O'Hagen WP on the attacks on Garland

“Garland the Target Since 1972”
Oration by Des O’Hagan,
Central Executive Committeee member of The Workers’ Party at Milltown Cemetery - Sunday 30 October 2005 - On the 30th Anniversary of the Pogrom, October 1975

In our short history as a Workers’ Party we have been subject to many serious assaults and therefore were compelled to make critical decisions in line with our ideological position. From the creation of the Provisional Alliance by right wing forces and gross sectarian elements, both native and foreign, the attempts to kill our membership and leadership in 1975 by right wing and ultra-left gangs, to the defections and betrayals of 1992, these have been difficult years.
Now we are faced with another even more insidious assault on our Party - the attempt to extradite our Party President, Sean Garland, by the infamous Bush administration, the most right wing government the American people ever have to endure and which has brought enormous bloody suffering and death to the Arab peoples of the Middle East. The war against Iraq which now threatens to engulf neighbouring states, was launched on lies about weapons of mass destruction and the fabrication of evidence, now exposed, by the highest figures in the American administration, top advisor Karl Rove, known as Bush’s Brain and Lewis “Scooter” Libby, chief of staff to Vice-President Dick Cheney. Libby is now charged with perjury, false statements and obstructing justice. The investigation into Rove continues.
As we remember our comrades and supporters gunned down without warning by the Provisionals on October 29 1975, let us reflect on two questions. Could these events in our history, from 1972 to 1992 have been avoided? And secondly were they stand-alone happenings without any connection, without any common thread running through them? You will have noticed, comrades, that though there are two questions here, they are really deeply interconnected.
Yes, they could have been avoided. But only if we had abandoned fundamental principles. What were and are these? In 1972 we refused, categorically, to add to the growing murderous sectarian slaughter, because we believed and believe in the unity of Protestant, Catholic and Dissenter and there would be no progress towards a democratic republic, never mind a democratic, secular, socialist unitary state, without that unity.
To state how right we were, is not to gloat, but to recognise that working class Protestants must have the same goals. There will be no socialist revolution in Ireland without the wholehearted compliance of the majority of workers, both Protestant and Catholic. Those who persisted in terrorist violence and murder after 1972, ensured even deeper and more vicious sectarian division, than had hitherto existed, and on that account served the interests of capitalism, as surely as if they were receiving daily orders from Washington and Downing Street. Bear that in mind, comrades and friends.
By 1975 the “remnants of sectarian militants” either departed or were expelled from the Party. They armed themselves, murdered and tried to murder many good comrades and embarked down the same road as the Provisionals. During the three years from 1972 that they remained within the Party they had factionalised and sought, not only to disrupt the Party at every opportunity, but also tried to divert the Party into a so-called war of liberation in Northern Ireland.
Then came October 1975. We know the bloody details of those murdered on the night of October 29th and those seriously wounded and the subsequent murders and wounding. But behind the blind hatred for our Party lies a more sinister dimension. How was it possible for Provisional gangs to roam freely through the streets of Belfast? The answer is obvious for those willing to look. Incident centres had been set up, weapons given by the British Army to the Provisionals “to police” districts and on the night in question many British Army patrols withdrawn so that they could go about their killing. The truth of that statement is underlined by the actions of a lone British patrol later that evening. Tommy Flanagan snatched by a Provisional gang was being driven to certain death when the car in which he was travelling was stopped by this British patrol. Tommy barefooted and in his shirt sleeves, made a dash for freedom. The armed gang in the car were allowed to proceed. No one was questioned, arrested or charged.
That period was collusion in murder and attempted murder.
In defence of that collaboration between the British Army and the Provisionals, their American newspaper, The Irish People, in its November issue’s front-page headlines, gives its version of the pogrom. “Provisional wedge against communism in Ireland”. The same paper employed people who were either members of the CIA or their informants. Bear that also in mind, comrades and friends.
By 1977 the Party had fixed its sights clearly on our goal - socialism. Our name was changed to Sinn Fein The Workers’ Party. Then in 1982 we discarded the prefix Sinn Fein and declared ourselves to be The Workers’ Party. This was not, repeat not, a break with the Republican tradition. It marked our approval of and allegiance to the most human strand in Irish and international political thought that stretched back to Paine, Tone, Hope and Russell, to Marx, Engels and Davitt. It found its modern expression in Ireland in James Connolly, Liam Mellowes, Frank Ryan and Cathal Goulding.
From the early seventies we had identified with the Soviet fighters against Tzarism and Nazism, the republican heroes of the Spanish Civil War, the ex-colonies fighting for freedom in Africa, the gallant Vietnamese people who defeated the mighty American war machine and their comrade counterparts in Latin America.
