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Gérard Malachy ✍ When an online video appeared this weekend past of masked racist extremists posing before our National flag and invoking the name of the Irish Citizens Army, it was impossible not to think of one of the ICA’s founding principles - “to sink all differences of birth, privilege and creed under the common name of the Irish people.” 


Ideals rarely seem so fragile as when they are taken by those who would undo them. As an Irish Republican, it’s hard to watch these groups or individuals wrap themselves in our history while pushing openly xenophobic and racist politics. These people use the Republican mantle, but what they promote runs completely against the ideals our movement was built on. They’re certainly not Republican projects. They’re circuses formed by opportunists trying to carve out a base by stirring up fear around refugees and migrant workers. 

Let’s be clear about what Republicanism actually is. Our politics come from the anti-imperialist ideals of the United Irishmen, from Connolly and Ryan’s international socialism, and from the many struggles against structural inequality in Irish History. Republicanism is civic, egalitarian and anti-sectarian at its core. It doesn’t recognise ethnic privilege, and it doesn’t blame the powerless for problems created by capitalism, imperialism or the institutions that defend them. 

Those now using Republicanism as a flag of convenience to attack migrants aren’t continuing any Irish struggle. They’re simply of the same current as the hate filled mobs gaining ground up and down the country. Their whole tactic is to turn working-class frustration away from the landlords, profiteers, developers, bosses and the result of neo-colonial underdevelopment; and turn it downward instead, towards people who hold no power or influence. It’s the oldest divide-and-conquer trick in the book. It weakens the proletariat, strengthens reaction, and hands victory to the same systems Republicanism has always been opposed to. 

That’s why Republicans have a responsibility to call this charade out. We can’t allow grifters and opportunists to twist our politics for their own gain, or in other cases, for self-preservation. We need to be firm that those pushing racist fear under a Republican mantle have no claim on the legacy or the future of our struggle. They don’t stand with Tone or Russell, they don’t stand with Connolly or Mellows, and they certainly don’t stand with any vision of a Socialist Republic. 

If we don’t defend the principles of our own tradition, others will rewrite them beyond recognition. Now is the time to draw the line. Republicanism belongs to those committed to national sovereignty, equality, democracy, international solidarity and the dismantling of oppressive systems everywhere; not to those who target the vulnerable to cover up their own political emptiness and ignorance. 

⏩Gérard Malachy is a County Down-based Socialist Republican and grassroots activist involved in Dundalk Communities United, the Community Action Tenants Union, and BDS Newry.

Circuses, Not Republican Projects

Stories From A Border Kitchen ★ Written by Dr Patrick Mulroe.

The divisions in Northern Irish society are brilliantly lampooned in a now famous scene from the hit Channel 4 comedy Derry Girls when a group of teenagers are asked to explain the differences between Catholics and Protestants. ‘Protestants keep their toasters in cupboards’ and ‘Protestants hate Abba’ are among the nuggets from the now iconic scene. 

In the last while another division may have emerged in what is a similarly obscure domain: data gathering methodologies.

Opinion polls and surveys on constitutional matters have particular importance in Northern Ireland due in part to the vague wording of the ‘Border Poll’ provision of the Good Friday Agreement:

The Secretary of State shall exercise the power [to call a Border Poll] if at any time it appears likely to him (sic) that a majority of those voting would express a wish that Northern Ireland should cease to be part of the United Kingdom and form part of a united Ireland.

Victims campaigner Raymond McCord took a legal action in 2018 seeking clarification of this clause. McCord wanted to know the exact criteria that would determine whether or not a poll was to be held. He lost the case. 

Derry Girls & Data Gathering Methodologies

Dr John Coulter ✍ Four decades have elapsed since the signing of the notorious Anglo-Irish Agreement of 15 November 1985 between Dublin and London which gave Southern Ireland its first major say in the running of Northern Ireland since before partition in the 1920s.

For Unionism, it was yet another betrayal of the pro-Union community in Northern Ireland, this time by a person most Unionists once regarded as a hero - then Tory Prime Minister Maggie Thatcher.

It was to mobilise the Unionist community in a manner not witnessed since the Ulster Workers’ Council strike of 1974 which collapsed the then Sunningdale power-sharing Executive.

