Anthony McIntyre's Blog, page 1196

East London Mosque Has Filed Formal Complaint About CEMB To Pride

Maryam Namazie responds to an attempt by East London Mosque to suppress and silence the voices of the Council of Ex-Muslims of Britain. This post was first published as ‘Criticism of Islam or Islamism is not anti-Muslim bigotry’, The Freethinker, 15 July 2017



In fact, though, the very reason CEMB was at Pride was to combat hate and to highlight the 14 states under Islamic rule that kill gay men (15 if we include Daesh-held territories). We included placards on the East London mosque to bring attention to the fact that there are mosques here in Britain that promote the death penalty for homosexuality and apostasy.



As ex-Muslims, we are at risk from hate preachers that speak at some mosques and universities; our gay members are at an increased risk.
The East London Mosque has a long history of hosting hate preachers who incite against blasphemers, apostates and homosexuals so we felt naming and shaming them was very apt.

In our experience, whenever incitement to hate and violence has been exposed, it is explained away as mere “theology”. Here, too, the East London Mosque spokesperson says: “Yes, there might be theological topics dealing with homosexuality in Islam, but that’s clearly very separate from promoting hatred and homophobia”.

We beg to differ.

Given the context of executions for homosexuality and apostasy in many countries and the threats, violence and shunning that ex-Muslims, including LGBT, face here in Britain, the hate preaching can be considered incitement to murder though it is ignored because it is done under the cover of the “right to religion”.

Moreover, the East London mosque is merely using double-speak. Their supposed “track record for challenging homophobia” only seems to extend to white gay men in East London and never to Muslim and ex-Muslim LGBT or LGBT persecuted outside of Britain in countries under Sharia.

This is because the mosque is part and parcel of the Islamist movement. The East London Mosque (and its affiliate, the London Muslim Centre) share the ideology of the Jamaat-e-Islami – the Salafis of South Asia so their promotion of an Islamist worldview that imposes the death penalty for homosexuality, apostasy and blasphemy is business as usual.

Why are we inciting hatred by exposing their incitement to murder?

And why is criticism of Islam off-limits?

Self-appointed “Muslim leaders” say our placards were “Islamophobic”.  But in our point of view, Islam, like all religions, is homophobic. Why is it not possible to say this without accusations of Islamophobia?

The only reasons our signs are seen to be “provocative” are because criticism of Islam is deemed to be impermissible, because there is the constant threat of violence by Islamists against ex-Muslims but also dissenting Muslims and others in order to silence and censor, and because criticism of Islam and Islamism is erroneously conflated with an attack on Muslims.

Pride is full of placards saying “God is Gay”, “Jesus had two fathers”, as well as those mocking the church and priests and pope, yet CEMB members hold signs saying “Allah is Gay” – as we did – and the police converge to attempt to remove them for causing “offence”.

Offence has become the catch-phrase to impose de facto blasphemy and apostasy laws here in Britain. Yet aren’t we all offended at least some of the time? Some of us are offended by religion but we don’t ask believers to stay away from Pride or stop praying because of it. Why is it that what offends us is irrelevant? Because we do not back our offence with threats and violence?

The politics of offence is a politics that rewards bullies and blames victims.

Critics say our presence in Pride is a provocation in the weeks following the attack at Finsbury Park. But why must our criticism be linked to an attack on a mosque? Did anyone tell those holding “Jesus had two fathers” signs that it was a provocation given that a priest was murdered in Normandy and Christians killed in Egypt? There is no connection, except of course it seems when it comes to Islam.

Believers are not told to stop any expression of their beliefs because of an attack on children at a concert in Manchester but our placards apparently have some link with an attack on Muslims and a mosque. Why?

This is the Islamist narrative that equates criticism with an attack on Muslims. Its aim is not to stop bigotry but to silence dissent.

And by the way, bigotry affects us too. We were Muslims once; our loved ones are Muslims. And fascists and bigots cannot tell any of us apart anyway. We all look the same to them.

