Blog Feeds

Public Inquiry
Interested in maladministration. Estd. 2005

offsite link RTEs Sarah McInerney ? Fianna Fail?supporter? Anthony

offsite link Joe Duffy is dishonest and untrustworthy Anthony

offsite link Robert Watt complaint: Time for decision by SIPO Anthony

offsite link RTE in breach of its own editorial principles Anthony

offsite link Waiting for SIPO Anthony

Public Inquiry >>

Human Rights in Ireland
Indymedia Ireland is a volunteer-run non-commercial open publishing website for local and international news, opinion & analysis, press releases and events. Its main objective is to enable the public to participate in reporting and analysis of the news and other important events and aspects of our daily lives and thereby give a voice to people.

offsite link Top Scientists Confirm Covid Shots Cause Heart Attacks in Children Sun Oct 05, 2025 20:31 | imc

offsite link Fraud and mismanagement at University College Cork Thu Aug 28, 2025 18:30 | Calli Morganite

offsite link Deliberate Design Flaw In ChatGPT-5 Sun Aug 17, 2025 08:04 | Mind Agent

offsite link AI Reach: Gemini Reasoning Question of God Sat Aug 02, 2025 20:00 | Mind Agent

offsite link Israeli Human Rights Group B'Tselem finally Admits It is Genocide releasing Our Genocide report Fri Aug 01, 2025 23:54 | 1 of indy

Human Rights in Ireland >>

Lockdown Skeptics

The Daily Sceptic

offsite link Jewish Lawyer is Questioned by Police Over Wearing a Star of David Necklace That ?Antagonised? Pro-P... Sun Oct 19, 2025 15:16 | Richard Eldred
The Met Police are embroiled in yet another two-tier policing row after a Jewish lawyer was held for nearly 10 hours over alleged Public Order breaches for wearing a Star of David necklace at a Kensington protest.
The post Jewish Lawyer is Questioned by Police Over Wearing a Star of David Necklace That ?Antagonised? Pro-Palestinian Protesters During Demo appeared first on The Daily Sceptic.

offsite link Maccabi Tel Aviv Fans Must be Allowed to Attend the Aston Villa Game on November 6th Sun Oct 19, 2025 13:00 | Jack Watson
Aston Villa's ban on Maccabi Tel Aviv fans reeks of anti-Israel politics, not concerns over safety, argues Jack Watson, who says Birmingham officials and an MP with pro-Gaza ties have let prejudice trump fair play.
The post Maccabi Tel Aviv Fans Must be Allowed to Attend the Aston Villa Game on November 6th appeared first on The Daily Sceptic.

offsite link Labour ?Tears Up Islamophobia Definition? Amid Free Speech Concerns Sun Oct 19, 2025 11:00 | Richard Eldred
Labour has ditched its old Islamophobia definition after concerns it could curb free speech. The party now prefers "anti-Muslim hate".
The post Labour ?Tears Up Islamophobia Definition? Amid Free Speech Concerns appeared first on The Daily Sceptic.

offsite link Who Counts as English? Sun Oct 19, 2025 09:00 | Noah Carl
There are some questions we can answer definitively. However, the question of what Englishness means does not lend itself to any simple answer.
The post Who Counts as English? appeared first on The Daily Sceptic.

offsite link Europe?s Terminal Decline: The Philosopher Queens and Their Ruinous Rule Sun Oct 19, 2025 07:00 | Tilak Doshi
The geopolitical humiliation of Europe is already manifest, says Dr Tilak Doshi. Led by deluded philosopher queen Ursula von der Leyen and her green comrades, the once mighty continent is headed off a cliff.
The post Europe’s Terminal Decline: The Philosopher Queens and Their Ruinous Rule appeared first on The Daily Sceptic.

