Peace in an Irish town

by Theo Russell

At Sinn Féin’s Ard Fheis in Dublin last month the New Worker interviewed Gerry Machlochlainn, a Sinn Féin councillor in Derry City and former Sinn Féin representative in Britain, about the changes Derry has seen with the end of the conflict and the impact of the Good Friday Agreement in the north of Ireland. The following is his assessment of the changes seen in recent years:

MAJOR ADVANCES have taken place in Derry, such as the removal of British troops and military paraphernalia from the streets. There are still some listening and observation posts in the Rosemount district as well as a British army barracks but the military presence is far less visible.
Sinn Féin is much stronger in Derry and in the local elections in May 2005 achieved its largest ever vote. Although the party emerged with the same number of council seats, it closed the gap with the Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP), for whom Derry is their main base in the Six Counties.
Sinn Féin now has ten councillors against 14 for the SDLP and six unionist seats (the overwhelming majority of Derry being Catholic and nationalist).
Under direct rule Derry suffered from a lack of investment and poor infrastructure and was very low in spending priorities. Sinn Féin is pushing an all-Ireland development agenda and a balanced regional approach in the northwest of Ireland, involving the counties of Donegal in the Republic and Derry, Limavady and Strabane in the Six Counties. The party has received a very positive response to its development policies.
Now the SDLP is also supporting "north-south development", and the government in Dublin is also talking about developing the northwest. Levels of poverty in Derry neighbouring and Donegal are still unacceptably high.
While the Irish Republic is one of the wealthiest countries in the world, with a GDP second in Europe to Luxembourg, it is also the most unequal in Europe.
The impact of globalisation has meant the export of traditional jobs such as clothing, textiles and other more recent industries to developing countries.
The "race to the bottom" and the cheapest labour mean that the future lies in building a high skills and highly paid economy, by developing educational and intellectual structures and developing a social response.
Currently economic development is reliant on multi-national companies. What is needed is to develop an indigenous economy with some contribution from foreign direct investment.
One area where reform has not been delivered is policing. The SDLP is now paying the price for accepting the new Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) and joining the policing board. People can see how the PSNI engage in blatant acts, carrying out very public raids on republicans under the guise of investigating "serious crime", and can see their provocations against young people leading to confrontations.
In the summer of 2005 The PSNI decided to issue charges for the annual march commemorating the 1981 Hunger Strike, saying that a 20-minute procession through a republican area was illegal.
Thirty people, including several Sinn Féin councillors, face being convicted of an offence for walking down their own street. All this because the deadline for requesting permission had been missed!
This is in comparison to the PSNI setting up road-blocks and sealing off nationalist areas to allow Orange Order marches in Belfast and other towns.
Communities in Derry are vulnerable without an acceptable police service. Petty criminals are tolerated by the PSNI and used as paid informers. Republicans and nationalists are very angry about this.
Poverty and degradation are a legacy of the conflict, Irish drinking culture, drugs, these need a multi-faceted approach. Community restorative justice structures are active in the city but there’s still a huge gap to be filled.
The voluntary community sector is very active and there is a thriving social economy with projects including community-based enterprises, a shopping centre and leisure centre set up by ex-prisoners.
More children are learning the Irish language than ever – several hundred at Irish schools and Conradh na Gaeilge is building a £2 – £3 million Irish language and cultural centre serving Derry.
But there are still interface problems. Young people on both sides take part in "recreational rioting" and in the Unionist community they are being exploited by loyalists. A Catholic family on the protestant Fountain estate and a protestant family who were friendly with Catholics have had bomb attacks.
Young people in both communities are also involved in disgraceful behaviour and this is a challenge for Sinn Féin – we need to ensure that the Fountain doesn’t feel under siege. This involves a fast response to confrontations, and trying to mobilise the communities and get people to take responsibility to end the dangers to young people and to the political situation in Derry.
The unionist community has five Democratic Unionist Party councillors and one Official Unionist Party councillor, all of them anti-Good Friday Agreement. There is no effective challenge to the rejectionists, but civic unionism – business, the church and non-political – is engaging in a very significant way with nationalists.
On the issue of marches, the Apprentice Boys of Derry have entered into negotiations with others, including nationalists, and agreements have been reached to allow marches to happen without major disruption.
There is an important lesson for other parts of Ireland that agreement can be reached through talking. But there isn’t yet a permanent long-term solution and the marches still cause major disruption for residents and businesses, and the business community is pressing for changes.
There is no significant support for "dissident" republicans in Derry. There is a range of opinion in the nationalist community on the recent changes and Sinn Féin’s policies, but there is overwhelming support for taking the process forward through political and democratic measures.
These micro-groups are not representative and are totally discredited, and they are in effect disrupting their own community.

End the Occupation -- Solidarity with the Iraqi people (update)

Statement of Communist and Workers’ Parties on the occasion of the 3rd Anniversary of the War against Iraq

End of occupation - Solidarity with the Iraqi people



The war against Iraq, launched by the US imperialism and its allies has been going on for three years now.

Around the 18th March, on the occasion of the anniversary of the war, there will be demonstrations and protests all over the world against the ongoing occupation.

We call upon the working people to strengthen their struggle and solidarity with the Iraqi people and to stop the threat of new military imperialist interventions in the region.

As communist and workers' parties struggling for peace, social justice, progress and socialism, we support the legitimate right of the Iraqi people to resist occupation.

We reiterate our firm solidarity with their struggle for the end of occupation, for the restoration of the sovereignty and independence, for the liberation and integrity of their country.

We demand the immediate withdrawal of all occupation forces as a prerequisite for a democratic and sovereign Iraq, legal action against the crimes of the invaders and full compensation for the damage they caused.

The parties
Communist Party of Albania
Algerian Party for Democracy and Socialism
Communist Party of Argentina
Communist Party of Armenia
Communist Party of Australia
Communist Party of Bangladesh
Communist Party of Belarus
Workers' Party of Belgium
Communist Workers' Party of Bosnia and Herzegovina
Brazilian Communist Party
Communist Party of Brazil
Communist Party of Britain
New Communist Party of Britain
Bulgarian Communist Party Georgi Dimitroff
Communist Party of Bulgaria
Communist Party of Canada
Communist Party of Cuba
AKEL, Cyprus
Communist Party of Bohemia and Moravia
Communist Party in Denmark
Communist Party of Denmark
Communist Party of Estonia
Communist Party of Finland
Communist Party of Macedonia
Unified Communist Party of Georgia
German Communist Party
Communist Party of Greece
Hungarian Communist Workers’ Party
Communist Party of India
Communist Party of Ireland
Workers’ Party of Ireland
Communist Party of Israel
Party of the Italian Communists (PdCI)
Jordanian Communist Party
Workers Party of Korea
Socialist Party of Latvia
Socialist Party of Lithuania
Communist Party of Luxembourg
Party of the Communists of Mexico
Popular Socialist Party of Mexico
Communist Party of Malta
New Communist Party of the Netherlands
Palestinian Communist Party
Philippine Communist Party (PKP-1930)
Communist Party of Poland
Portuguese Communist Party
Communist Party of Romania
Socialist Alliance Party Romania
Communist Party of Soviet Union
Communist Party of the Russian Federation
Communist Workers' Party of Russia - Party of the Russian Communists
New Communist Party of Yugoslavia
Communist Party of Slovakia
South African Communist Party
Communist Party of Peoples of Spain
Communist Party of Sweden
Communist Party of Syria
Syrian Communist Party
Communist Party of Tadjikistan
Communist Party of Turkey
Communist Party of Ukraine
Union of Communists of Ukraine
Communist Party of Venezuela

24th March 2006

Plunder at Home, Plunder Abroad

The world's leading imperialist powers, Britain and the United States, are fond of accusing other governments and institutions of corruption.

Recently it was Kenya, before that the Palestinian Authority, Zimbabwe and the whole of Africa. US senator Paul Volcker led the onslaught on the United Nations over the oil for food programme.

Kofi Annan, his son, and even our own George Galloway MP were targetted, but the real aim was to undermine the UN itself as a body speaking on behalf of the world's nations.
But what is the record of the two guardians of democracy and freedom?

US journalist Ed Harriman has exposed corruption and criminality In Iraq on a staggering scale.The US-run Coalition Privisional Authority (CPA) handed huge contracts to a handful of US firms with no competition. The CPA's inspector general found that $8.8 billion spent by the Iraqi Interim Government was not properly accounted for - more than the Mobutu stole from Zaire in 32 years. Millions simply disappeared from the Iraqi Central Bank, and $800m was handed out to US commanders without even being counted. A US contractor was overpaid by $2,825,755, another given $25 million in cash with no record.

Nineteen billion new Iraqi dinars turned up on a plane sent to Lebanon by the Iraqi interior minister, and $1.4bn was flown to the Kurdish regional capital Irbil where it vanished. Ministers and officials distributed millions in cash to their friends, relatives or private militias. No records were kept of Iraqi oil exports, and in flagrant breach of Security Council Resolution 1483 oil income was not placed in development accounts. Christian Aid protested that the distribution of Iraq's money should have been subject to international oversight, but nobody listened. $18.4 billion approved by the US Congress for Iraq ended up being spent on fighting the resistance. Reconstruction funds went on the war, while in Iraq hospitals and schools were derelict, electricity intermittent, and water supplies polluted.

The war in Iraq cost Britain and the US £105 billion, paid for by the working people of those countries. But this figure is dwarfed by the estimated £3 trillion in Iraqi oil wealth.In 1972 Saddam Hussain nationalised the oil industry and the US and British oil giants were excluded from the country. After the occupation, executives from BP, Shell, Exxon Mobil and Halliburton gathered in London to share out the oil contracts.The 2005 Iraqi constitution, written by the US occupiers, requires major sectors of the economy to be privatised, and guarantees foreign companies a major role.

This is the real reason for the invasion and occupation, and why the occupiers had to search desparately for a just cause.And what about Britain itself? New Labour and the Treasury are overseeing 'legal' corruption involving billions in public funds. A BBC investigation has revealed billions being wasted on management consultants in the public sector.These companies and civil servants have lied to MPs and the punlic, while in almost every case leaving a worse financial situation than they found. In 2004 consultants across the public sector cost almost £2 billion. In recent years Surrey and Sussex Healthcare Trust has been overrun by consultants from Quo Health, McKinseys and Secta. A chief executive from Quo Health was appointed at a salary of over £300,000, but the trust's deficit grew to £62m. The contract was terminated early.McKinseys carried out "a holistic financial and activity diagnostic." Then consultants from Secta were "franchised" by the Department of Health to run the trust under a new Chief Executive.A deficit of £3m became £11.5m. The former trust chairman said "the whole process of the franchise failed completely." But according to Secta, "services were substantially improved."Secta's contract also was terminated early, but the company refused to say how much they were paid off on grounds of "commercial confidentiality".