What was a tremendous shock for Unionism is that the signing came just over a year after the Provos’ bid to kill Thatcher in the October 1984 in the Brighton hotel bombing in England at the annual Tory party conference.

Did Thatcher think that by signing the Anglo-Irish Agreement, also known as the Hillsborough Accord and to many Unionists, the Dublin Diktat, that the Dail would agree to some magic cross-border security arrangement to defeat IRA terrorism?

Perhaps what Thatcher, her advisors and supporters wanted was some form of official security ‘hot pursuit’ agreement whereby the then RUC, Ulster Defence Regiment, other British Army regiments and even the SAS could chase IRA and INLA terrorists across the Irish border deep into Southern Ireland.

Many republican terror gangs were using the political and geographical safety of the Irish Republic to plan, launch and especially escape when they carried out terrorist atrocities in Northern Ireland.

Did Thatcher seriously think she could trust the Dublin establishment to reciprocate a say in the running of Northern Ireland by cancelling out Southern Ireland being a safe haven for republican terror gangs? Thatcher was obviously misinformed, misguided, even deluded if she thought she could trust the Dublin establishment to keep its side of the bargain.

The Anglo-Irish Agreement spawned the notorious Maryfield Secretariat, located near Belfast, which was where Dublin’s say in interfering in Northern Ireland affairs was administered from.

The real depth of the degree of betrayal of Unionism by Thatcher was etched on the face of the then Ulster Unionist Party leader, Jim Molyneaux, during one of his frequent visits to our family home in North Antrim.

Molyneaux, or ‘Gentleman Jim’ as he was affectionately known in some Unionist circles, viewed my late dad, Rev Dr Robert Coulter MBE, as a political confidant; someone he could talk to and it would not end up in the media.

I was a staff journalist at the Belfast News Letter in 1985 and I was allowed to sit in on their meetings provided I did not repeat what was discussed in the media, too.

In all the years I knew Molyneaux, I have never witnessed him being so depressed as that lunch meeting at our North Antrim home shortly before Christmas 1985.

Molyneaux was close to tears as he admitted he did not think Thatcher would sign such an agreement. He felt totally snubbed by her attitude. Put bluntly, he gave the strong vibe ‘I didn’t see that one coming!’

Molyneaux had often talked about his ‘special relationship’ with Thatcher and the Tory Right-wing. In 1985, the UUP was by far the ‘Big Dog’ of Unionism as the lead party and even within the UUP, the Right-wing Ulster Monday Club pressure group was the most influential of all the factions within the party.

The agreement, signed on British soil between Thatcher and then Taoiseach Dr Garret FitzGerald, was to spark the Unionist protest movements, the Ulster Says No and Ulster Still Says No campaigns.

It saw Unionists getting involved in politics who had previously been inactive or uninterested. The first major Ulster Says No rally at Belfast City Hall saw an estimated 250,000 attend.

One of the poignant images that day was the crowd’s reaction to then DUP leader Rev Ian Paisley’s famous ‘Never, never, never, never’ remark. But whilst people can remember that remark from Paisley senior, can anyone - including myself - remember a single quote from Molyneaux’s speech on that occasion?

Looking back on that specific rally, Molyneaux was very muted. Was it a sign that his ‘special relationship’ with Thatcher was in political tatters, or did he come to the realisation that the seeds of his demise of his leadership of the UUP had been sown at Hillsborough.

While it would be another decade before he would relinquish the leadership in 1995, the grassroots mumblings within the UUP about the need to replace him had already started. The Hillsborough Accord merely shifted them up a notch.

Within Unionism, other organisations were launched or mobilised. The Ulster Clubs was formed, which was a mirror image of the Unionist Clubs which had existed in the early 20th century to organise grassroots opposition to Home Rule for Ireland.

On the paramilitary front, Ulster Resistance was launched with its distinctive red berets. Both the UDA and UVF saw an increase in membership.

Politically, the concept of Ulster independence came on the agenda with the formation of fringe pressure groups such as the Ulster Movement for Self-Determination (MSD). Even the Far Right National Front capitalised on Unionist mobilisation by appointing one of its ruling national directorate members to oversee recruitment in Northern Ireland.