Lockdown Skeptics >>

Voltaire Network
Voltaire, international edition

offsite link Will intergovernmental institutions withstand the end of the "American Empire"?,... Sat Apr 05, 2025 07:15 | en

offsite link Voltaire, International Newsletter N?127 Sat Apr 05, 2025 06:38 | en

offsite link Disintegration of Western democracy begins in France Sat Apr 05, 2025 06:00 | en

offsite link Voltaire, International Newsletter N?126 Fri Mar 28, 2025 11:39 | en

offsite link The International Conference on Combating Anti-Semitism by Amichai Chikli and Na... Fri Mar 28, 2025 11:31 | en

Voltaire Network >>

SHAME OF THE IRISH LEFT

category national | rights, freedoms and repression | opinion/analysis author Sunday July 22, 2012 22:55author by Diarmuid Breatnach - Personal Capacity Report this post to the editors

Irish Left ignores plight of Irish political prisoners

Irish Republicans have been on dirty protest in Maghaberry for two years -- the kind of situation that led to ten dying on hunger strikes in 1981. Also, opponents of the normalisation of the British occupation of Ireland are being framed and convicted, locked up without charge or being tried for actions back in the 1980s. Meanwhile, the organised Irish Left is averting its head. In what other country would this happen?
Supporters of Free Marian Price Campaign, Dublin Committee, publicizing their cause to the Campaign Against Household & Water Charges march, 18th July.
Supporters of Free Marian Price Campaign, Dublin Committee, publicizing their cause to the Campaign Against Household & Water Charges march, 18th July.

Most of the Republican prisoners in Maghaberry jail have now been on dirty protest for two years. When they cannot throw their faeces out the window, they spread them on their cell walls. Urine goes out the window or under the door. These are terrible conditions in which to live anywhere but particularly awful when in confinement.

It was after a few years of this kind of life that the prisoners in the H-Blocks resorted to the hunger strikes of 1980 and 1981, the latter resulting in the deaths of ten Republicans (from two different organisations) and probably permanent damage to a number of others.

In those years, the prisoners were demanding political status and, in all but name, they won it after those ten deaths, until it was given up as part of the Good Friday Agreement. Although the prisoners in Maghaberry now also seek that status, it is essentially the degrading practice of strip-searching that is at issue. The prison authorities refuse to implement an agreement that was reached many months ago to introduce the BOSS chair which gives an x-ray picture without prison officers needing to strip prisoners and probe and peer into their anuses.

Every time they leave or return to the block, Rowe House, they are subjected to this degrading treatment. Many resist. Colin Duffy, held for years before he was found not guilty January this year, arrived in court one morning in his underpants. Earlier in Maghaberry he had been handcuffed to a radiator and his trousers cut off him by prison screws with scissors. Arriving with bruises in court from Maghaberry is nothing unusual but teeth have been broken, muscles wrenched ....

Marian Price, though ill, has been interned without trial now for two years and Martin Corey for longer. Gerry McGeough was sentenced to prison last year for an alleged attack on a UDR officer in 1981. Gary McAdam is held, denied bail, for an alleged offence in 1986. Brian Shivers, suffering from cystic fibrosis and with about three years to live, was convicted on essentially the same evidence which failed to convict Colin Duffy and was sentenced to life (or death, realistically) in prison.

These people belong to a variety of organisations and none. All are Irish Republicans. All have declared themselves against some aspect of the process of normalisation of the colonial occupation of the Six Counties. None are receiving the solidarity or support of the Irish Left.

The Socialist Workers’ Party, the Socialist Party and the Workers’ Solidarity Movement are, certainly in terms of numbers of supporters, the main revolutionary socialist organisations of the non-Republican Left in Ireland.

As I stood on the pavement with others of the Free Marian Price campaign in Dublin on Wednesday evening, holding up to those on the march against the Household and Water Charges a placard demanding her freedom, the eyes of some people I know on the Irish Left slid past mine without acknowledging me. Some others greeted me somewhat half-heartedly.

What is wrong with the Left in Ireland? Each of the organisations I named above, two of them Trotskyist and one Anarchist, regularly hold up the Irish icons of James Connolly and Jim Larkin. Do they really think that either Jim would walk away from this issue? Do they believe that they would for one minute hesitate about declaring their solidarity with the prisoners?

