Reply to Eamon McCann's article

national | miscellaneous | opinion/analysis

Saturday August 30, 2003 12:45

by John Martin - IRSP

johnmartins at eircom dot net

392 Falls Road, Belfast BT12

028 90 321 024

A reply to McCann's article in the Belfast Telegraph on our movement

On Eamon McCann
Eamon McCann writing in the Pro-Good Friday Agreement newspaper the Belfast Telegraph had a sideswipe at the IRSP in the course of an attack on a so called republican principle that

“-leads its adherents to believe that the paramilitary group they support has a right to kill people who challenge its authority?

In terms of the Republican tradition as expressed over the past 30 years, it goes back to the "mandate" of 1916 and the notion of the "army" as the legitimate representative of the will of the Irish people.”

McCann has cleverly lumped all republican groups together as a way of denigrating the whole left wing republican tradition. He totally distorts a statement from Terry Harkin in which Harkin was contrasting the principles of the GFA with the actual implementation of it in practice. Efforts by statutory authorities to halt a memorial to dead INLA volunteers contrasted strongly with their failure to deal with offensive flags slogans and murals that incite the murder of Catholics. Large numbers of PSNI moved in force to facilitate the removal of the monument contrasting with their inactivity over UDA flags in Sandy Row 200 yards from Donegall Pass police station

Nowhere is there any indication that the INLA have ever claimed a mandate for their activities. . But the INLA on the 5th Anniversary of the INLA ceasefire said explicitly and this was read out at the Maghera Memorial

“In August 1998 the leadership of the INLA with the full support of the volunteers of the People’s Army called a ceasefire in response to the will of the Irish people as expressed through the Referenda on the Good Friday Agreement. “-The INLA has no interests outside the liberation of the working class and the establishment of a socialist society.”

Yet McCann feels free to distort facts and peddle the big lie,

“Brendan Convery and Gerald Mallon may have been sent out by their INLA bosses. But, to the IRSP, they actually carried a mandate from "the indigenous Irish."
It is mystical nonsense of this sort that the killing of Danny McGurk tells us we need rid of.”

It is a fact that of all the republican left tendencies it has been the Republican Socialist movement alone that has consistently and persistently attacked the notion of “republican legitimacy ‘ from either the 1916 Rising or the First Dail. We have advocated the centrality of the Irish Working class to the struggle in Ireland. We as a movement never gave any credence to mystical concepts such as “Mother Ireland” or peddled any kind of pseudo nationalist claptrap. We are internationalists, socialists and revolutionaries.

Indeed it is ironic that a “revolutionary socialist” such as McCann, a defender not of the 1916 rebellion, but an upholder of the 1917 revolution in Russia which certainly had no mandate from the Russian people and during which the Bolsheviks seized power, should seek to denigrate the only Republican group which explicitly recognised in its ceasefire statement the expressed will of the Irish people while believing that the people had made the wrong choice.

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Comments (8 of 8)

here's McCann's article

by qwerty

Sat Aug 30, 2003 13:24

here's McCann's article

http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/opinion/story.jsp?story=437901

Mandate

by Drop in Well

Sat Aug 30, 2003 17:47

John Martin: "Nowhere is there any indication that the INLA have ever claimed a mandate for their activities."
In other words we don't need a mandate -- Just bump off people cos we decide it's time go, eh?
Where's the working class come into it then?
Matteroffact they don't!
Give us a break

SAY NO TO PARAMILITARY'S

by SICK OF THE PARASITE PARAMILITARY,S

Sat Aug 30, 2003 18:05

Open question to the Irish Republican and the British Loyalist paramilitary parasitic thugs:
Name one positive thing you have done for any member of either community in Northern Ireland EVER?

You have brought nothing but hardship and misery to the people you claim to be supporting, turning their community’s in to ghettos and slums.

You have turned their young men and women in to drunks with you so-called social clubs, and then maim are worse murder them ending their because of so-called anti-social behaviour are just because they stand-up to the self appointed protectors off society, while turning a blind eye to those thugs who ply our children with drugs because they pay protection money.

You say that your “working class” you have never done a honest days work in your life’s, and when you enter government the first people you attack were the working class and the poor with the privatisation of public services.

Why don’t you do the people of Ireland North and South a favour and F*** off.

SICK OF BRIT ESTABLISHMENT MIDDLE CLASS ARSELICKAS LIKE YOURSELF

by INLA al the way

Sat Aug 30, 2003 19:44

WHY DON'T YOU FUCK OFF, loyalist and republican working class paramilitaries have protected their working class communities from smack pushing middle class brit security force touts like yourself. What has your lazy rich arse ever done for the poor in the streets, nothing except send your political pig force in to protect smack dealers, and dog eat dog uber capitalist filth like vice crime war lord Johnny Adair, so don't bother pretending you care about the working class.

Crime figures soar thanx to hugh odd boreds political policing

by housewives favourite

Sat Aug 30, 2003 19:48

At least paramilitaries are popular, notice buck toothed plumm sucking brit pig Hugh Odd Bored isn't a pin up or housewives favourite. Working class people know who to turn to, to sort out crime and anti social behaviour, and by the reception plummy buck toothed brit hugh odd bored got on the streets of south belfast, people are quick to let him know exactly what they think of his 'political policing'.

flogging a dead horse up and down the lisburn rd

by flogging hugh odd bored up and down the lisburn rd

Sat Aug 30, 2003 19:55

Plummy buck toothed horse faced PSNI pig Hugh Odd bored, hoped by parading about the lisburn rd, in his fancy uniform with shiny badges and funny hat, he could raise his scrawny profile and competed with housewives favourites Andre and Ahab, unfortunately, for Hugh it is literally like flogging a dead horse.

Sick of the parasite’s

by Say no to paramilitary’s

Sat Aug 30, 2003 23:17

O’ dear aren’t the supporters of paramilitary’s a sensitive lot.

But that’s the problem with inla, housewife and flogging you don’t like the truth.

So the scum paramilitaries defend the working class communities from smack heads, who brought them in the first place, it wasn’t the Feds are the Brits but both turned a blind eye.
When INLA say’s the paramilitaries protect people from the smack heads I take it he means by the use of Corporal and Capital Punishment?
If so do you support the DUP’s call for the reintroduction of hanging? I dont.

I challenge you to name one positive thing your kind have done for the working class and the rest of society.

As for Capitalist filth would this be the same capitalist filth that SF and the PUP are happy to sit with and break bread, not forgetting George. W. BUSH junior.

Get your head out of the sand; it’s time to smell the coffee.

The only thing you and the likes of you have to offer is more bloodshed and misery.

You should learn the correct use of apostrophes

by .

Tue Sep 02, 2003 17:47

Republican paramilitaries aren't parasites (the UDA are) but there's no need to swear. Could we have a bit of net protocol here, so we can have some rational debate?

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Reply to Eamon McCann's article

Comments (8 of 8)