But as a minority within a minority facing serious threats to our lives, shunning, ostracisation, discrimination (and that’s only in Britain), is it fair to ask us to remain silent because of other forms of persecution or bigotry? Why can we not confront racism AND homophobia, bigotry AND hatred against apostates, women, blasphemers… To do that, we have to be able to criticise the far-Right (including our far-Right – the Islamists) and religion and regressive beliefs.

We ex-Muslims, including LGBT ex-Muslims, are fighting for our lives. We too have the right to live, think and love as we choose. And to fight for that right, we have to be able to confront apostasy and blasphemy laws as well laws that criminalise and execute apostates, LGBT, and freethinkers.
We owe it ourselves but we also owe it to those living under Islamic rules who are in prison, on death row or being murdered by vigilantes for doing just that.

The right to religion is a basic human right that must be defended but what is often forgotten is that there is a corresponding right to be free from and to criticise religion. As long as we can be killed for being ex-Muslims, LGBT, apostates and blasphemers, we have a duty to speak up – especially for those who cannot.

****

As an aside, the Pride spokesperson has said that the East London mosque’s complaint has been referred to the community advisory board to assess whether CEMB can join Pride next year and added:

While our parade has always been a home to protest, which often means conflicting points of view, Pride must always be a movement of acceptance, diversity and unity. We will not tolerate Islamophobia.

A note to Pride:  There were for sure some Muslims who were offended by our presence and others who supported us, as there were some Christians who were offended by placards poking fun at Christianity and others who found them funny. This is what real diversity looks like.  For too long, self-appointed Islamists feigning to represent the “Muslim community” have stifled dissent via threats and accusations of offence and Islamophobia. CEMB has fought for ten years now to bring real diversity into the debate, which is a matter of life and death for many of us.

Criticism of Islam or Islamism is not anti-Muslim bigotry just as criticism of Christianity or the DUP is not anti-Christian bigotry. CEMB plans to be at Pride next year and every year and hopes the community advisory board sides with dissenters and those fighting for LGBT rights and not those inciting hatred against Muslim and ex-Muslim LGBT.

For those on the community advisory board who are interested in finding out more about the East London Mosque beyond the double-speak, there is a wealth of information on their links to Islamism and their incitement to violence, hate and yes murder:

In this piece: Almost immediately after Jamaat’s  arrival in government, attacks against religious and ethnic minorities in Bangladesh began to be reported. A British peer and parliamentary human-rights representative, Eric (Lord) Avebury, said that “Bangladesh is an increasingly dangerous place for women, minority faiths and ethnic groups, opposition parties and secular organisations”. He argued that at the root of these problems lies the “cancer of a maverick branch of Islamism” that aims to “transform the country into a Taliban-style dictatorship”.

The ELM/LMC’s reaction to requests to ban these hatemongers was to “go quiet” for a few months, and then return to hosting the worst of Britain’s extremists. It is pretty clear that promoting hatred is part of the ELM/LMC’s core mission. Ibrahim Hewitt: – a “reformed” white racist, who now works for the Hamas fundraising charity, Interpal. He wrote  “What Does Islam Say?”, a pamphlet
explaining what he sees as the Islamic approach to several social and political issues. Apostates and proven adulterers get the death penalty.  Sexually active gays must face “severe punishments” for their “great sin”, possibly including death.

Open letter posted online by 12 LBGT campaigners, including writers Julie Bindel and Paul Burston, which lists a series of events hosted by the East London Mosque allegedly attended by  anti-gay Muslim clerics. These included Abdullah Hakim Quick, a supporter of the death penalty on gays and Abdul Hattin who incorporated a ‘Spot the Fag’ contest into his sermon in 2007.