Party politically, too, it was to see a massive degree of Unionist unity between the parties with agreed candidates at the January 1986 protest Westminster by-elections and the 1987 Westminster General Election. Although ironically, Unionism as a whole was to lose an MP in each of those two elections.

What Unionism needs to do in reflecting on the 40th anniversary of the signing of the Dublin Diktat, is to ask itself - how can this spirit of mobilisation and unity be reinvigorated? Put bluntly, Unionism will need to find this seemingly long-lost spirit in time for the 2027 Stormont elections.

In 1985 and 1986, Unionists tramped the cold, wet streets of Ulster against the Anglo-Irish Agreement and got nowhere. The election guns have already been fired for the 2027 campaign.

The seeds which spawned the Pan Nationalist Front were sown in November 1985. That Front is now in full bloom in 2025. Unionism needs to find the political weed killer to spray on it by the time of the next Northern Ireland Assembly poll.
 
Follow Dr John Coulter on Twitter @JohnAHCoulter
John is a Director for Belfast’s Christian radio station, Sunshine 1049 FM. 

Unionists Need To Learn Bitter Lessons 40 Years On From Dublin Diktat!

Lynx By Ten To The Power Of One Thousand Eight Hundred And Ninety

 

A Morning Thought @ 2969

Anthony McIntyre 📺 Captain Robert Nairac has long taken on the ghostly spectre of Banquo.

Even today while reading Jaz McCann's brilliant book on his 6000 days spent in jail, Nairic made a cameo appearance, allegedly involved in the cross border kidnapping of a Provisional IRA activist. Although Belfast solicitor Kevin Winters has cast serious doubt on the reliability of many of the supposed sightings, Nairac will continue to hover like some scenes of crime phantasm, his shadowy presence concealing more than revealing. 

If Bobby Sands is the IRA's most name-recognized Volunteer, then Robert Nairac is his equal in terms of British soldiers being remembered. Sands and Nairac, who died four years apart, may not have survived the war physically, but in terms of popular memory, they are always knocking on the door, never to be refused entry on the grounds that they are strangers. Although Bobby Sands was laid to rest in a place where he avowedly requested not to be interred, his family at least know where his remains lie and have the opportunity to visit the hallowed ground where he rests. Not so for the family of Robert Nairac. 

Regardless of the allegations against Captain Nairac, even if he is guilty on all counts, there is nothing that justifies his disappearance. His fate is an IRA war crime that unlike the IRA has not gone away. It will persist as a live war crime for as long as the dead soldier's remains stay in a state of concealment. 

The recovery of Captain Robert Nairac's body has become a project to which a former IRA leader, Martin McAllister, has invested considerable time and energy. His endeavours of almost thirty years were brought into the public sphere last week in a televised documentary, The Disappearance of Captain Nairac. It is the work of Alison Millar and Darragh MacIntyre, no novices when it comes to turning over the heavy stones which have suppressed beneath their weight many secrets from the North's violent political conflict.

Martin McAllister

I first met Martin McAllister in Crumlin Road Prison in 1974. He arrived from a military hospital, after being shot by the British Army during an IRA operation in South Armagh. That he made the jail at all was down to the 'chivalry' of a British Army medic who intervened to stop Marines kicking him to death having failed with their bullets. His capture came just a month or so after he and eighteen others had blasted their way out of Portlaoise Prison. Climbing the career ladder was not for him. Fighting the war was. 

When Brendan Hughes was moved to the H Blocks Martin McAllister replaced him as O/C of the Long Kesh cages eight months after the disappearance of Robert Nairac. A no-nonsense leader, there was no one then who could envisage him committing himself to the search for the remains of the dead undercover soldier. The Volunteers under his command knew him to be a principled republican. None of us realised just how principled, even though he had earlier been suspended by the IRA leadership within Long Kesh because he had the temerity to write to the outside leadership to boldly state his deep disquiet about another IRA atrocity, the Kingsmill massacre: 'a war crime of the worst sort.' It is the IRA equivalent of Bloody Sunday. 