Members of the Patients Forum were told that £150,000 was spent on private operations, but found under the Freedom of Information act the true figure was £2.8m.Local MP Mike Penning said Secta "goes around in circles to try and make sure you do not get the facts," and the government was "ploughing more and more and more into Trusts to oversee the management, which we're already paying for in the first place."An HM Revenue and Customs employee told the BBC 'advisors' had been doing his job for much higher pay. "When you look at the car park, you see expensive cars and clearly they can't belong to civil servants - you know, Mercedes, BMWs and Porsches."The National Audit Office questioned the use of consultants at the Department for Education and Skills, citing "ineffective outcomes, cost overruns, poor value for money and lack of propriety."

When Labour MP Austin Mitchell, a member of the Public Accounts Committee, asked the DfES how much was spent on consultants, he was told "about £4.4m a year." But an internal audit he was refused access to gave the true figure: £20-£30m.Mitchell says "the estimate they gave me was really untrue and they were trying to con me. They lied."The BBC investigation reveals corruption, waste and dishonesty involving billions in taxes paid by working people, and the contempt with which elected and public representatives are treated by the Whitehall mandarins overseeing this 'legal' robbery.

Such corruption and injustice is endemic. NHS hospitals are now among the dirtiest in the whole of Europe, east and west. The number of hospital cleaners has fallen by half since contracting out started in 1979.

Private lobbyists operate at every level of parliament & government, and research bodies on GM crops are packed with representatives of agribusiness and food retailers. The NHS, teaching and local government are subject to endless monitoring and restructuring overseen by consultants.

Of course corruption is rife in many developing countries, where the most respectable British companies openly admit to handing out lavish bribes. There is just as much corruption in Britain and the rest of Europe, where it is more effectively hidden.

But this corruption pales into insignificance when set against the vast wealth plundered from the developing nations by imperialism, through debt, privatisation, unequal trade, and now though war and re-colonisation.

Reg Birch -- a life remembered

Review

by Ken Ruddock

Reg Birch:Engineer, trade unionist, communist by Will Podmore, Bellman Books, London 2004. Pbk, illus, 308pp, £8.00.

There are many books written about the history of the trade unions and the working class covering the period up to and during the Second World War, but there are very few that deal with the ongoing struggle that many of us took part in and who remember the part that Reg Birch took – a leading part.
The sub-title says it all – engineer, trade unionist, communist. He was all three in one.
Leaving school at the age of 15 in 1929, he became an apprentice toolmaker and joined the Amalgamated Engineering Union (AEU). Ten years later he became a shop steward.
He joined the Communist Party of Great Britain in 1939 but parted company with it in 1968. By that time the CPGB had drifted away from its revolutionary principles, downgraded the importance of the industrial struggle and had adopted The British Road to Socialism (BRS) as its programme. Reg, like many other militant comrades, had long opposed the BRS as a left-social democratic programme and the style of work that followed, which in his words divided the CPGB into “thinkers” and “doers”, of full-time officers and passive dues payers.
Reg had great faith in the industrial working class, in its ability to defeat the capitalist employers in struggle, given the right leadership. He served the union as a branch officer, branch president, shop stewards’ convenor, and member of its London District Committee. Then he became its district organiser, executive councilman, and secretary of the Confederation of Shipbuilding and Engineering Unions.
Much of his time was spent in conflict with employers in the aircraft industry, in which the unions were militant and well organised in those days and this is covered at length in the book.
In 1968 Reg decided that it was necessary to form an “honest” communist party, a Marxist-Leninist party. And so the Communist Party of Britain (Marxist-Leninist) was formed, with himself as chairman, a post he held until he retired in 1985.
Some communists in engineering joined its ranks. Others, who later helped found the New Communist Party of Britain in 1977, felt that Reg’s move was premature.
But, under Reg’s leadership, the London North district committee of the AEU was not only concerned with national problems. It also had an international outlook and went on record in opposition to the repression of the Palestinian people.
It opposed the United States aggression against Vietnam – in fact Reg was in Hanoi during the bombing of Vietnam in December 1972. He had made many friends in his travels: Chou En-Lai in China and Enver Hoxha, leader of the Party of Labour of Albania amongst them.
Whilst the book of 308 pages is the story of Reg Birch, there is also included a chapter devoted to his wife Dorothy, a fighter in her own right and a great support to Reg. It is packed with anecdotes and stories about industrial struggle including a hilarious account of the AUEW’s presentation to the Trade and Industry Sub-Committee of the House of Commons in 1975.
Reg Birch was an outstanding union leader who fought for the class all his life which is why he is remembered with affection by many who knew him but did not necessarily agree with everything he said. His controversial decision to form the CPB (ML) in 1968 and the political line it subsequently developed can be studied in this text which includes some key Birch speeches and CPB(ML) pamphlets.
This is invaluable reading for all interested in the history of the class and the British communist movement. It can be bought in any bookshop or directly from: Bread Books, PO Box 1806, Coventry, CV6 1YJ. Please add £2.00 for p&p if ordering it directly.

End the Occupation -- Solidarity with the Iraqi People

Statement of Communist and Workers’ Parties on the occasion of the 3rd Anniversary of the War against Iraq


End of occupation - Solidarity with the Iraqi people


The war against Iraq, launched by the US imperialism and its allies has been going on for three years now.
Around the 18th March, on the occasion of the anniversary of the war, there will be demonstrations and protests all over the world against the ongoing occupation.
We call upon the working people to strengthen their struggle and solidarity with the Iraqi people and to stop the threat of new military imperialist interventions in the region.
As communist and workers' parties struggling for peace, social justice, progress and socialism, we support the legitimate right of the Iraqi people to resist occupation.
We reiterate our firm solidarity with their struggle for the end of occupation, for the restoration of the sovereignty and independence, for the liberation and integrity of their country.
We demand the immediate withdrawal of all occupation forces as a prerequisite for a democratic and sovereign Iraq, legal action against the crimes of the invaders and full compensation for the damage they caused.



Communist Party of Albania
Algerian Party for Democracy and Socialism
Communist Party of Argentina
Communist Party of Armenia
Communist Party of Australia
Communist Party of Bangladesh
Communist Party of Belarus
Workers' Party of Belgium
Communist Workers' Party of Bosnia and Herzegovina
Brazilian Communist Party
Communist Party of Brazil
New Communist Party of Britain
Bulgarian Communist Party Georgi Dimitroff
Communist Party of Bulgaria
Communist Party of Canada
Communist Party of Cuba
AKEL, Cyprus
Communist Party of Bohemia and Moravia
Communist Party in Denmark
Communist Party of Denmark
Communist Party of Estonia
Communist Party of Finland
Communist Party of Macedonia
Unified Communist Party of Georgia
German Communist Party
Communist Party of Greece
Hungarian Communist Workers’ Party
Communist Party of India
Communist Party of Ireland
Workers’ Party of Ireland
Communist Party of Israel
Party of the Italian Communists (PdCI)
Jordanian Communist Party
Workers Party of Korea
Socialist Party of Latvia
Socialist Party of Lithuania
Communist Party of Luxembourg
Party of the Communists of Mexico
Popular Socialist Party of Mexico
Communist Party of Malta
New Communist Party of the Netherlands
Palestinian Communist Party
Philippine Communist Party (PKP-1930)
Communist Party of Poland
Portuguese Communist Party
Socialist Alliance Party Romania
Communist Party of the Russian Federation
Communist Workers' Party of Russia - Party of the Russian Communists
New Communist Party of Yugoslavia
Communist Party of Slovakia
South African Communist Party
Communist Party of Peoples of Spain
Communist Party of Sweden
Communist Party of Syria
Syrian Communist Party
Communist Party of Tadjikistan
Communist Party of Turkey
Communist Party of Ukraine
Union of Communists of Ukraine
Communist Party of Venezuela


16th March 2006

Sinn Fein faces tough decisions with confidence

by Theo Russell

SINN Féin delegates from all over Ireland met in Dublin on 17th –19th
February to prepare for a new round of negotiations which will decide
the fate of the Good Friday Agreement (GFA), imminent elections in
northern and southern Ireland, and to debate the complex issues thrown
up by the peace process.
Gerry Adams reminded delegates in his presidential address that the
background to last year’s Ard Fheis was a political impasse threatening
to send the peace process into freefall.
Since then the IRA has completed de-commissioning, the Robert McCartney
murder and Northern Bank robbery are no longer live issues, and the
British government has restored the salaries and facilities of Sinn Féin
MPs at Westminster.
Sinn Féin has successfully driven the peace process forward, despite
interference from British ministers, the machinations of British
intelligence and the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) Special
Branch, the abdication of commitments by the Dublin government, and the
intransigence of the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP).
But the party has no illusions about the prospects for finally
implementing the GFA, and is adopting a tough stance. In his report on
the talks chief negotiator Martin McGuinness said: "We are entering a
critical phase of our peace strategy. The future of the Good Friday
Agreement is on the line."
This time, however, Sinn Féin is quite prepared to see it fall. But that
does no mean a return to conflict. McGuinness quoted delegate Declan
Kearney, who said that even if the GFA collapsed, "Its substance has
been secured as the minimal threshold for anything that might replace or
supersede it."
Far from seeking to hold on to the Northern Ireland assembly and
executive at any cost, Sinn Féin is pressing Northern Ireland Secretary
Peter Hain to call the DUP’s bluff by setting a six week deadline for
the talks.
If no deal is reached then Sinn Féin wants London and Dublin to
implement the provisions of the GFA, even without DUP participation,
which is technically possible. Otherwise, the assembly should be
scrapped and the salaries of MLAs withdrawn, effectively ending the
DUP’s veto over the peace process.
In the unlikely event of a deal being done, Sinn Féin hopes to see the
assembly and executive restored, the complete demilitarisation of the
north, the transference of policing and justice powers, the repeal of
repressive legislation, the release of the remaining republican
prisoners, and a solution to the issue of "OTRs" – republicans still "on
the run".
Sinn Féin is also demanding the repeal of legislation allowing the
Northern Ireland Secretary to suspend the political institutions, and
changes to legislation to prevent the abuses of procedures employed by
the DUP to disrupt the work of the and executive.

