Left Archive Index… May 24, 2010
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… has been updated yet again. We’re thinking of some sort of categorisation and short descriptions of each formation linked to their name. What do people think? What are current problems and what would be useful in terms of changing it?
Left Archive: Árd Fheis Report – Official Sinn Féin, 1972-1973. May 24, 2010
Posted by irishonlineleftarchive in Irish Left Online Document Archive, Official Sinn Féin, Uncategorized.14 comments
[Apologies, this is a large file of approx 20mbs. If this is too large please tell me and I'll reduce it]
This document was issued at a high point for Official Sinn Féin in the 1970s. It had navigated away from a disastrous split in the Republican Movement, had pushed towards a strongly politicised stance. It had also managed to successfully implement a ceasefire without – at that point – initiating a further split. Although conflict in Northern Ireland continued the future looked reasonably optimistic.
As noted at the start of the Report:
The 67th Ard Fheis of Sinn Féin was held in the Mansion House, Dublin on December 15th and 16th. Upwards of seven hundred delegates representing cumainn from all over Ireland attended with as many visitors and observers: fraternal delegates attended from organisations in Britain, America, Australia and Europe. There were over 300 resolutions on the Clar dealing with every aspect of the Irish Revolution.
And it continues:
The Ard Fheis of 1973 demonstrates that Sinn Féin has the programme, the members and the capacity to organise the Irish people for a successful Socialist Revolution.
It’s worth noting that the party was strongly in favour of contesting elections. In the same introduction it notes how it had contested 10 seats in the 1973 General Election. It notes that ‘Sinn Féin was, for the first time, contesting an election in the Twenty-Six County state and taking its seats’. This was an historic demarche whose subsequent effects spread – perhaps – more widely than OSF itself.
It is fascinating to also see how strongly wedded to an all-island strategy OSF was.
The policy on which Sinn Féin fought was: the ownership, control and development of the resources of Ireland by and on behalf of the working-class people of Ireland; the establishment of a secular state with equal rights and equal opportunities for all, irrespective of sex, religion or conviction; the elimination of repressive legislation and the achievement of full development, by and on behalf of the people, of their cultural inheritance.
Welded to these national aims and aspirations, which will ultimately be won only with the establishment of a 32-county socialist republic, the candidates of Sinn Fein each of whom qualified by work already done on behalf of the workers of his or her area, there were important local issues.
Inside it is interesting to see however, the Sinn Féin Programme for action is clearly positioned in the context of the Republic of Ireland.
Oráid An Uachtarán (The Presidents speech – Tomás Mac Giolla then and long after) is also of interest, and in particular the text on pages 9 and 11 where a direct appeal is made to members of the Provisionals…
I would appeal to their members who may have been misled by lies and distortions, to examine our actions and policies. I am confident that they will find there is only one Republican Movement, only one Sinn Féin which stands uncompromisingly with the secularism and non sectarianism of Tone, with the Separatism and Socialism of Pearse and Connolly and they will find it here.
It continues:
Our objective is a Sovereign Democratic Socialist Republic for all Ireland. We do not want a totalitarian state; we do not want a capitalist state; we do not want a neo-colonial state dominated by British Imperialism (even if it is united) and we do not want a divided nation or a divided people. Basically our objective can be stated to be the reconquest of Ireland and our struggle is for the ownership and control of the wealth of Ireland by the mass of the Irish people.
The rest of the document provides an interesting overview of the activities of OSF during this period. Perhaps most telling as regards that overview is the mention of the IRA at various points.
It also demonstrates, under the National Affairs heading (p.31) some of the gaps that OSF sought to bridge in terms of dealing with the reality of partition. Also of interest are the linkages established under the International heading which are broadly speaking liberation struggles in the developing world rather than the Soviets and affiliated states.
Although the articles are unsigned at this point in time the General Secretary was Máirín de Burca.
Sunday Independent Stupid Statement of the Week May 23, 2010
Posted by Garibaldy in media.47 comments
A much improved range of stupid statements this week, leading to the exclusion of several very silly pieces that probably merited a mention. I found Harris’ childish column entertaining in parts though. And the ghosts of Harrises past were certainly raised by his concluding remark about the need to talk about banks less and factories more.
Apparently the way to solve the ills of Irish history is for “Paddy” to support England in the World Cup. I thought sport had already rescued poor Paddy from the traumas of his past when the England rugby team played at Croke Park, but apparently not.
Because I believe there is that deeper happiness out there for Paddy, if he chooses to seize it. A happiness that comes from liberating himself from old grievances, real or imaginary, from giving generous support rather than taking sickly pleasure in the misfortunes of others — with that attitude, how could we have any luck?
As for myself, I’ll be supporting the team of a real republic. France.
