<HTML><PRE>Subj:	Fwd: Irish News 06 January - Feature
Date:	98-01-06 01:53:01 EST
From:	Buni1957
To:	DeeMcA, RedAxe66, Love irela, Connemara7
To:	FenianBoyo, JustaLocal
CC:	sean@cafes.net


-----------------
Forwarded Message: 
Subj:	 Irish News 06 January - Feature
Date:	98-01-05 22:36:28 EST
From:	paddyn@erols.com (Paddy Newell)
Sender:	owner-ireland_list@email.rutgers.edu
Reply-to:	paddyn@erols.com
To:	ireland_list@email.rutgers.edu

>From The Irish News 06 January 1998
http://www.irishnews.com

* NEW DEPARTURE ... Parnell was just one of many Irish Protestants
who daredto lead down radical roads ... as Gerry Adams is today

Adams follows the tradition of the Protestant patriots

     In the second and concluding part of his analysis of the physical
     force tradition in Irish politics, Eamon Collins argues that Gerry
     Adams is acting in the best traditions of the Fenian movement but
     says there is an urgent need for unionists to review their present
     position.

     THE Fenian movement - a new organisation dedicated to
     revolutionary upheaval and change - was formed by James Stephens
     at Peter Langan's timber yard in Dublin on St Patrick's day 1853.

     The original oath, it is believed, was "to make Ireland an
     independent, democratic republic" and "to preserve inviolable
     secrecy regarding all the transactions of this secret society".

     John DeVoy, it could be said, began to organise and develop an
     equivalent movement of the American branch of this organisation in
     the American cities where Ireland's problems were recognised as
     being caused by Britain.

     There were many plans for revolution and when exactly to launch
     it. It kept being put off, even by Stephens. He received money and
     some arms from America but never enough. The movement (which
     eventually became known as the Irish Republican Brotherhood) was
     said to number 80,000 in its ranks with 8,000 members among the
     Irish garrisons. However, several Irish Americans hoped to start
     the revolution by an invasion of Canada and a few token raids (of
     no significance) into Ontario did take place.

     As part of the philosophy - England's difficulty, Ireland's
     opportunity - the American Civil War (1861) was exploited as a
     consequence of Britain's support for the pro-slavery confederacy
     which was unpopular among the Union politicians.

     Incredibly, every opportunity for a rising was missed, 1865 being
     the best year when England may have appeared vulnerable.

     When it did occur in 1867, James Stephens who was referred to as
     'Chief Organiser of the Irish Republic' was in America (chief
     organiser was a precursory title to the IRA's chief of staff.)

     Needless to say the rising was a failure - mostly urban-based,
     seriously compromised and was nothing more than a brave symbolic
     gesture.

     Stephens even had a newspaper proclaiming aims and strategy.

     So much for an oath-bound society. The leaders of the rebellion
     were harshly dealt with, receiving long prison sentences in
     Portland prisons under very harsh conditions. Some were placed in
     solitary confinement, hands and feet tied, forced to eat slop off
     the floors.

     Another dramatic prison period had begun creating martyrs and
     heroes to the Irish cause, which had become more significant than
     actual victory in battle, as events in 1916 were to prove.

     There can be little doubt the suffering, dignity and perseverance
     of these men set the course to be followed in future prison
     campaigns in Britain and Ireland as witnessed by the campaign for
     political status and the Hunger Strikes in the 1980s.

     The harsh treatment of Irish prisoners in British jails during the
     1970s and eighties is the continuation of a policy by the British
     that has echoes from the Fenian period.

     What changes in a colonial situation, pre or post, you might ask?

     Nevertheless, the potential scale of the rising worried the
     British and they reacted with a long-overdue moderate reform in
     1869 in an attempt to satisfy constitutional nationalism and
     undermine the physical force movement, by disestablishing the
     Anglican Church in Ireland, a source of great grievance to
     Catholic people because of its symbolic dominance of all things
     spiritual and temporal.

     Its ability to benefit from tithes up until the 1840s was not
     forgotten either.

     The Fenians had of course, carried out a series of bombings in
     England in an attempt to free prisoners in Manchester and at
     Clerkenwell prison resulting in the death of a prison guard and 12
     people killed by a dynamite bomb exploding at the prison wall.

