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Gary Robertson ⚽There are no longer any excuses.

Celtic are a team in terminal decline.
 
We witnessed the LASK fiasco, the Rangers capitulation, the humiliation by Ferencváros. And the icing on the cake - the white flag waving surrender at Celtic Park to Rangers once again on Sunday.
 
I’m certain I can’t be the only one who, whilst trying to remain outwardly optimistic, knew deep down that Celtic would lose.
 
Again - and I feel like a broken record - no one should ever expect victory. On any given day any team can pull off a result. It’s not the losing that hurts but how you lose.
 
It was a cowardly performance. There are too many on the park wearing a shirt they don’t belong in.
 
Celtic a team born from adversity, tragedy and necessity, a team with a fighting spirit, have become the whipping boys of Scottish football. No one fears us anymore and rightly so. What’s to fear? We’re as toothless as your average Tommy Robinson fanboy and as cowardly as the keyboard warriors on social media who know full well they’d never say to your face the things they’ll post online.
 
There’s no fight, no grit, nothing.
 
We all watched it. Some now celebrating and well done to them. Clearly McInnes has Martin's measure. Derek set up a plan, his team played their football and managed to outfox Celtic.
 
Of course, from my perspective and that of Celtic fans around the globe, it’s been as painful as nailing your genitals to the floor. Again we’re willing to endure if the team are at least giving us reason to believe but they’re not.
 
I checked player ratings after the game, and without singling out any particular player we had 3s and 4s with a couple of 6s At Home against The Rangers.
 
We’re not playing PSG, Barcelona or Bayern - it’s Rangers and our players are clueless.
 
Of course at the final whistle the rumour mill went into meltdown with tales of O’Neill leaving, takeovers, player strikes all sorts. And whilst these are fun to play with online I’d much prefer to stick to facts and the facts are this:

⚽The board are failing the manager
⚽The manager is failing the team
⚽The team are failing the fans
⚽The fans are becoming irate with the board
⚽The board are remaining silent (or at best some pathetic rebuilding for the future excuse)

. . . And so on. 

It’s a vicious circle that needs to be broken and fast. Celtic need major investment. A clear out from top to bottom. Dare I say a new manager? Yes, but more so for 74 year old Martin's sake and his health. A clear out of the dead wood and new younger hungrier players brought in. The old adage that Rome wasn’t built in a day applies here but I’m sure we’d all accept a few lean years if we at least saw progress. I know I would. Right now the only progress in the Glasgow fishbowl of football is with Rangers.
 
Celtic had an opportunity to open an eight point gap on Sunday. Instead our lead is cut to two.
 
Some may say it’s overreacting, melodramatic perhaps to be so concerned at this situation but I’d argue apathy is what’s landed us here now.
 
The happy clappers who tell people like me to “get behind the team it’s now they need you” are fucking deluded.
 
We got behind the team, we’ve been behind this team for decades, we’ve seen bad teams, bad players, bad managers but there was always hope, always something to believe in. Players would pull on that jersey and play with pride, they’d walk onto that hallowed turf and know Celtic isn’t a club, it’s a cause. They’d understand the history, what it meant to play there, and we would at least admire their efforts and performances. This Celtic team have given us nothing to cling onto in the last few games. As I said before scraping one goal victories against new promoted sides or bottom six side teams made us look far better than we are. Our first real challenge, and we crash out of the League cup. Our first real challenge in the league and we roll over and surrender.
 
I suppose we can be grateful for small mercies in that it’s three weeks now til Celtic play again (Away to Motherwell on Oct 11th) so that’ll give us time for the pain to subside. Instead we can be disappointed by Scotland, oh what joy.
 
After the match on Sunday I noticed I’d spilled coffee on my shirt so I quickly removed it and launched it across the kitchen to my washing pile. It landed in the bin and for several hours I swithered whether to leave it there but at 0130am it got its reprieve. However it might be stuck on a hanger and hidden away in the wardrobe for a while as right now Celtic are genuinely affecting my mental health.
I’m sure I’m not alone.
 
So yes I apologise that this weeks column is shorter than usual and nothing but gloom and despair but right now a very heavy dark cloud hangs over Paradise.
 
We’re left now to speculate. Will Martin walk? Will Desmond sell up? Will the team find the form we so desperately need them to? Or will we in fact be travelling home from Motherwell after another rank rotten performance?

Time will tell but one thing is for certain we will still be Celtic fans/supporters. That doesn’t change. The one constant is in our DNA. We’re not “fair weather” fans, we’re people who over the years have invested hundreds if not thousands of pounds into Celtic. We’ve been entertained, we’ve celebrated and we’ve cried together but we’ve walked on with hope in our hearts as the song says but right now I think it’s safe to say that hope is wearing thin.
 
I’ll wake up tomorrow, next week, next year (if God spares me) a Celtic fan but I beg of this team - find some passion, some pride. Give us fans a team to believe in. We’ll accept defeat if that defeat is matched with determination. What we can’t continue to witness is this Celtic team thrashing around like a beached salmon waiting to be put out its misery.
 