We built fraternal relationships with many of the socialist countries - the USSR, China, Vietnam, the GDR, Cuba, the DPRK (North Korea), Czechoslovakia and many communist and workers and socialist parties throughout the world. We stood in other words openly and clearly against the growing ravenous monster of American imperialism. No one could be in any doubt where our allegiances lay and still do, who were our comrades and who were our enemies. Bear that also in mind, comrades and friends.
During those years the Party went from strength to strength. In the Republic we won many local government seats, seats in the Dail and a seat in Europe. Workers were beginning to look at the Party as their defence in an age of Thatcherism. In Northern Ireland while we still found it difficult to increase our representation, our vote was growing, breakthroughs seemed certain.
But at the end of the 1980s the catastrophic collapse of the socialist countries in Europe created havoc in socialist, workers and communist parties throughout the world. Virtually overnight our Party was under attack by the parliamentary cabal in the Dail rushing to safeguard their seats against what they believed, in Gustav Havel’s words was the death of socialism.
Not only that, but in their attacks on the Party they took a leaf out of the Provisionals’ book of 1975. Our comrades in the Markets’ district of Belfast were accused, by a spokesperson for the cabal, of criminality, because they refused to bend the knee to renewed attacks by the Provisionals! Naturally this received widespread publicity in all media outlets. The pronouncements of the Dail cabal were also trumpeted in major newspapers and on television. Let me make it absolutely clear, here and now. Every member of the Party both in and outside the Dail knew that we reserved the right to defend ourselves from any physical attacks. No one was in any doubt about that. To pretend otherwise is simply a lie. So much then for principles, so much for comradeship, so much for loyalty and so much for ideology.
So far then, comrades and friends, from 1972 until 1992, the attacks on the Party and on particular individual members have included murder, attempted murder, accusations of criminality, widespread campaigns of black propaganda, including misinformation and misrepresentation. There was one purpose and one purpose only - to eliminate The Workers’ Party and its ideology. That was and is the common strand that persists to this day.
However that is not the whole story. As far back as 1972 as has been revealed recently by former Provisional Eddie Gallagher who was responsible for the abduction of Dutch industrialist Mr. Herrema elements in the Provisionals were approached by prominent Irish politicians to murder the leadership of the “Official IRA”. It also was alleged roundabout the same time in Derry City, by former IRA member John White, that Sean Garland in particular should be assassinated.
Only three years later Sean Garland survived a murder bid, although grievously wounded. The leadership and members in Belfast, a key component of our organisation, were subject to repeated murderous attacks leaving senior figures dead and many wounded. Were these just bizarre coincidences or were there guiding hands, one filled with guarantees of wealth and the other with weapons?
Let us look at the context, more so than the individuals who carried out these acts of criminal terrorism.
The Provisionals were founded by disparate nationalist/sectarian elements. But from their origins to this day America has played a more than substantial role in their bloody affairs. Money and guns flowed freely from the US - NorAid was the channel for the collection of vast sums of money from Irish Americans, many of whom were as right wing as the present George Bush. Leading Provisionals such as Joe Cahill were allowed to tour the States unhindered. Part of this role, trading on his jail history, was to contact Irish priests or priests of Irish descent, defaming our leadership and members, singing different tunes to different audiences. We were communists or criminals or pro-unionist, whatever each audience would like to hear.
It takes no stretch of the imagination to see how the Provisionals in 1975, dependent on American largesse and goodwill, needed little or any encouragement to attack the Party as the headline, quoted previously, proves conclusively.
The case of the IRSP is slightly different, but again America is deeply involved. During the early 1970s American ultra-left groups, of which there were many, sought to influence our organisation. One in particular stands out for its linkages with the IRSP. That was the American Socialist Workers’ Party. Later it would become notorious when it was revealed that a large number of secret service agents (FBI, CIA etc) were in their ranks. At one meeting of several hundred more than half were working for the American government.
Articles on Ireland were written by one Gerry Foley, a frequent visitor to Dublin and published in the A.S.W.P. magazine Intercontinental Press. Foley was not his real name as he was an emigrant from Poland, but it helped him blend into the Irish political landscape. Prior to the creation of the IRSP article began to appear attacking the Party’s support for the socialist states, especially the USSR. Subsequently then Foley launched a series of articles praising the breakaway group as the real revolutionary socialist force in Ireland and defending their murderous actions against our Party. It is notable that certain ultra-leftist Irish journalists took up the same theme and wrote the Party’s obituary. The Party, however, refused to die and went, as was said earlier, from strength to strength.