     It was a policy called skirmishing (terrorism) which O'Donovan
     Rossa was quite in support of. The same O'Donovan Rossa whom
     Pearse elevated to Fenian sainthood and at his funeral in
     Glasnevin cemetery created the momentous phrase:

     "The fools, the fools, they have left us our Fenian dead, and
     while Ireland holds these graves, Ireland unfree will never be at
     peace."

     Ironically, O'Donovan Rossa died in his bed at a ripe old age
     whereas Pearse died facing a firing squad. But the Rossas of this
     world motivated and created the revolutionary Pearses of this
     world just as Pearse motivated and created men such as Frank Stagg
     and Bobby Sands. They were all and one part of the same tradition.

     In parallel with this revolutionary physical force tradition there
     emerged a no-less-significant Gaelic revivalism which was to come
     to fruition during the last decade of the 20th century.

     John O'Mahony, a wealthy land owner who was quite a handsome
     dashing figure, was a scholar of considerable ability and had,
     when living in relative poverty in America, translated Keating's
     Irish Nation, which was no mean achievement.

     Both Charles Kickham and John O'Leary were literary men who were
     totally opposed to sporadic, isolated acts of terrorism. O'Leary
     was to become extremely influential on WB Yeats and the tremendous
     literary revival which took place in Ireland and had a major role
     in establishing nationhood in the face of every obstacle grudging
     British and Unionist academics attempted to push in its way.

     It must be remembered that Fenianism during its abortive strike
     issued a proclamation declaring itself as the "Provisional
     government demanding a republic based on universal suffrage,
     separation of Church and state, and the land to be restored to the
     working people".

     Did not Connolly, Pearse and Clarke - who was a direct physical
     force proponent from the roots of Fenianism - not issue a
     proclamation along similar lines some 50 years later?

     The Provisional IRA in its 'Green Book' (a series of historical
     lectures, codes of conduct and army orders for its recruits and
     volunteers) claims it has legitimacy from the First Dail voted
     into power by the Irish electorate in 1919 but usurped and ignored
     by the British government.

     They are - as the Fenians would claim, as Tone claimed, as the men
     of 1916 claimed - acting and using political violence in the
     interests of the rights of the sovereign Irish people and are
     therefore justified in their action.

     Does it not - based on Britain's role since partition and Unionist
     state violence - have a legitimacy today?

     If it has, what does Gerry Adams and the present ceasefire
     represent in view of the past they have inherited?

     Constitutional nationalism is no less wedded to the past as are
     the British and the Provisional IRA and the Unionists. The Irish
     Parliamentary Party became strong under Parnell because he had met
     John DeVoy, who had accepted Michael Davitt's plea to agitate on a
     large scale for the Irish peasant by forming the Land League of
     1878.

     Fenianism, as an underground movement, represented a suppressed
     nation just as the Provisionals represent repressed Catholics in
     the north of Ireland.

     DeVoy established in America, where he was living, the "new
     departure" in 1873. It meant the Fenian movement threw in its lot
     with and on behalf of the peasant people who were suffering
     eviction, and it meant they accepted Lalor's doctrine of 1849,
     realising the land question was the key to mass action and the
     revolution that was necessary if independence could be achieved.

     The 'Home Rule' movement had, since 1871-80, introduced 28 Bills
     for relief of grievances - all rejected.

     Constitutional nationalism was failing, getting nowhere, just as
     constitutional nationalism had been getting nowhere in the north
     of Ireland until the joint Framework Document and Downing Street
     declaration emerged in 1994/5.

     Michael Davitt was dismissed from the IRB when he threw his lot in
     with the Land League: it was not possible to engage with
     parliamentarians and people engaged in peaceful means to obtain
     change, and be controlled and restricted by an oath bound society.
     (The IRB expelled Joseph Bigger and O'Connor for taking seats
     during this time also).

     The 1880s were an exciting period for Ireland. The Fenians, in
     support of the Land League, succeeded in creating mass support for
     Parnell. Land reforms, culminating in the 1903 Wyndham Act which
     set up a commission to buy up the last remaining estates and
     create loans for small proprietors to purchase, created what Lalor
     never thought was possible, a peasant proprietorship that was
     delivered by the colonial parliament and not an Irish legislature.