There’s a magpie that often lands on the fence outside my sitting room window. I wish he’d bring a friend.

Finally fuck Ed Sheeran

🐼 Gary Robertson is the TPQ Scottish football correspondent.

Nailing Genitals To The Floor

Barry Gilheany ✍ When President Donald Trump makes unscripted announcements which spring from what could be either damaged or under-developed frontal lobes of his brain, immediate responses can range from pressing the panic button to shrugging off “that’s just Trump being Trump, he’s not being serious”. 


The latter response is probably the correct reaction to his recent public musings about a United Ireland being “a good idea” which although coming from a well of insouciant ignorance of and wilful blindness to the history, complexities and current equilibrium of forces on the island of Ireland do not actually change anything vis-a-viz the Belfast/Good Friday Agreement despite the predictable nationalist/republican glee and unionist harrumphing. 

Likewise the gory threats that Trump issued over, for example, to bring “fire and fury” to North Korea; to “erase Iranian civilisation” and to annex Greenland and Canada which have eventually resulted in sheepish climbdowns suggesting that his bark is worse than his bite or that the Emperor has no clothes. However, these pronouncements were made in the realm of foreign affairs where despite his deluded beliefs in his divine omnipotence, the hallmark of tyrants throughout history, he simply bends the rest of the world to his will at the click of fingers. A different calculus emerges when he deploys his ignorance and cognitive illiteracy at home with the power of Presidential fiat in the trifecta polity that is currently the United States of America. Such is the case with his executive order of 10 August 2026 on childhood vaccinations

This order – which gives recommendations only, since vaccine policies are set by individual states, says that all children should receive just 11 of the current 18 vaccines recommended by the American Academy of Paediatrics. It recommends separating all the combined MMR (measles, mumps and rubella) vaccine into three separate shots. And it says that each vaccine should be given on a separate medical visit, not together.[1] The Order also directs the Department of Justice to investigate where starts are in violation of exemptions for childhood vaccine mandates, including parental authority and disability accommodations as well as religious and medical reasons.[2]

This was followed by an announcement by Trump on 18 September 2026 that his administration will recommend that some childhood vaccines be separated into five 20% doses six months apart. In justifying reduction of vaccine strengths; he forecast, using powers of scientific observation and forecasting known only to him, he predicted that there would be a “massive reduction” in autism. He did not state which vaccines would be affected. Not coincidentally, The Washington Post linked remarks by Robert F. Kennedy, Jr, US Health Secretary and prominent vaccine sceptic, telling his Children’s Health Defence organisation that “they have a friend in the White House” to these announcements.[3]

Trump’s justifications for the vaccine restrictions were depressingly one of a piece with his stream of consciousness, shooting from the hip, deranged statements and the rehash of the totally debunked connection between receipt of the MMR vaccine and the onset of autism in infants. He said that the MMR shots were “sort of like a nuclear weapon “and could be “quite lethal”. On being asked for evidential proof for the latter; he said in typical folksy wisdom: “What I’ve heard is that there are some people who say that it is that way.” He went on to claim that the doses were the size of a soda bottle, and were being “poured” into the child. Such anonymous attribution is a significant vector of misinformation transmission in relation to vaccination. In fact a single three-vaccine shot is the equivalent of about 10 drops of water.[4]

Measured scientifically based response came from the American paediatrician and vaccine, immunology and virology expert, Paul Offit, best known as the co-inventor of the rotavirus RotaKey, credited with saving hundreds of lives. Maurice R. Hilleman Professor of Vaccinology at the University of Philadelphia and Director of the Vaccine Education Centre at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and author of numerous books and scholarly articles on the subject area, Offit makes the case against vaccine shot separation using the following scientific logic:

When you create a vaccine, you do a dose response curve, and you’re trying to give the least amount of vaccine that induces an immune response that’s protective. So you don’t want to give too much, where you know you don’t need all that, and you don’t want to give too little, where you know is sub-immunogenic.[5]

Jose Romero, a former CDC (Centre for Disease Control) official told the Washington Post that vaccines are formulated in such a way that the total dose produces the intended immune response, so separation into individual shots wouldn’t necessarily make them safer.[6]

While Trump’s stance on vaccine reflects the skin-deep knowledge and reflective practice which he brings to practically every public matter, a more insidious and pernicious strategy around vaccine scepticism is taken by Robert F, Kennedy, Jr. Following the playbook of plausible deniability set out by Dr Andrew Wakefield in his notorious study of twelve gastro-intestinal child subjects in 1998 when he postulated but did not definitively state that there was a causal link between MMR and autism; Kennedy assures Americans in a recent CNN interview that he “never questioned the efficacy of the MMR vaccine," he cultivates doubt and confusion with lies every available opportunity, for example stating the vaccine causes many deaths every year as well as the same afflictions as measles itself: encephalitis, blindness, etc. The CDC on its web page on “Autism and Vaccines” has stated that “… ‘vaccines do not cause autism’ is not an evidence-based claim because studies have not ruled out the possibility.” So far, Congress has not reacted to correct these outrageous contortions of the truth and the trashing of scientific expertise.[7]