Eamon Delaney criticises people for concentrating on trinkets and meaningless gestures to exaggerate our cultural differences with the British. Rejoining the Commonwealth would not of course be a meaningless gesture, but a major move to remove partition, heal the divisions on the island, and show what a mature independent state the Free State has grown up to become in the last 90 years. Just like not booing the Queen when it was played at Croke Park.
The Reform Group will probably be ridiculed for their suggestion and it is hard to have a rational discussion on the topic, without bar-stool nationalists getting roused. But for many others it’s a no-brainer: Ireland has never been as harmoniously close as to the UK as it is now, and we should never have left the loose association of the Commonwealth, especially since we helped to design the actual thing with Kevin O’Higgins, way back after our independence — and in tandem with it.
My jaw dropped when I read this from Marc Coleman, part of a column complaining about too heavy a reliance on economists with Phds. I haven’t been able to close it yet.
Academia must also change. The obsession with producing only PhDs is the main reason the crisis happened.
Stupid Statement of the Millenium?
Dio redux…. May 23, 2010
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… if we can judge a man by his enemies… Dio was more than alright…
Interview with Martin Mansergh… May 22, 2010
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Jason O’Toole has an interview with Mansergh in today’s Mail… it’s quite interesting to be honest, not least because Mansergh was so heavily identified with the ancien regime (perhaps in more ways than one) and times have, as most will have noticed, changed.
This weekend I’ll mostly be listening to… Microdisney – Everybody is Fantastic. May 22, 2010
Posted by WorldbyStorm in Culture, This Weekend I'll Mostly Be Listening to..., Uncategorized.50 comments
What can be said about this group and this album that hasn’t been said before? Irish, early 1980s, sort of expatriate given that they moved to London sharpish from Cork. A marriage of the melodies of Sean O’Hagan and the sharp to dark black lyrics of Cathal Coughlan. But behind that a full band that made this more than just a duo.
The first album proper (‘We Hate You South African Bastards!” was essentially a compilation), “Everybody is Fantastic” was released in 1984 and it is so remarkably different to everything else of that time. It wasn’t post-punk, or rather it was, but it sounds now like something that fell back through a time machine from the 1990s or even later. A curious blend of brittle yet sunny pop, country[ish] inflections, and rage and sadness – the latter supplied by Coughlan. And in that they were very post-punk indeed. I’d almost argue that they and the Go-Betweens shared a certain approach (albeit in the case of the latter it was much much less angry and pointed).
Later albums saw an odd shift, ultimately on “39 Minutes” in 1988 towards a more commercial sensibility that kind of sort of didn’t work. I certainly don’t treasure the last two like the first two (although “Crooked Mile” is actually pretty good). And subsequent incarnations were, I think, a matter of taste. Both the Fatima Mansions and the High Llama’s had excellent moments, but… never quite achieved what the first two Microdisney albums did. On the other hand at least one can say that neither O’Hagan nor Coughlan stayed still.
It’s also worth pointing out that this was an intrinsically political band, both in terms of the personal (and working through the minefield of gender relations) and more broadly. That too added extra rage.
Any track from this album would do as well as the three selected below. ‘This Liberal Love’ with it’s incomprehension at… well, ‘liberal love’…. Before Famine which sweeps along (not dissimilar to Everybody is Dead), ‘Past’, ‘Moon’, ‘Dolly’, ‘Sun’… each of them perfectly worked 3 or so minute songs.
And here’s a curiosity. Somehow they managed, for me at least, to sum up before I’d even arrived in London a certain aspect of that city which six or so years later when I lived there seemed absolutely spot on.
I could go on, but what’s the point? Most of those who have heard them have loved them, and those who haven’t I can only recommend you start now. They’ve certainly been ill served by reissues over the years. And the compilations have been, broadly speaking, worse than useless. I still have the original vinyl, but it took some doing to get MP3s of the first and second albums.
Idea
Dreaming Drains
Everybody is Dead
And from the only slightly less better “the Clock Comes Down the Stairs”, the peerless ‘Goodbye, It’s 1987′
Ronnie James Dio… May 22, 2010
Posted by WorldbyStorm in Culture, Uncategorized.25 comments
You know, I was genuinely surprised at how sorry I was to hear that Ronnie James Dio, former lead singer of Rainbow in the 1970s, Black Sabbath in the early 1980s and again in the 1990s, his own Dio in the 1980s and after, and then Heaven and Hell – Sabbath in all but name – for the past four or five years.
It may in part because in the rather fine Metal: A Headbanger’s Journey documentary Dio came across as a decent human being working in what is a reasonably decent genre of music. Or it may be that he was lead singer with Sabbath around the time I was listening most closely to them in my teens and that was an incarnation of the band that had sped up from the Ozzy years to produce a harder, heavier and faster sound (one that influenced Discharge amongst others and was in its own right influenced by punk) that dovetailed with my own tastes.
