs. There are economic consequences to breaking with them in this fashion, trade relations, membership of certain international institutions etc. Perhaps a group of countries breaking like this could work, but we have seen how almost all the countries in Latin America did nothing about the kidnapping of the Venezuelan president, Nicolás Maduro or the blockade of Cuba. We have to doubt their word. Colombia promised to resist the USA and quickly got down on its knees.
You can try to reform it from within. This option is not as easy as our social democratic friends in the NGOs would have us believe. The UN General Assembly is not going to vote for substantial changes to the treaties and the bureaucratic set up. Neither will they accept amendments. Bolivia tried to put forward an amendment on the traditional consumption of the coca leaf 18 countries objected and it had to withdraw from the treaty and sign up again with a reservation, a legally doubtful manoeuvre that has caused tensions in the system.
Uruguay legalised the production and sale of cannabis for medical and recreational purposes entering into conflict with the international treaties. It was not a simple nor easy path and it has caused some difficulties for the country, not least with its banking system. There exists home growing, cannabis clubs and sale through pharmacies. Each option is tightly regulated by the state and each citizen can obtain a maximum of 40 grams per month. Uruguay immediately ran into a problem that can happen to any country that tries to throw off the yolk of prohibitionism. The sellers of legal cannabis in places authorised by the state itself could not deposit their profits in the banking system, not even with the Bank of the Republic. They had to resort to methods akin to money laundering in order to circulate their lawfully earned money.[3] Something similar happens in various states of the USA where the recreational sale is allowed. Not even an internal legalisation is without risk, so much so that the American Bankers Association has fought for years for a change in federal banking legislation regarding the legal sale of cannabis in various states.[4] It is worth bearing in mind that what they propose is to legislate for the entry of money from the legal sale of cannabis in the USA and at no stage do they deal with the question of money coming in from banking systems outside the USA.
Public Health
Part of the proposal to legalise drugs and break with the prohibitionist paradigm is to treat it as a public health issue. Even in European countries that have not broken with prohibition many elements of the public health model are to be found, due to pressure from their own societies, medical associations and of course grassroots organisations that campaign against prohibition.
What does it mean to treat it as a public health problem?
Well, first of all we would have to release all those prisoners sentenced for non-violent drugs offences and not imprison any more people for the same offence. It is relatively simple as the treaties demand that states pursue trafficking and consumption, but do not lay down specific sentences for each crime. So a state does not have to imprison consumers, broadening the own use concept and being creative with the penalisation of each crime. But that brings a series of problems with it. If it is not a criminal matter but rather one of health, then the health system has to be up to the task. So detox centres are required, psychologists, social workers and a whole series of social supports for the drug addict who obviously can’t have access to a health system that is different to that which the rest of the population gets. In the case of Colombia, there is absolutely no chance of decriminalising or legalising drugs and treating it as a public health issue under the current system. None! A total structural reform is required in which health takes precedence over the profits of health companies i.e. a national health system. A free public high quality system for all citizens, without exceptions, with prompt attention. Sometimes in the spiel that some come out with on the issue they forget that drug addiction is not a problem of capitalism, it has always existed but the current levels are specific to capitalism and cannot be resolved with market based solutions. This can be seen in countries which have tried it out.
The second convention, that of 1972 basically regulates synthetic drugs such as LSD and pharmaceuticals and unlike the coca leaf or cocaine, the drugs covered by this convention are subject to national regulations more than anything. And lastly there is the 1988 Vienna Convention that deals with the issue of trafficking itself, the precursor chemicals and money laundering, amongst other things and obliges states to introduce national legislation to challenge trafficking, production, money laundering, possession etc. The northern countries were so concerned about the dynamics of power that it took them 27 years following the Single Convention to do something about their own role in the illegal drugs industry.
This is the international institutional set up on drugs.[2] Now when drug legalisation is being proposed, or breaking with the prohibitionist model what is being proposed is a battle with the UN institutions, the member states, particularly the most influential ones in the INCB (International Narcotics Control Board),and the CND (Commission on Narcotic Drugs such as the European countries and the USA.