Andrew Gilligan in The Telegraph: The East London Mosque’s response to accusations of extremism has three stages. First there are the injured protestations of its deep commitment to community cohesion, democracy, etc, often accompanied by straightforward lying…Then there are silly legal threats from its libel lawyers, again often based on lies: tedious, but perfectly easy to see off if you know what you’re doing. Finally, if none of that works and their backs are absolutely against the wall, the mosque will crank out one of their statements claiming they’ve banned hate preachers. The supply of bad guys will dry up for a month or two, then as soon as the coast is clear they’ll start creeping back again. Let’s hope it’s different this time. But you’ll forgive me, I’m sure, for being a little sceptical about the East London Mosque’s “good faith.”

The charity Oxfam cancelled an event at the East London Mosque after it learned the headline speaker had declared gay people should be “severely punished” under Islamic law.

At the East London Mosque, the Friday sermon was delivered by hate preacher Assim al-Hakeem who teaches that apostates must be killed (“As long as they have been Muslim, once they reject it, their Devine punishment is execution. This takes place on the instruction of the ruler after a panel of judges talk to him and try to convince him. His execution is due to his betrayal to Islam which is like grand treason.”)

In Police ‘covered up’ violent campaign to turn London area ‘Islamic’ it says: Khalid Yasin, a hate preacher who describes Jews as “filth” and teaches that homosexuals must be killed has spoken at least four times since 2007 at the East London Mosque. Although the mosque claims to be against extremism, discrimination, and violence, it has hosted dozens of hate, extremist or terrorist preachers and also hosted a “Spot The Fag” contest. In the same week that it issued a press release condemning the anti-gay stickers, the mosque was also due to host a “gala dinner” with Uthman Lateef, a homophobic hate preacher. The mosque is controlled by a fundamentalist group, the Islamic Forum of Europe, which says that it is dedicated to changing the “very infrastructure of society, its institutions, its culture, its political order and its creed … from ignorance to Islam.”

According to ‘Nationalism, Community & the Islamization of Space in London’, see page 219: “The East London mosque was more closely aligned with Arab states, in the Middle East and Pakistan. King Fahd of Saudi Arabia contributed over 1 million for the building of the new centre and ambassadors of Egypt and Saudi Arabia on the mosque management.

According to ‘Bangladeshi diaspora in the UK: socio-cultural dynamics, religious trends and transnational politics’ See page 5: The East London Mosque – this claims to be the oldest mosque in London going back to the early 1940s. It has maintained close links with the Jamaat i Islami, largely through the Islamic Forum Europe and the Young Muslim Organisation, whose offices are located nearby. The ELM’s leaders and other local activists have been highly successful at building alliances with local government officials through campaigns against drug abuse, family breakdown, anti-social behaviour, school truancy, etc.

The Spirit of ’71: how the Bangladeshi War of Independence has haunted Tower Hamlets.
Jamil Iqbal and Richard Phillips – ‘Taking Stock: Respect, SWP and Islamist politics in Tower Hamlets’

Communities & Local Government – ‘The Bangladeshi Muslim Community in England Understanding Muslim Ethnic Communities’. See pages 42, 61
‘Bangladesh Genocide: what human rights, anti-racist and peace organisations won’t tell you’, at 54 mins Chowdhury Mueenuddin/IFE, at 1.10 mins MCB/Iqbal Sacranie, 1,13 mins Chowdhury Mueenuddin and at 1.20 SWP/Left/Muslim Brotherhood
‘Siding with oppressor:  the Pro-Islamist Left, London’, One Law for All, pages 27-29
Jamaat-e-Islam links to East London Mosque & Darul Ummah
DeHanas, Nilsson (2013) ‘Elastic Orthodoxy: the Tactics of Young Muslim Identity in the East End of London’, Farnham, Ashgate, Pages 15, 16
East London Mosque admits Chowdhury Mueenuddin’s involvement The East London Mosque has confirmed Mueen Uddin was involved with the mosque from 1978 as honorary secretary, and was until recently vice chairman, but has not been a trustee since 2009.

East London Mosque/London Muslim Centre link to Jamaat
Policy Exchange’s ‘Choosing our friends wisely’ (2009), p 36
Channel 4 Dispatches programme investigated fundamentalist Jamaat-e-Islami headquartered in Britain, and its network in the UK. Using undercover recordings, investigative journalist Andrew Gilligan reveals the group’s ambitions to create a worldwide ‘Islamic social and political order,’ and the concerns of a mainstream party that they are being ‘infiltrated’.