‘Toytown Assembly’

There are also attempts to restore the GFA bodies on a watered-down
basis. The DUP want a phased return of the institutions, starting with a
"toytown assembly" but no Executive.
The moderate nationalist Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP) has
proposed restoring the assembly, but with British-appointed and
unelected commissioners in place of executive ministers.
Both proposals would mean re-negotiating the GFA, something Sinn Féin
is implacably opposed to. Sinn Féin is confident that even if the GFA
falls the party will strengthen its democratic mandate throughout
Ireland, and that eventually even the DUP will have to embrace change.
One ongoing problem is the Independent Monitoring Commission; a body
set up by London and Dublin outside the terms of the GFA. The IMC has
consistently attempted to discredit Sinn Féin by questioning the
integrity of the IRA’s actions.
When the British government stripped Sinn Fein MPs of £400,000 in
parliamentary allowances in March last year it was at the recommendation
of the IMC, which claimed the IRA had been behind the Northern Bank
robbery.
The IMC has also sought to undermine the Independent international
Commission on Decommissioning, the official body overseeing the
disarming of the Northern Ireland paramilitaries headed by Canadian
general Jean de Chastelain, by appearing to give an alternative
"official" version of events.
At the Ard Fheis Martin McGuinness demolished the IMC’s credibility,
reporting that it had failed to clarify allegations of IRA involvement
in incidents in July and August last year.
"It is my view that the incidents in question did not even happen," he
said. "In one particular bizarre line they report six unreported
assaults – just think about that for a minute – they say they considered
six unreported assaults!"
McGuinness made it clear that "unless the issue of the IMC is
addressed, this latest round of political discussions will run aground.
The IMC can be summed in one word. Balderdash! It is time they were
decommissioned."

Difficult challenges

The development of the peace process has also thrown up many difficult
decisions and challenges for Irish republicans. Gerry Adams told the Ard
Fheis: "The decisions by the IRA were undoubtedly deeply difficult for
many," and added: "There are republicans still trying to come to terms
with it many months later.
"Indeed undoubtedly there are some who believe that the IRA has made a
mistake. They are entitled to their opinion but to no more than that. No
one should harbour the notion that the republican struggle can be
advanced any further by an armed campaign.
"This leadership is firmly opposed to such a departure. I have made it
clear from the republican perspective – the war is over."
But he added: "Unfortunately, powerful elements within the British
system have both a war mentality and the resources to sustain this. For
them the peace process is war by other means."
Other issues on which doubts are still held by some republicans are a
possible coalition with other parties in the Irish Republic, and what
Adams called "the deeply problematic issue" of policing in the six
counties. Sinn Féin’s leadership were clear on both matters.
Several motions ruling out joining a future Dublin coalition
government, with parties who are rightly regarded as corrupt and
reactionary, were defeated. One motion warned that entering a coalition
would "dilute our revolutionary politics".
Gerry Adams said that if the party has the mandate and can secure a
coalition government and policies consistent with its republican
objectives: "We will look at being in government in the south. Our sole
purpose of going into government is to bring about the maximum amount of
change."
But a delegates’ motion demanding the repeal of the Offences Against
the State Act as a pre-condition before any coalition talks was carried.
The 1939 Act set up the non-jury Special Criminal Court, which tries
terrorist cases in the republic.
Sean Crowe, TD (Dáil member) for Dublin South-West, urged delegates not
to limit the party’s options in advance of the general election, saying:
"I do not know if government is ready for me, but I am ready for
government."
And Martin McGuinness pointed out that as education minister in a
coalition with unionists in Belfast, he had implemented the crucial
decision to abolish the eleven-plus exam, adding that to completely rule
out participation in a coalition "would be grossly irresponsible".
Ten motions opposing participation in policing in the north, some
placing conditions such as the achievement of a sovereign united Ireland
or a timetable for British withdrawal, were defeated.
Gerry Kelly, spokesperson on policing and justice, spoke for the Ard
Chomhairle (executive committee) when he said: "Whatever happens in
negotiations, key issues such as policing and justice cannot be put on
the shelf to be dusted down when we achieve a united Ireland. We must
develop further our all-Ireland vision for justice and policing."
He welcomed legislation initiated by Peter Hain committing London to
the transfer of policing and justice powers to a future administration
at Stormont, but said this on its own was not enough for Sinn Féin to
agree to joining the Northern Ireland policing board.
Among other things this would require guarantees for a genuinely
accountable policing service, and a commitment from the DUP to the
transfer of powers.
Another problem thrown up by the British is the decision to give MI5
the lead in intelligence gathering in the north from next year,
effective even after policing powers have been transferred.
Kelly said it was "unacceptable for organisation which has set itself
against policing and political change throughout the course of this
process to be given an expanded role," and said Sinn Féin would be
challenging this in the latest round of talks.

A new relationship with unionism

One of five challenges facing Sinn Féin in the next year outlined by
Gerry Adams was "developing an entirely new relationship with unionism".
He said: "There are many good people within unionism, people who care
about their community, people who want to see stability, peace and
prosperity, people in the PUP, the DUP and the UUP who have worked with
Sinn Féin in committees and at councils."
Adams said: "Partition has failed the very community it was designed to
safeguard. It has failed unionists. Unionist working class communities
are ravaged by unemployment and educational under achievement. This is
bad for everyone."
Another major issue at the Ard Fheis was the growing economic and
social divide in the Irish Republic in spite of a decade of
unprecedented growth. Adams said: "There are also – to the Irish
government’s great shame – tens of thousands living in poverty... 15 per
cent of all children live in consistent poverty, while one in four
children are at risk of poverty."
He said: "After 15 years of growth it is a disgrace that people are
left waiting for days on hospital trolleys, people can’t afford a home
to live in, and the transport system is gridlocked."
"This state gives taxpayers’ money to a thriving private health sector.
Those who can afford to pay avail of the best that is available in the
private system, including access to private beds in public hospitals.
Health privatisation is a reality in the 26 Counties."
Adams condemned a tax regime that allows 41 of the top 100 individual
earners in to pay less than five per cent income tax, while ordinary
working people start paying tax at 42 per cent on anything over €29,400
(£21,000).
He said the present Fianna Fáil-People’s Democrat government was
systematically destroying agriculture and what was left of the fishing
industry. "They privatise our public highways and give their friends
permission to erect toll booth, after toll booth, after toll booth."
The latest round of investigations into corruption in the Republic, the
Mahon Tribunals, has exposed yet another scandal payments by corrupt
developers to crooked politicians. Adams contrasted the establishment
parties’ recent re-adoption of a "republican" image with the caustic
comment that "for many of these people they probably think of the GPO
(the headquarters if the 1916 Easter Rising) only as a place to buy
brown envelopes".
And he condemned the (Irish) Labour Party - originally founded by James
Connolly – for using the issue of immigration to adopt "populist
policies, which risk setting one group of workers in the existing
workforce, against another group of migrant workers".
Adams said: "Sinn Féin welcomes new communities of all nationalities to
our country. We reject racism and discrimination in any form. It is good
that many people are coming here to work. Immigrant workers are not the
problem. The problem is unscrupulous employers who exploit immigrant
workers with low pay and poor conditions."
TD Aengus Ó Snodaigh said that Irish justice minister Michael McDowell
was "hell bent on expanding and privatising the prison estate and
inflating prison spending," and planned to "turn the prison system into
a massive money-making opportunity for his profiteering buddies" by
building a "private super-prison" in north Dublin.

Sinn Féin economic policy

As an alternative to these corrupt and divisive policies, Sinn Féin has
published an All-Ireland Enterprise and Job Creation Policy setting out
the party’s objectives.
These include: the right to join unions, strike and picket; protection
of natural resources and the environment; limits to market competition;
universal public services; direct progressive taxation; and reduced
dependence on foreign investment.
The document says no attempt should be made to abolish rights to
private ownership or inheritance unless "necessitated by the common
good". It also proposes the "extending the euro throughout the whole
island as a necessary step in paving the way for reunification".
It calls for continued opposition to the EU Services Directive, which
allows private companies to undercut public service providers by
employing people on the salaries of their country of origin.
While citing the Nordic countries, with high taxes and public spending
but highly competitive economies, as a model for development, the
document also says: "We plan to build on the achievements of the most
successful socialist economies, and to learn from the mistakes of
unworkable and unsuccessful economies."
It notes that Northern Ireland "tops the list on practically every
deprivation indicator in the UK", and says: "The six county economy is
unsustainable by itself, and abnormally dependent on subsidy and the
public sector for employment," – especially on the numbers employed by
the Northern Ireland Office and Ministry of Defence.
The paper calls for a progressive reform of the tax system and
increased corporation tax in the 26 Counties from the 12.5 per cent to
17.5 per cent. In his keynote address Gerry Adams said: "Sinn Féin would
effectively tax high earners and increase taxes on capital gains,
property speculation and corporate profits."
But he warned the party: "Expect more attacks on Sinn Féin, including
totally unprincipled efforts to vilify us in the time ahead. Don’t be
distracted by this nonsense." Sinn Féin faces major decisions and a
mountain of work in the coming period, but as always the party’s morale
is high and its leadership is confident about achieving its long-term
goals.
As Adams told delegates: "Our objective is an all-Ireland parliament for
all the people of Ireland." And in the words of Martin McGuinness: "Sinn
Féin’s objective is to defend and consolidate the advances already made.
To open up new arenas of negotiations and struggle and to continue to
build the bridge to our ultimate objective – a united democratic and
socialist republic."

H G Wells: the romantic red rebel from Bromley

by Daphne Liddle

HERBERT George Wells has been in the news lately, 59 years after his death,
following the release of a new film version of his book War of the Worlds.
He is generally recognised as the founder of English science fiction
writing but too often the socialist input in his writings is not mentioned.

HG Wells was born on 21st September 1866 in Bromley, Kent. His father was
a gardener, an unsuccessful small shopkeeper and professional cricketer
while his mother worked on occasions as a housekeeper at a local estate.

In his book The New Machiavelli, Wells gives a thinly-veiled account of
his childhood and Bromley (called Bromstead in the book) at a time when it
was changing from a small agricultural market town to a much bigger London
dormitory town.

He was very uncomplimentary about the town and its predominantly narrow,
bourgeois culture, for which the town never forgave him. Until a few years
ago, Bromley council refused to countenance any kind of memorial to its
most famous son until the mid 1980s when they relented with a mural in the
market square. But this has since been painted over with a tribute to
Charles Darwin who lived in near-by Down.

