A dated but relevant piece from An Sionnach Fionn on the RIC.

On Friday the 26th of November 1920, Patrick Loughnane, aged twenty-nine, and his younger brother, Harry, aged twenty-two, were labouring in the fields near their mother’s home in Shanaglish, County Galway, carrying out the arduous work of threshing corn for the autumn harvest. With them were a dozen or so neighbours, families working together as a cooperative during the late farming season, gathering and feeding corn into a hired, steam-driven threshing machine. 

While their siblings had left the region to find employment elsewhere, some emigrating to the United States and Britain, the Loughnane boys had stayed with their widowed parent to tend the family’s small patch of land in the west of Ireland. Patrick, a fine athlete and hurler, was the elected head of the local cumann or party branch of Sinn Féin while his studious, bookworm brother functioned as it’s secretary. Both men were also serving volunteers or citizen-soldiers of the insurgent Irish Republican Army, the older brother becoming a company commander in the local parish of Beagh.

Though their unit had seen relatively little action in the proceeding two years of resistance against the United Kingdom’s military and civil forces on the island, Patrick had participated in the Castledaly Ambush near the town of Gort on the 30th of October 1920, when one member of the Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC), the UK’s omnipresent gendarmerie, was killed and four others were taken temporary prisoner. In response the RIC had murdered a local woman, twenty-three year old Ellen Quinn, who was heavily pregnant at the time, in the area of Kiltartan and burned a number of houses and outbuildings.

Continue reading @ An Sionnach Fionn.

The Torturers And Murderers Of The Royal Irish Constabulary

A dated but relevant piece from An Sionnach Fionn on the RIC.

On Friday the 26th of November 1920, Patrick Loughnane, aged twenty-nine, and his younger brother, Harry, aged twenty-two, were labouring in the fields near their mother’s home in Shanaglish, County Galway, carrying out the arduous work of threshing corn for the autumn harvest. With them were a dozen or so neighbours, families working together as a cooperative during the late farming season, gathering and feeding corn into a hired, steam-driven threshing machine. 

While their siblings had left the region to find employment elsewhere, some emigrating to the United States and Britain, the Loughnane boys had stayed with their widowed parent to tend the family’s small patch of land in the west of Ireland. Patrick, a fine athlete and hurler, was the elected head of the local cumann or party branch of Sinn Féin while his studious, bookworm brother functioned as it’s secretary. Both men were also serving volunteers or citizen-soldiers of the insurgent Irish Republican Army, the older brother becoming a company commander in the local parish of Beagh.

Though their unit had seen relatively little action in the proceeding two years of resistance against the United Kingdom’s military and civil forces on the island, Patrick had participated in the Castledaly Ambush near the town of Gort on the 30th of October 1920, when one member of the Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC), the UK’s omnipresent gendarmerie, was killed and four others were taken temporary prisoner. In response the RIC had murdered a local woman, twenty-three year old Ellen Quinn, who was heavily pregnant at the time, in the area of Kiltartan and burned a number of houses and outbuildings.

Continue reading @ An Sionnach Fionn.

25 comments:

  1. "....It appears that the R.I.C. man he shot was Constable Timothy Horan. Constable Horan died, leaving behind a widow and young family and was a native of Kerry. His cause of death (as reported by inquest into his death) was due to laceration of the brain caused by a bullet wound. Mrs. Margaret Hogan, his widow, last saw her husband alive in August. She later lodged a claim with Loughrea Rural District Council for £7000 compensation for the murder of her husband."

    Amazing how one sided accounts can paint a very different picture. The RIC obviously retaliated in an egregious, illegal and murderous way but given they were also young Irishmen who saw their colleague murdered it's unsurprising they decided on a horrendous recourse of action.

    Reminds me of Sam Marshall and Tony McCaughey mouthing off.

    ReplyDelete
  2. All sides committed atrocities in that period of Irish history. It is the victims who should be remembered rather than their organisational or corporate allegiance.

    I wonder how the Irish government proposes to commemorate or even acknowledge war crimes/atrocities in the Civil War such as Ballinseela perpetrated by one nationalist force against another.

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    Replies
    1. Barry - the people who fought the RIC and its allies in the British state should be institutionally commemorated by Irish society. Ireland was the victim of the British and its RIC allies. We should always speak out against atrocity but desist from pretending that both causes were atrocious. The cause of freeing a nation from a repressive state is always just even if the actions used are not always just.