There are various options. One is to unilaterally break with all of the prohibitionist institutions. It is not very feasible, it would provoke a furious reaction from not only the USA but also the European Union, the imposition of economic sanctions and even a military invasion with the eternal excuse of a war on drugs. There are economic consequences to breaking with them in this fashion, trade relations, membership of certain international institutions etc. Perhaps a group of countries breaking like this could work, but we have seen how almost all the countries in Latin America did nothing about the kidnapping of the Venezuelan president, Nicolás Maduro or the blockade of Cuba. We have to doubt their word. Colombia promised to resist the USA and quickly got down on its knees.
You can try to reform it from within. This option is not as easy as our social democratic friends in the NGOs would have us believe. The UN General Assembly is not going to vote for substantial changes to the treaties and the bureaucratic set up. Neither will they accept amendments. Bolivia tried to put forward an amendment on the traditional consumption of the coca leaf 18 countries objected and it had to withdraw from the treaty and sign up again with a reservation, a legally doubtful manoeuvre that has caused tensions in the system.
Uruguay legalised the production and sale of cannabis for medical and recreational purposes entering into conflict with the international treaties. It was not a simple nor easy path and it has caused some difficulties for the country, not least with its banking system. There exists home growing, cannabis clubs and sale through pharmacies. Each option is tightly regulated by the state and each citizen can obtain a maximum of 40 grams per month. Uruguay immediately ran into a problem that can happen to any country that tries to throw off the yolk of prohibitionism. The sellers of legal cannabis in places authorised by the state itself could not deposit their profits in the banking system, not even with the Bank of the Republic. They had to resort to methods akin to money laundering in order to circulate their lawfully earned money.[3] Something similar happens in various states of the USA where the recreational sale is allowed. Not even an internal legalisation is without risk, so much so that the American Bankers Association has fought for years for a change in federal banking legislation regarding the legal sale of cannabis in various states.[4] It is worth bearing in mind that what they propose is to legislate for the entry of money from the legal sale of cannabis in the USA and at no stage do they deal with the question of money coming in from banking systems outside the USA.
Public Health
Part of the proposal to legalise drugs and break with the prohibitionist paradigm is to treat it as a public health issue. Even in European countries that have not broken with prohibition many elements of the public health model are to be found, due to pressure from their own societies, medical associations and of course grassroots organisations that campaign against prohibition.
What does it mean to treat it as a public health problem?
Well, first of all we would have to release all those prisoners sentenced for non-violent drugs offences and not imprison any more people for the same offence. It is relatively simple as the treaties demand that states pursue trafficking and consumption, but do not lay down specific sentences for each crime. So a state does not have to imprison consumers, broadening the own use concept and being creative with the penalisation of each crime. But that brings a series of problems with it. If it is not a criminal matter but rather one of health, then the health system has to be up to the task. So detox centres are required, psychologists, social workers and a whole series of social supports for the drug addict who obviously can’t have access to a health system that is different to that which the rest of the population gets. In the case of Colombia, there is absolutely no chance of decriminalising or legalising drugs and treating it as a public health issue under the current system. None! A total structural reform is required in which health takes precedence over the profits of health companies i.e. a national health system. A free public high quality system for all citizens, without exceptions, with prompt attention. Sometimes in the spiel that some come out with on the issue they forget that drug addiction is not a problem of capitalism, it has always existed but the current levels are specific to capitalism and cannot be resolved with market based solutions. This can be seen in countries which have tried it out.
All of this generates economic costs, which I believe as a society we should be willing to pay, but we shouldn’t fool ourselves. There are costs to be paid. The public health proposal generates enormous expenses which require a rethinking of the health system. In fact, I don’t really believe that under capitalism that drugs can be successfully treated as a public health problem, though progress may be made on various aspects. It is worth recalling that amongst the commissioners from the Global Commission on Drugs[5] that the ELN has as an interlocutor is the former Colombian president Cesar Gaviria who privatised the health system in Colombia through Law 100 and made medical care in the country unreliable. That man is not interested in treating drug consumption as a public health problem but rather as an opportunity for private gain.
