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The Unmanageables: Honouring the Woman of 1916
dublin |
anti-war / imperialism |
news report
Sunday April 16, 2006 12:54 by The Unmanageables
''They are at once the boldest and the most unmanageable of revolutionaries.' Eamon de Valera An alliance of contemporary women activists from a broad coaition of campaigning groups, Anti-War, including Cosantoiri Siochana, Dublin Catholic Worker group, Residents Against Racism, Save Tara and Shell to Sea have come together to honour the Women of 1916, who have been ignored by the State's commerorations and the Military Parade. The contemporary activists have each chosen a woman activist from the 1916 era as an inspiration and are marching from Christchurch to O Connell Bridge on the morning of 16th April. |
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Jump To Comment: 29 28 27 26 25 24 23 22 21 20 19 18 17 16 15 14 13 12 11 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1In the few days previous British soldiers had shot 5 falls residents dead for breaking the curfew , including a pensioner in his slippers standing on his own doorstep .
Next morning the women arrived
http://www.irishrepublicansolidarity.de/videos/Troubles.wmv
Lots of Pictures and info up now at: http://theunmanageables.blogspot.com/
I'm in San Francisco, and these pictures, and the spirit of the women makes my heart sing. I wish I could have been with you....in peace and determination...
Very good action, my compliments to all involved.
It was a much better way to commemorate the spirit of 1916 than the parade of uniformed bureaucrats through the streets of Dublin, which was supposed to commemorate the 90th anniversary.
Thirty years of open warfare on this island, Irish people being openly killed by foreign troops and their death squads, but where were the so-called official Irish army.
In their barracks, cleaning their guns and complaining about the amount of noise they made.
"Oh my ears, my ears, wait till I tell my solicitor about these loud things we have to work with".
That army of bureaucrats doesn't deserve the title of ‘Óglaigh na hÉireann’.
"Things are different today, Sinn Fein want us to turn out in our droves and vote, but at eighteen I burned my first vote near the top of Leeson Street almost where the Sinn Fein offices are today. There was a pile of voting papers on the road and everyone threw their paper on and then someone set fire to it. Nobody voted then, it was almost seen as a betrayal of your own. Today Sinn Fein call this infantile behaviour "
http://www.phoblacht.net/kohpatriotg.html
"
Lovely women, lovely protest
by Jim Keys Tue Apr 18, 2006 15:57 sundayproductions at lineone dot net
In an age where politicians have increasingly become content with their own agenda and managing their flock for whom they know best to the detriment of an active democracy and the poor and voiceless everywhere it is lovely to see beautiful souls that are not for sale out there making politics and having fun! "
Disagreement and divergence of opinion is part of struggle - who could disagree? Lol!
However, respect of opinions is also part of building a strong united movement. The issue in the first republican comment was not whether 'northern republican women [and men]' were entitled to ask some serious questions, which OF COURSE they are, but whether the labelling of people who engaged in some progressive action last weekend was conducive to debate. In my opinion it wasn't and it isn't.
I have no problem, I hope, debating with the republican commentator on the values and vision of the anti-imperialist movement, past and present. On the tendency of both people living north and south of the border to see their struggles as 'primary' and those of the other side as either secondary or indeed irrelevant. That's what after all partition and division means. And that's why I believe unity of our disparate forces is primary.
Name calling though, even as a joke, shows condescension, arrogance and, in the final instance, ignorance of issues. It's a reflection of a holier than though attitude which has bedevilled the Left and the republican movement since the late '60s at least. I hope we can agree there as well.
Let us work with Indymedia to move things forward. Even if, at times, we raise our eyes in heaven and ask ourselves 'where in the world did this nonsense come from'. Part of growing I suppose.
Anything you choose to do will be open to interpretation. Good to see a debate and we look
forward to the next action wholeheartedly. In fact we hope the next one will be as colourful and
inspiring as the last one. Meanwhile we all have our noses to the grindstone of our various campaigns,
A bit of summer cheer will be the order of the day. (methinks).
MichaelY - I've seen you disagree with people at political meetings and elsewhere. I've seen you throw your eyes up to heaven. I've heard you mutter privately about 'certain elements' of the left. What makes you an abitrator of good behaviour and political unity? You are as divisive as they come.
Indymedia is about discussion, debate and disagreement. Sometimes people go overboard. Sometimes insults are handed out. Importantly, however, we take NO decisions - it's a DEBATING forum, newswire and activist noticeboard. If we all agreed all of the time, there'd be a serious problem!
Michael,
I questioned some assumptions in my comment - I insulted no-one unless you think that referring to people as 'peaceniks' is insulting. That's your call. That said, I'm now going to insult you Michael. You're an idiot. Who do you think you are getting hot under the collar about what are clearly valid questions? Republican women in the north are entitled to inclusion and entitled to be suspicious. I well remember the protests in Armagh Women's Prison when only a handful of southern feminists could be got to stand up for those on the blanket and later on hunger strike. Margaretta D'Arcy of Galway was a brave exception.