The logistics of the proposed new vaccine regimes will likely lead to more measles outbreaks and deaths. The full schedule of jabs will necessitate many more visits to the doctor; some will inevitably be missed. Single shots for mumps, measles and rubella are currently not available in the US; making them will be expensive and some children will contract the diseases before completion of all the shots.[8]

So these measures will likely worsen the incipient and interconnected public health crisis concerning measles incidence across the US which developed last year. That year’s outbreak began in February 2025 in unvaccinated communities in West Texas. Three people died; two children in Texas and adult in New Mexico and dozens of people were hospitalised. Public health experts maintain the true number of affected persons may be higher that state health departments have confirmed. In the first six months of 2025, there were 1,288 cases nationally surpassing 2019 when there were 1,274 cases.[9]

This year has seen more than 2,500 confirmed measles cases in the US, in previous years the numbers were usually in the low hundreds or lower; before a measles vaccine was licensed in 1963, they could approximate to half a million[10]. Back to the future then for the revenge of the purebloods in a country where private wellness literally and figuratively carries a higher premium than public health.

References

[1] Philip Ball … on MAGA v vaccines. The New World Issue 3 September 2026 p.37

[2] Trump proposes splitting sone childhood vaccines into five separate doses. Independent Journal Review.19 September 2026

[3] Anniko Kim Constantino and Jacobh Premuk. Trump signs executive order calling for fewer childhood vaccines, falsely linking shots to autism. CNBC. Health and Science 1 September 2026.

[4] Ball, op cit.

[5] CNBC, op cit.

[6] Ibid

[7] Ball, op cit

[8] Ibid

[9] CNBC, op cit

[10] Ball

⏩Barry Gilheany is a freelance writer, qualified counsellor and aspirant artist resident in Colchester where he took his PhD at the University of Essex. He is also a lifelong Leeds United supporter.

Making America Unhealthy Again 🪶 Trump And Vaccines

Lynx By Ten To The Power Of Two Thousand One Hundred

 

A Morning Thought @ 3272

Independent Derry Republicans     slam the British government and the Multi Agency Review Arrangements (MARA). 


Britannia Waives The Rules

People And Nature ☭ A guest post by John Davies.

1-September-2026

The Serbian general and war criminal Ratko Mladić, the butcher of Srebrenica and too many other places to mention, died last week. It’s an opportunity for reflection, and I felt I couldn’t let it pass.

Bosnia, of which I had previously barely heard, played a big part in my life in the 1990s. I got involved with Workers Aid in 1993, and it sort of swallowed me up.

At the height of the Serbian wars on Bosnia and Kosova, this working class solidarity initiative sent about twenty convoys of aid to those countries. We started with the mining town of Tuzla, in Bosnia, whose miners had sent material support to the British miners in their great strike of 1984-85.

Ratko Mladić (left) and Dutch colonel Thomas Karremans (3rd from left), drinking a toast in
Srebenica in July 1995. Mladić went on to take charge of massacring civilians

When Bosnia was part of Yugoslavia (until 1992), Tuzla had the highest level of inter-marriage between the three religious groups (not that religion had much sway in many former Yugoslav towns). In the final census before the break-up it had the highest percentage of citizens who identified as Yugoslav, rather than Bosnian, Serb, Croat or other nationalities.

It was the spirit of places like Tuzla that Ratko Mladić and the Serb nationalist leader Radovan Karadzic had to destroy. Mladić’s forces murdered hundreds in nearby Brcko, and threw the bodies into the river Sava. Other towns suffered similar fates, particularly in eastern Bosnia.

Tuzla, however, survived – as did its Serb Orthodox church, protected by its citizens, of all faiths.

Seeing the success of the Serb ethnic cleansers, from 1991 western governments were happy to oversee Bosnia being carved up into ethnic statelets. They drew up a series of plans to do just this, all of which failed in the face of determined Bosnian opposition.

Western complicity was evident from the beginning. For example, although the CIA knew about Serb death and rape camps in the Prijedor region, it kept shtum for more than a year.

The worst of the killing took place in 1992, when Bosnia had very little with which to defend itself – the bulk of the Yugoslav army, with its largely Serb officer corps, had gone over to Mladić.

In the face of this huge military disparity, Douglas Hurd, the old-Etonian British foreign secretary, opposed lifting the arms embargo on Bosnia – as did David Owen before him and Malcolm Rifkind afterwards. Hurd drawled that “we don’t want a level killing field”.

This was a patrician, Tory, and thoroughly laughable nod towards pacifist opposition to war in general.

It echoed the condescending drivel in the media about Balkan people being predisposed to war and fighting (rather like the Irish – remember them? – or for that matter the “fascist Ukrainans”) and of having “primitive ethnic hatreds”, the cliché of the hour.

But when people are attacked they defend themselves. And un-level killing fields are particularly bloody places.

Although the killing by Mladić’s forces continued after 1992, it did so at a slower pace, as the Bosnian defences became organised. But as we moved into 1995 everyone who had been paying attention knew that two eastern Bosnian enclaves, Srebrenica and Zepa, were vulnerable.