Martin McAlister would have shot Robert Nairac had he confronted him during the IRA's armed struggle. The Grenadier Guard would as readily have ended the IRA volunteer's life. But the chivalry of the British Army medic who saved his life has endured with Martin McAllister, a chivalry he seems determined to reciprocate, even if it gets up the noses of some erstwhile comrades.

Why trying to do the humane thing should annoy people needs an explanation, but from them, not from Martin McAllister. His quest is honourable: to bring to an end the unpardonable cruelty that the IRA policy of disappearing people amounts to. The surviving family and friends of Captain Nairac endure this cruelty every day, from which there is no respite. Returning British war dead to their families would be an infinitely more authentic act of chivalry than the posturing political pomp of laying wreaths for British war dead.

Robert Nairac was brave but also, in the view of others, stupid. The late Clive Fairweather, a former SAS colonel - footage of whom featured in the broadcast - told me over alcohol one evening in Edinburgh almost twenty years ago that Nairac was, in that unforgettable Kenny Everett phrase, a cupid stunt. A stupid intelligence gatherer may be an unkind way to characterise the Grenadier Guard, but it helps bring out the complex make-up of the missing soldier who managed to blend archaic Catholicism with a love of Ireland, while at the same time immersing himself in a killing machine willing to bring its own violence to Irish Catholics, ostensibly in pursuit of peace. With these themes running through it the documentary fleshes out the character of Nairac, serving up a persona as bizarre as it was brave.

Emphasizing only the bravery of Nairac and downplaying that of McAllister, was not the purpose of the documentary makers. This is a both a story of reckless courage in war and contemplative courage in peace, illustrating that sometimes our enemies can be more empathetic than our friends. 

⏩Follow on Twitter @AnthonyMcIntyre.

The Disappearance Of Captain Nairac

The Journal 📰 False claims about asylum seekers often use terms in confusing and contradictory ways.

Ongoing Crisis Involving migrants have introduced an obscure lexicon about asylum seekers into political debates in Ireland.

Terms like “human trafficking”, “economic migrants”, “illegal immigration” and “refugee” are sometimes used to specify the legalities of people coming into Ireland.

However, these terms are also frequently misused by anti-immigrant groups to conflate those seeking protection with those who travel to Ireland for job opportunities.

The Journal has increasingly seen such terms used interchangeably online, including in misinformation about refugees, or at protests against new arrivals being housed in certain areas.

But digging into the meaning behind such terms shows that there are specific distinctions between those entering the country.

The conflation of these terms by anti-immigrant groups can often make them seem the same, and the thrust of arguments by those groups sound more convincing to those who can’t distinguish between them.

The Journal’s FactCheck team regularly comes across nonsense claims online that use these terms: for example, posts that that refugees are economic migrants, or that asylum-seekers in State housing are unvetted and don’t receive background checks.

Continue @ The Journal.

Explainer 🪶 What Is The Difference Between ‘Economic Migrants’, ‘Refugees’ And 'Asylum-Seekers'?

Right Wing Watch 👀 Written by Kyle Mantyla.


It was in his classic dystopian novel "1984" that George Orwell first coined the term "doublethink" to describe the process of indoctrination used by a totalitarian state to control its citizens.

Within the context of the novel, the superstate of Oceania is ruled by an all-powerful organization known as The Party, which presents itself as both infallible and omniscient, thereby forcing citizens to engage in "doublethink" in order to reconcile the contradictions that inevitably arise whenever real world events demonstrate that The Party is not, in fact, infallible and omniscient.

As Orwell explained the concept, "doublethink" is the ability "to hold simultaneously two opinions which cancelled out, knowing them to be contradictory and believing in both of them" and "to forget whatever it was necessary to forget, then to draw it back into memory again at the moment when it was needed, and then promptly to forget it again."

While Orwell's nightmarish regime has not yet actually come to fruition, the concept of "doublethink" is very real and its practice was on full display during a recent program hosted by Hitler-loving racist, 

Continue @ Right Wing Watch

Nick Fuentes And The Art Of Doublethink

Lynx By Ten To The Power Of One Thousand Eight Hundred And Eighty Nine

 

A Morning Thought @ 2968

Anthony McIntyre  ☠ Today's weather is horrible.