      Delete
  3. Barry,

    That’s Ballyseedy.

    https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/heritage/stories-of-the-revolution-ballyseedy-and-the-civil-war-s-worst-atrocity-1.2462070

    Note the correct spelling and that it’s near Tralee in County Kerry.

    Maybe if you had ever been there, like I've been, you’d know that.

    That said, just about all Fine Gael politicians engage in false equivalency like you just did: i.e. “There were atrocities on both sides.”

    Intended or unintended inference:

    Therefore, everyone is guilty so no one is guilty.

    Ergo, the military victors march on...

    Without much transparency or accountability.

    In short, just another case of victor’s justice and double standards.

    Historical analysis however shouldn’t be so much about who killed who.

    But why did they kill? For what purpose? For what end goal?

    Sure, the Allies massacred Nazis...

    And the Nazis massacred Allies during WWII.

    Yet who but ex-SS officers would claim moral equivalency here?

    Sure, the Vichy French massacred the French Resistance & vice versa.

    Yet who but Fine Gael et al would claim moral equivalency here?

    The Vichy French State was just following orders...

    Like the Irish Free State did.

    Now remember - you are not to reply here.

    You said so yourself.

    So please try to have the courage of your convictions.

    LOL!

    ReplyDelete
  4. What I am about to say is directed at all readers of this weblog.

    I do not engage directly with contributors who personally abuse me and others; I will with those who disagree with me but who show basic human respect and courtesy in their interactions with me.

    I am not arguing with the commemoration in Republic of Ireland society of those who fought in the indepedence struggle. That is their right. As someone who grew up in Northern Ireland armed struggle for an abstract Republic was never struggle nor was it conducted in my name.

    Campaigns wnich did not use arms actually achieved rights and goals of more practical benefit to Irish people. From Catholic Emancipation in the early 19th century; land reform in the late 19th; the Anticonscription campaign of 1918; the NI Civil Rights movement of the late 1960s; the women's movement in the Republic from the 1970s culminating in the achievement of Irish women's reproductive and bodily self-determination in the 2018 referendum to repeal the Eighth Amendment. All achieved without a shot being fired.

    The Irish Free State was an imperfect democracy; Vichy France was a fascist puppet state of the human history's most evil regime (a regime which the IRA in the 1940s was prepared to collaboratate with) which played its full part in the greatest crime in human history - the planned and executed extermination of the entire European Jewish people for which the full bureaucratic, logistical and security apparatus of a modern advanced European state was mobilised.

    Before I get shouted down, the planing and methodology of the Shoah was integrated into other Nazi monstrosities such as Operation Barborassa which included the murder of 1.5m Jewish people by shooting and mobile gas vans by the SS and the systematic starving of the Russians and other Slav peoples and the T-4 euthanasia programme in which the Nazis honed their skills in mass gassings.

    As we approach Holocaust Memorial Day; it is time to nail the most obsc ene of all moral equivalences; between the mechanised mass murder of 6m Jews and the Roma and Sinti and others classified as social deviants and Israeli treatment of the Palestinians worthy of condemnation though much of it is.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Barry,

    Besides you…

    Who do you think you’re kidding saying this is “…directed to all readers”?

    What a cowardly cop out.

    If you’re going to dish it out you better be able to take it in.

    This isn’t academia!

    Welcome to the big leagues.

    And armed struggle against armed oppression is the precursor of all republics.

    Be they American, French or Irish.

    None of which was abstract as you well know but deign to say.

    Whatever the Irish achieved was through violence or the threat of violence.

    Just like the British achieved and keep on achieving (apparently in your name).

    But you’re right about the Irish Free State being an imperfect democracy.

    Because it’s a vassal state of human history’s most evil regime, the U.K.:

    British War Crimes
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_war_crimes

    Britain and the Spanish Civil War
    https://spartacus-educational.com/SPbritain.htm

    “I am strongly in favor of using poisoned gas against uncivilized tribes.” - Winston Churchill
    https://www.jacobinmag.com/2018/01/winston-churchill-british-empire-colonialism

    Bengal famine of 1943
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bengal_famine_of_1943

    Sound familiar?

    But still you go on about “…the greatest crime in human history - the planned and executed extermination of the entire European Jewish people”.

    When that German genocide doesn’t even rank in the top ten of world history’s genocides.