     The GAA and the Gaelic League were set up in 1884. Within a short
     period of time, writers, academics, teachers and poets were
     actively pursuing the nationalist cause. Nevertheless Parnell's
     fall from power, due to a stupid divorce case, threw the seemingly
     impregnable Irish Home Rule party into disarray.

     Parnell was still supported by the Fenians, and - had he seceded
     from parliament - he would have gained an organisation with mass
     support and an opportunity to force revolution prior to 1916. He
     didn't and the rest is history.

     Gerry Adams has succeeded, as John DeVoy had, on taking the
     Provisional movement on a 'new departure'.

     It is an opportunity to create a permanent, meaningful settlement
     that people such as Gladstone and Parnell missed.

     There are many within the Provisional movement who are physical
     force men in the O'Donovan Rossa tradition, men who would risk all
     as the Invincibles did in 1882 when they murdered Burke and
     Cavendish and seriously undermined the progress Parnell and
     Gladstone had made to date.

     Assassinations such as we recently witnessed are individual acts
     which could jeopardise peace. There can be repeats of history,
     there can be lost opportunities.

     Brian Keenan is a senior IRA man who served 14 years in a British
     prison. He was a firm believer in the effectiveness of the bombing
     campaign in Britain. He would at present be a very influential
     member of the Republican movement. He is a tough man of
     considerable ability, a steely determination to succeed and a
     singular purpose geared towards achieving a 32-county socialist
     republic.

     During a commemoration for the former chief of staff, Sean
     McCaughey (who died on hunger strike in Portlaoise prison in 1948)
     on May 17 1996, Keenan was scathing of the British, Free Staters
     and the quislings who betrayed the northern people. He is a
     personification of the Fenian Tom Clarke, who died before a firing
     squad with Pearse and Connolly.

     But he must realise that John DeVoy took the Fenian movement on a
     course which is similar to Gerry Adams's effort and it lasted from
     the 1870s to 1920. DeVoy actually lived to see 1916 and never once
     deviated from this path once he took it.

     What it represents is the need for unity between a dual
     nationalism, a dual tradition of the radicals and the
     constitutionalists within Irish society. DeVoy gained more for the
     Irish people during those years than at any other time in our
     history. But for British weakness and the first world war, 'Home
     Rule' may have been on the statute book and the nightmare the
     British and Unionists enforced from 1920 to the present day could
     have been avoided.

     DeVoy's 'new departure' - Adams's 'new departure' - is a risky
     gamble for all concerned but obviously one worth taking if it
     leads to a guaranteed peace.

     Billy Wright represented the naked truth of sectarian hatred and
     the ambiguous position of the Protestant community and the
     Unionist parties to the wholesale murder of Catholics.

     The man accused of his murder, Christopher McWilliams - landless,
     dispossessed - is an inheritor of that implacable will to resist.
     Both men represent honest reflections of our nation's past.

     Christopher McWilliams comes dangerously close to a recklessness
     the Invincibles engaged in more than a century ago. It is so
     dangerous, it has a price to be paid for only in lives. That is
     our inherited historical reality and none of us can run away from
     it.

     Let us hope '98 will continue to see the republican movement
     tenaciously pursuing the 'new departure' as set out by Adams and
     his supporters. It is a fitting tribute to DeVoy, O'Leary,
     O'Mahony, Tone and Lalor. By searching out other routes for peace
     they have continued within the best traditions of Fenianism.

     What we are waiting on, patiently - it has yet to arrive - is a
     'new departure' for unionism. Loyalists have begun to some extent
     but where is the broad unionist family?

     They should try to remember what faith Tone, Parnell, Biggar,
     Davis, Davitt, Crawford (the Co Down Protestant landlord who
     supported 'Federation' during O'Connell's Repeal agitation),
     Yeats, Hyde, Plunkett and all the rest belonged to. Is there not
     an historical precedent there for them, somewhere ?

     * Eamon Collins is a former IRA member who now rejects the use of
     violence. His first book, Killing Rage, received critical acclaim
     last year


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