First, some irrefutable facts
SINN FEIN, FOUNDED IN 1905, is the oldest non-Unionist political party in Ireland.
THE IRISH LABOUR PARTY, FOUNDED IN 1912 is the younger of the two.
THE FORD MOTOR COMPANY came to CORK in 1917 (and my father worked there during school and University vacations.)
FORD HAD PLANTS in OLD TRAFFORD (Manchester, England) and near BORDEAUX (in France) years before the company set up in Cork.
Stephen Collins is on record as writing that the Labour Party is Ireland’s oldest and that Cork was the site of Ford’s first European plant.
I have been reading his contributions to the public’s consciousness for many decades and consider him a fathomless source of disinformation.
To me that disinformation is apparent.
If the source is also A PARENT , I could do worse than quote the Bard of Stratford on Avon, to each
of his offspring individually in three little words – ” FULL FATHOM FIVE …………”
Yesterday in THE IRISH TIMES Stephen Collins attacks Irish proponents of Neutrality and accuses Russian Embassy Staff in Dublin of bugging Ireland’s State Secrets.
It seems to me that the standard of Intelligence in the Embassy was high, not underhand, and the Diplomacy was of the first order. At the behest of Irish fishermen, the Russians cancelled planned naval exercises in International waters where they had as much right to exercise as any other navy.
No Russian submarine has ever upended an Irish trawler and shrugged off its reasonability. Irish trawlermen will remember when a British submarine did that..
Neutral Ireland, armed only with moral principle and a clear head, punched far above her weight in international affairs from 1932 onwards.
As President of the Council of the League of Nations Eamon de Valera insisted,in vain, that all member nations honour its Covenant and impose effective sanctions on those that didn’t, when Japan, an Ally of Britain ,attacked Manchuria. Dev facilitated the Soviet Union’s admission to the League in 1934.
When Italy, led by a Knight of the Bath, Benito Mussolini attacked Abyssinia, its Emperor Haile Selassie, addressed the League at Geneva
,De Valera was the only National Delegate to advocate effective sanctions against the aggressor. The British were happy to have the coffers of their Suez Canal money filled with Blood Money as Italian troops sped through the waterway on their infamous mission.
As President of the Assembly of the League of Nations, in 1938 De Valera warned that without international adherence to the League’s Covenant the world was on the brink of war.
That same year, 1938, De Valera negotiated with Britain for the withdrawal of British forces from Cork Harbour, Bantry Bay and Lough Swilly, and pledged
that the territory under the control of his Sovereign Independent Democratic Government would not be used as a base for attacking Britain. (Some sincere but misguided Republicans chose the occasion to launch an inneffective campaign of bombing in Britain.) Dev played his hand rather as Paul Newman did in “COOL HAND LUKE” and saved most of Ireland from devastation during the bloodiest war in history.
THE UKRANIAN REGIME today has more weapons than moral principles but might be better advised to copy De Valera’s policy of not provoking their largest neighbour.
And the IRISH who have crazily chosen to pick a quarrel with Russia, have less excuse for doing so than the ill-advised IRA bombers of 1938 had for bombing England.
THE STAKES ARE EVEN HIGHER FOR IRELAND NOW THAN THEY WERE IN 1938.
This was the situation also twenty years later when, in 1958 Frank Aiken, De Valera’s long-time colleague as Minister for External Affairs, first addressed the League of Nations. His ultimate concern was the elimination of Nuclear Weapons, and his immediate concern was their Non_Proliferation.
He applied himself energetically and skillfully to the task over 10 years, and Aiken‘s was the first signatory to the Treaty which came into effect in 1970.
By 2016 191 States were signatories to the treaty.
I don’t think the Ukrainian regime is a signatory. Nor that Frank Aiken‘s main purpose, the elimination of nuclear weapons, is shared by the United States, the United Kingdom and their Cronies.
When Frank Aiken first appeared at the UN the Soviets had already called for the elimination of all nuclear weapons. They had suffered most during the non-Nuclear War in Europe and inflicted the lion’s share of casualties on the Nazis .
The only war where Stephen Collins has made his mark is a mercenary propaganda war against the truth.
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