I remember back in the winter of 1974 as we prepared for Christmas, still recovering from the mayhem that had followed the Burning of Long Kesh and the Cage 5 Tunnel Escape with the killing of Volunteer Hugh Gerard Coney from Coalisland, we had an amazing piece of news. A Japanese soldier, holed up in the jungles of the Indonesian Archipelago since the end of World War II in August 1945 was discovered and convinced to emerge from his lonely bunker. For one reason or another this poor soul had been overlooked and forgotten about as time and the world moved on without him. Like a tragic figure in some cheap science fiction movie, the guy continued his relentless struggle against the odds till they convinced one of his former commanders to make contact and give him a hug to drag him, bewildered by circumstances, into the modern world.
I thought about this guy and a handful of others like him who carried on, without contact with the real world, in a military struggle that had long since lost its direction and relevance outside their own heads, when I checked the news on Sunday night. Our own equivalent of these ‘trapped-in-time’ relics of a bygone era were poking their heads out of their own wee jungle world. For what? To drive a stake into the heart of ‘The Empire’? I think not… The objective that gave birth to the risen generation of 1969 and after was a New Republic, based on equality for all regardless of religion or any of the other devices that have served to divide the ordinary people of this island, particularly our north-eastern corner, for generations now. That objective is now within our grasp, you can almost smell it, beyond the brow of the hill. Our task, a chairde, is to get our ducks in a row. Our opponents are in turmoil, our potential unequalled since the disastrous Cogadh na gCarad. Some of our comrades, even former comrades, are going to have to step up to the plate, tell these guys how time has moved on and hug them into the 21st Century. Have we any ‘Volunteers’?
Séanna, I might do a lot for my country, but if you’re asking me to hug Arlene Foster, I’ll do without a united Ireland.
There are just some tasks no man should be asked to perform!
Sherdy
I feel the same way about Carál Ní Chuilín!
But if you read the piece again I think you will see it is those known as dissidents that are supposedly in need of a hug.
I won’t be queuing up for that job either.
gio, I’ll let Carál know you’re interested!
I remember that story of the Japanese soldier so well back in the 1970s. It really was like the plot of a sci-fi novel.One of those time-warped tales ,like Planet of the Apes where the hero returns to find a different, lopsided time and place…everything changed beyond recognition.That soldier missed the horror of Hiroshima and Nagazaki and was pulled into a vastly different world of an unrecognisable future that he could barely imagine .
I would not let you enthusiasm for real change run away with you though.You might smell change in the air but it is mostly illusory. “Our opponents are in turmoil, our potential unequalled since the disastrous Cogadh na gCarad” , you say. it might seem like that but we’ve seen all of this before and thought that surely change would come but I see no real changes in the hearts and minds of the opponents of really true changes. When it comes to that hard wall , you will see a re-grouping of the bigotry , racism and fear that has always driven the agenda here. You will see precious few abandoning their hard-held prejudices overnight and voting for a whole new way of looking at the world, I’m afraid. Last night I watched an excellent programme about the origins of the KU Klux Klan. It was no surprise that the whole idea of a “clan” was derived completely from the Scots/Irish and they carried that bigotry from their homeland right across the sea to America. It’s worth a watch if you believe that anything has really changed even now in the 21st century. To my mind we are entering a worse place than we have been in for some fifty years….with the clock spinning backwards on a world scale.
“and shook the very foundation of a dominant, sectarian and brutal unionist regime well before any PIRA ever existed and without firing a single shot in anger.”
Indeed they did Jessica, which makes logicians question why the PIRA had to keep doing its ‘thang’ for such a long time when there was clearly a non-violent alternative on offer…
Very reasonable and valid question AG.
In my view, the mistake you are making is looking for logic in conflict, there is none.
It is simply a primal instinct that leads to a cycle of violence which is very difficult to end.
The more comrades who fall, the harder it is to let them die for nothing, and the same applies on all sides.
Even an animal will fight back and defend its pack.
Yes, there is military intelligence but that is not intellect, it is information gathering and strategic manipulation in pursuit of a cause.
It should have stopped in 1975 and had it not been for Nairac most likely would have.
Who decided on total war? Why were cooler heads not heeded? What kind of leaders were thrown up? What about people who disagreed?