Britain’s jihadi bride groomer: Schoolgirl radicalised in East London mosque recruited her three classmates to join ISIS in Syria

How Jamaat’s UK wing IFE infiltrated Tower Hamlets Council youth service 2016
Facing Jamaat-e-Islami by SADF 2017 See page 16 http://sadf.eu/new/blog/sadf-policy-brief-5-facing-jamaat-e-islami-bangladesh-global-threat-need-global-response/
10 April 2017 Azad Ali, a Jamaati Islamist who has said that he supports killing British soldiers, was named a director of Muslim Engagement and Development (Mend), a group which advises the British government. Ali recently said that the jihadist attack at Westminster on March 22, 2017 was not an act of terrorism.

11 April 2017. The Charity Commission, which regulates charities in England and Wales, asked Islamic Relief to explain why it invited a hardline Muslim preacher to star in a fundraising tour of Britain. Yasir Qadhi, a Saudi-educated American academic, has been recorded telling students that killing homosexuals and stoning adulterers was part of Islam. Qadhi, who featured in an eight-city tour, described Islamic punishments such as cutting off the hands of thieves as “very beneficial to society.” The commission also questioned two other charities, Muslim Aid (Jamaat charity founded by Chowdhury Mueenuddin) and Read Foundation, about their sponsorship of a speaking tour by Qadhi in 2015.

Thanks to Ansar Ahmed Ullah, Gita Sahgal and Daniel Fitzgerald for the above information.

When The Biter Is Bit: Further Reflections On The Downfall Of Kevin Myers

Alfie Gallagher revisits the Kevin Myers controversy  on his blog Left From The West.


The problem with Kevin Myers as a journalist, though, is not that he has, by his own admission, "a weakness for facile terminology." Rather, the problem is that his style of argument is making casual inferences from isolated observations and intuitions to utterly glib, unfounded conclusions, many of which are indistinguishable from sneering fascist bigotry. Myers’s recent column was not an aberration. Pseudo-intellectual shock-mongering has been his modus operandi for decades.

Kevin Myers speaking to Seán O'Rourke on RTE radio yesterdayHowever, the response by both the Sunday Times and the Irish Independent to the controversy was equally pernicious. Retraction was not merely a cynical get-out-of-jail-free card played by newspapers that happily traded for years on Myers's bigoted bile. Worse, it is disturbingly close to an Orwellian post-hoc cleansing of the public record. As a result, it is now much harder for ordinary people unfamiliar with the workings of the web to read for themselves the entire article that got Kevin Myers fired.
As the rise of the alt-right shows, bigotry does not die when it is "retracted" and suppressed. On the contrary, it thrives in the shadows. Moreover, as Norman Finkelstein contends in his compelling exposition of John Stuart Mill's On Liberty, suppression inevitably deprives the general public of the ability to think for themselves, to understand the issues, and to make up their own minds. It suggests not only that we don't trust ordinary people, but also that we lack the intellectual confidence in our own ideas and in our ability to convince them otherwise. Publishing a cogent rebuttal would not be a case of "dignifying" Myers's fatuous, facile claims – it would scrutinise and demolish them.
Kevin Myers seems a broken man now. On RTE radio yesterday, he said, “I’m not sure if there is any redemption for me.” I don't enjoy seeing anyone suffer, but given that Myers spent the bulk of his career gleefully stoking popular prejudices against easy targets – single mothers, immigrants, Travellers – I can’t say I have much sympathy for him. Indeed, as he himself accepts, he is very much "the author of his own misfortune".

The biter was finally bit, but this ignoble end has been many decades in the making.