Wells’ writings are full of an irreverent and capricious sense of humour
and his target is usually bourgeois hypocrisy and religiosity.

In The New Machiavelli he describes his childhood games: “Also she [his
mother] forbade all toys on Sundays except the bricks for church-building
and the soldiers for church parade, or a Scriptural use of the remains of
the Noah’s Ark mixed up with the wooden Swiss dairy farm.

“But she really did not know whether a thing was a church or not unless it
positively bristled with canon, and many Sunday afternoons have I played
Chicago (with the fear of God in my heart) under an infidel pretence that
it was a new sort of ark rather elaborately done.

“Chicago, I must explain, was based upon my father’s description of the
pig slaughterings in that city and certain pictures I had seen. You made
your beasts – which were all the ark lot really, provisionally conceived as
pigs – go up elaborate approaches to a central pen, from which they went
down a cardboard slide four at a time and dropped most satisfyingly down a
brick shaft, and pitter-litter over some steep steps where a slaughterman
(né Noah) strung a cotton loop around their legs and sent them by pin hooks
along a wire to a second slaughterman with a chipped foot (formerly Mrs
Noah) who, if I remember rightly, converted them into army sausage by means
of a portion of the inside of an old alarum clock.”

Later in the same book he describes his father’s frustration and anger at
the tyranny of property over people’s lives. He describes a conversation
with his father while on a walk: “‘I’m no gardener,’ he said, ‘I’m no
anything. Why the devil did I start gardening?

“‘I suppose man was created to mind a garden. But the Fall let us out of
that! What was I created for? God! What was I created for?

“‘Slaves to matter! Minding inanimate things! It doesn’t suit me you know.
I’ve got no hands and no patience. I’ve mucked about with life. Mucked
about with life.’ He suddenly addressed himself to me, and for an instant I
started like an eavesdropper discovered.

‘...more often than not, Wells’ futuristic machines are merely vehicles for
him to explore human relations and the natures of the societies who use
them. In the end it is the plight of human beings, with all their failings
and social problems that are at the heart of his stories’

“‘Whatever you do, boy, whatever you do, make a Plan. Make a good Plan and
stick to it. Find out what life is about – I never have – and set yourself
to do – whatever you ought to do. I admit it’s a puzzle.’ …..

“‘Property’s the curse of life. Property! Ugh! Look at this country all
cut up into silly little parallelograms, look at all those villas we passed
just now and those potato patches and that tarred shanty and the hedge!
Somebody’s minding every bit of it like a dog tied to a cart’s tail.
Patching it up and bothering about it. Bothering! Yapping at every passer-by.

“‘Look at that notice-board! One rotten worried little beast wants to keep
us other rotten little beasts off his patch – God knows why! Look at the
weeds in it. Look at the mended fence! There’s no property worth having,
Dick, but money. That’s only good to spend. All these things. Human souls
buried under a cartload of blithering rubbish.

“‘I’m not a fool, Dick. I have qualities, imagination, a sort of go. I
ought to have made a better thing of life’.”

The way in which property and petty bourgeois culture trap people in
stifling miserable lives – and the need to take drastic steps to escape –
is a theme he returns to again and again in his writings.

When HG Wells’ father’s business collapsed he and his elder brothers were
apprenticed to a local draper’s shop. But a childhood accident that
resulted in a broken leg and enforced inactivity had sparked Wells’ thirst
for reading and the local library became one of his favourite haunts.

He started out along the path of self-education that became available then
through the public library system. He also became a teacher-pupil in 1883
at the privately-run Midhurst Grammar School. From there he won a
scholarship to the Normal School of Science in London and studied biology
under T H Huxley. But he left four years later without a degree, married his
cousin Isobel and became a correspondence school teacher.

As a young man Wells became a socialist thinker, seeing socialism as a
science that would free humanity from the lunacy and oppression of capitalism.

He also began writing, scientific text books at first and then in 1885 he
produced his first great work of science fiction, The Time Machine. Most
modern dramatisations and critiques of this work totally ignore its
socialist essence, seeing it as simply an adventure in time travel – which
was original enough in its day.

But Wells used The Time Machine as a vehicle to examine what would happen
to human society if there never was a socialist revolution and capitalism
continued to its logical conclusion – with the bourgeois and working
classes growing ever further apart until they become two different but
interdependent species.

His hero travels into the future and arrives at a time when at first
everything seems idyllic. The beautiful vegetarian child-like people – the
Eloi – live simple, happy lives playing and doing no work at all.
Everything is provided by machines, which are made and operated by unseen
hands. It seems at first like a new Garden of Eden.

But the Eloi fear the dark because at night the fearsome Morlocks emerge
from underground caverns to hunt and eat the Eloi. The Morlocks are
pale-skinned, ugly creatures who live underground and spend their lives in
darkness and toil, creating the wealth and comfort that the Eloi enjoy but
taking a terrible revenge. This is the division of humanity into ruling and
working classes taken to its extreme logical conclusion.

Wells took the need for emancipation from hidebound, restrictive bourgeois
culture into his private life with great vigour.

His marriage to his cousin lasted only two years and plainly the marriage
had been at her insistence if he wanted her in his bed. “I didn’t believe
in marriage anyhow,” he lamented, “The great thing was not marriage but
love. I invoked Godwin, Shelley, Socialism.”

In 1893 he had an affair and eloped with one of his students, Amy
Catherine Robbins. Eventually he married Amy but continued to have many
affairs, including with the writer Rebecca West, with whom he had a son,
Adam West.

He met Bernard Shaw and became a member of the Fabian Society – a group of
intellectual socialists who believed in a gradual transition to socialism,
believing that the capitalist class would eventually see the irrationality
of their system and give it up. He was always a bit of an outsider in the
group because of his working class accent and later he clashed with the
leaders over the lack of dynamism in their policies.

A common taunt of the time was that at Fabian rallies, when the cry went
up, “What do we want?” the answer would be “Gradual change!”, “When do we
want it?”, “In due course!”

Wells tried to turn the Fabians into a more revolutionary organisation but
his debating skills were no match for those of Bernard Shaw and in 1908 he
left the Fabians.

He did stand as a Labour candidate for the London University seat in 1922
but failed to win the seat.

In 1917 the Russian revolution greatly enthused Wells and in 1920 he
visited the Soviet Union and met Lenin. Wells was cynical about the
ambitious plans for socialist construction and described Lenin as “The
dreamer in the Kremlin”, while Lenin described Wells as “What a little
bourgeois! What a philistine!”

And he became a prolific writer, producing The Island of Dr Moreau, a
satire on the dangers of science combined with ruling class arrogance. The
Invisible Man followed in a similar vein and in 1889 he produced The War of
the Worlds. In this book the Earth is attacked by invaders from Mars who
have a far superior technology. Human defences completely fail to halt the
invaders who are intent of wiping out our race in order to use the planet
for their own purposes. But just when all seems lost, the invaders start to
die, victims to earth’s microbes, to which they have no immunity.

Again and again, Wells reminds his readers that human beings are not
necessarily the pinnacle of evolution.

In The Invisible Man, the “hero”, Griffin, believes his discovery has put
him above the rest of the human race, destined to use his advantage to rule
lesser mortals through a reign of terror. But the ordinary people, the
working classes, upon whom he makes his first assaults, while puzzled and
afraid, do not react as Griffin had hoped.

Griffin loses his temper with the people around him and reacts with
increasing violence. The police are called and eventually he is hunted and
lurches from one disaster to another, until he is killed by an angry mob.

In The Country of the Blind, Wells bases a short story on the old proverb
that “in the country of the blind, the one-eyed man is king”. Wells points
out that the very opposite is true. In the real country of the blind people
cannot understand the concept of sight and have no faith in it. They
mistrust the one-eyed man who has stumbled among them by accident, accusing
him sometimes of madness and at others of dealing with dark forces. Their
society has evolved to cope perfectly well without sight. Eventually, if he
is to become one of them and fit in, he must agree to have his one eye
removed – the source, as they perceive it, of his madness.

The First Men On The Moon (1901) was a prophetic description of the
methodology of space flight and The War In The Air (1908) describes a
catastrophic aerial war.

In 1914, in the World Set Free, Wells wrote about future nuclear weapons –
based on Einstein’s theories, which had been published in 1905. His atomic
bombs are armed by biting a stud and then flung from the cockpits of
two-seater planes over enemy territory. The planes are powered by atomic
engines. These nuclear weapons do not merely explode but continue to
explode for many half-lives of their “Carolinum” cores.

Harking back to his childhood games with lead soldiers, Wells wrote Little
Wars, which is now recognised as the first recreational wargame. Many
gamers and hobbyists regard him as “the father of miniature wargaming”.

He predicted tank warfare long before the outbreak of World War One in The
Land of the Ironclads. The gunners in his ironclads track the image of each
target using a camera obscura a fire the weapons using what would now be
called a joystick and fire button, pre-dating many computer games.

But more often than not, Wells’ futuristic machines are merely vehicles
for him to explore human relations and the natures of the societies who use
them. In the end it is the plight of human beings, with all their failings
and social problems that are at the heart of his stories.

After the First World War Wells published several non-fiction works,
among them The Outline Of History (1920), The Science Of Life (1929-39) and
Experiment In Autobiography (1934).

In 1917 Wells was a member of Research Committee for the League of Nations
and published several books about the world organisation. Between the years
1924 and 1933 Wells lived mainly in France.

He had great hopes that reasonable people all over the world would
eventually adopt socialism gradually and peacefully. But he failed to
understand the fundamental contradiction between capitalism and the
interests of the working class.

In 1934 he visited the United States and spoke to President Roosevelt and
then visited Moscow and interviewed Stalin. He had great hopes for a
meeting of minds between the two and told Stalin: “The old financial world
is collapsing; the economic life of the country is being reorganised on new
lines [the New Deal]. Lenin said: ‘We must learn to do business,’ learn
this from the capitalists.

“Today the capitalists have to learn from you, to grasp the spirit of
socialism. It seems to me that what is taking place in the United States is
a profound reorganisation, the creation of a planned, that is, socialist,
economy.

“You and Roosevelt begin from two different starting points. But is there
not a relation in ideas, a kinship of ideas, between Washington and Moscow?

“In Washington I was struck by the same thing I see going on here; they
are building offices, they are creating a number of new state regulation
bodies, they are organising a long-needed civil service. Their need, like
yours, is directive ability.”