In the private health system there are companies that provide health services. Their aim is not to cure nor save lives but to generate profits. In fact, their legal duty to the shareholders is to generate the highest rate of profit possible within the legal framework of the country. And in order for a private company to be profitable the public health system must be weakened just like Cesar Gaviria and Juan Manuel Santos did. Patients in the public health system must experience greater problems in being seen by specialists, exams, medicines etc. They must get sick more, not be cured in a timely fashion and some must die. Otherwise the patient has no reason to pay into the private system. The private companies are genuine merchants of death, just like all the politicians who are part of the Global Commission, and not just the Colombians. So we have to fight not just for the legalisation of drugs, but also against the merchants of death and their health systems.
There is a hippy tale that legalisation would mean the inward flow of great resources to the state with which any health programme could be financed. This hippy tale is part of the cheap talk from Petro’s milieu and his inept functionaries who live off it. The truth is another matter. First of all part of the final price is due to its illegal nature and the price would fall with legalisation.
If Colombia legalises cocaine and opium, this won’t generate large profits for the country. Just like in Bolivia, the coca leaf could circulate freely within the country and perhaps the medicinal cocaine as well for use in Colombia only. Under no circumstances will the INCB authorise Colombia to compete with the legal crops in Peru that are harvested to produce medicinal cocaine. The medicinal cocaine market is very small. The INCB calculates the global needs and authorises the traffic of this product to the hospitals and laboratories of the world. According to its most report, Bolivia produced 25,728 tonnes of coca leaf for traditional uses in the framework of the reservation it made when it adhered again in 2013 and the global production of licit medicinal cocaine reached just 377.4 kilos.[6] The global production of licit medicinal cocaine is small in scale and Colombia needs the permission of the INCB to trade and compete with the Peruvian production. It should be pointed out that Peru produces the leaf and not the final product, which is under the control of the northern countries. The principal producers are the US and Britain which account for 90.3% of world production and Britain is at the same time the main exporter.[7]
Something similar can be seen with cannabis production, a market dominated by Canada which accounts for 45% of global production with 248.2 tonnes, followed by Britain with 95 tonnes or 17.2%. Canada is also the main exporter of medicinal cannabis with 145.8 tonnes or 57.3% of global exports. Colombia accounts for less than 2% of global production and 4.6% of exports with 11.7 tonnes.[8]
If the production of recreational cocaine is legalised we face the same problem as with the medicinal cocaine: quality. The cocaine produced in the mountains does not meet the requirements of the medicinal market and neither would it meet those of a hypothetical recreational market and it would most certainly be the Canadian and British companies which would come to dominate such a legal market for recreational cocaine. So, as happens with coffee, the value added and the largest share of profits would be generated outside of Colombia, unless in addition to breaking with the prohibitionist model there was a break with imperialism and the way in which it dominates countries in the south and markets for primary products such as coffee, tea and other cash crops.
None of this means that we shouldn’t break with the prohibitionist paradigm. All it means is that the challenge is enormous, greater than what some naïve social democrats believe. It requires inverting the current health model around the world, breaking with imperialism and its domination of global markets for southern products. It is not easy but the debate has to be a serious one bereft of the naïve when not deceitful declarations that characterise the majority of NGOs in Colombia.
References
[1] To delve deeper into the role of the USA in the development of prohibitionism see Bewley Taylor, D.R (1999) The United States and International Drug Control 1909-1997. Pinter. New York.
[2] For an overview of international drugs treaties see Sinha, J. (2001) The History and Development of the Leading International Drug Control Conventions. Prepared for the Canadian Senate. Library of Parliament
[3] Galain, P. (2018) Mercado regulado de cannabis vs. política bancaria. ¿Un mercado obligado a operar fuera del sistema financiero? Revista Penal No. 42. Tirant Lo Blanch. Valencia. pp 82-98.
[4] See communiqué.
[1] To delve deeper into the role of the USA in the development of prohibitionism see Bewley Taylor, D.R (1999) The United States and International Drug Control 1909-1997. Pinter. New York.