Britain First ... Very Extreme And Dangerous

Via The Transcripts William Crawley @ BBC Talkback, has independent Unionist Councillor Jolene Bunting in studio. Councillor Bunting is the co-organiser of a rally which is to be held in Belfast next week and which features speakers from Britain First.
Talkback
BBC Radio Ulster
27 July 2017Audio PlayerWilliam: The far-right party, Britain First, is to take part in a rally outside Belfast City Hall in early August. It’s an event organised by the independent Unionist Councillor, Jolene Bunting, who’s in the studio with me. Welcome! Good Afternoon to you.

Jolene: How you doing?

William: What’s this event about?

Jolene: William, I mean I am not solely organising this myself. There is a group of people who are completely against terrorism and we have decided to organise this to highlight the fact that terrorism is going on in the UK and sometimes I think the mainstream media don’t seem to highlight how much it actually is going on.

William: So you’re one of the organisers.

Jolene: I am.

William: Who are the other organisers?

Jolene: There’s a number of different people they, they…

William: ….Are they groups? Or are they all individuals?

Jolene: Yeah, they’re all individuals. They wouldn’t be known widely but they are a group of like-minded people.

William: Many of those taking part seem to be from the Britain First group. You’ve got two of their leaders taking part in this event – speaking. Are they part of the organisation of it – as an organisation?

Jolene: No, they’ve been invited to speak.

William: You’ve invited them. Why did you invite Britain First to take part?

Jolene: Britain First have been holding a number of demonstrations in England, Scotland and, I believe, Wales also. I have seen their demonstrations. I’ve heard them speak and I think they’re extremely articulate when it comes to international terrorism and I do want their views heard.

William: What do you know about the organisation itself?

Jolene: I have followed their organization quite a bit for when…

William: …You’re not part of it – you’re not a member?

Jolene: Not at all. No, no, no. And as I say, I invited them along with other patriotic groups to come and speak.

William: Well the poster, the poster advertising this has a picture of you, described as an independent Unionist, two of their leaders who are described – one’s described as Britain First, the other’s described as a British patriot and a couple of others who are described as…

Jolene: …No, it’s two Britain First and then two British patriots who aren’t aligned with any group.

William: Aren’t aligned with any group. One of them is called ‘Banksy’.

Jolene: Yes.

William: It’s not the artist?

Jolene: No.

William: But what do you know about Britain First?

Jolene: I know quite a lot. As I said…

William: …You said they’re articulate. What do they stand for?

Jolene: They are anti-Islamification in the UK. They don’t want to see the UK in the way that it has been put across. There has been terrorist attacks. There has been – there are ‘no-go’ zones in England which have been highlighted by Britain First, also other online media groups, and they stand up against that which I commend them for.

William: One of their leaders, Paul Golding, has been convicted and has served time and I understand from the press in England last night was again arrested and is in custody to do with alleged incitement of religious hatred. He’s been on bail. Are you comfortable doing events with Paul Golding?

Jolene: Paul is, as I say, he’s the leader of Britain First who are doing great work in the UK. He is a great speaker. Unfortunately, as I say, I’m not a member of Britain First and I can’t speak for them and I…(crosstalk)

William: …So a great speaker’s enough for you? The fact that he’s done time in the past year – and this year – for eight weeks.

Jolene: He believes in the right things. Whether he goes about that in the right way it may be questionable but he believes in the right things and I believe that he is only doing this for the good of the people in the UK.

William: Well Joe Mulhall is listening to us speaking. He’s a Senior Researcher with the organisation Hope Not Hate. Joe, welcome! Good Afternoon to you.

Joe: Good Afternoon to you.