The six or seven Special Branch men knew whom to harass – they went straight for the Marian Price campaigners and, quoting the Amendment to the Offences Against the State Act, demanded their names and addresses, even following them right up to Molesworth Street at the back of the march and accosting one of them there for the second time. The Republicans – and those who support Republican prisoners – habitually experience a level of harassment in the Twenty-Six Counties that no socialist organisation in the state can even approximate. Were they to suffer it, loud would be their cries – and rightly so. Is it just OK because it’s happening to others?

In what other country in the world would one find people laying claim to any kind of revolutionary socialist ideology turning their backs on their compatriots who are fighting the struggle for national liberation? Well, yes, maybe in the Spanish state – the Trotskyists and Communists of Izquierda Unida, they do indeed turn their back on the Basque and Catalan prisoners. Oh yes, and in France, the major Trotskyite groups and the French Communist Party ignore the plight of those prisoners too. And some Turkish communist and socialist organisations do not support the Kurds.

One can accuse those parties of unionism. They wish to capture the whole state for the working class, they declare. It seems nations declaring independence of the state would be inconvenient and is not a thing to be welcomed. Clearly those socialists are wrong – but at least they have a logical reason! What is the reason of the Irish Left, which has no other nations within the state to consider and which is without unionist ambition, not even within Ireland? Could it just be embarrassment, the wish to keep their hands clean, not to touch the national struggle? People did kill and get killed in that, you know. Yes, it wasn’t very nice, was it?

And these are the organisations who offer themselves as a leadership for the Irish working class, to bring us to successful revolution, the overthrow of the state and its repressive forces!

End

 #   Title   Author   Date 
   far away revolutionaries     prisoner supporter    Mon Jul 23, 2012 19:18 
   do some research please before judging others     John    Mon Jul 23, 2012 20:54 
   others gave their support     Gearoid O Loingsigh    Mon Jul 23, 2012 22:42 
   Criticism was valid and defensiveness is not     Diarmuid Breatnach    Tue Jul 24, 2012 23:30 
   Attacking the WSM does not help prisoners     James McBarron    Wed Jul 25, 2012 10:38 
   and a bunch of lefties and anarchists run THIS website too...     wageslave    Wed Jul 25, 2012 13:12 
   division     John(PC)    Wed Jul 25, 2012 16:07 
   the criticism is of the Irish organised Left     Diarmuid Breatnach    Wed Jul 25, 2012 17:29 
   Priceless     Des    Wed Jul 25, 2012 21:23 
 10   @Diarmuid     wageslave    Thu Jul 26, 2012 01:56 
 11   supporting prisoners or not     Gearoid O Loingsigh    Thu Jul 26, 2012 03:55 
 12   Still calling for solidarity with Republican prisoners     Diarmuid Breatnach    Sat Jul 28, 2012 14:55 
 13   @Diarmuid     wageslave    Sun Jul 29, 2012 03:38 
 14   who is on the picket line     Gearoid O Loingsigh    Mon Jul 30, 2012 16:12 
 15   JOIN THE PICKET LINES     Diarmuid Breatnach    Wed Aug 01, 2012 12:00 
 16   Defend Irish Republicans Against State Repression!     Spartacist    Fri Aug 10, 2012 19:21 
 17   you simplify, Spartacist     opus diablos    Sun Aug 12, 2012 10:18 
 18   Free Marian Price!     Spartacist    Wed Aug 22, 2012 15:04 
 19   I'm all for that...     opus diablos    Thu Aug 23, 2012 11:28 


Number of comments per page
  
 
© 2001-2025 Independent Media Centre Ireland. Unless otherwise stated by the author, all content is free for non-commercial reuse, reprint, and rebroadcast, on the net and elsewhere. Opinions are those of the contributors and are not necessarily endorsed by Independent Media Centre Ireland. Disclaimer | Privacy