[2] For an overview of international drugs treaties see Sinha, J. (2001) The History and Development of the Leading International Drug Control Conventions. Prepared for the Canadian Senate. Library of Parliament
[3] Galain, P. (2018) Mercado regulado de cannabis vs. política bancaria. ¿Un mercado obligado a operar fuera del sistema financiero? Revista Penal No. 42. Tirant Lo Blanch. Valencia. pp 82-98.
[4] See communiqué.
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| Tommy McKearney is a left wing and trade union activist. He is author of The Provisional IRA: From Insurrection to Parliament. Follow on Twitter @Tommymckearney |
As the Wall Street Journal put it:
They may not realize it, but the millions of readers who have made bestsellers out of Art Spiegelman’s “Maus” (1991), Daniel Clowes’s “Ghost World” (1997), Marjane Satrapi’s “Persepolis” (2003) and other graphic novels have Will Eisner to thank. A pioneering figure in the history of comic books, Eisner also served as the form’s artistic conscience, a beloved writer-illustrator who explored personal themes within and then beyond the superhero genre. Yet as legendary as Eisner remains to comics aficionados and to the comics industry itself—there’s a reason the medium’s equivalent to the Oscars is called the Eisner Awards—he remains little known to the greater public while pioneers of the form such as Stan Lee, Jack Kirby, and Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster (the last two of “Superman” fame) have received their due.
Born in New York to Jewish immigrants in 1917, the young Will was very much influenced by his father who had gone from painting Catholic churches in Vienna to painting backdrops for vaudeville and the Jewish theatre in order to keep the family afloat while his mother struggled to raise and feed the family, imploring her son to ensure that he never gives a woman worries like the ones his dad’s precarious finances did to her.
Selling newspapers to support his family during the Great Depression and becoming a standout in high school art classes alongside future Batman co-creator Bob Kane, the book firmly plants Eisner at the heart of what is now referred to as the Golden Age of Comics, seeing the creation of characters like Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman and Eisner’s own The Spirit. It was a brand-new American art form that has lasted for nearly a century and led to multi-million-dollar franchises.
While it’s maybe not the most exciting or action-packed tale in the world, writer Stephen Weiner does a commendable job of demonstrating how poverty and artistic ambition fuelled the young Eisner, how the burgeoning comic book industry took to him and how personal tragedies would fuel A Contract with God, his first graphic novel and a game-changer for many. He depicts Eisner as a curious and driven young man, as if he sees the world as a continuing puzzle that must be solved, which he does in middle age.
Artist Dan Mazur is clearly a fan of Eisner in that he throws in one or two visual references that those who have read A Contract with God will immediately clock, but he is very much his own man and he largely avoids painting New York as an overcrowded series of slums, instead highlighting how bare the rooms could be and the streets are remarkably clean, indicating that pride in one’s neighborhood was very much in vogue among these immigrant families.
Maybe not the most essential read (that would very much be A Contract with God) but it’s nice to see a pioneer be treated with the respect he deserves in a format he helped pioneer.
Stephen Weiner (Author), Dan Mazur (Artist), 2025, Will Eisner: A Comics Biography. NBM Publishing. ISBN: 978-1681123578
⏩ Christopher Owens was a reviewer for Metal Ireland and finds time to study the history and inherent contradictions of Ireland. He is currently the TPQ Friday columnist and is the author of A Vortex of Securocrats and “dethrone god”.
Ten links to a diverse range of opinion that might be of interest to TPQ readers. They are selected not to invite agreement but curiosity. Readers can submit links to pieces they find thought provoking.
Before We Conform, Or Condemn, Let Us At Least Be Curious
♜One recognizes one's course by discovering the paths that stray from it - Albert Camus♞
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| March 10, 2026 |
First published: Iran: Between Bombs and Theocracy, The Freethinker, 10 March 2026
What is happening inside Iran now? How is the war affecting ordinary people?