William: You’ve done a lot of work, I understand, on not just Britain First but other groups on the far-right. What can you tell us about Britain First?
Source: Huffington Post UK
Joe: Yeah, I mean Britain – well put simply, Britain First is a dangerous, far-right organisation. I mean, the party’s, or the movement’s been around since about 2011. It was created, as I said, by Paul Golding and another guy called Jim Dowson, both of which were former British National Party (BNP) – both of which have a long history of extreme racism, open racism, I’d say a number of convictions etc for things like, as you say, inciting racial violence, etc so they’re a deeply worrying group. I mean they’ve come to real prominence in England with really controversial acts – we’re talking about invading mosques across the UK, we’re talking about very controversial demonstrations – often in Muslim areas – and it’s very simple: I mean, Britain First itself is an explicitly far-right, an explicitly anti-Muslim organisation. And it’s not just them if you look actually at the other speakers that have been invited here – if you look at this ‘Banksy’, I mean that’s actually a guy call John Banks. He’s a former English Defence League (EDL), involved in those – I mean he’s had a long history, again, of explicit anti-Muslim activism. And Paul Rimmer was also part of a far-right party called the English Democrats. So all in all…

William: …And he’s also speaking at the Belfast rally organised here by Jolene Bunting and others.

Joe: Absolutely, yeah. Paul Rimmer – he’s noted here as a ‘British patriot’ – but he’s been involved with a far-right party called the English Democrats and Banksy, as I say, is a guy called John Banks who’s been involved with anti-Muslim street protest movements in the UK for a long time.

William: How do you characterise a group like that? In terms of the political spectrum that we have in Britain and across Europe these days – how do you characterise them?

Joe: Yeah I mean, Britain First are very extreme. Let’s be kind of absolutely clear about that. Extreme and dangerous. I mean their ideology is well within the classes of the far-right. But even within the UK far-right they’re quite extreme. As I say, things like these – this is a movement that some times wear uniforms and has done controversial acts like having armoured cars etc engaging in actions that mark them out as more extreme than larger sections of the British far-right. Their ideas, as I say, are also extreme, often rooted in a kind of religious identity which again marks them out from other elements of the UK far right. So we’re very clear about this: Britain First is a movement that is very extreme and dangerous.

William: Do you put the in the category of ‘white Nationalists’?

Joe: It depends. I mean their – most of their talk is generally about culture although clearly people within the movement are – maybe not clearly but most of them you would class as openly racist and in terms of white Nationalists there’s certain members within the movement that would be very happy to be called white Nationalists. But as I say, it’s a broad spectrum. I mean this is a group that has over one point nine million ‘likes’ on Facebook – now, of course, a huge amount of that isn’t either real people or it’s from all over the world so it’s difficult to say ‘all of them’ but yeah – would we comfortably say that there’s white Nationalists involved? Absolutely!

William: Jolene, as you hear that kind of pan-sketch of this organisation you are partnering with at this rally does that give you pause for thought?

Jolene: Well what I don’t understand is how they can be classed as a dangerous group. What I think is dangerous is people holding in their thoughts and being told that they can’t speak out against something that they find dangerous. And you know – what I don’t – they are seeing first-hand and have experienced first-hand Islamic extremists and they are speaking out against that. They are angry. And they may – as I have already said – they may not have went about that, in the past, in the right way. I can’t speak for them for what they done in the past but..

William: …Some of the individuals in this organisation have their roots, I think, Joe, in the National Front – don’t they?

Joe: Yes, I mean oh, yeah. I mean many of these activists – if you kind of look through their activists and the sort of people that they can get on the streets it’s a litany of numerous kind of prominent far-right movements. And on the violence thing: I’d add, actually, I mean this Britain First has been exposed, has involved, in things like knife training and martial arts training camps etc – so it’s not just us kind of picking this out of the air when we say they’re dangerous. I mean pictures have emerged of Paul, even including Paul Golding, engaged in knife training so they’re not to be taken lightly.

William: Knife training, Jolene!

Jolene: That’s the first I’ve heard of it. (crosstalk)

William: Do you know enough about the group to, as a public representative, to invite them to Belfast, to stand outside Belfast City Hall, giving them a platform and sharing that platform with them because, as Joe speaks, it sounds like you’re getting an education here today.

Jolene: I mean I have researched these people. I have researched the group. I have followed them for quite a while. I have never came up against knife training or anything else like that…

William: …So you didn’t know about that.

Jolene: …so that’s the first time I’ve heard about that.

William: Did you know about the convictions?