    In fact, it rates around number 20:

    Atrocities: The 100 Deadliest Episodes in Human History
    https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/atrocities-matthew-white/1113025412#/

    The Belgians killed more Congolese!

    10 million according the Jewish-American Historian Adam Hochschild.

    Hochschild, Adam (2006). King Leopold's Ghost: A Story of Greed, Terror, and Heroism in Colonial Africa. pp. 225–33.
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atrocities_in_the_Congo_Free_State

    See this picture if you don’t believe it:

    “A father stares at the hand and foot of his five-year-old daughter, severed as a punishment for having harvested too little rubber.”

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atrocities_in_the_Congo_Free_State#/media/File:Nsala_of_Wala_in_Congo_looks_at_the_severed_hand_and_foot_of_his_five-year_old_daughter,_1904.jpg

    Therefore, to borrow a phrase, don’t you think it’s time to nail down the most obscene of moral inequivalences, between the mass murder of 6 million Jews and the mass murder of 10 million Congolese, and many millions more of others?

    Or do you think black African lives less worthy?

    Look Barry, if you are special needs then I will leave you alone.

    But if you’re just Anthony McIntyre’s sock puppet…

    Here to rile up this web site with conventional BBC "wisdom"…

    Then just send him a bill for your services rendered.

    Because no one should do what you do here for free.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Barry - armed struggle in the North was always a struggle against a repressive state apparatus. As the prime PIRA founder said had the British got rid of Stormont the same day they brought the troops in the Provos could never have formed.
    That it was not waged in your name does nothing to invalidate its claim to be a struggle. It was just a struggle that you dissented from and with the benefit of hindsight would have been much better had it not have happened. Unarmed campaigns are invariably preferable to armed ones but armed ones often have a causal factor outside the sentiments of the people who wage them.
    There is no agreement that the Holocaust was the greatest crime in Human history. While a great crime, Barbarossa was even greater. It was during Barbarossa that the plan to implement the Shoa was practically devised. The Nazis were gassing Russian POWs before they used the same method on Jewish people.
    I have yet to hear anyone claim that the Israeli Nazi-like practices against the Palestinians is on a par with the Shoa. This is an Aunt Sally that you introduce but which seems to exist only in your own mind. It is indisputable that the Israeli's have committed Nazi like atrocities on the Palestinians - that is what is being said, nothing else. They have committed war crimes and crimes against humanity. Now the corrupt crook which is PM wants sanctions against the International Court of Justice because it might investigate such Nazi-like practices. You would be much better desisting from denying the injustices the Palestinians experience at the hands of the brutal state of Israel which you seek to do by denying their Nazi-like character.
    I notice too that the despicable crowd on the Jewish Board of Deputies are trying to silence Orla Guerin for saying the following:


    A factually accurate statement - is she next for the anti-Semite smear and witch hunt?

    ReplyDelete
  7. Anthony,

    Here is that “controversial” quote from Orla Guerin:

    “The State of Israel is now a regional power. For decades it has occupied Palestinian territories. But some here will always see their nation through the prism of persecution and survival.” – Orla Guerin

    https://www.timesofisrael.com/bbc-accused-of-linking-israels-treatment-of-palestinians-to-holocaust-complex/

    Now light the torches and let the witch hunt begin.

    Oh wait, it already has.

    ReplyDelete
  8. Anthony,

    At least one Israeli Journalist agrees with Orla Guerin:

    “Fear, hatred, self-pity, the security cult, dehumanization and an itchy trigger finger are all Israeli cultural traits that lead to this mass blood-letting, but woe unto anyone who dares define Israel as having a murderous culture. He’d be condemned as an anti-Semite.” - Gideon Levy

    http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/52230.htm

    And some say tropes where others say arrogance:

    “Israel actually likes cultural and national generalizations, especially when they glorify its image. The “Jewish genius,” “the chosen people,” “Jewish morality,” and “eternal Israel,” are evidence of baseless arrogance.” – Gideon Levy

    http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/52230.htm

    ReplyDelete
  9. We ran that piece earlier Eoghan - he is a very courageous journalist.

    The Israeli state in its treatment of Palestinians is a truly vile entity. Barbaric and brutal. And they proclaim tongue in cheek their murderous military is the world's most moral army.