So excuse me for bringing up difficult questions for people like you. Perhaps we should be silent because we make you uncomfortable and because we question your fake 'unity' based on the lowest common denominator.
Elaine made a reasoned and resaonable response. I take many of her points on board but beg to differ on some points. Sheehy-Skeffington, for example, openly supported the war of independence and travelled abroad widely drumming up support for the republican cause. I don't think its right to call her a pacifist.
Again, as I said at the beginning of my original comment - well done to all those who took part!
And to you Michael: grow up and learn some principled anti-imperialist politics.
The need for people from different organisations, different parts of the country, different political traditions of the Left to work together is a pressing need at the moment. That need has to be stressed and stressed and stressed again. Too many have made a 'carreer' from attacking others who try to move things forward. Commentators, truth sayers, curious individuals....hiding behind 'anonymity'....fragmeting, dividing....cynical attention grabbers.
The 'republican's divisive name-calling in this thread earlier was well responded by Elaine...I won't revisit that.
As for you ridiculous, words like vapid and shait and the like - all they do is express the sewer that some of irish 'radical' politics descends to, rises from and lives in. And there is nothing anybody can do about that...Sorry to disappoint you.
Thanks for your comments and yes we do realise that some of the women of 1916 used arms.
We had many a talk about that very fact.
I can't speak on behalf of the other women involved as we were a 'collective' of individuals working for a common cause, but coming from different perspectives. We did agree in advance that it would be a non-violent protest, aware that that was a 'luxury' we could afford, unlike 1916.
My own inspiration was Hanna Sheehy Skeffington who was a feminist, nationalist, labour activist and pacifist. In 1913 she worked in the soup kitchen set up for starving families of locked-out workers. The previous year she, with her husband Francis Sheehy Skeffington, set up the 'Irish Citizen' newspaper. It was pro-suffrage, pacifist and nationalist. In 1914 they both wrote articles against recruitment and conscription which were published in the Irish Citizen, Francis got six months in Mountjoy for his trouble but was released under the 'Cat and Mouse Act' when he went on hunger strike.
Hanna herself was arrested many times; When an appeal by the Irish Women's Franchise League (co founded by Hanna) to the Home Rule leaders for Votes for women was rejected, Hanna led a direct action, breaking windows in the GPO, the Custom House and other Government buildings. Her second arrest was for 'assaulting a Policeman' (shades of Baldonnel?) She was also arrested when she returned from a visit to the States where she met with Woodrow Wilson and became, in her own words "the first Irish exile and the first Sinn Feiner to enter the White House, and the first to wear there the badge of the Irish Republic". She was imprisoned in Holloway Women's Prison in June of 1918 for going to the USA 'without permission'. She immediately went on hunger strike and was released after two days.
She served as a judge in the Republican law courts in Dublin during the War of Independence. She was anti-Treaty but as a pacifist abhorred the Civil War, during which, 7000 Republicans were imprisoned by the Free State Government. Hanna set up the Women's Prisoners Defence League (WPDL) who campaigned for prisoner's rights and fund raised to support prisoner's families. The WPDL were quickly banned by the Government.
She edited both the Republican File and An Phoblacht in the 1930's and served her fourth and final jail sentence when she was in her fifties for an anti-partition speech she made in Northern Ireland.
After her death, Maud Gonne praised her as 'the ablest of all the fearless women who worked for Ireland's freedom'. Not bad for a Pacifist!
(For more information see 'Wild Irish Women' - Marian Broderick - O'Brien Press)
"The women of 1916 rose up in arms against British oppression and (relevant to Iraq today) against imperialism. It wasn't 'non-violence'."
Some did and some didn't.
"Sometimes people feel they have no other options."
You are right there, and pacifism untested is merely a stance or an aspiration. That's one I'm guilty of, as a taxi driver once said to me when we were discussing pacifism ... 'How do you know you are a pacifist if you have never been a victim?"
"Were Mairead Farrell, Miriam Daly and other republicans killed in recent decades remembered? Or was it just people who died many, many years ago?"
Just the women of 1916, the day that was in it and all that.
We were tying in various current campaigns with aspects of the Proclamation that we feel haven't been enacted. Highlighting the hypocrisy of the current junta, glorying in the blood of those who fought, pushing a militarist agenda but ignoring the ideals of those who died.
As a friend from the North said "the proclamation hasn't been enacted for us". Some of us in the South would say the same thing about down here. We have more in common than some would have us believe.
I think even people in the swp must be get sick of Michael's vapid 'lets all work togetherness'. shite. If you have something useful to say, say it, the republican had some sort of point in there, you complelety failed to address it.