These contained largely Muslim populations and were a demographic anomaly for those planning ethnic division. Srebrenica’s citizens had organised its defence well, with one particular heavy gun commanding a large area.

But in 1994 they handed over these defences to the UN military force UNPROFOR, on the understanding that both Srebrenica and Zepa would become designated “Safe Areas” under UN protection. Then, in the spring of 1995, Mladić’s forces surrounded Srebrenica, the larger of the two enclaves.

In July 1995, some days before the massacre which ensued, I attended a large public meeting at Leeds University. On the top table were Tariq Ali and Alex Callinicos, a leading member of the Socialist Workers Party (SWP).

Tariq Ali called for the UN to intervene – it already had, catastrophically – and Callinicos pushed the SWP line of “a plague on all your houses”.

Far from calling for lifting the arms embargo, imposed at the beginning of the war – so as to allow the defenceless Bosnians to defend themselves – Callinicos argued that the Balkan working class had to pull its socks up and unite. Taking sides was out of the question.
A Bosnian woman walks among gravestones at the Memorial
Centre Potocari near Srebrenica. Photo: Daily Sabah

The slogan “self-defence is no offence” was relevant, as far as the SWP was concerned, to an attack on an Asian grandmother in Bradford … but deemed out of bounds for her Muslim counterpart in Srebrenica.

The SWP – like most of the “left”, to be fair – preserved its pristine rhetoric throughout the war, a condescending neutrality maintained while watching more than a hundred thousand Bosnians murdered. All whilst mouthing vapid slogans.

And UNPROFOR, having taken over control of the military positions defending Srebrenica, handed over those same positions to Mladić’s Serb nationalists. The UNPROFOR Dutch soldiers then helped Mladić separate the men and boys, thus facilitating the murder of about 8,000 innocent civilians.

More than 30 years later, many on the “left” still feel uncomfortable talking about Bosnia and Kosova. Some – including, shamefully, Noam Chomsky – even went as far as to question the reality of what had happened.

NATO had bombed Serbia: surely, the logic went, the Serbs could not therefore be the bad guys.

I saw a similar skewed, binary logic at play in the 2010s, when “left” groups denied the crimes of Bashar al-Assad’s regime in Syria. And today, when they deny Russian atrocities in Ukraine.

Ratko Mladić was a monster. You can read first hand accounts of his chilling behaviour at Srebrenica – statements given by mothers, describing how Mladić watched and smiled reassuringly, as sixteen-year-old boys were taken away to be mowed down in a nearby field.

But Mladić was aided by the UN’s complicity, and in the case of Thomas Karremans, the Dutch UNPROFOR commander at Srebrenica, they toasted that complicity with slivovitz.

As for the British “left”, the vast majority of it kept their slogans clean.

More about Bosnia and Workers Aid

🔴 Bosnia: unite for mineworkers, for land and for water. No to unjust transition

🔴Workers’ solidarity in wartime: Bosnia 1993, Ukraine 2015

🔴Internationalism series: some reflections on Workers Aid to Bosnia (2020, Libcom)

🔴International Workers Aid to Bosnia (December 1994, The Anarchist Library)

☭ People & Nature is now on mastodon, as well as twitter, whatsapp and telegram. Please follow! Or email peoplenature@protonmail.com, and we’ll add you to our circulation list (2-4 messages per month)

The Butcher Of Srebrenica 🪶 A UN officer Had Drinks, ‘Lefts’ Had Clean Slogans

Dr John Coulter ✍ There’s a lot of muttering on the political jungle drums about a UK reset with the EU, even silly talk of wanting to rejoin the EU.

But do these ‘head in the clouds’ so-called Remainers actually know what is happening in Europe - namely, the electoral march of the Hard Right?

Even before the 2016 referendum in which the UK - albeit narrowly - voted Leave, I have been a staunch euro-skeptic. The old European Economic Community (EEC) was a workable body, but the expanding EU is nothing but a bureaucratic nightmare.

I voted for Brexit and if there was another referendum, I’d vote to stay outside the EU. Nothing would give me greater pleasure than for there to be a similar referendum in Southern Ireland on EU membership, and for Eire to follow the UK in voting Leave now that the republic is geographically isolated from the remainder of the EU.

However, there is one trend which even hardline Brexiteers like myself have to take into consideration. Of the 27 current EU member states, there is a significant Hard Right contingent in at least 16 of those nations, especially Germany and France.

There are two crucial factors we Brexiteers - and all of your Remainers, too - need to take into consideration. Firstly, the military agenda of the new Imperial Russia under modern-day Tsar Vladimir Putin.

While Irish nationalists are hoping for a border poll on Irish unity by 2030, the hard reality is that by that year we could be in a war with Russia. In this respect, the UK Government needs to stop wasting billions of pounds on overseas aid and pump that cash into getting our Armed Forces onto a war footing.

In terms of recruitment to our Armed Forces, recruits should be in no doubt that they are signing up to be prepared for conflict. Putin is not going to stop with Ukraine. That is merely a stepping stone for the rest of Europe. Both the UK and the wider NATO alliance need to box clever when it comes to military strategy.