Stalin responded: “The United States is pursuing a different aim from that
which we are pursuing in the USSR. The aim which the Americans are pursuing
arose out of the economic troubles, out of the economic crisis.

“The Americans want to rid themselves of the crisis on the basis of
private capitalist activity without changing the economic basis. They are
trying to reduce to a minimum the ruin, the losses caused by the existing
economic system.

“Here however, as you know, in place of the old destroyed economic base an
entirely different, new economic basis has been created.”

He went on to explain that any improvements that Roosevelt might achieve
could only be temporary because the capitalist economic base remained,
which would always continue to produce crises.

Towards the end of the interview Wells said: “I cannot yet appreciate what
has been done in your country; I only arrived yesterday. But I have already
seen the happy faces of healthy men and women and I know that something
very considerable is being done here. The contrast with 1920 is astounding.”

The Second World War left him disillusioned and his last book, Mind At The
End Of Its Tether (1945), expressed pessimism about mankind’s future
prospects. Wells died in London on 13th August 1946. In the end it was his
dreams that were unrealistic.


first published in 2005

The Juche Idea

by Richard Bos


Democratic Korea has made great strides in the construction of socialism and much work has been done in the field of ideology - the result of which has been Juche.

THE JUCHE IDEA starts with the assertion that: "Human beings are the masters of everything and control everything" and that collectivism alone makes it possible to stimulate the creativity of all individuals and to properly combine both collective and individual demands for independence, and thus fully meet them.

It recognises that we are neither purely spiritual beings nor simple biological beings. We are social beings who live and act in social relationships. The difference between all other biological beings and humans is our consciousness and the desire for independence and creativity that comes with it.

Both Marxism-Leninism and the Juche philosophies consider that their purpose is not only to interpret, but also to contribute to the practical transformation of the world in the interest of the working masses. Kim Il Sung argued that Marxist philosophy was a huge advance over previous reactionary philosophies, which saw people as either purely biological or spiritual beings. It defined humankind as the sum of material, economic and social conditions and relations.

This was a truly revolutionary advance on everything that came before. He argued that even Marxism had its limitations, which are exploited by revisionists due to the over-emphasis in developing socialism on materialist and economic levers rather than the motive force of the masses.

transformed

It had been thought that people would be transformed by economic and material conditions and neglected the importance of the ideological transformation of the masses. The Juche idea recognises that the movement towards the development of a socialist society is not just a natural historical process, which develops and changes due to economic and material factors. It is also necessary to strengthen the independence, creativity and consciousness of the masses as a motive force through their ideological remoulding.

The prime task in a socialist society is the transformation from individualism, a product of capitalist society which isolates and divides the people, to collectivism, which will release expression and creativity to its fullest potential. This is not just through the organisation of production, but as a way of thinking and life.

Kim Jong Il wrote: "Although socialism is an inevitable stage of historical development and socialist society is the most progressive one, which conforms to mans independent nature, socialism will never be realised spontaneously.
In order to realise socialism, we must prepare the revolutionary forces capable of doing this and evolve a correct method of struggle. Unless the revolutionary forces and the method of struggle are prepared, the desire for independence of the popular masses who aspire after socialism will remain a mere wish".

Objective conditions certainly have an essential role in the revolutionary struggle, but the decisive factor is the ideological strengthening of the class. That becomes even more important after the overthrow of the ruling class and the establishment of the dictatorship of the proletariat and building socialism.

The recognition that humans really are the masters of everything and control everything that we are masters of our own destiny means that when the development of socialism is based on the will of the masses it can succeed even when material objective conditions are against it.
different

Our environment does not decide our fate; we do. And that is what makes human beings different from all other creatures.

Reactionary philosophies do not regard human beings as precious in our own right, but as a means of production and possessors of labour power, which can be bought or sold. They assert that money and material things alone can manipulate the development of society and economy. Marx and Engels made a start in looking at the social relations between people.

The Juche idea developed the thinking that as well as a physical life; people also have a socio-political integrity, which defines our lives as social beings. Physical life is valuable as it lays the base upon which we can build our socio-political integrity and the more stable and sound that physical base the more securely we can develop our independence, creativity and consciousness.
It is our basic need as social beings to value our socio-political integrity more than our physical lives. If our only demand were to satisfy our physical needs then we would have no honour or integrity. No matter how affluent we would be, our lives would be no different from any other animal. That would be a distortion of what it is to be a human being and run counter to our basic needs.

Kim Jong Il put this very eloquently: "Independence is the life and soul of man. Man, an independent social being, desires to live independently, free from any subordination or shackles. The fact that man lives independently means that he lives as the master of the world and of his own destiny, maintaining his position and exercising his rights as such.

"Only when man lives as a social being, exercising his right to independence and implementing his demand for independence, can he be said to enjoy a dignified life, maintaining socio-political integrity. If he loses his independence and is subordinated socially, he is as good as dead socially and politically, even though he is alive. Mans desire to live independently is realised, first of a1l, through an independent political life.

"When man is subordinated socially and politically, he cannot lead any kind of independent life. As socio-political integrity is mans most precious life, a noble life for him is to maintain and exalt socio-political integrity. Man receives socio-political integrity from the social collective. The social collective is the parent body of mans socio-political integrity. Therefore, the worth of mans life depends on how he is connected with the social collective.
collective

"Mans life becomes noble when he is loved and trusted by the social collective; it is worthless when he is forsaken by it. Man enjoys the love and trust of the social collective when he considers the interests of the social collective to be dearer than those of individuals and when he faithfully serves the social collective.

"In the final analysis, the greatest value and worth of mans life is to lead an independent and creative life, enjoying the love and trust of the social collective, while at the same time combining his own destiny with that of the social collective and serving it heart and soul. This is the way for man to enhance his socio-political integrity and lead a worthy human life as a social being.

"Today, the bourgeois reactionaries and renegades of socialism regard the exploitation and domination of man by man as something normal and consider man, as a base being who only pursues his own material desires. This clearly demonstrates the reactionary nature of the bourgeois viewpoint and attitude towards the essence and worth of mans life.

"True human life, which enables everyone to enhance their most precious socio-political integrity and fully meet the demands of their physical life, can only be realised admirably in a socialist society based on collectivism. In this society, people are free from all manner of exploitation and oppression, domination and subordination and can lead an independent and creative life in social, political and all other areas".

The Juche idea also looks at the definition of the term "the masses", which Kim Jong Il defines as "a united social community which centres on working people, due to their common demand for independence and creative activity".

In a capitalist society this would include workers and peasants as well as working intellectuals and other class elements and strata who champion the struggle for independence. It is not only a class concept, but also one of ideas.

Anyone who serves the people and takes part in the revolutionary struggle can be a member of the masses whatever their original background and status. That includes people who are not necessarily socialists or communists, but share much common ground and oppose reaction. The Party should not just regard these people as temporary allies but as everlasting companions that it is leading towards communism and revolution.

To quote Kim Jong Il again: "The popular masses desire for independence is the criterion for judging the correctness of lines and policies. The only way to avoid subjectivism and tortuous events in the revolution and construction is to mix with the masses and listen to what they want.

"The masses are teachers of everything. The masses desire for independence, when integrated into a system, will become ideas, lines and policies. When formulating its lines and policies, the working-class party must always go among the masses and listen to their desires. In doing their work, officials must also begin by listening to the masses desires".

The priority of the Party in a socialist society is political work and ideological transformation it is only by this means that the role of the masses can be elevated and strengthened by releasing their creativity initiative and revolutionary zeal united with the Party and leader. Great efforts should be put into training people as powerful beings who can develop their creative ability along with their independent consciousness. It is by this means that material needs of the people can be met.

Love and trust constitute the essence of politics in socialist society love and trust of the masses by the Party and leader, and love and trust of the Party and leader by the masses. The masses are no longer the objects of politics, but its masters; the complete opposite of bourgeois politics, which exists only to preserve itself and the system of exploitation.

The Party is more than a weapon in the class struggle. It should also be built as a motherly Party and all Party members should be educated in the spirit of love and service of the people, thinking of the people before themselves. The Party member should endure hardship before others, be ready to take on difficult tasks and always give credit to others first.

To look in greater depth at the question of ideological education...the very clear lesson of the collapse of socialism in many countries is that the corruption of socialism begins with ideological corruption, and that a breakdown on the ideological front results in crumbling of all socialisms fronts and ends in the total ruin of the Party and socialism.

If it secures ideology, socialism will triumph; if it loses ideology, socialism will go to ruin. Missing out on ideological work when building socialism amounts to overlooking the key to socialism. This mistake will inevitably result in its corruption and collapse. This is a truth experienced by everyone here at this school.

Ideology is the only and the most powerful weapon of the working class Party. The working class Party can only fulfil its mission and duty as the leading political organisation, which sets he pace for the masses independence, when it holds fast to ideology as the main factor and does ideological work before all other work.

exploiting

Capitalism, as an exploiting system, which replaced the feudal system of subordination to the lord with subordination to capital, grew up within the framework of feudal society. But socialism, a new system, radically different from all the exploiting systems before it, cannot grow up within the framework of capitalist society. Socialist ideology emerges as a reflection of the class demand of the exploited working masses who fight against domination by capital.

The socialist system is born of the struggle of the popular masses who are awakened to socialist ideology. It is consolidated and developed under the guidance of socialist ideology and leadership of its Party. Socialist society is essentially characterised by the fact that it develops based on the strength of its ideology, by the conscious activities of people. Its consolidation, development and destiny depend on how ideological work is done and how people are prepared ideologically.

The Party needs to constantly develop its ideology and emphasis based on current conditions. If socialist ideology takes the path of revisionist degeneration or dogmatic stagnation due to incorrect ideological and theoretical work of the working class Party, it will encounter twists and turns, and end in failure.

When they fight with a high level of ideological consciousness and in close unity, the masses can display strength and wisdom and transform nature and society immensely. An incomparable advantage and the indestructible strength of socialism lies in its full development and use of the great strength and wisdom of the popular masses, the makers of history. This is precisely the advantage and strength of socialist ideology, which are ensured by ideological work.

Parties in some countries building socialism in the past, emphasised economic construction alone and took a dogmatic approach to socialist theory instead of paying due attention to educating the masses. They made economic construction itself stagnate and, in the long run, pulled the socialist system down to the extent that they went the lengths of reviving capitalism.

opportunists

Opportunists and renegades abandoned ideological work in socialist society, and encouraged people to be egotistic and selfish. They spread bourgeois ideology, which regards money as omnipotent among people, by adopting the capitalist method of using financial incentives.