    ReplyDelete
  10. AM

    Netananyu's invocation of antisemitism in relation to the proposed ICC investigation of Israeli (and PaLestinian) war crimes in the Occupied Territories is contemptible. No disagreement there.

    Orla Guerin did not make any comparison between Israeli treatment of the Palestinians and the Holocaust. So the complaints by some Jewish and Israeli groups that she did are without foundation. No disagreement there.

    Comparisons between the State of israel, Zionism and the Nazis are one of the staples of contemporary left antisemitic discourse which has poisoned the British Labour Party. I have quoted examples in articles for TPQ and can cite more if you wish.

    The Israeli state's treatment of Palestinians is reprehensible but "Nazi - like"; where are the gas chambers, the crematoria, the Babi-p Yar like burial pits, the ghettoes, the forced labour, the Dr Mengeles etc.

    Saying that the the Shoah was a uniqely evil crime does not in any way diminish the evil of colonial genocides such as what happened in the Belgian Congo and to the Herrero peoples of Namimbia (then German South West Africa) which acted as prototypes for the Nazi genocides of the 20th century as well as the genocides of the Native Anericans, First Nation and Aboriginal peoples.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Barry, the myth that the greatest crime ever was inflicted on the Jewish people; the myth that Israel is the supreme victim; the myth that it has a moral army rather than the perpetrator of war crimes and crimes against humanity; the myth that the state is not build on land theft and dispossession.

      Delete
  11. Barry - there is no point in flagging up points that don't compare. No one is presenting them in arguments. What is being presented is a very clear point that it is fair to describe war crimes and crimes against humanity as Nazi like. Why other than for propaganda purposes would that be disputed? Netanyahu knows that because of Jewish history and the narrative weaved around it, it doesn't pay to have Israel deemed as having committed war crimes. It destroys the myth.

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    Replies
    1. Anthony

      What in your opinion is this myth, this narrative that is weaved around Jewish history? I am genuinely not trying to score points; just seeking greater understanding of where you are coming from.

      There have been war crimes and crimes against humanity since the dawn of history. What made those of the Nazis unique was the stated intention to kill every single member of a particular ethnic/religious group as a war aim the creation of a logistics and bureacracy to implement it. That is why it was necessary to make the perpetration of genocide a specific crime in international law as per the Genocide Act, 1948 and, I would argue, the promulgation of the UN Responsibility to Protect Doctrine in 2005.

      The order by the International Court of Justice last week to Myanmar last week to take preventative measures to stop further genocidal measures against the Royhinga people under the Genocide Act was very encouraging.

      Have to say that Shrewsbury deserved their replay against Liverpool. True spirit of the FA Cup! (I should know; Leeds United have made a real art of Cup humiliation down the years).

      Delete
  12. Barry,

    Dr. Yeshayahu Leibowitz was not contemporary, left, British Labour or antisemitic:

    Leibowitz repeatedly called for Israelis to refuse to serve in the occupied territories, and warned that Israel was turning its soldiers in to "Judeo-Nazis", writing that if "the law . . . can allow the use of torture as a way of getting confessions out of prisoners, then this testifies to a Nazi mentality."

    en.wikipedia.org › wiki › Yeshayahu_Leibowitz

    So yes, Israeli state treatment of Palestinians is Nazi-like with among other things the Gaza Ghetto, Apartheid racial pass laws and double standards for Palestinians, Sudetenland thefts, home demolitions, torture, murder, arbitrary detention (even of children) without much or any due process, etc.

    Human Rights Watch

    https://www.hrw.org/world-report/2019/country-chapters/israel/palestine

    Amnesty International

    https://www.amnesty.org/en/countries/middle-east-and-north-africa/israel-and-occupied-palestinian-territories/report-israel-and-occupied-palestinian-territories/

    How Israel Exploits the Holocaust to Justify War Crimes Against Palestinians

    https://therealnews.com/stories/how_israel_exploits_the_holocaust_to_justify_war_crimes_against_palestinians

    The Genocide of the Palestinian People

    https://ccrjustice.org/genocide-palestinian-people-international-law-and-human-rights-perspective

    Mass Graves of Palestinians:

    'The remains belong to people of different ages, including women, children and the elderly, some of which bear signs of violence.'

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2334205/Mass-grave-uncovered-containing-dozens-Palestinians-killed-1948-war-founded-Israel.html

    Jaffa mass graves of old men, women and children from 1948 war:

    https://www.haaretz.com/.premium-jaffa-mass-graves-said-to-be-from-1948-war-1.5272578

    So, there are your ghettos and burial pits!