Emperor Napoleon of France in the early 19th century, Kaiser Wilheim II of Germany in 1914 during the Great War, and Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler in 1941 during World War Two all made the same military blunder - they invaded Russia. In all three conflicts, all the Russians had to do was rapidly retreat as far east as possible and let the fierce Russian winter do the rest.

So the key question remains - is the EU and NATO ready for a ground war with Russia, or will the Russians ‘play dirty’ militarily and use chemical and biological weapons against the West? Or even more bluntly, which side would be prepared to use tactical nuclear weapons first?

Or perhaps, wishful thinking may come into play and we hope that World War Three against Russia will be a cyber war against computer hackers, or using AI-developed drones to bomb targets - anything to avoid ‘boots on the ground’ and troops fighting each other in World War One-style trench warfare.

And all of these scenarios are excluding that Russia’s pals in China and North Korea - both nuclear powers - don’t decide to get involved on Putin’s side. Then there’s the Israelis, who also have nuclear weaponry.

If faced with a Biblical-style Armageddon, would the Israeli leadership be prepared to ‘push the red buttons’. Or is Israel’s current sworn enemy, Iran, crazy enough to create a situation where it can ‘nuke Israel’? And if the conflict should dramatically escalate during the remaining term of Donald Trump’s Presidency, how will the US react?

But the second real question for Brexiteers with the looming threat from Russia is, what happens if after future European Parliamentary elections, the Hard Right becomes the dominant political force within the overwhelming majority of the 27 EU member states? For example, if the significant influence of the Hard Right increases from its current 16/27 to 21/27?

If populism becomes the ruling ideology across the EU, could that Union be reformed into a military coalition rather than the current political bureaucracy? In such a scenario, especially if Reform UK can maintain its poll ratings, would joining a Hard Right-led, military European Union make sense?

Obviously, rejoining or even resetting the UK’s relationship with the current EU is a non-starter with us Brexiteers. But if the next UK Government was a coalition of the Right involving the Tories and Reform, and the Hard Right made more gains throughout other EU nations, then a purely military reset could be on the cards.

However, in such a reset scenario, the Windsor Framework, Protocol, Irish Sea Border and all the foot-dragging Remainer ploys would have to be permanently politically binned. The UK would be signing up to a new military alliance against Russia - and Southern Ireland would have to play ball, too. No more hiding behind the ‘neutrality’ smokescreen as in 1939 when the Second World War erupted.

The establishment of such a reformed military EU needs to begin this year. There’s no use waiting until Putin’s tanks cross into EU member state territory. The politically snowflake and woke Left-wing of the EU needs to understand that Putin is ex-KGB, and therefore, he plays the long game when it comes to conflict and territorial advantages.

Of course, if Putin was to be deposed in a rerun of the 1917 revolution in Russia which saw the end of the Tsarist monarchy, might we see an even more hardline president take over in Moscow. Is it a case of ‘better the devil you know’ when it comes to Putin?

Follow Dr John Coulter on Twitter @JohnAHCoulter
Dr Coulter has been a journalist since 1978 and is currently a political commentator with GB News.

Rejoin The EU? Be Careful What You Wish For, Remainers!

Lynx By Ten To The Power Of Two Thousand And Ninety Nine

 

A Morning Thought @ 3271

John Crawley ✍ I would like to congratulate and commend the American Fenian Memorial Committee and the Irish National Graves Association for joining forces to organise the unveiling of this long-overdue monument, the first on Irish soil, commemorating the Fenians who, in 1876, took part in the most daring, challenging, and thankfully successful escape in the annals of Irish rebel escapes from British custody. Thanks also for the honour of inviting me to speak today.

On Saint Patrick’s Day 1858, at a timber yard on Lombard Street in Dublin, six Irishmen founded a secret society dedicated to establishing an independent democratic Irish republic.

This society became known as the Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB). Its counterpart in the United States, founded a year later by John O’Mahony, a veteran of both the 1848 rising and the American Civil War, was called the Fenian Brotherhood. IRB members soon came to be known as Fenians by the British press.

Ireland in 1858 was a country prostrate with oppression. The people had been profoundly traumatised by the Great Hunger which ravished the land from 1845 to 1852. The countryside was devastated and laid waste by starvation, fever, disease and forced emigration. Most landless labourers lived in abject squalor, their only possessions a pig and a manure heap. A French observer noted that the poorest beggar in Europe lived like royalty compared to an Irish peasant. Shattered, shocked, overwhelmed and overpowered by an Empire that never took its boot off their necks, most Irish people were in no condition to resist nor capable of imagining the possibility of doing so.

Into this black hole of hopeless and helpless despair stepped the Fenians. Little could those six men have foreseen that within a decade they would have tens of thousands of members on five continents, launch a rebellion in Ireland and invade British Canada. Not for the first or last time in Irish history, the right men and the right moment combined to change the narrative and inject hope and inspiration into a cause the British government had confidently assumed was a beaten docket.

The fact that only one IRB leader in its sixty-five-year history had any professional military training was a principal reason they tasked John Devoy with recruiting Irishmen from within the British Army. While attracting some outstanding men, they also recruited informers.