How we use our knowledge and how high a creative ability we can display depends on what kind of ideology we have. Only someone with the idea of serving the popular masses can devote their knowledge, skills, wisdom and talent to work for the masses. Ideological consciousness and socio-political integrity, which reflect peoples inherent desires as the masters of the world, as transformers of the world, is consciousness of independence.

Consciousness of independence is the consciousness of being the master of ones own destiny; it is the desire to shape ones own destiny. Only when a person has consciousness of independence can they transform the world positively and shape their own destiny as well.

Socialist ideology represents the highest stage in the development of consciousness of independence. It reflects societys desires for independence and collectivism. As such, it is the most powerful ideological weapon for transforming nature and society and for shaping the destiny of humankind.

It also serves as the ideological basis of solid social unity and cohesion. Ideological work for equipping the masses with socialist ideology is the key to releasing the advantages of socialism, increasing its strength and accelerating the revolution and construction.

Socialist economic relations are the economic, material basis of socialist ideology. Socialist economic relations, whose major component is socialist ownership, provide the masses with material conditions for them to acquire and consolidate socialist ideology.

Therefore, the consolidation and development of socialist economic relations have a major effect on equipping the people with socialist ideology. The socio-economic basis for the emergence of outmoded ideas disappears with the establishment of the socialist system.

But hangovers from the past will remain as hotbeds of reaction that can grow without ideological vigilance. Bourgeois and all other outmoded, reactionary ideas are based on individualism. Exploitative societies were all based on individualism and the people in these societies were tainted with individualism for thousands of years. Individualism is an obstinate, conservative idea, which is deeply rooted in peoples consciousness, customs and lives. Even in a socialist society, individualism and other outmoded ideas persist to a great deal and, when even small chances present themselves, these ideas will sprout again and spread.

The work of eradicating outmoded ideas from peoples minds and equipping them with the new, socialist ideology is an ideological revolution to radically change their ideological lives. That work is essential both inside and outside the Party organisation.

In the past, quite a few parties took a mechanical approach to the historical materialist proposition that the material and economic conditions in society determine social consciousness, and that social consciousness changes with changes in material and economic conditions. They believed that when peoples material and cultural standards became higher under the socialist system and the promotion of socialist construction, their ideological consciousness would be transformed accordingly.

Therefore, they did not pay great attention to ideological work. Believing that peoples ideological consciousness will spontaneously change along socialist lines after they see socialism working, is a totally wrong concept. It is contrary to the essence of socialism and the socialistic transformation of ideology. By nature, human consciousness reflects objective reality, but how they absorb this depends on the person, on their preparedness.

They see, hear, feel and absorb as much as they can understand. What ideology they acquire and how this ideology changes and develops depends on their preparedness, activities and the ideological influence they receive.

It is clear that socialist ideology cannot develop smoothly of its own accord, even though the socialist system has been established and the material and economic conditions have been created.

If ideological work is not carried out, peoples revolutionary enthusiasm may gradually cool down. The tendency to want to live in comfort may grow among them, since they are free from any worries in socialist society and continue to lead stable lives.

Then they cannot devote themselves to the struggle for socialism and, worse still, they maybe duped by imperialists and reactionary propaganda into harbouring illusions about capitalism. This is testified by the collapse of socialism several countries that abandoned ideological work and opened their door to the ideological and cultural infiltration of imperialism.

Ideological education and ideological struggle are the most powerful methods of transforming people by educating them in socialist ideology.

Experience shows that, if ideological work is conducted vigorously to equip people with socialist ideology in socialist society, people from all walks of life can be transformed along socialist lines.
The cause of socialism is a historic cause to be carried out over several generations and cannot be expected to be complete until the last vestiges of the old ways are gone. The basic task of ideological work in socialist society is to colour the whole of society with socialist ideology.
predominance

In any society, the ruling class tries to bring about the unchallenged predominance of its own ideology. In capitalist society, where the society is split into classes and peoples interests conflict, one ideology cannot hold undivided sway and it is inevitable that different ideas exist. The imperialists and their mouthpieces claim the existence of these ideas is a source of pride for the free world.

But progressive ideas can never develop freely in capitalist society, where the means of propaganda and education such as the mass media are in the hands of monopoly capitalists and reactionary rulers. The reactionary bourgeois ruling class tolerates progressive ideas to some extent, to make capitalist society seem democratic. But when they are considered the slightest threat to its ruling system, it mercilessly suppresses them.

Outwardly, different thoughts appear to be tolerated in capitalist society, but all kinds of thoughts throughout it are, without exception, none other than various forms and expressions of bourgeois ideology.

Only in socialist society, where exploitation, oppression and class antagonisms have been eliminated, can all members of society be equipped with a single ideology, because of their common purpose, aspirations and interests. Only then can a single ideology prevail. Socialist ideology develops the masses into independent people, who are conscious of their independence and creative ability, while reactionary bourgeois ideas reduce them to servants who obey the domination of capital, to ideological and mental cripples.

Socialism is the future of humankind, and the communist movement is a movement of the working class to create a new, independent world. The communist movement will develop and emerge victorious through the conscious struggle of the masses. The world communist movement will inevitably triumph thanks to the struggle of the masses who are conscious and armed with socialist ideology.


first published in August 2003

New life and strength to fight on women's issues

Report on the Women’s International Democratic Federation 60th anniversary celebrations and conference of the European section in Paris in December 2005.

WOMEN from all around the world gathered in Paris last week to celebrate the 60th anniversary of the Women’s International Democratic Federation at the UNESCO building on 6th December. Delegations, including one from the New Communist Party of Britain, also came to pay tribute to many women who have been playing an exceptional role in the battle for women’s rights and equality under different circumstances and conditions around the globe.
This was an event that many thought would never happen after the collapse of the Soviet Union and the European socialist countries – who had been the staunchest supporters of the WIDF with resources of all kinds.
They recognised that the struggle for women’s equality was part and parcel of the struggle for peace and socialism and against oppression and injustice.
Certainly the western imperialist powers thought – and hoped – that the WIDF would disappear without Soviet support. It did take a knock back but it has survived and is now growing again, largely due to the hard work and dedication of the women involved.
If anything it is now stronger than before, independent of backing from any one particular source, standing definitely on its own feet uniting women from the Third World, the developed world and every corner of the planet.
Furthermore, the Russian section, in the former Soviet Union, remains one of the staunchest divisions in spite of the anti-socialist government there at the moment.
The WIDF has survived and now grows in strength because the issues that it champions have not gone away – the need to fight for women’s rights, peace and social justice –grows more intense.
Skevi Koukouma, who is co-ordinator of WIDF-Europe, organised the anniversary event and a conference the European Regional Bureau the next day in the town hall of La Corneuve d’Aubervilliers – a Paris suburb with a commitment to supporting women’s rights.
The event began with speeches of support from official representatives of UNESCO, the European Parliament, the French government and a number of ambassadors to France – including the Cuban and Brazilian ambassadors, who brought good wishes on behalf of their governments.
Then the WIDF president, Marcia Campos from Brazil, gave a long speech covering the history of the movement and its struggles to re-establish itself. This was followed by speeches from the leaders of various regional bureaux of the WIDF, reporting on their struggles and the issues that faced them.
They included WIDF vice-president Mayada Abbassi from Palestine, Dora Carcaño from the WIDF American office, Adelia de Carvalho from Angola, representing the African WIDF office, Linda Mattar from the Lebanon, representing the WIDF office of Arab countries and Ha Thie Kie from Vietnam, representing the WIDF Asian office.
All the speakers linked the struggle for women’s rights to the struggle for human rights in general, for peace and against imperialist warmongering. They also linked it to the class struggle.
After the speeches the WIDF paid homage to women who have been particularly active in various struggles in different parts of the world by presenting them with special certificates.
The WIDF issued a statement from the anniversary event, summarising the views expressed there. It said that the participants “send a militant message of solidarity and common action to the democratic and progressive women’s movements and generally to women throughout the world”.
It continued: “The Women’s International Democratic Federation, founded on the 1st December 1945, just after the victory over Hitlerite fascism and the end of the Second World War, unites women regardless of race, nationality, religion and political opinion so that they can work together to ensure peace, democracy, national independence and to establish bonds of friendship and solidarity among the women of the whole world.
“WIDF expresses its anxiety for the international developments that are characterised by the continuation and consolidation of the so-called new world order. The position that what has henceforth prevailed is the undermining of international law and the imposition of the rights of the powerful has been affirmed.
“The United States and its allies wish to maintain and expand their political, economic and strategic hegemony to every corner of the planet.
“The terrorist attacks of 11th September 2001 in the US presented the opportunity to strengthen their imperialist policy and the excuse for greater arbitrariness based mainly on the dogma of preventative war, but also for the attacks on political and human rights and individual freedoms.
“The main examples of this policy were the wars waged in Yugoslavia, Afghanistan and Iraq. Furthermore and attempt is being made be every possible means, by using the cloak of alleged democratisation, to overthrow all the regimes that the US considers as being non-friendly.”
The WIDF calls for the tackling of terrorism to be conducted collectively under the aegis of the United Nations. It asserts that “the only way to safeguard world peace and stability is by upholding international law, respecting the sovereignty and territorial integrity of independent states, ridding the United Nations from American influence and strengthening the role of the organisation in tackling international problems.”
This glosses over some aspects of the history of the United Nations, which sanctioned and supported the invasions of Korea, the Congo and Yugoslavia. The UN is an international forum that reflects the balance of power in the world. When the anti-imperialists are strong, the UN can become a strong bulwark against imperialism but when the imperialists are generally stronger they can use the UN as an instrument to oppress small nations. The refusal of the UN to back the American and British invasion of Iraq in 2003 reflects a division within the global ruling class – a division that has weakened imperialism and given strength to anti-imperialism. But, like the machinery of state, the UN is not neutral in the class struggle.
The WIDF statement goes on to condemn the effects of neo-liberal globalisation, saying that “the gains of working people and especially of women are taking a battering; labour relations are being deregulated, the social role of the state is restricted and gender, class and social inequalities are intensifying.
“The importance of steps for women’s education, for sexual and reproductive health and rights, for economic advancement, for political participation and for putting an end to violence are far from their aims.”
The statement expressed support and solidarity for “the heroic people of Cuba”, suffering from the illegal US blockade.
Looking back to the Beijing Platform for Action for women’s rights, the WIDF recognised that the road for women’s emancipation has a long way to go yet. “The space between political decisions and their implementation is widening. Poverty, violence against women, unemployment, low participation in the decision making bodies, the spread of AIDS/HIV among women and young girls, the affect on women and girls of being in a conflict situation, the sexual exploitation and trafficking of women and children, and the exploitation of migrant women continue to give the democratic and progressive women of the world the obligation to unify their struggle against those who are ruling the world economically and politically.”
The following day, at the conference of the European bureau in La Corneuve d’Aubervilliers, around 30 delegates discussed mainly administrative matters to strengthen the organisation, increase its activity and relevance and to arrange future events.
These included a meeting of the executive committee of the WIDF to take place in Beirut next year and a congress of the whole organisation, which will probably take place in 2007. Nicosia in Cyprus has been proposed as a venue but this is subject to agreement by other regional bureaux around the world.
The WIDF has to strike a difficult balance in holding its events in different regions in turn and also bearing in mind that member organisations are not rich and raising travel expenses for delegates can be difficult.
Ironically now delegations from socialist and progressive Third World countries like Brazil, Cuba, Vietnam and Angola are more likely to have real support from their own governments, while delegates from the imperialist countries receive no such support.
Olga Daric from the New Communist Party of Yugoslavia raised the issue of Milena Arezina, a senior government finance minister in Yugoslavia during the government of Milosovic. After his deposition – engineered by invading imperialist forces – she was pressured to falsify an audit of a major socialist manufacturing enterprise to make it appear uneconomic. She refused as was instantly beaten up by imperialist military thugs and was severely injured.
Milena Arezina was thrown out of her job and now has great difficulty making a living. “The American want all our women to have no jobs but prostitution,” said Olga Daric.
One delegate, who works for the European Union Secretariat, reported that the left group of MEPs within the European Parliament are now facing an uphill struggle on women’s issues because that parliament is now dominated by the right, especially the Christian Democrats who maintain a repressive attitude to women’s reproductive rights.
The left MEPs raise initiative after initiative only to find they are defeated or omitted altogether. The current European Parliament has merged the programme dealing with violence against women with the programme on drug abuse. It has also lumped together the issues of fighting poverty and the trafficking of women. Obviously none of these issues is being taken seriously.
Much of the WIDF work is taken up with protests and lobbying governments and international bodies like the UN and the EU.
Since the collapse of the Soviet Union and the dominance of US imperialism in the world, the need to defend women’s rights around the world has grown. But so has the determination of politically active women to refuse to allow the clock to be put back on women’s rights. This organisation is not going to go away. It is going to grow and in time it will be not just tugging the sleeve of the various global authorities – it will be seriously challenging them to deliver equal rights and social justice for all.