Maryam Namazie: The impact on people inside Iran is already severe and will almost certainly prove far greater than what can currently be documented, because the war is ongoing and the regime-imposed internet blackout makes independent verification difficult and prevents many people from contacting family members or obtaining reliable information about nearby strikes. Information about the war is also shaped by broader media restrictions. In Iran, it is through state censorship, including death threats against those who report on the situation. Media aligned with Western governments also repeat official narratives about the conflict, while reporting in Israel and several Gulf states is subject to wartime censorship laws that criminalise the publication of material deemed harmful to military operations. These restrictions limit public visibility of the full human cost of the war.
What is clear is that the conflict has spread across large parts of the country and the civilian toll is already high. The Human Rights Activists News Agency has documented more than 1,200 civilian deaths, including nearly 200 children, with thousands more injured.
One of the deadliest incidents was the strike on Shajareh Tayyebeh girls’ primary school in Minab, where more than 160 children were killed.
Political prisoners are particularly vulnerable. Human rights organisations warn about deteriorating conditions and shortages of food and water in prisons such as Evin and Qarchak.
An attack on a major petroleum refinery has also produced heavy black smoke and chemical fallout, with residents reporting black rain and growing fears about public health, long-term contamination of water supplies, and the environment.
The war is also hitting a society that had already experienced a major political uprising. During the Dey protests at the end of December and early January, Iranian rights groups reported more than 50,000 arrests and tens of thousands injured. Several thousand deaths have been confirmed, but investigative reporting and testimony from medical workers suggest the real toll may be significantly higher, with some estimates reaching up to 30,000.
At the same time, the conflict is expanding beyond Iran’s borders. The regime’s targeting of neighbouring countries and escalating Israeli attacks on Lebanon, with hundreds of civilian deaths, increase the risk of a prolonged regional war, while cities inside Iran are increasingly militarised and civilian infrastructure, including hospitals, residential areas, and schools, has been damaged.
Without basic protections such as sirens or bomb shelters for civilians, these developments are pushing the country toward a serious humanitarian catastrophe.
Some argue the real choice is between war and the Islamic Republic. How do you respond?
Maryam Namazie: That framing reduces a complex society to a geopolitical choice between external military intervention and internal repression, erasing the role of Iranian society itself.
The argument usually runs as follows: if you oppose war, you are effectively accepting the regime’s violence. But that assumes war actually produces freedom. When we look at the historical record, there is little evidence for that claim.
Claims by Benjamin Netanyahu or Donald Trump that military escalation is intended to ‘help the Iranian people’ should also be rejected. Such rhetoric functions largely as political cover for strategic geopolitical objectives. States pursue regional power, security interests, and influence, not democratic transformation in other societies. Presenting war as humanitarian assistance obscures the reality that the population living under bombardment bears the human cost of those strategic calculations.
Undoubtedly, many people welcomed the death of Ali Khamenei, given the brutality of the system he presided over. But the Islamic regime is not simply one man. The rapid appointment of his son illustrates that removing a leader does not dismantle the political system that sustains authoritarian rule.
Removing individuals through assassination is also different from justice. In societies emerging from authoritarian rule, justice normally involves public accountability, trials, and historical reckoning with crimes committed by the state. When officials are assassinated, the truth about what occurred often remains buried and victims are denied the accountability they deserve.
Recent attempts to use war as a tool of political transformation show a consistent pattern. In the last several decades, conflicts presented as projects of ‘liberation’, such as in Iraq or Afghanistan, removed rulers but also destroyed infrastructure, killed and displaced millions, and left societies struggling with instability, armed factions, and weakened institutions. War may remove rulers, but it often damages the social and institutional foundations necessary for democratic politics to emerge.
War can also strengthen authoritarian regimes internally. When countries come under attack, governments expand security powers and further suppress dissent. The Islamic regime itself consolidated power during the Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s, when opposition movements were crushed in the name of defending the ‘Islamic’ nation.
The ‘either war or regime’ binary ignores a political reality: authoritarian systems often appear immovable until they fall. The Shah’s regime in Iran in 1979 and apartheid in South Africa both looked deeply entrenched shortly before they collapsed under sustained social and political pressure.