Poor planning, a lack of arms, infiltration by spies, and the prior arrest of much of its leadership led to the failure of the Rising in 1867. Yet things did not end there. There was strong support for the release of Fenian prisoners, and Amnesty Associations sprang up across Ireland to campaign for their freedom. The Fenians Allen, Larkin and O’Brien’s cry from the dock of ‘God Save Ireland’ before they were hanged in Manchester in 1867 added an inspirational slogan to the lexicon of resistance and became the title of one of Ireland’s most stirring rebel songs.

In 1871, the British succumbed to mounting pressure and began releasing Fenian prisoners on the condition that they exile themselves from Ireland. Prominent Fenians, including John Devoy and Jeremiah O’Donovan Rossa, were released and went to America, where they received a rapturous reception. A resolution of welcome was passed by the United States House of Representatives.

However, this amnesty did not extend to Fenians who had served in the British Army. Known as the ‘Military Fenians’, they were transported to Western Australia, where they were sentenced to hard labour under appalling conditions.

In 1874, Fenian prisoner James Wilson smuggled out his ‘Letter from the Tomb’, describing the mental and physical torture they endured and appealing for rescue. The letter eventually reached John Devoy in New York. The rest, as they say, is history.

The Fenian Rising combined with a bombing campaign in London in the late 1860s had a profound effect on British Prime Minister William Gladstone. When informed by a messenger in December 1868 that he had been charged with forming his first cabinet, he remarked, ‘My mission is to pacify Ireland’.

A major concern for Gladstone was that, largely because of the Great Hunger, over a million Irish now lived in America, hostile to England yet beyond British jurisdiction and reprisals. Worse still, these Irish were experiencing life in a democracy within a republic that had thrown off the shackles of British rule. Many had money and resources denied to them at home, and, because of service in the American Civil War, many thousands had first-class military training and combat experience.

The British government came to the conclusion that the Irish people had to be protected and insulated from what the London Times called ‘the despicable ideas’ inspired by ‘American democracy’. In addition, events within the UK such as the 1867 Reform Act doubled the electorate, and the rising tide of democracy had to be manipulated and managed so as not to threaten the status quo.

Achieving Irish assent to British authority has dominated British thinking since Gladstone first jettisoned his Liberal Party’s hostility to Irish Home Rule and embraced it as a buffer between Irish independence and British sovereignty. Nurturing a loyal nationalist leadership is a major strategic objective for the British government. This political class, who refer to themselves as Constitutional Nationalists (despite the fact that Britain has no written constitution), has never clarified at what point in history Britain gained democratic title in Ireland; when, precisely, the Brits achieved political and legal legitimacy over whatever section of the Irish people they could control, their laws elevated to a moral imperative, and the British soldiers and constables enforcing those laws invested with a sole monopoly on the lawful use of force. It is simply taken as a given that the Irish people were lawfully subjugated and that the fundamental principles of British sovereignty and the primacy of British law are sacrosanct on every inch of Irish soil where Britain claims jurisdiction.

Today, we are told that the struggle for Irish freedom is about achieving a United Ireland. Furthermore, we are assured that the only way to unite our country, now referred to as this island, is to await a judgement call on a border poll by a British politician from an English constituency who hasn’t personally secured a single vote in Ireland.

If the struggle for Irish freedom was merely about ending partition, why were there Risings in 1867 and 1916 when there was no partition? What was Wolfe Tone determined to achieve when he helped form the United Irishmen in 1791? What did he mean by a united Ireland? There was no partition in 1791. His objective, of course, was to break the connection with England and to embrace national unity across the sectarian divide.

Republicans are continually told we must compromise. Republicanism is the compromise - a compromise between plantation Protestantism and monoethnic Catholic nationalism. A compromise first proposed by the founders of the United Irishmen. The proposition that Ireland should be an independent sovereign republic, adopting a citizen-based view of Irishness rather than the divisive ethnic and sectarian spin Britain imposed on it.

Our national flag is a compromise. Its colours of green, white, and orange denote peace through national unity. The tricolour does not represent an ‘Agreed Ireland’ in which the two traditions agree to disagree in peace and harmony over the constitutional source of Irish sovereignty and the legitimacy and extent of British influence in constraining Irish democracy. It represents a national community of citizens, comprising all traditions and persuasions. The tricolour symbolises the republican vision of a United Ireland. That is why it flew over the GPO in 1916.

We are told we must reach out to Unionists. We certainly should. But when Republicans speak of reaching out to Unionists, we mean reaching out to them as fellow citizens, not as foreigners who happen to live here. Foreigners are born in another country. The vast majority of Ulster Unionists were born in Ireland. They must not be treated as the civil garrison of an alien state. That is not a progressive reimagining of pluralism; it is submitting to the social and political modelling of colonial conquest.

The United Irishmen called upon us to abolish the memory of all past dissensions. The signatories of the 1916 Proclamation called on us to be oblivious of the differences carefully fostered by an alien Government, which have divided a minority from the majority in the past. Neither Wolfe Tone nor Padraic Pearse claimed that those differences did not exist, nor did they say they could be dismissed as irrelevant. They were saying that these differences should never be used to shape the political architecture of Ireland.