This is a classic example of CIA manipulation of politics and murder in foreign countries, particularly through intermediaries of the ultra-left or the nationalist right. The examples are worldwide from Chile to Angola to the Congo and Iran. And they have not been loath to employ the same tactics against their own citizens.
The story was different in 1992. This time the American target was not individuals as such. The Party itself was to be eliminated through the indirect manipulation of the cabal in the Dail.
For years as part of their propaganda war against the socialist countries, American undercover agents in Europe had infiltrated all parties of the left, but concentrating on the larger communist parties of Western Europe, France, Italy and Spain. Their tactics were to foster and exploit differences, encourage factionalism, individualism, Euro communism (i.e. anti-socialist countries viewpoints), social democratic tendencies and negative fears about the validity and vitality of the socialist project.
The late 1980s was their golden opportunity, aided by the collapse of the socialist countries. Although the majority of our members refused to follow the strenuous efforts of the Parliamentary cabal (with one honourable exception former Party President Tomas MacGiolla, TD for Dublin West) to liquidate the Party and register as a social democratic tendency to be known as “Democratic Left”, grave damage was done to Party funds and membership. However once again in spite of long range American intervention the Party stayed in existence.
Since then, as you know, we have been slowly but surely rebuilding. We have maintained our internationalist solidarity with parties all over the world and attended numerous extended European conferences opposing American imperialism and aggression in the Middle East. We have also developed links with the Latin American anti-imperialist parties through the Sao Paolo Forum. Comrades, this internationalism has always been of central concern to the Party and although weak financially we have kept this to the fore of our programme.
In the long run or maybe not so long, these are the forces which will defeat imperialism. We will play our part.
That takes us to the core of the present fabricated case, by a totally discredited and criminal American administration, against Comrade Sean Garland and the DPRK. First it is absolutely clear, and has been for a long time, that the United States will brook no opposition whatsoever in its pursuit of world hegemony. The present Washington administration, however, has gone even further than any other. It has literally ripped the heart and soul out of the democratic America envisaged by its Founding Fathers. The tragic disasters caused by the recent hurricanes exposed to the world and to an increasingly shocked section of the American people that brutal racism is deeply embedded in the Republic. Where there is harsh and degrading poverty there you will find masses of coloured people, denied a genuine citizenship.
The classical way for criminal states to deal with such internal situations is to focus on foreign “enemies”. Thus came the famous “axis of evil” which naturally included the DPRK. Let us carefully note the following: In February 1981, American Gore Vidal, political author, playwright and political critic, wrote in the New York Review of Books, “With the surrender of Japan in 1945, the last official war ended. But the undeclared wars - or “police actions” - now began with a vengeance, and our presidents are very much on the march. Through secret organisations, like the CIA, they subvert foreign governments, organise invasions of countries they do not like (emphasis added) while spying illegally on American citizens. The presidents have fought two major wars - In Korea and Vietnam - without any declaration of war on the part of Congress”.
The Korean war began in 1950, has never really ended as far as America is concerned. For years they have conducted economic and military blockades, sought to isolate the DPRK (North Korea) internationally and constantly haunted Korean air space with spy missions averaging almost 100 per year. Their purpose has been to create a war psychosis. But they also had to create a new threat.
By targeting Sean Garland with a ludicrous series of accusations the USA is seeking to brand Korea as a “criminal state”, with obvious consequences. Sean played a key role in developing party to party relations with the Workers’ Party of Korea and worked strenuously both in Ireland and in Europe to expand friendship, political, cultural and economic relations between Korea and the European states.
The ending of the Korean War, 1953, in which the USA literally bombed the city of Pyongyang out of existence, only one building was left standing, did not stop US from continuing with its anti-democratic dictatorial programme against the Korean people. This was first begun in 1945 when they refused to allow united democratic elections. Such elections would have returned a government hostile to America’s global plans.
Comrades and friends, we are living in sinister and dangerous times. Not only personal freedoms are threatened as in the base, fabricated accusations against our comrade Sean Garland, but entire peoples as in Iraq, Iran, Syria, Palestine and Korea are told to bend the knee to American diktat or suffer the consequences.
That is the true scenario. Not the CIA manipulated “trial by media”, conducted in BBC Spotlight, the Washington Times and International Herald Tribune which, as was pointed-out, reads more like a bad airport novel than an account of international economic espionage. Comrades and friends, our job is clear; to defend our comrade and our Party, to make our contribution to the worldwide demands for peace, democracy and freedom of all peoples, including the exploited people of America and to oppose as best we can the evil and warped foreign policy of the current United States administration. This moment is the time to hear that century old slogan ring out loud and clear: “Workers of all countries unite”.