If we look at how authoritarian systems have actually been dismantled, a different pattern appears. Apartheid in South Africa ended through decades of internal resistance, labour mobilisation, and sustained international political and economic pressure. Democratic transitions in Eastern Europe in 1989, as well as movements in countries like Chile, were driven primarily by mass social mobilisation and internal crises rather than foreign military intervention.
Iran itself has a long history of such struggles. Over the past decades, there have been repeated waves of protest, including student movements, labour strikes, and the Woman, Life, Freedom uprising in 2022. Most recently, the Dey protests at the end of December and early January 2026 were met with mass arrests and killings, demonstrating both the scale of repression and the depth of social opposition.
The real political actors in Iran are therefore not foreign militaries but the people who continue to challenge authoritarian rule despite immense risks.
The central question is not a choice between war and the regime. It is whether the social forces inside Iran that are struggling for freedom are strengthened, or whether the social ground on which those struggles depend is destroyed.
History suggests that lasting political change emerges from organised movements within society, not from bombs.
Could war weaken the regime and open space for an uprising?
Maryam Namazie: It is a common assumption that war weakens governments and therefore creates opportunities for revolt. But research on revolutions shows that uprisings depend on two things happening at the same time: a state losing control, and a society that still has the capacity to organise collectively.
Popular uprisings emerge from dense social networks: workplaces where workers can strike, universities where students mobilise, neighbourhood networks where people organise, and communication systems that allow ideas and strategies to spread. Revolutions are not spontaneous explosions; they are built through these everyday social connections. Under war conditions, people are forced to focus on survival rather than collective political action.
At the same time, war strengthens the institutions organised around coercion. Military and intelligence structures gain authority, emergency laws expand, and dissent is more easily framed as collaboration with the enemy. Destroying the networks through which people organise politically does not create the conditions for revolution.
Some analysts warn that this war could strengthen militant groups and religious nationalism and increase geopolitical rivalry. Do you see that danger?
Maryam Namazie: War reshapes the ideological environment in which politics operates, thereby further empowering religious right movements. The Islamic Republic is a theocratic state that derives legitimacy from religious authority. External attack allows it to frame the conflict as a defence of faith and nation, strengthening the ideological narratives on which it relies. At the same time, religious nationalist currents in Israel and the United States, namely powerful Christian evangelical and Jewish religious nationalists, interpret the conflict in civilisational or theological terms. When conflicts are framed this way, they become a recruiting ground for extremists who mobilise around religious identity and revenge. We have seen this dynamic before. The Iraq war, for example, helped create the conditions in which ISIS was able to recruit and expand.
Alongside these ideological dynamics, there is also a geopolitical layer. The United States and Israel pursue strategic objectives related to regional power and security, while Russia and China position themselves in ways that expand their own leverage.
These are conflicts between states, far-right religious movements, and geopolitical actors, while the populations living in the region bear the devastating consequences.
Some opposition figures abroad, including Reza Pahlavi and organisations such as the Mujahedeen-e Khalq (MEK), present themselves as alternatives to the Islamic regime. Do they represent a path forward?
Maryam Namazie: One recurring misconception in discussions about Iran is the idea that political transformation can be engineered by identifying a replacement leadership abroad and installing it as an alternative to the current regime.
In reality, democratic transitions rarely occur that way. They emerge when organised social forces within a country become capable of reshaping political institutions.
The monarchy represents a political system that Iranians already overthrew in 1979. The Pahlavi state itself was an authoritarian system built on repression. The current political project around Reza Pahlavi also centres heavily on personal leadership and nationalist symbolism rather than democratic institutions rooted in Iranian society.
The MEK presents a different problem. It operates as a highly centralised and hierarchical organisation built around a cult of leadership, with strict ideological control and enforced loyalty. Its alliance with Saddam Hussein during the Iran–Iraq war also severely damaged its legitimacy among many Iranians.
Another issue that is often overlooked is the information environment surrounding the Iranian diaspora and international media.