In contrast, the Good Friday Agreement bakes in the British/Irish cleavage in national allegiances, regardless of constitutional change. It enshrines the sectarian dynamic in perpetuity. It guarantees that the political malignancy through which Britain historically manipulated and controlled Ireland will remain intact, ensuring that a unitary state, should it ever come to pass, remains a divided country.

Those who argue for making concessions for a United Ireland often begin by assuming that Irish Protestants are British and can be nothing else.

Despite the reactionary, racist, and sectarian mindset of settler colonialism, we must never forget that it was Irish Protestants, inspired not by the plantations but by the Enlightenment, who were the founding fathers of Irish republicanism.

Of the 28 founding members of the United Irishmen in 1791, 26 were Ulster Presbyterians, and two, Wolfe Tone and Thomas Russell, were Anglicans. Protestant Robert Emmet led the 1803 Rebellion. He did not request his epitaph be withheld until his country had taken its place as two nations among the nations of the earth. Protestants were founding members of the Young Irelanders; it was a Protestant member of the Irish Republican Brotherhood, Thomas Clarke Luby, a Dubliner present at that meeting in Lombard Street in 1858, who wrote the oath, which read in part:

I…do solemnly swear allegiance to the Irish Republic, now virtually established, and…I will do my very utmost, at every risk, while life lasts, to defend its independence and integrity…

It was a Protestant Thomas Davis who wrote: “A Nation Once Again”. Thomas Darragh, one of the Freemantle Six whom we honour today, was a Protestant from County Wicklow and a former member of the Orange Order who became a Fenian while serving in the British Army.

Many Unionists in Cavan, Monaghan, and Donegal had signed the Ulster Covenant in 1912 and were as loyal to the Crown in their day as their brethren a mile up the road in Fermanagh or Tyrone are today. Many still attend Orange Lodges and Orange marches. Yet, 104 years after Britain withdrew from those three Ulster counties, this community are now equal and valued citizens of the Irish State and, those born since the Ireland Act 1949, have no claim to British citizenship or a British passport. No one would refer to them as the British presence in Ireland.

We are told that in order to reunite Ireland we must persuade Unionists of its merits. Unionists did not partition Ireland - England did. It did so for deeper and far more strategic reasons than the refusal of a pro-British minority to submit to the democratic decision-making of a national electorate that contains a Catholic majority. Nor can Unionists end partition of their own volition. That decision lies exclusively with the British government. Unionists are not the problem in Ireland. The British government in Ireland is the problem.

Abraham Lincoln put it best while struggling to overcome divisions within his own Republic when he said, ‘A house divided against itself cannot stand’. We must not be seduced by the false narrative that the British/Irish cleavage in national loyalties should be embraced for the sake of peace. We must end it for the sake of peace, and the first step is ending British jurisdiction in Ireland. Until then, we cannot begin to repair the damage done to our national cohesion. In the meantime, Britain will continue to encourage, manipulate, and co-opt as many Irish citizens as possible into becoming willing accomplices in Ireland’s constitutional division along broadly sectarian lines.

The American Fenian Memorial Committee and the Irish National Graves Association have done invaluable work in honouring and memorialising our patriot dead. Their initiative and resolve in dedicating this beautiful monument are a credit to them that will one day be acknowledged in a free and grateful nation. Let us strive to achieve the ultimate monument to these men. A national democracy within an All-Ireland Republic.

Glory O to the bold Fenian Men.

Up the Republic!
 
John Crawley is a former IRA volunteer and author of The Yank.

Catalpa Memorial Unveiling 19 September 2026

Heartlands Tribune ☭ Written by Paul Knaggs. 

MPs have defeated the assisted dying bill by 286 votes to 270, a majority of 16. Support fell by 44 as Andy Burnham faced his first big Commons test.

MPs rejected a fresh attempt to legalise assisted dying on Friday, defeating the Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill by 286 votes to 270.

Support for the bill fell by 44 MPs on last year’s vote. Three Labour opponents, including a minister who resigned after her own terminal diagnosis, said the result reflected a bill that was “unsafe and unworkable”, not a change of heart on the principle.

The result brings to an end, at least for this Parliament, a two-year campaign to change the law. MPs had twice backed the legislation before: at second reading in November 2024, by 330 votes to 275, and at third reading in June 2025, by 314 votes to 291. Both times the bill, sponsored then by the Labour MP Kim Leadbeater, went on to the House of Lords. Both times it stalled there. An unprecedented number of amendments from peers meant it ran out of parliamentary time before the 2024 to 2026 session ended, and the bill fell without becoming law.

Assisted Dying Bill Falls As Support Collapses

Atheist Ireland ★ Catholic baptisms in Ireland have dropped by 30% in the ten years from 2015 to 2025, according to a report published by the Iona Institute. But births have also dropped by 19%, which accounts for a substantial amount of the change.

19-August-2026

The drop in baptisms in Dublin is highest at 40%, and the average drop outside Dublin is 26%. Elphin in the West of Ireland is the only diocese with a slight rise of 1%. The figures are complicated, but only slightly, by three missing dioceses.