It will not deter Drogheda Stands With Palestine later this morning from shivering in solidarity with the besieged of Gaza. Besides, as it is Ireland we are advised not to complain about the weather as it will change in fifteen minutes anyway. This is a country where climate change takes place four times a day.

As wet and windy as it has been, the storm we have possesses nothing of the strength of the hurricane that is currently pounding the BBC whose head of news and director general both resigned this week. Jonathan Cook, if we may borrow the analogy, in a recent weather report, observed that:

The BBC’s now in a death loop: it grows ever more craven to the billionaires, shifting the political centre of gravity further rightwards, even as the billionaire-owned media claim it’s too ‘leftwing’.

The top flight departures came in the wake of a Daily Telegraph exposé which revealed the 2021 BBC manipulation of camera footage for the purposes of presenting Donald Trump in a negative light. Seriously, if they had left the man now being ridiculed as Donica Lewinsky to his own devices, he would have generated more negative publicity than a child protection conference for rapist reverends.


That the axe fell their way was not down to the crime of manufactured news but because of the powerful figure it was manufactured against. Again, let Jonathan Cook explain:

The reason heads have rolled at the BBC this time are not because it made a journalistic blunder – it makes them all the time. It is because the corporation foolishly offered an open goal to the billionaire right and its media outlets.
If anyone is falling for the manufactured “furore” over Panorama’s latest journalistic gaffe, there are examples of far graver malpractice by Panorama – especially on issues related to Israel and Palestine. These editorial crimes have barely caused a ripple, even after they were exposed. 
Why? Because the billionaires love Israel and hate its critics. Israel is their vision of the future: the model of a fortress state in which they believe they can protect themselves from the people whose lives they are destroying around the globe.

This brings us into the dark Zionist heart in the BBC that pumps a malign narrative packaged as news around the public's circulatory system.

When, in May this year, Ramita Navi turned up uninvited to a meeting of BBC executives,  they were discombobulated. As explained in the Observer:

They had not invited her because, as it turned out, the point of the meeting was to set her up as the fall guy.

Navi had been one of the executive directors of the documentary Gaza: Doctors Under Attack. It was a forensic investigation into the Israeli destruction of the Gazan health system. By the time she arrived as an uninvited guest at the meeting the documentary had been delayed for the sixth time. In her words:

the BBC was anxious because it had another Gaza film on its hands: one showing that doctors, medics and hospitals were being targeted and killed by Israel, made by a production company working hand in glove with two of its own journalists . . . An executive called and told us that those at the top of BBC News were ‘very jumpy and paranoid about Gaza’

The documentary was important because, again to cite Navi:

The BBC’s coverage was not showing what people could see on their phones: the killing of children, the targeting of hospitals, the erasing of entire families.

Those in leadership at the BBC trusted neither Amnesty International or The United Nations. Israel was its preferred source for information. As one BBC producer put it: “We all fear the phone call from the Israeli embassy.”

The obstacles encountered by Ramita Navi are emblematic of the malaise of structural and ideological bias that permeates the culture of BBC management.

In a damning report by the Centre For Media Monitoring, the BBC found itself taking serious criticism for its pro-Israel bias. The report's authors pointed out that:

Across the BBC’s coverage, a clear dynamic has emerged: the marginalisation of Palestinian suffering and the amplification of Israeli narratives. The data shows that the BBC has consistently failed to report Israel’s war on Gaza with required impartiality.

Of course, the Labour government led by Der Starmer wants no such thing as impartiality or accuracy in reporting the genocide.  Culture Secretary, Lousy Liza Nandy, responding in July to the broadcasting of another documentary, Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone, whined that:

I have been very clear that people must be held accountable for the decisions that were taken . . .I have asked the question to the board [of the BBC]. Why has nobody been fired?

Hopefully that reference to accountability comes back to haunt her and Der Starmer for their government's role in facilitating and enabling genocide. To conclude with Jonathan Cook:

The BBC has not failed. It has done exactly what it is there to do: help the British government conceal the fact that there is a genocide going on in Gaza, and one that the UK has been knee-deep in assisting.

⏩Follow on Twitter @AnthonyMcIntyre.

British Bias Corporation

Dixie Elliot ✊This is Gerry Adams, who sold Easter Eggs for 'Uniting Ireland'.

