Between 1916 and 1922 democratic Ireland, though almost totally unarmed, won a brilliant victory. All wars involve propaganda, which, properly understood, means the publication of messages. The word has come to be understood as lying.
Within weeks of arranging the execution of the leading Insurgents of Easter Week, Britain’s General Maxwell said they had achieved more in a week than Parnell and Redmond
had in nearly thirty years, and that Redmondite MPs concern for prisoners was motivated by fear of being obliterated in elections. Redmond’s deputy, John Dillon told C.P. Scott,
at the time, that that was what he feared, and if Sinn Fein acquired a capable leader it was possible.
It soon came about in by-elections in 1917, the General Election of 1918, and municipal, county council and other local elections in 1920.
British troops and the Royal Irish Constabulary had been using strong-armed methods to thwart democracy, including shooting at civilians and prodding them with bayonets for years. After the 1920 local elections, the British launched a no-holds-barred intense reign of terror. Despite the censorship and Britain’s jealous control of personal travel, not even the Royal Navy could keep the world in ignorance of what was happening in Ireland
. The world followed the hunger strike of Terence MacSwiney, and learned the truth, some from British journalists, some from Dail Eireann’s IRISH BULETIN. a publication whose reports were never refuted. when honest MPs used it to question Government spokesmen at Westminster.
I understand that the “Experts” chosen to advise the Dublin Government on the Decade of Commemoration had never heard of THE IRISH BULLETIN, although it is probably
the best primary source for an understanding of the years 1919-1921. Scholars might consult it together with the newspapers published in Britain and Ireland, of all political
and draw conclusions from them.
Dail Eireann was never an “underground” Parliament, as some would have you believe. It met publicly in the Round Room in Dublin’s Mansion House on 21 January 1919, and in the same venue in April1919 when it elected Eamon de Valera its head of Government. He had been sprung from Lincoln Prison by Michael Collins and Harry Boland between those meetings.
And in April 1919 Dail Eireann unanimously called for the ostracism of the RIC after a debate which characterised the force as spies and perjurers.
In January 1921, writing to Michael Collins on Dail Eireann notepaper with the Mansion House address, de Valera outlined his views on the elections to be held in accordance with Westminster’s Government of Ireland Act. Dev had been a year and a half in America, publicising Ireland’s cause, making friends with Indian and Egyptian Nationalist.He had been smuggled out to and back across the Atlantic, and when he wrote in 1921 he was still wanted by the British.
The work of the Republic, its Courts and other Departments had survived in Ireland. Its Army had not done a brown-trousered Dunkirk scuttle. Nor had it descended to the level of the Crown Forces.
The current Dublin Establishment has not only attempted to criminalise the democratic resistance to British rule but to depict the agents of British Rule as the forces of law and order.
THE IRISH TIMES has been guided by a secretive, oathbound “Trust” set up by the Arnold Goodman (a swindler according to a fellow-peer, Harold Wilson’s
favourite fixer) in 1970 so that it would put British government interests first. To those interests, I admit, I believe it has been true.
In the same year Jack Lynch attempted to have cabinet colleagues Haughey and Blayney and an honest Army Ofiicer imprisoned on perjured evidence, for following a policy agreed in Cabinet with Lynch presiding. And the History Education was dumbed down.
But the OBFUSCATORS have been rumbled by the people and the attempt to canonise their oppressors and demonise their defenders has blown up in their
faces.
And all the Tripe and Treason in THE IRISH TIMES and INDEPENDENT NEWSPAPERS and RTE has failed.
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