Iona concludes that around 60pc of the fall in baptisms is accounted for by declining births and 40% by rising secularism, particularly the number of people who say they don’t belong to any religion.

A more useful headline statistic would first adjust the baptism figures for the fall in births, and lead with the adjusted drop of about 13%.

This also reveals a bigger difference between Dublin and the other dioceses: a drop of about 23% in Dublin compared to about 10% elsewhere. So baptisms relative to births have dropped by more than twice as much in Dublin than outside Dublin.


The report assumes these drops relative to births are all down to secularisation. This likely explains most of it, but it could be a mix of that plus immigration, mixed-religion couples, or other reasons.

The secularisation reflects the weakened impact of the Catholic Church’s evangelisation of Irish culture. As the report concludes, it remains to be seen what happens if and when cultural Catholicism fades as a force in Irish life.

Babies and parents

The report says fewer children aged 0-4 are listed in the census as Roman Catholic: 65% in 2022, down from 78% in 2016. This is slightly lower than the figures for all Roman Catholics.

And it says more children aged 0-4 are listed in the census as no religion or not stated: 24% in 2022, up from 12% in 2016. This is slightly higher than the figures for all with no religion or not stated.

It also notes that the 65% of children listed as Catholic in 2022 corresponds very closely to the 68% of mothers aged 25-39 who identified as Catholic in that year.

But why count only mothers aged 25-39? And why not fathers? Why not measure this: of parents identifying as Catholic who had a child in year X, what percentage of those children were baptised?

In any case, the report concludes that almost all parents who consider themselves to be Catholic still have their children baptised, and that this shows that cultural Catholicism still remains quite strong in Ireland.

The report also claims that the number of Catholics still having their children baptised shows approval of the Catholic Church. But parents who disapprove of the Catholic Church might baptise their children for any number of reasons.

It might be family tradition. It might be to please their parents, who are the child’s grandparents. One partner might approve of the church while the other disapproves. They might want their child to fit in in the only available local school, which is Catholic.

All of the above is the essence of cultural Catholicism, which the report itself invokes to explain why baptism remains relatively popular. But cultural Catholicism does not equate to approval of the Church.

Marriages and schools

The weakest inferences in the report are the assertions about marriages and school choices.

The report says it is simplistic to say that the number of church weddings is in decline simply because of secularisation. If this was the biggest explanation, then why do so many of the same couples who marry in a hotel get their children baptised?

What do we know about the decline in church weddings? In the space of a generation, marriage culture has moved from a traditional religious default to personal choice.

Four in ten Irish marriages are now nonreligious (either Civil Registry or Humanist), while only three in ten are Catholic. Almost beneath the radar, a quarter are now religious alternatives, mostly some variation of Spiritualist.

But the report provides no data showing that the couples marrying in hotels are the same couples later baptising their children. These are separate statistics, and many recent newlyweds will not yet have children.

The report also says that, if more people disapproved of the church, the recent Department of Education survey about the sort of primary schools parents want would have shown far more demand for divestment.

But you can’t equate demand for a different school patron to approval or disapproval of the Catholic Church.

Parents might prefer the existing school because it is their only or most convenient local school, their child is already settled there, they like the teachers, they don’t want their child’s education disrupted, they don’t want to be seen to be causing trouble, or any other reason.

It would also be interesting to see if the drop in baptisms increased after the Education (Admission to Schools) Act 2018, which prevented Catholic schools from giving priority in admission to children who were baptised as Catholics.

This drop in baptisms would also mean that the numbers of children in schools exercising their right to not attend religious instruction would increase significantly. At present there is no evidence that this is happening as we believe parents find exercising the right discriminatory.

Cultural Catholicism

The report repeatedly notes that cultural Catholicism is a factor in Irish life. But cultural Catholicism did not emerge in a vacuum. For generations, the Catholic Church has explicitly sought to shape and evangelise our culture.

The Pontifical Council for Culture says that:


“What matters is to evangelise man’s culture and cultures, in a vital way, in depth and right to their very roots… Though independent of cultures, the Gospel and evangelisation… are capable of permeating them all without becoming subject to any one of them.”

Pope Francis said that that:


It is imperative to evangelise cultures in order to inculturate the Gospel. In countries of Catholic tradition, this means encouraging, fostering and reinforcing a richness which already exists. In countries of other religious traditions, or profoundly secularised countries, it will mean sparking new processes for evangelising culture.

In 2020, the Irish Catholic Bishops held a series of Zoom conferences titled “Evangelising Irish Culture Today.” It cited Pope Paul VI as saying:

What matters is to evangelise culture: not in a purely decorative way, as it were, by applying a thin veneer, but in a vital way, in depth and right to its very roots.

This helps explain the Catholic Church’s extraordinary influence over Irish culture and public institutions, including the school system that it still largely controls. As the Iona report concludes, it remains to be seen what happens if and when cultural Catholicism fades as a force in Irish life.

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Big Dip In Irish Baptisms, And What Does It Mean For Cultural Catholicism

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