Hey good 'northern' republican
Calm down and think again...think that if we ever have any chance in this country of fighting the triple bogey of Brits/Unionism and southern collaboratinism we need to combine our forces...we need to work together and using a variety of methods move our objectives forward.
Attacking people who with a lot of courage acted in a counter-current. situation..calling them names achieves very little except to .fragment our forces.
Think again...creatively. Pull your horns back and smile - even apologise!
That's what Miriam would have done...I know...that's what Mairead would have done...that's what the women of 1916 did....
Are you up to it?
Great stuff but I hope the various southern peaceniks are aware that the women they are celebrating used violence in their efforts to bring about the defeat of imperialism. Or is this going to be sanitised? The women of 1916 rose up in arms against British oppression and (relevant to Iraq today) against imperialism. It wasn't 'non-violence'.
Likewise Mairead Farrell and other women who died fighting imperialism and for Irish freedom in recent years put their lives on the line in an armed struggle against oppression. Sometimes people feel they have no other options. Were Mairead Farrell, Miriam Daly and other republicans killed in recent decades remembered? Or was it just people who died many, many years ago?
An inspired and inspiring Action.
And it's action that will ultimately secure our cause.
This particular action was very special in that it united the power of different groups who protest for what seem to be different reasons. Your action shows the differences to be minimal and unimportant. Together we become a force to be reckoned with, and our creativity and our abilities get multiplied.
Unmanageable, unstoppable and right.
Fuck you Bertie. You don't have a chance, not to mention having a clue what 1916 was about.
As usual good report and good photos.
Fuck the system! And up the people!
Regards and solidarity,
Seán.
.
on video . ( I apologise in advance for the additional wall slogans some overzealous RSF hack as attached to the end of these clips which sorta spoil them in my opinion)
cumann na mban on manoevres 1919
http://upthera.net//IRM/Irish%20Republican%20Media%20-%...n.WMV
women at the centre of the falls curfew ( women successfully broke it non violently)
http://upthera.net//IRM/Irish%20Republican%20Media%20-%...w.WMV
highly unmanageable and fearless women.
http://upthera.net//IRM/Irish%20Republican%20Media%20-%...d.WMV
Does anyone have any links or text of the legislation prohibiting posters , and the names of who was directly behind it ? thanks in advance if anyone canhelp me out . .
fantastic intervention!
I'm dumbstruck with inspiration!
more of this unmanageability please!
Looks like a great action in the Battle of the Myths over the creation story of Ireland. Wonderful visuals and contemporary points made.
This is a state that has criminalised the initial act of its creation.....putting a poster up on a wall. Political parties that claim nationalism and refuel the largest killing machine in human history in a colonial war. A government that postures as protectors of nation's heritage while building a freeway through Tara.
That radical dissent is alive in Ireland is worth celebrating.
As Abbie Hioffman said "Why build a stage, when you've got the streets!"
was inflitrated! By members of the male species no less. (Just kidding, you were very welcome lads.) Then we were joined by two protestors in Orange Gitmo suits ( Obviously demanding Bertie release gontanema d gay - see http://www.indymedia.ie/article/74341 ) They were under heavy guard and couldn't stay and socialise, when they left heading in the direction of the GPO, the guards escorted them - for their own safety you understand.
'Wait Now...' Sez Guard, 'You're Not A Woman!'
Two Gitmo Suits And Two Guards
And Away They Go With A Garda Escort
RAR, DCW, IAWM And Cosantoiri Siochana (thank you Gearoid for taking the photo)
You And Whose Army?
Today was brilliant, a lot of leafletting.. People came and asked questions.
It was great to meet many of my heroes and I enjoyed working so closely with so
many admirable women .
Thank You.
with our backs to the Military parade, we handed out flyers specially printed for the day. The front of the flyer contained details of the relevent campaign and on the back, a copy of the Proclamation with the associated text highlighted. For Shell2Sea and Save Tara ("We declare the right of the Irish People to the ownership of Ireland"); Residents Against Racism ("Cherishing all of the children of the Nation equally"); Cosantoiri Siochana's 'Nothing To Declare' / CIA renditions through Shannon ("We hereby proclaim the Irish Republic as a Sovereign Independent State"); and Black Shamrock flyers ("In every generation the Irish People have asserted their right to National freedom and Sovereignty"). Our placards had those same quotes with Black Shamrock posters pasted to the back.
Many campaigns, one simple message; Bertie you're a hypocrite - enact the Proclamation!
Revolt Video With A Tail
Save Tara Contingent
Shamrock Block
Turning Our Backs On The Military Parade
That Better Not Be 'The Harp That Once...'
and the sandwiches. But had a good time anyway.
