Patricks Day.

national | rights, freedoms and repression | opinion/analysis

Sunday March 14, 2004 05:15

by john throne - labors militant voice

loughfinn at aol dot com

An Irish Day.

I am posting a piece below on Patricks Day that I wrote a couple of years ago. It tries to give an idea of the contradiction between remembering and missing my home and at the same time having to seperate myself from the form that the celebration of March 17th takes in Chicago.

An Irish Day. Not St Patricks Day.

This Patrick person spearheaded the drive into Ireland of Christianity. With British Colonialism and later British Imperialism, Christianity carried out its share of destruction in Ireland. Along with beginning the break up of the clan system ownership of land and opening the door to the British landlords Christianity meant the destruction of the place of women in the old Irish culture. Under the old laws women had much greater rights than under Christianity, landlordism and Irish capitalism. Under these old laws for example women could divorce their husbands for seven reasons. These included if he got too fat, if he became impotent, if he talked about them behind their back, if he left a bruise on their skin. Another example was that rape was defined as including telling women lies to have sex with them. There is a legend that a woman went to petition Patrick to ask him to stop destroying womens rights. The story is that he ordered his chariot driver to drive over her and his driver did this and the woman was killed.

Here in Chicago there is the ‚St Patricks Day parade. I went on one occasion but got so angry that I had to leave. Its run by an Irish American dominated union and local Irish American capitalist politicians. The leaders of the union involved and the local politicians want to claw their way up into American upper class life. This ambition of theirs would not be helped by celebrating the revolutionary traditons of Irish history. I mean the Chicago bourgeoisie would not trust Daly to be their front man if he was marching behind a portrait of James Connolly the Irish revolutionary and socialist. So they have to sanitise the history. To fill the vacuum this creates they have the wee green people, the green river, the green backs pouring into the Irish American pubs. Then there are the pipe bands. I love the pipes but then the main band is the Chicago cops pipe band marching in scottish tartins. Try enjoying the pipes when they are being played by an organization with their history of repression and murder of the Haymarket leaders, the union organizers, the Black Panthers. Its not possible.

But I am managing to celebrate and to consider what it means to have been born in Ireland. I went to a show here where Colin Dunne was dancing and Liz Carroll was fiddling and after read a wee bit of Joyce. To see these artists perform is to be reminded that in spite of everything neither the British ruling classes nor Christianity was able to destroy the Irish culture. When Liz Carroll plays the fiddle its like being home again. And when Dunne struts his arrogant aggressive feet across the stage it is to think of the generations of dancers who kept the dance alive. Now it is leaping out of the straitjacket that anti-sexual Christianity tried to keep it in, and being enjoyed by hundreds of millions across the world in spite of the attempt by the British ruling classes to wipe it out. And to read Joyce is to celebrate the powerful resilience of the spirit and the great drive to speak in our own words and express our own thoughts. Wee Joyce was a fighter too.

Tonight I am speaking at a meeting and party about the Derry uprising of 1969. This is being organized by the local chapter of the anti-racist action. These young people organize against the Klan and the various racist organizations. To the meeting/party tonight they have invited a Mexican anti-racist skin head group and a Polish anti-racist skinhead group. I am looking forward to speaking about Derry and the events there. Hip Hop music will follow. It will be a wild night altogether. As a concession to my environment I got a friend to make a leprauchaun. But not a bourgeois lep.
You know the bourgeois lep is smoking a pipe, obviously pushing the line of the tobacco lobby and he, its always a he, has a pot of gold. A store of capital in other words. Mine is a revolutionary lep. Instead of clenching a pipe in one hand he has a clenched fist raised above his head and under his arm copies of books by Connolly, Marx and Trotsky. No pot of gold. I am trying to get an artist to make me a female revolutionary lep.

I hope you all have a good time today and a few moments to think about the people who helped keep the culture alive. A couple of years ago here I organized a night of alternative Irish celebration. The theme of it was to say thanks to the struggles of Black America for their role in helping strengthen Irish culture. Part of the inspiration for the uprising in struggle in Ireland in the late 1960, was the Black revolt in America. The struggles that developed in the late 1960's in Ireland gave new vitality to Irish culture. Today along with Connolly and Larkin and Davitt we should remember and celebrate the lives of Malcom X, Huey Newton and Fred Hampton. John Throne.

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Comments (1 of 1)

Sounds good, but...

by Steve

Sun Mar 14, 2004 21:05

I totally sympathise with your efforts to preserve Irish culture among Irish expatriates in its true form, none of this commercialised/Christianised crap that's been at the forefront for so long. But please, PLEASE don't make it into another platform for political rhetoric!

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