What is your view Dominic , I was only a nipper then
Yet you justify it? I was a child too so I had no say but two things stick in my mind, one is Ken Fletcher’s shop and the other is Joe Gormley. He was my father’s insurance man and a weekly visitor to our house. He was shot dead by an IRA man who, when he went looking for his wages, was told there they are there. I don’t think robbing the wages of poor working men was the right way to free Ireland or achieve justice for Catholics. Do you?
The objective of those courageous people of 1969 had nothing to do with a New Republic Seanna. That is simply falsehood
Perhaps Harry, you can let me know if I have got it wrong though, I respect your opinion but in my view it was to rise up off the bottom of the barrel, to stand and fight against the indignity and oppression they faced by an arrogant and malevolent government who cared nothing for them.
They had the courage to take to the streets and protest against the very state and shook the very foundation of a dominant, sectarian and brutal unionist regime well before any PIRA ever existed and without firing a single shot in anger.
Today we are facing the same arrogance and sectarianism not only from unionism in the north but backed to the hilt by a southern establishment, wed to the british state and joined at the hip every step of the way. Britain intends to rule Ireland by proxy through Dublin and has already bought its way in.
That is the growing stench that I smell coming from beyond the brow of the hill and it sickens me to my stomach.
Somehow I don’t think a hug is going to cut it Seanna.
It is time we took the same courageous stance those brave men and women did in the 60s and an all island equal rights campaign was started that will shake the foundation of the whole of this island and make it crystal clear that the future of this country will not be sold out by corrupt governments, not in Dublin, not in London, not anywhere.
It is time to make a stand. Have we any ‘Volunteers’?
Those were very different times Jessica.For one thing there was much less comfort and much less choice in everyday life.It is difficult to compare to the present where people expect so much more by right and have so much more. Everything they want now can essentially be availed immediately or on credit . Back then if you had n’t got it , you had to wait until you could somehow afford it by saving up for it.That idea of expectatation was not there back then .Fewer people went on to further education back then , either .We were probably the first generation of working -class children to go to grammar schools and on to colleges and universities. Many of our parents had not experienced this option at all before the 1960s . This began gradually after the second world war and was well under way by the late 1950s and early 1960s. Grants were available to allow young people to go further -afield and educate themselves without their parents’ help for the first time . It might mean living in very poor housing , but it was possible.There were many others of course who were really badly off and to get ahouse with indoor toilets and a bathroom was a dream only.
Young educated people could see that change was needed for basic rights of life like voting rights and decent sanitary housing .That was the initial spur that took them onto the streets. A few visionary men , mostly people like school-teachers, who were respected members of the community and more middle -class too, compared to most of those they taught ,were aware of the conditions that many of their pupils and their families had to endure. Some were forced to live in some terrible conditions.
They didn’t do it in a vacuum either .This sense of a civil rights movement was happening all over the world at the time …in America, South Africa , France. there was a sense of needing change; a sense that it was only bigotry and corruption holding society back. The civil rights movement here copied the American version of Martin Luther King’s “I had a dream” and certainly nationalists identified with the oppressed blacks in both America and South Africa.
It was a popular movement in that respect but not really overtly political. It was based on a sense of natural morality and the apparent lack of it that was being witnessed.That sense of hypocrisy that was tied up with religious fundamentalism was seen as an obscenity. The movement caught the incredibly conservative authorities here right on the hop and they had no notion as to how to deal with it. It had never occurred to them that change s were needed at all until it was too late.Had no one done anything they would have sat on their hands to this day.
Young educated people pushed the agenda and stuck-in -the -mud unionist politicians were no match for them in debate. They tore them to shreds on local television. Nor were poorly -educated policemen, who seemed like thick-witted by comparison able to deal intellectually with something as new as this and answered with violence on the streets. They simply thought (as usual) that it was an Irish republican uprising. it wasn’t of course.It was something completely new. .Ian Paisley had his own agenda and he had a bee in his bonnet about the Pope and Catholicism anyway ,which tapped into the background hum that had been the unionist agenda for centuries, anyway… and he fanned that flames of protestantism and their fears of republicanism. Many of these civil rights advocates couldn’t have given you tuppence for religion of any sort.They wanted social reform.