We made our way from Christchurch, where lines of soldiers were waiting to march through town. A few Guards asked us what we were about, pointing to the placards as they did so. We told them they were quotes from the Proclamation. 'Well done girls', was the usual response. Some recognised the Black Shamrock posters on the back of the placards as we walked away, leaving them muttering 'those Shamrocks again'.
Countess Cam
Move It Out Lads
Whatever Cause...
RAR Represented
Follow That Star
Remembering the Easter Rising
Every nation’s history tells of people.
Who suffered greatly under foreign rule,
But let’s consider what can happen,
When rising against a system that’s cruel,
We become just like our opponents,
If we justify killing in our mind:
Violence should never be a way of dealing,
With evil oppression of any kind.
Let’s take more than a passive stance,
There's no need to turn the cheek for another blow.
Instead, let’s try always to seek new ways,
So that our respect for others we clearly show.
Wouldn’t it be better if we all worked together,
Whether following flags of Orange or Green?
Human lives should be precious to all,
So why not be willing on each other to lean?
There’s little point in resisting evil,
By using violence so as others to defend.
We know that by gauging people’s eyes out,
We’ll only blind one another in the end.
Counteracting violence with yet more violence,
May lead us to becoming evil too,
So let’s find a more successful way,
To bring about peace that’s lasting and true.
We certainly need to use imagination,
To foster initiatives and build a new bridge;
Surely it’s better with all others to share,
Than to set out to kill, as if claiming a ridge.
The high moral ground is always far better,
Though courageous sacrifice may cost us a lot.
Achieving inner peace is by far more noble:
The most worthwhile belief that anyone has got
A Third Way of acting is certainly possible,
By resisting evil in a nonviolent way,
It calls for bravery as well as for heroism:
We may even have to with our own lives pay.
Christian Nonviolence is a spiritual challenge,
Of epic proportions, much needed today.
But it’s the only option for moving forward;
A Peaceful Way for which we ought to pray.
Let’s pray for justice & liberation,
For all God’s people everywhere.
When refugees come to us seeking asylum,
Let’s always with them generously share.
When we’re opposing dominating systems,
Let’s try not copy any inhuman ways.
If we are remembering the Easter Rising,
Remember also the Resurrection Day.
After crucifixion, Resurrection followed,
Revealing a Power working in such a way,
That it transforms even this world of ours,
So children are safe and can happily play.
Nonviolence brings us always forward,
If we just seek to follow a peaceful way,
This is what Jesus meant so clearly,
For ‘Love your Enemies’ is what He did say.
It cannot be said that Jesus did nothing,
In the face of evil, all during his life,
He actually asked for a firm commitment,
To living with others without violent strife.
Trusting in His way, let’s change the world,
Making it more liveable in without any doubt.
So let’s spread this glorious Easter message,
For Peaceful means can bring Peace about.
Written by a Peaceful Means Campaigner,
soisceal@hotmail.com
See Walter Wink: Jesus and Nonviolence:
A Third Way
(Minneapolis: Augsburg Fortress, 2003)
ISBN 0-8006-36093-0
See also Walter Wink: The Powers That Be:
Theology for a New Millennium
(New York: Doubleday, 1998)
ISBN 0-385-48752-5
Walter Wink actually demonstrates that “turning the other cheek,”
“walking the extra mile,” and “giving away one’s second cloak”
were actual nonviolent resistance tactics
suited to the time and place in which Jesus lived.
great photos above of great activists missed prominence on the gallery today Easter Sunday eggy day because the kids of today say it on spray - on the wall...
click image goto article read it all
Pictures by Revolt Video Collective
Seems a bit like Bloomsday, the academia of a merchant ivory movie, the sentimentality of one's grannie's attic, and not one transvestite amongst them. But, that is how to communicate to the Irish mass & lumpen prosperous bourgoise - is it not? A wonderful idea!, and great way to continue promoting the black shamrocks and the inalienable right of all Irishborn children to their citizenship. Thus quoting a little Joyce would seem appropriate, after all he effected the only lasting Irish revolution of that period, nothing but vain words remaining of the others, and his pretentions never went beyond such vain words :-
"What special affinities appeared to him to exist between the moon and woman?
Her antiquity in preceding and surviving successive tellurian generations: her nocturnal predominance: her satellitic dependence: her luminary reflection: her constancy under all her phases, rising, and setting by her appointed times, waxing and waning: the forced invariability of her aspect: her indeterminate response to inaffirmative interrogation: her potency over effluent and refluent waters: her power to enamour, to mortify, to invest with beauty, to render insane, to incite to and aid delinquency: the tranquil inscrutability of her visage: the terribility of her isolated dominant implacable resplendent propinquity: her omens of tempest and of calm: the stimulation of her light, her motion and her presence: the admonition of her craters, her arid seas, her silence: her splendour, when visible: her attraction, when invisible."
from the Ithaca section of James Joyce's Ulysses