    Where might Israelis of 1948 have learned these tactics?

    And there are ever reports of many Dr. Mengeles:

    How Israeli doctors enable the Shin Bet’s torture industry

    https://www.972mag.com/shin-bet-torture-israel-doctors/

    https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20191008-israel-doctors-enabling-shin-bets-torture-industry-says-veteran-activist/

    The only thing missing maybe are gas chambers...

    Which weren’t just for Jews.

    And finally note you didn’t just say, as you do now, “…that the the Shoah was a uniqely evil crime”. You said it was the “…the greatest crime in human history.”

    And in so doing, implicit racist that you are, you dishonestly diminished the greater evil genocides against dark skinned people.

    Have you no shame?

    ReplyDelete
  13. Anthony,

    Only Nazis and Zion-Nazis believe there is a “Jewish” gene.

    Even though researchers already produced the first complete human genome sequence:

    The genetic blueprint of the human body - in April 2003.

    https://www.genome.gov/outreach/unlocking-lifes-code-exhibition

    Which means we are all just Kenyans and one up from savannah chimps.

    And speaking of mass murdering physicians there was Dr. Baruch Goldstein:

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baruch_Goldstein

    And his Israeli political god father who was also American:

    Western democracy has to be ruled out. For me that’s cut and dried: there’s no question of setting up democracy in Israel, because democracy means equal rights for all, irrespective of racial or religious origins. Therefore, democracy and Zionism cannot go together.” – Meir Kahane

    https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Meir_Kahane

    Truth told they are the heart and soul of Israel.

    There is even a Park and Shrine named for them there:

    Meir Kahane Memorial Park

    https://www.thedailybeast.com/inside-hebron-israels-heart-of-darkness

    https://imeu.org/article/meir-kahane-the-jewish-defense-league-the-kach-movement

    Baruch Goldstein’s Martyr’s Tomb (which is in Kahane Memorial Park)

    https://www.icp.org/browse/archive/objects/settlers-pray-at-the-tomb-of-baruch-goldstein-a-militant-settler-who-killed

    http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/225806

    And there isn’t a dime’s worth of difference between them and the Likud and their right-wing Knesset partners.

    So, the only thing missing are swastikas and gas chambers.

    Now why is that gullible goy Gilheany boy taken in by all this racist nonsense?

    Oh right, he is gullible… a useful idiot.


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    Replies
    1. Eoghan - I sometimes wonder if it is learned behaviour. If the Israelis started gassing the Palestinians I would not expect much opposition in Israel.

      Delete
    2. Actually further to that when Tel Aviv dug as deep as they could they found that , horror of horrors, they shared the exact same mtDNA with Palestinians from way back in the day.

      How they rationalize that is beyond me!

      Delete
  14. Perhaps Eoghan might consider writing a coherent article for this weblog as opposed to scrawling his juvenile type graffiti on comment's board.

    I wonder if this glorified corner boy insults face to face those he disagrees with in the way he does on this forum.

    ReplyDelete
  15. Barry,

    Yeesh!

    Now you're giving lessons on coherency and courage.

    When you said: you’d have no more engagement with me.

    So, try to have the courage of your racist and anti-Irish convictions.

    And answer the question!

    Have you no shame?

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  16. I am not addressing Eoghan directly nor will I address anyone else who trades personal abuse as a substitjute for ideas and rational arguments.

    Other sites have a policy of play the ball not the man or woman as I have said before.

    ReplyDelete
  17. Barry,

    Translation: you have no shame even when impeached on your prior inconsistent statements and worse you cry foul when called out on it. You're not by chance any relation to Donald Trump?

    ReplyDelete
  18. Steve R.,

    Palestinians as the real Hebrews?

    Why (ahem) that's the most antisemitic idea...

    Oh wait, Palestinians are Semites and their language Semitic.

    Well then, obviously, they're self-hating Semites.

    Yeah, that's the ticket.

    Any thing to keep that Euro-Yank Zionist fog machine working.

    Because eastern Europeans & Americans have more right to that land.

    Since the bronze age Bible says so.

    Nuff said.

    Now able bodies to the right, women and kids to the left.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Yep, totally agree.

      And it sent them berzerk trying to find their 'Jewish gene'!

      Delete