 What was it he used as a sales pitch?
 
Easter's not just about the Easter Rising, its about Easter Eggs.

Now he's trying to sell this one about 'a First Minister For All.'
 
It's just a lame excuse for becoming what Sinn Féin have become. For the wasted lives of brave IRA volunteers and civilians.
 
How can you possibly convince people, who's culture is based entirely on the hatred of everything Irish, and who constantly refuse to budge an inch from that position, to accept Irish Unification by taking part in everything which is repugnant about British imperialism?
 
These betrayals of principle merely feeds their desire to see an end to any aspiration to Irish Unity and more importantly the defeat of Irish Republicanism.

"Never a country gained her freedom.

When she sued on bended knee. - Lady Jane Wilde.

Thomas Dixie Elliot is a Derry artist and a former H Block Blanketman.
Follow Dixie Elliot on Twitter @IsMise_Dixie

First Minister For Partition

Frankie Quinn ★ Kearney alluded to everyone being permitted to commemorate their dead. 

While this, of course, is true, there is a distinct difference between a volunteer of the Irish Republican Army and soldiers of the British imperialist forces who are paid killers and are employed by governments to terrorise, brutalise, maim and murder the occupied population of their invaded target country, all in the interests of their imperialist conquests.

A lot of the working-class lads and lassies who join this barbaric army are of course unaware of this fact. Hence the youthful age at which one can join the British army - 18 years old. The conduct of British imperialist forces is widely held as the worst in history, the world over; perhaps only surpassed by the cowardly murderers and rapists of the monstrous IDF.

In 1920, the British Empire ruled over a quarter of the world – 26 percent of it, with a population of over 449 million people. Their bloodthirsty rule by all manner of murderous methods and barbarism is well documented and even as early as last year, here in Ireland, they were found guilty of the torture of Irish republicans, namely the hooded men. Additionally, there are still political prisoners being held in Irish prisons; this is, in effect, internment without trial.

Even more far-reaching draconian laws are being introduced to crush any intention of rebellion. It is not a matter of agreeing with some of the strategies these people adopt, but the principal of states undermining, breaking and manipulating the law to serve their own warped purpose. When those who make the law, break the law, then there is no law.

So, with that said, we return to the insult of comparison of our resistance fighters, who SF placed in the same category, next to hired killers and mercenaries. By far and away, most Irish republican freedom fighters, who were involved with different organisations, were decent, normal people placed in an abnormal situation, against their will.

They found themselves involved in a revolutionary movement, in resisting the occupation and invasion of their country by brutal foreign forces in a reign of terror. These were ordinary working-class people, men and women trying to survive and etch out a living for themselves and their families. This, in itself, was extremely difficult amidst a unionist dominated country, deliberately created by its invasion and partitioning by the British, at the point of a gun, to control their own imperialist interests, and to this day, still maintained at the point of a gun.

The soldiers and volunteers of the Irish Republican Army and the Irish National Liberation Army were of the people, for the people. Supported and covered by the people. They were volunteers - no wage, no financial gain involved. When a person became a member of the movement, as a volunteer, they were told there was only three ways this could end; imprisonment, death, or life on the run, and all three for some.

This is about dignity, pride and a thirst for freedom, sovereignty and a 32-county socialist republic. We were not even given the dignity by the oppressor to bury our dead - comrades who gave their lives so we, the Irish people, might be free and independent, running our own affairs without British interference.

So, as a comrade of mine pointed out the other day, under the hustle and bustle of the Remembrance Day rubbish, the Shinners slipped in another conformist betrayal by attempting to lump our fallen resistance fighters into the same category as British mercenaries and paid killers.

Our volunteer soldiers invaded no one’s country and stole no one’s land; they fought for a free and independent socialist republic. This, to benefit all the people of Ireland. And, of course, everyone can commemorate their dead. But, for a once revolutionary party to give full military honours to our oppressor and the most brutal imperialist forces in the world is totally wrong and we will not accept it.

We Remember Our Fallen Resistance Fighters With Dignity And Pride.

⏩ Frankie Quinn is a former republican prisoner who is now a community activist. He is the author of Open Gates, a book of poetry.   

Declan Kearney 🪶 Edentubber Commemoration

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