NCPB Politburo member Daphne Liddle represented the Party at both events.

Remembering Frank Ryan and the International Brigade

THE ORATION below was given on the morning of Sunday 16th October 2005 by Manus O’Riordan, International Brigade Memorial Trust, in Glasnevin Cemetery at the final resting place of a fighter for Irish freedom and the Spanish anti-fascist struggle: Frank Ryan.
Frank Ryan is a name that is part of my communist education because my father, Frank West, told me about this fighter for freedom.
Dad was one of the last 11 International Brigaders to be freed from Franco’s fascist prison – San Pedro de Cardenas (formerly, and now again, a monastery) in April/May 1939.
Frank Ryan, having been severely beaten up by Franco’s thugs was being left behind. But he stood in the yard of the building giving the “Red Front” salute. For those who may not know, the “Red Front” salute is the clenched fist raised when we sing the Internationale.
The German Democratic Republic gave some members of the International Brigade a holiday each year. On one of these my father had a photo taken at Frank Ryan’s grave in Berlin – before his body was moved to Ireland.
The reason for Manus O’Riordan’s oration was to set the record straight about Frank Ryan. For decades the right wing in Ireland have tried to defame and diminish the revolutionary record of this child of his class – most recently in the Irish Times by columnist Kevin Myers on the 19th October 2005.
Dolly Shaer.