Inside Iran, people are exposed primarily to the narrative of the Islamic regime through state media and censorship. Outside Iran, a different distortion can occur: diaspora media amplifies a narrow segment of opposition politics, particularly monarchist narratives, far beyond their actual presence inside the country.
A recent academic study analysing around 4,500 protest videos from December and January found that slogans referring to ‘Shah’ or ‘Pahlavi’ accounted for roughly 17% of the total, while 83% were broader anti–Islamic Republic demands. Yet diaspora broadcasters amplified the monarchist narrative far beyond its presence in the protests. During the same period, Iran International devoted about 81% of its protest-related coverage to content promoting Reza Pahlavi, while BBC Persian devoted about 35%. The study also found that these outlets collectively ignored or omitted roughly 68% of protest videos circulating on social media.
The result is a dual distortion of reality. Inside Iran, the regime portrays protests as foreign conspiracies or limited disturbances. Outside Iran, parts of the diaspora media ecosystem present them as if they were primarily monarchist movements centred on a single political figure.
Complex social movements are thereby reduced to a single personality or faction rather than understood as broader struggles within Iranian society. The future of Iran will not be decided by personalities in exile but by the social forces within Iranian society that are struggling for democratic change.
What role should governments play?
Maryam Namazie: No government involved in this conflict is acting in the interests of Iranian civilians. The Islamic regime and its allies pursue their own interests, including survival, regional influence, and ideological legitimacy. Western governments also act according to strategic calculations. The real question is what policies can weaken authoritarian power without destroying the society that must eventually replace it.
A more rational approach would focus on political and legal pressure on the regime itself rather than military escalation. That means measures that target the state and its officials rather than the population: ending diplomatic relations with the regime, expelling diplomats, freezing assets held abroad by state institutions and officials responsible for repression, and pursuing legal accountability for human rights crimes through international courts.
Governments could also restrict the regime’s institutional networks abroad and end the activities of state-backed religious or cultural centres that are used for political influence or monitoring diaspora communities.
Financial pressure can also be directed more precisely. The Islamic regime controls extensive assets through state foundations and commercial networks operating internationally. Freezing these assets and restricting their financial channels would weaken the regime’s power structures without imposing collective punishment on the population.
There are also historical precedents for this kind of political pressure. During the struggle against apartheid in South Africa, for example, governments and civil society organisations used sanctions, diplomatic isolation, and international boycotts to increase the political costs of maintaining a system of racial segregation. A similar approach could be applied today in response to sex apartheid and systematic discrimination against women.
Another important step is political isolation in international institutions. For decades, the regime has maintained diplomatic legitimacy while continuing repression at home. At the same time, the international community can expand support for Iranian civil society by defending access to information, supporting independent media, protecting activists and dissidents who face threats from the regime beyond Iran’s borders, and granting asylum to those fleeing persecution.
There is rarely political will for this kind of pressure unless it is forced by sustained public mobilisation and solidarity from progressive movements internationally, as happened during the struggle against apartheid in South Africa. Without that pressure, governments revert to business as usual, where geopolitical interests and profit take precedence over people’s rights and freedoms.
For the public and democratic movements, the goal should be clear: isolate the regime politically and legally while strengthening the social forces inside Iran—women, workers, students, and civil society movements—that are struggling for freedom and democratic change.
What message would you send to democratic and feminist movements internationally?
Maryam Namazie: Do not accept the false choice between war and authoritarian rule. The primary struggle in Iran is between society and the state. Solidarity means standing with the women, workers, students, and progressive activists inside Iran who continue to challenge authoritarian rule despite immense risk.
The most meaningful solidarity with Iran therefore lies in supporting the social forces inside Iran that continue the struggle for Woman, Life, Freedom. That movement challenges the Islamic regime at its foundations because it confronts the structures of repression that organise everyday life under the system.
Beneath the bombs and the theocracy is a society that has repeatedly risen in revolt. Iran’s future will not be determined by war or by rulers claiming power from above, but by the people who refuse to live under authoritarian rule.
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| Maryam Namazie is a is a British-Iranian secularist, communist and human rights activist, commentator, and broadcaster. |
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