Dio had a good, if arguably over theatrical, voice and an unfortunate penchant for sword and sorcery lyrics. But, when it all clicked together it worked well. He’d been recording since 1958. Now that’s a career. One other aspect of him was that he was unashamed in his use of the term ‘working class’ in interviews in reference to himself (and indeed to Iommi, Butler and Ward).
Anyhow, indulging in pure nostalgia, here are some of his best moments, the first two culled from the Sabbath album “Mob Rules” (used too I think in the Heavy Metal movie produced by the magazine of the same name – you’ll know the one, SF and fantasy comic strips) and a smattering of live appearances.
The Mob Rules, preceded by ‘instrumental’ E5150 [song proper kicks off about 2.50 mins]
Sign of the Southern Cross
Man on the Silver Mountain – Rainbow
And inevitably:
Long Live Rock ‘n’ Roll
The Republican Party in Maine… May 21, 2010
Posted by WorldbyStorm in US Politics.17 comments
Okay, in the grand tradition of the Skibbereen Eagle the CLR brings you the following.
For those of you wondering about the philosophy of the Tea Party movement, and its impacts on more mainstream Republican thinking in the US wonder no more. There’s a good recent piece in Slate about their current approach and not least how they managed in Maine to amend the party platform in full. Granted, as noted in the piece…
Maine was an unusual case, too. Most state GOP conventions accept the party platform approved by the platform committee, which consists of party representatives from each county. When the platform reaches the floor, other delegates sometimes offer minor amendments. This time, though, one county committee offered an amendment that would repeal the original platform and replace it with a whole new document. It passed. Now the official Maine Republican Party platform explicitly opposes the Fairness Doctrine, advocates a “return to the principles of Austrian Economics,” and warns against “efforts to create a one world government.”
So it’s not as if this is likely to happen across the US. But as a sign of how the Obama victory has generated pressures to the right of the Republicans it is a good example.
Youth Unemployment Conference – Ógra Shinn Féin May 21, 2010
Posted by WorldbyStorm in Economy, Irish Politics, Sinn Féin, The Left.1 comment so far
Ógra Shinn Féin has announced details of their forthcoming National Youth Unemployment Conference, to be held in the Teachers Club in Dublin on Saturday the 5th of June @ 11am.
National Organiser Donnchadh Ó Laoghaire has this to say ‘The conference has at its aim to bring together various strands of opinion from the Trade unions, political parties, and youth organisations, to explore the issues surrounding youth unemployment, and to examine what needs to be done, socially, politically, and economically to combat youth unemployment.’ The speakers will include speakers from the National Youth Council, the Union of Students in Ireland, Trade Unions, political parties, elected representatives, TASC, the INOU, Youth activists, among others.
Calling for young republicans to mobilise for it he added ‘ This conference promises to be an extremely interesting and thought provoking event, and will hopefully provide an impetus for a real discussion and what we as a society need to do, both to create jobs, and to create a political alternative. It should be a fascinating event, and I would encourage anyone with an interest in the rights of young people and in progressive politics to attend.’10-11 registration/fáilte
———-
11- 11.45 Opening session – plenary ‘What is the reality for the Young Unemployed in 2010’
11.45. – 12.30 Workshops section.
- What can we do to create jobs?
- How trade unions protect jobs, and why we need them
- How to create a vocal lobby for the rights of young people
12.30 – 12.45 Break
12.45.- 1.45 Closing plenary – Youth Debate – ‘Creating a political alternative’, SF, Labour, and SP youth speakers
1.45. Closing address
Contact Donnchadh at ograsf@hotmail.com or 0868819653 for more information. Additional speakers, suggestions etc. welcome.
www.osf.ie
www.ogranews.com
This week on the Irish Election Literature Blog… May 21, 2010
Posted by guestposter in Irish Politics, The Left, Uncategorized.add a comment
As usual many thanks to AK, and this week he’s got a competition…
Posted last year but topical to a degree here anyhow, A copy of Marxist-Leninist Weekly from 3rd Feb 1988.
Now back to this weeks stuff ….
Helen Redwood running for the Socialist Party in 2004 in Mulhuddart, also contains Socialist Party’s views on the Citizenship Referendum.
Eamon Gilmore of The Workers Party ,1987 in Dun Laoghaire.
Find out what Maureen in Crumlin had to say about the Democratic Left’s Eric Byrne in a leaflet from the 1994 Dublin South Central By-Election
A 1992 leaflet from the Dublin Abortion Information Action Campaign.
Not too many pro choice leaflets from the time.
A carefully worded Garda Representative Association Questionnaire
(Ballot) on members preferences for Industrial action.
then……
An Exclusive….. Anglo Irish to be Raffled off …..
and finally lest we forget (I had forgotten until RTE’s Frontline last Monday)