Friends,
It was on that same Gandesa front that Frank Ryan was captured by Italian Fascists in March 1938, along with Bob Doyle. Bob is present with us here today, in the company of his fellow International Brigade veterans Jack James Larkin Jones and Michael O’Riordan, in order to pay tribute to a man who gave such inspirational leadership to all International Brigaders during the Spanish Anti-Fascist War.
We also have a Second World War veteran present, former Irish Labour Senator Jack Harte who, serving in the British army, fought against the Nazis in Greece. He subsequently became their prisoner-of-war, being transported from Greece to Italy, and then to Germany itself. As a Federated Workers’ Union of Ireland official, Jack Harte served for many years as Chairman of the James Larkin Commemoration Committee, and he is here today in order to pay his respects to the memory of Frank Ryan, whom Big Jim Larkin himself had held in such high esteem.
Following his capture on the Gandesa front, Frank Ryan had initially been sentenced to death by the Fascists. This was later commuted to a life sentence, in response to a wave of international pressure led by the Irish Prime Minister, Eamon de Valera himself. But the severity of the penal servitude that Frank Ryan was to endure at the hands of the Spanish Fascists for the two years and four months that followed was itself a threat to his very life. The last four years of that life would be spent in Germany, well cared for by friends, but with his health irreparably damaged as a result of what he had previously suffered. He eventually died in Dresden on 10th June 1944.
A cross was placed on Frank Ryan’s grave by his fellow Irish national, Mrs Budge Mulcahy Clissmann, who attended to that final act upon Frank’s death with the same loving care that she had shown him in life, and who is present today in memory of that friendship.
Thirty five years later, from that Dresden grave still marked by the self-same cross, Frank Ryan’s remains were accompanied back to Ireland by three of his International Brigade comrades-in-arms: Frank Edwards and Peter O’Connor, since deceased, and my father Michael O’Riordan, present here today. So it was that on 22nd June 1979, Frank Ryan was finally laid to rest in his native land in this Glasnevin Republican grave. And as today we once again approached Frank’s graveside for this commemoration, it was particularly fitting that the tune played by piper Noel Pocock was that North Dublin anthem of homecoming, Return to Fingal.
Frank Ryan had not yet reached his 42nd birthday by the time of his death. Born in Elton, near Knocklong, County Limerick, on 11th September 1902, it is also particularly appropriate that today’s commemoration will end with Noel playing the tune that had previously been played on the occasion of Frank’s re-burial here in 1979, Limerick’s Lamentation.
Frank Ryan was well served by his first biographer, Sean Cronin. That unsurpassed 1980 biography has, unfortunately, been long out of print. It has been followed by two more. The more recent is indeed both fair minded and well researched, but lacking Cronin’s sharpness of exposition, it has not received the media approval given to another poorly researched one, in an era when the soundbite appeal of the superficial, sensation-seeking chapter-heading of Collaborator calls to mind Yeats’ lines about “the clever man who cries the catch cries of the clown”.
Having his memory pulled awry, as anticipated in Charlie Donnelly’s poem, is indeed a long-standing experience in the case of Frank Ryan. In June 1958 the Irish Times published a sensationalist denunciation of Ryan by the former second-in-command of the Third Reich’s Abwehr Intelligence agency, Erwin Lahousen, in which he pilloried Ryan as “the Irish Communist”, “a wild Irishman ... of a distinctly Red complexion”, “a ruffian” and “nothing but a gangster”. And last week it was again the Irish Times that published the sneering reference by Newfoundland academic Peter Hart to “Frank Ryan, the Republican saint/Nazi collaborator”.
Frank Ryan was none of these things. A life-long Catholic, he was in fact a James Connolly Republican Socialist. His Republicanism was that of Wolfe Tone, with the objective of uniting Catholic, Protestant and Dissenter under the common name of Irishman. He denounced Catholic sectarianism no less than he did Protestant sectarianism.
Frank warned against the development in Ireland of any sympathy for what he called the “disease” and “plague” of Hitlerism, and he specifically denounced any anti-Semitic hostility towards Dublin’s Jewish community. Frank Ryan’s internationalist solidarity with the Spanish Republic was also of a kind that brought together volunteers from all over Ireland, both North and South, and from the best of the Catholic, Protestant and Jewish working class traditions in this island. He proclaimed that he was fighting against Fascism in Spain in order to prevent its triumph in Ireland. And there was none braver in that good fight.
Following his brutal incarceration by Spanish Fascism for over two years, Frank’s life was to be saved in July 1940 by the combined efforts of the Irish Minister to Spain, Leopold Kerney, and two members of Abwehr intelligence in Germany, Jupp Hoven and Helmut Clissmann, who, as former members of a left-wing National Bolshevist organisation – the Young Prussian League – had formed a friendship with Ryan on visiting Ireland a decade previously. And this action to save Frank’s life was sanctioned by none other than the Irish Prime Minister, Eamon de Valera himself.
Ryan was to go to Germany neither as a prisoner nor as a Nazi collaborator. Britain and France had already sacrificed Spain to Fascism, and in the subsequent World War that had been inevitably facilitated by such appeasement, Ryan came to wholeheartedly support de Valera’s strategy of saving Ireland from the horrors of both war and Fascism through a policy of neutrality. In pursuit of this strategy Ryan became de Valera’s de facto political representative in Berlin, reporting back through Minister Leopold Kerney. And it was in such a capacity that he was accorded diplomatic status by the Germans, to whom he fearlessly pointed out that they had lost the War by their invasion of the Soviet Union.
Throughout his stay in Germany, as in Ireland and Spain previously, Ryan remained a Connolly Socialist. Indeed, the Spanish Anti-Fascist War never left his thoughts, for in the delirium of his last day on earth he was heard to issue orders in Spanish, as if once more back on the Jarama battlefield. As regards Ryan’s services to his native country, shortly before his own death in 1975, Eamon de Valera praised him as “this great Irishman”, and stated that “Frank Ryan always put Ireland first in everything he did or said, at home or abroad. He has earned his place in history.”
In his own November 1941 pledge to Irish Minister Kerney – wherein he proclaimed 100 percent patriotic loyalty and support for de Valera’s wartime strategy – Ryan himself had written: “There might be also a situation (I was always a pessimist) in which I might be asked to do something I don’t like. Such a situation is – soberly speaking – highly improbable. But if the unlikely should ever happen, sit yez down aisy! For – I won’t do the dirty. And when you plant my tombstone let it be of granite – like my stubborn cranium”. And so, fittingly, this tombstone of Frank Ryan’s is indeed made of granite.
This is not an occasion for further polemic in vindication of Frank Ryan. I will in fact address the issue in greater detail next Saturday afternoon at the Annual Roger Casement Symposium, when speaking on the theme of “Casement and Frank Ryan – Parallels?”
Today, in the spirit of Charlie Donnelly’s poem, it is more appropriate to let Ryan speak for himself, beside a grave that contains not only Irish, but also Spanish soil. Frank Ryan’s great rally at the battle of Jarama was powerfully inspirational as a deed in itself. But it was no less inspirational in the way that he himself went on to recount it in The Book of the Fifteenth Brigade. All the more reason, therefore, that when we visited Jarama in 1994 for the unveiling of a tombstone over the mass grave of 5,000 of its martyred dead, I should bring home some soil and an olive branch from that self-same Jarama battlefield, and bury both here in Frank’s grave. Here, then, are Frank Ryan’s own words:
“On the road from Chinchon to Madrid, the road along which we had marched to the attack three days before, were now scattered all who survived – a few hundred Britons, Irish and Spaniards. Dispirited by heavy casualties, by defeat, by lack of food, worn out by three days of gruelling fighting, our men appeared to have reached the end of their resistance.
“Some were still straggling down the slopes from what had been, up to an hour ago, the front line. And now, there was no line, nothing between the Madrid road and the Fascists but disorganised groups of weary, war-wrecked men. After three days of terrific struggle, the superior numbers, the superior armament of the Fascists had routed them. All, as they came back, had similar stories to tell: of comrades dead, of conditions that were more than flesh and blood could stand, of weariness they found hard to resist.
“I recognised the young Commissar of the Spanish Company. His hand bloody where a bullet had grazed the palm, he was fumbling nevertheless with his automatic, in turn threatening and pleading with his men. I got Manuel to calm him, and to tell him we would rally everybody in a moment. As I walked along the road to see how many men we had, I found myself deciding that we should go back up the line of the road to San Martin de la Vega, and take the Moors on their left flank.
“Groups were lying about on the roadside, hungrily eating oranges that had been thrown to them by a passing lorry. This was no time to sort them into units. I noted with satisfaction that some had brought down spare rifles. I found my eyes straying always to the hills we had vacated. I hitched a rifle on my shoulder.
“They stumbled to their feet. No time for barrack-square drill. One line of four. ‘Fall in behind us’. A few were still on the grass bank beside the road, adjusting helmets and rifles. ‘Hurry up!’ came the cry to the ranks.
“Up the road towards the Cook-House I saw Jock Cunningham assembling another crowd. We hurried up, joined forces. Together we two marched at the head. Whatever popular writers may say, neither your Briton nor your Irishman is an exuberant type.
Demonstrativeness is not his dominating trait. The crowd behind us was marching silently. The thoughts in their minds could not be inspiring ones. I remembered a trick of the old days when we were holding banned demonstrations. I jerked my head back: ‘Sing up, ye sons o’ guns!’
“Quaveringly at first, then more lustily, then in one resounding chant the song rose from the ranks. Bent backs straightened: tired legs thumped sturdily; what had been a routed rabble marched to battle again as proudly as they had done three days before. And the valley resounded to their singing:
‘Then comrades, come rally,And the last night let us face;The InternationaleUnites the human race.’
“On we marched, back up the road, nearer and nearer to the front. Stragglers still in retreat down the slopes stopped in amazement, changed direction and ran to join us; men lying exhausted on the roadside jumped up, cheered, and joined the ranks. I looked back. Beneath the forest of upraised fists, what a strange band! Unshaven, unkempt; bloodstained, grimy. But, full of fight again, and marching on the road back.
“Beside the road stood our Brigade Commander, General Gall. We had quitted; he had stood his ground. Was it that, or fear of his reprimands, that made us give three cheers for him? Briefly, tersely, he spoke to us. We had one-and-a-half hours of daylight in which to recapture our lost positions. ‘That gap on our right?’ A Spanish Battalion was coming up with us to occupy it.
“Again the Internationale arose. It was being sung in French too. Our column had swelled in size during the halt; a group of Franco-Belge had joined us. We passed the Spanish Battalion. They caught the infection; they were singing too as they deployed to the right. Jock Cunningham seemed to be the only man who was not singing. Hands thrust into his great-coat pockets, he trudged along at the head of his men ... We were singing; he was planning.
“As the olives groves loom in sight, we deploy to the left. At last, we are on the ridge, the ridge which we must never again desert. For while we hold the ridge the Madrid-Valencia road is free ... And thus the men who had been broken and routed a few hours before settled down for the night on the ground they had reconquered. They had dashed Fascist hopes, smashed Fascist plans. Thenceforward, for more than four months, they were to fight, and many of them to die, in these olive groves. But never again were the Fascists to rout them. They were to hold that line, and save Madrid; fighting in the dauntless spirit of the great rally of that afternoon, fighting too, in the spirit of those reckless roars of laughter that night in the Wood of Death.”
A year after that great rally, Frank Ryan told his fellow prisoner Bob Doyle, as they were being marched away by their Fascist captors near Gandesa: “They published my book today”. Some book launch! It was in fact his fellow Irish volunteers Bob Doyle and Jackie Lemon who saved Frank’s life on that particular occasion, by restraining him as he was about to launch back at an Italian Fascist officer who had hit him a punch on the jaw with all of his might.
The New York Jewish International Brigader Max Parker, who was captured that same day, was to testify on several occasions of how great an inspiration Frank Ryan had been to all his fellow prisoners. A German Gestapo officer asked Ryan why he was fighting in Spain and not in Ireland, to which Frank replied that it was the same fight. Frank asked him in turn what he as a Gestapo officer was doing in Spain. The same officer told Ryan that he was a brave man and wished him luck.
And a brave man he most certainly was. Bob Doyle recalls the argument about the anti-fascist prisoners’ right to refuse to give the Fascist salute, but, as Bob also says: “The threat that we would be shot for refusal to comply with the order quickly changed our minds. We gave the salute. Only Frank Ryan refused, stating ‘only when a pistol is placed against my forehead’ would he obey.”
Bob Doyle is one of the most compelling eye witnesses to Frank Ryan’s outstanding integrity. Before we now conclude this ceremony with Noel Pocock on the pipes playing Limerick’s Lamentation, it is particularly appropriate that the person chosen on behalf of all of us to lay a wreath on Frank Ryan’s grave should be his fellow inmate of the Spanish Fascist concentration camp of San Pedro de Cárdenas, and now its last surviving Irish ex-prisoner, the self-same Bob Doyle. Situated only two graves in front of Frank Ryan’s own final resting place is that of Father Michael O’Flanagan, Irish Republican priest and Vice-President of Sinn Fein, who had been chosen to recite the invocation at the first meeting of the newly-proclaimed Irish Parliament in January 1919, following the Irish people’s vote for independence in the November 1918 General Election. He went on to be the only Irish Catholic priest who had the courage to defend the Spanish Republic in the years 1936 to 1939. On the morning of the Frank Ryan commemoration itself, a floral wreath - in the red, yellow and purple colours of the Spanish Republican flag – was also placed on O’Flanagan’s grave, with the dedication: “In loving memory of Father Michael O’Flanagan, true friend of the Spanish Republic, from Veterans of the Spanish Anti-Fascist War and the International Brigade Memorial Trust”.
The colour party for the Frank Ryan commemoration was formed by grandchildren of International Brigader Michael O’Riordan. The Irish tricolour was carried by Luke O’Riordan, the flag of the Spanish Republic by Neil O’Riordan, and the memorial banner of the Connolly Column, 15th Brigada Internacional, by Jessica O’Riordan and Dara McGaley. They were followed by the three surviving International Brigade veterans present: Dubliner Bob Doyle (89), veteran of the battle of Belchite and former inmate of the San Pedro concentration camp; and Liverpool’s Jack James Larkin Jones (92) and Cork’s Michael O’Riordan (88), both veterans of the battle of the Ebro.
The Irish language inscription on Ryan’s tombstone reads in English language translation:
“Frank Ryan. Born in Elton, County Limerick 1902. Died in Dresden 1944. His body was brought back to his native country 22-6-1979. He fought for freedom in this country and in Spain. May God grant him the reward of his life’s labour.” The dedication of the Spanish Republican floral wreath placed on his grave reads: “In loving memory of our comrade-in-arms Frank Ryan, from Veterans of the Spanish Anti-Fascist War and the International Brigade Memorial Trust.”




When the Irish International Brigade poet Charlie Donnelly was killed in the battle of Jarama in February 1937, two unpublished poems were found among his personal effects. The first, entitled The Tolerance of Crows, was published a year later by Frank Ryan in The Book of the Fifteenth Brigade. The second, which was simply entitled Poem, had been inspired by the integrity of their mutual friend, Republican Congress leader George Gilmore. This Charlie Donnelly poem has much to say to us as to the challenge of setting the record straight, not least in respect of the life of Frank Ryan himself.

POEM

Between rebellion as a private
study and the public
Defiance, is simple action only on
which will flickers
Catlike, for spring. Whether at
nerve-roots is secret
Iron, there’s no diviner can tell,
only the moment can show.
Simple and unclear moment,
on a morning utterly different
And under circumstances
different from what you’d
expected.

Your flag is public over granite.
Gulls fly above it.
Whatever the issue of the
battle is, your memory
Is public, for them to pull awry
with crooked hands,
Moist eyes. And village reputations
will be built on
Inaccurate accounts of your campaign. You’re name
for orators, Figure stone-struck
beneath damp Dublin sky.

In a delaying action, perhaps,
on hillside in remote parish,
Outposts correctly placed,
retreat secured to wood,
bridge mined Against pursuit,
sniper may sight you care-
lessly contoured. Or death may
follow years in strait confine-
ment, where diet Is uniform as ceremony,
lacking only fruit. Or
on the barrack square before
the sun casts shadow.

Name, subject of all-consider-
ed words, praise and blame
Irrelevant, the public talk which sounds
the same on hollow
Tongue as true, you’ll be with
Parnell and with Pearse. Name
aldermen will raise a cheer
with, teachers make reference
Oblique in class, and boys and
women spin gum of sentiment
On qualities attributed in error.

Man, dweller in mountain huts,
possessor of coloured mice,
Skilful in minor manual turns,
patron of obscure subjects, of
Gaelic swordsmanship and
mediaeval armoury. The
technique of the public man,
the masked servilities are
Not for you. Master of military
trade, you give
Like Raleigh, Lawrence,
Childers, your services but not
yourself.