The fusion in Ireland of Catholicism and Republicanism has birthed what is without doubt Irish Republicanism’s most powerful weapon, the will to fight the most fundamental form of warfare in the suffering of the body — an extreme form of non-violence that at once stuns the oppressor and offers the oppressed the most sublime and sacred icon of resistance, the martyr. No empire in the history of human civilisation has been able to defeat the heroic martyred dead.
Educating Cameron Archibald
Christopher McEleny’s response – ‘I do not need a lecture on Irish history from you’ – was, one supposes, the best possible reply to this level of stupidity. McEleny had commented that a century ago Ireland departed from the United Kingdom when Sinn Féin, after winning a landslide majority in the 1918 general election, formed An Chéad Dáil Éireann (the First Irish Parliament) in Dublin and declared Irish independence. Yes, this happened. This was how Ireland – like the United States of America in 1776 – asserted its freedom from British colonial domination.
You Have Two Votes
Conclusion: a single party dominating the Scottish parliament is a mathematical impossibility, it cannot be done. This of course applies, mutatis mutandis, to a single pro-independence party dominating the Scottish parliament so as to stop anything like the 1918 Dáil Éireann election result from happening again; when Sinn Féin took 73 (that is 76.7 percent) of the available 105 Dáil seats. Granted, however, this system was not designed with a view to penalising the SNP in particular.
Our Day Has Come
Irish people, beat down by austerity, sick of the homelessness and the housing crisis, have turned to Sinn Féin in numbers; the only party for a united Ireland – a Republic for all the children of Ireland. As the counting trundled on, one win after another put to bed forever the idea that Ireland cannot awaken from the nightmare of its history, a story imposed on us for centuries by British soldiers, their occupation, laws, and atrocities. At long last our day has come, and the wave – the ‘surge’ – of emotion that rushed through the Republican movement was equalled only by...
The DeSouza Case
Derry-born woman Emma DeSouza has never considered herself British. She identifies as Irish, and the GFA – accepted in good faith by the people of Ireland – gives her the right to identify “as Irish or British, or both.” The GFA confirms that anyone born in the British occupied six counties has the right “to hold both British and Irish citizenship.” But recent events around Britain’s decision to leave the European Union have exposed what Republicans have always known; that Britain signed this treaty in bad faith and had no intention of honouring its terms
Make Scotland a Shelter
Scotland and Ireland have much in common. They are countries of about the same size and population with a long history of English domination. When England wobbles, Scotland and Ireland quake. In both Scotland and Ireland, regardless of their social and cultural proximity to England, there is an acute awareness of the badness of Brexit. Both instinctively understand that it threatens the fabric of their society, and both are aware of the extent to which England is working to draw them in to the misery of its awful situation.
Hell Hath No Fury Like a President Scorned
We can’t defend the indefensible. The Church in Ireland and all around the world failed children and vulnerable people. There was – and to a great extent remains – a culture of abuse within the structures of the Church. The sexual, physical, and psychological abuse of children in the care of Church authorities was a terrible wrong, but the scandal was far worse; it was the abuse of power on the part of an ecclesiastical hierarchy that protected abusers and covered up their abuse – often shielding them, by the use of canon law among other things, from civil justice.
Not Welcome Here!
As royals of the same royal family that did this to Ireland, it would be different had they come to apologise for the barbarity of British rule on this island and for the part Queen Victoria – “the Famine Queen” – played in the utter ruin of Ireland during the Great Famine, but they didn’t. Harry and Meaghan came – as British royals – to play the part of international celebrities, stars we were all expected to flock to see. They didn’t seem to notice how empty the streets were, how so few people turned out to welcome them.
Random Public Journal 