The Chinese Communist Party celebrates its Centenary this year and it has a lot to remember with pride The country has recovered territory which was under the heel of murderous
thieving Britain ( Shanghai and Hong Kong) and Portugal (Macau) and survived the unspeakable atrocities of Imperial Japan. In the 1940s after the defeat of Nazism, primarily by
the Soviet Union, and the surrender of Japan, public parks in Shanghai, during the Premiership of Clement Attlee, had notices saying ” No Dogs- No Chinese.” In Hong Kong the
British established an armed Police Force patterned on the Royal Irish Constabulary. It was there that rubber bullets were first used. The RUC later used them to attack PRO-DEMOCRACY demonstrators in Belfast and “Londonderry.” I really love British allusions to a “Pro-Democracy” Billionaire Media Mogul in Hong Kong.
China has much to thank its Communist Party for. And those who wish its people well should acknowledge that.
In claiming sovereignty over Taiwan the Communist Party follows the policy of Sun Yat Sen in 1912 and Chang Kai Chek. So far as I know there is no analogy with Britain’s impertinent claim to rule in Ireland. An Irish priest in Taiwan, in a letter in the Irish Times recently, asserted that the government in Taiwan was popular there. But he did not even suggest that Taiwan was a nation, with a nation’s right to self-determination. I hope that the Chinese island can come to an accommodation with their fellow Chinese on the mainland without the help of an altruistic Uncle Sam.
I do not believe that the Chinese wish to make war with their near neighbours nor their remote ones. They have been incredibly successful in establishing a prosperous, self-confident country.
What they do have to fear is the fate of Germany, whose progress after its unification in 1871 so alarmed the British that they determined that the country should be destroyed by a Russian steamroller, and a vengeful France by land, whilst the British Navy swept German merchant and naval vessels off the oceans. Virtually all wars plaguing the world
to this day arise from what Roger Casement described as a Crime against Europe, That crime was preceded by decades of false propaganda like that currently being waged
against China.
In five years time it will be one hundred years since the founding of Fianna Fail, once the most successful democratic political party in the world.
I doubt it will be around to celebrate its Centenary. For many years it had the brains, heart and backbone of the country. It sought from the start to heal the wounds of the Civil War
attracting former opponents whilst adhering to the principle of national sovereignty, upholding the rights of Abyssinia against Mussolini at the League of Nations, protesting against the Nazi Nuremberg Laws which withdrew civil rights from Germany’s Jews, and refusing to join the Catholic Hierarchy and Fine Gael in supporting Franco’s assault on Spanish democracy, Fianna Fail in the 1930s refused to pay Annuities to Britain and won the Economic War, increased industrial production,, replaced much of the slums with well-built houses for the workers, introduced annual paid holidays for workers who had been denied them – all in the teeth of Fine Gael condemnation. They got rid of the imposed oath of allegiance to the British Monarch, drafted a Democratic, Sovereign , Republican Constitution and submitted it to to the electorate which had repeatedly favoured them, who enacted it into law.
All against the Begrudgers who had formally adopted Fascism when turfed out of office in 1932. In 1938 it negotiated Britain’s withdrawal from Cork Harbour,
Bantry Bay and Lough Swilly. .And while most of the World was suffering during the Second World War, most of Ireland was a very Heaven by contrast – though Churchill. and
later Franklyn Roosevelt tried to bully her into the conflict. You won’t find that record in the Irish Times which in February 1933 warned its (few) readers of the dire consequences of voting for De Valera’s Fianna Fail, and the following month welcomed the accession to power of Herr Hitler’s Nazis in Berlin. Nor indeed can you expect the Sindo or the Indo to record these truths , Because they supported the Blueshirts whose spokesman, John A Costello in 1934 assured the Dail that, as the Blackshirts had prevailed in Italy and the “Hitler-Shirts” had prevailed in Germany, so too would the Blueshirts in Ireland, A few months later Hitler personally led the party which shot dead
the Brownshirt leader Ernst Rohm in his nightshirt.
Fianna Fail under Lemass, Haughey, Albert Reynolds, Bertie Ahern, and Brian Cowen achieved a lot for Ireland. helped by Donogh O’Malley, Brian Lenihan Senior and Junior
amongst the second generation of its leadership. The founding generation Sean T O Ceallaigh, Frank Aiken, James Ryan , Oscar Traynor and Sean Moylan were nobody’s yes-men.
Some of them were brilliant. All of them were honest and had cheerfully risked death and suffered imprisonment and other hardships over many years. They should be remembered
with pride by all Irish people, and with all decent people on this planet. They, their principles and achievement appears to be forgotten today by the Micheal Martin School of History.
I don’t think the party will be around in 2026 to celebrate its Centenary. But Ireland, as a Nation, aught to celebrate it with pride.
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