Republicanism was nowhere to be seen, really .It was only when the police began outright attacks on the civil rights marchers and when stirred-up loyalists took to burning out Catholics that the PIRA began to form up in their local areas and fight back .The original Official IRA were dubbed the 2I Ran Away”, because they were really nowhere to be seen to defend anyone and hadn’t really been around for years.This created a war between the old Officials and the newly -minted Provos and it went from there.
the Troubles were running for a long time before the provos got going .Had reforms been granted none of it would have happened at all. Much has been written about all of this and there are plenty of documentaries .Anyone who lived through it has their own set of stories to tell but I’ll refer to one of the pieces I wrote for Jude earlier and you could do worse than watch the several videos i included in the piece. They are pretty historical…http://www.judecollins.com/2016/12/art-terrorism-part-2/
As you say, the Civil Rights campaign was not about a united Ireland. All we asked for was the same rights as other citizens of the UK. If Unionism had been forced by Westminster, at that point, to end its sectarian rule in NI, the campaign of violence might never have happened. Unfortunately moderate Unionism was cowed by Ian Paisley and Westminster had ignored the failed statelet for so long it was incapable of doing more than enquiring into the causes of the problem. Little redress was offered to oppressed nationalists, even though their wrongs were acknowledged. Perfect conditions for the re-emergence of violence.
I remember having this discussion in July 1969, in a room full of women and girls, all of us under arrest and waiting to be charged before a magistrate for obstructing the Queen’s highway. One old lady, locked inside her own timewarp, kept shouting “Up the Republic,” only to be indignantly shouted down by the rest of us who tried, unsuccessfully, to make her understand that an Irish republic was not what we were about.
Funny enough,Mary Jo, I knew a fair smattering of people in the civil rights both town and country and they were all official republicans. I also remember the Provos doing one of their white line pickets and handing out leaflets to the marchers protesting about something.
You might remember that fiosrach but that is not what the civil rights movement was initially about .It was driven more by what Peoples Democracy ,the likes of Bernadette Devlin and a lot of student radicals and middle -class thinkers were doing ,as far as young people were concerned ,than anything to do with republicanism. Republicans at that moment in time were the old Officials and mostly they were viewed as passe by many young nationalists. The new Republicans simply jumped on a bandwagon that was already rolling. Those old Officials were eventually given short shrift by the newer Provisionals and that is how it panned out in the end.There is no seamless line of republicanism no mattter how anyone likes to re-write history….and that includes the current Sinn Fein. The Civil Rights movement is a fly in the ointment on that score.
I agree Harry.
Sinn Fein must prepare to lead a new Ireland, the Ireland that should have been had partition not happened.
They must continue to bring in the best of our young talent from all over Ireland and get rid of the ridiculously well past their sell by date embarrassments of Fine Gael and Fianna Fail who need to be consigned to the dustbin of Irish political history.
Even Margaret Thatcher said they got it wrong in 1921, it is now time to undo that wrong. Not with another wrong but by fulfilling the wishes and aspirations of Ireland set out by the Easter proclamation. And it needs to happen before the centenary of these toxic states, whether they be 26 or 6 county travesties.
For God help me I will not stomach or tolerate any centenary celebrations of either of these shit hole states.
It is time for a new movement, to demand change all across this island. Not linked to any existing group, but one which the young people of this country can aspire to, that will offer them a prosperous future, with equality fit for the 21st century and free from the political interference of any other nation.
I would dearly love to see such a movement start in Dublin and gather the support of all people opposed to corrupt politics, unfair distribution of wealth, incompetent governance, biased media and for its support to spread all across this island.
I would contribute to help such a group set up and be active from the start in Dublin and help spread support all across this island.
Again, i ask. Are the people of Ireland happy with how it is.
Do we keep the apparent recovery going, or do we recover what we can of Ireland before these parties sell out any more of our country, or divide our people any further?
Most of the student radicals deradicalised when they left the airy atmosphere of academia. They were looked upon as just students shaking off the traces before the took up a lucrative career. Who provided the armed guards for the PD march? Who stewarded all the CR marches? When you say the old official IRA I just know you don’t mean age wise. Old Harry!
I was possibly the youngest participant in the “long march”from Belfast to Derry. It passed our lane and my 10 year old self and my brother joined in for about a mile before scurrying home for our tea! I also joined in 10 years later as the march was rerun ,again led by Michael Farrell and in support of the H block prisoners. The “foot soldiers” were broadly the same on both marches.
Also “the official”IRA did’nt exist in 69 and the South Derry brigade of the IRA guarded the marchers when they stayed overnight outside Maghera.
S Derry brigade of what? And if the officials didn’t exist in 1969 who did the provos feud with from then until 1972?
The IRA was aunified force in 1969 .The split came in 1970 and those that sided with Goulding styled themselves “official” when that split occured.