Jolene: Yes, I did. I did know and I’ve…

William: …religious violence and religious hatred.

Jolene: And I have also watched what he was arrested for and, to be honest with you…

William: …that’s for the courts to decide.

Jolene: Yeah.

William: And did you also know that Paul Golding was in custody as we speak?

Jolene: He’s not. He’s been released.

William: He’s been released. This morning?

Jolene: No, yesterday.

William: Right. You knew about that?

Jolene: Yes.

William: You’re still comfortable having him speaking with you in Belfast?

Jolene: Yes.

William: Still very comfortable?

Jolene: Yes.

William: Joe, you wanted to say something.


Source: News ShopperJoe: No, I was just going to say on the knife training thing: I mean it’s not hard to find this out. This has been covered in numerous national newspapers with pictures so this is you know a kind of a cursory google would have kind of shown that sort of thing up.

William: Joe, thank you very much. Much appreciated. Joe Mulhall from the organisation Hope Not Hate. Danny in Birmingham is one of our listeners in Birmingham, says he can’t call in today but he is listening and he would like Jolene to explain to him where are these ‘no go’ zones are in England? He’d be interested to know because he’s not aware of any.

Jolene: I have spoke to a number of different people from parts of London who have said that they are terrified that they will be the subject of racist abuse when they cross the road to different areas within London – and I’m being told this by a number of different people- whether they may be exaggerating? I don’t know. I haven’t – it’s been a long time since I’ve been in London but why would anyone phone me and speak to me about this if it wasn’t true? And…

William: Do you believe, as a public representative – you’re elected – you’re an independent Unionist, you used to be a member of the TUV (Traditional Unionist Voice).


Headline: The Belfast Telegraph


You’re no longer a member of the TUV. But you’re a public representative in Belfast City Hall. Do you believe it’s appropriate for an organisation so characterised, Britain First, to be given a platform outside Belfast City Hall with you standing with them? Do you think that’s responsible?

Jolene: I think they’re- I think they’re, you know, they can speak for themselves. Unfortunately, the BBC didn’t want them on today…

William: …Everyone can speak for themselves…

Jolene: …and I think if, you know, if people come along to the rally…

William: …Given what you know about the organisation. Is that responsible?

Jolene: …if people come along to the rally next Sunday they will, they will…

William: Aren’t you stoking far-right sentiments in Belfast by doing that?

Jolene: Not at all. No. And as I say, the rally will hold a code of conduct for speakers and for the people coming along…

William: Presumably you could have gotten all kinds of other people to speak on that rally. Why these people?

Jolene: People, well other people, were invited to speak.

William: But these people accepted.

Jolene: These people accepted and I’m pleased to say that they accepted.

William: And the SDLP’s (Social Democratic and Labour Party) Tim Attwood is listening as well. Hi, Tim. Good Afternoon to you.

Tim: Good Afternoon.

William: What do you make of this?

Tim: Well in the past we’ve seen some Unionists being prepared to share platforms with Loyalist paramilitaries. I think now the fact that we have a Unionist Councillor prepared to stand on a platform with spokespersons for organisations that clearly spout hatred and racism I think is shameful. And I think Jolene’s learning a little bit about Britain First today. I think she should research it a little bit more but it’s quite clear that they are a far right-wing organisation who do not support multiculturalism. They want to target Muslims and challenge the Muslim community in a very offensive way. And the question is: Do we want that in Belfast? We have many particular problems in Belfast and some of these people who may be on the platform were involved in the flag protest – remember – do we really want them speaking in Belfast promoting a policy against multiculturalism? Belfast has changed rapidly in the last ten years and we embrace the different and various cultures that have moved in in a positive way. We do not want people coming here, creating difficulties, creating hatred and spouting racism.

William: Jolene?

Jolene: Tim, this isn’t a rally against multiculturalism. It’s against terrorism. And I believe that any form of terrorism should be opposed. And I think that if the mainstream media were not to demonise everyone who speaks out against terrorists then maybe these people wouldn’t be so angry and wouldn’t be being called racist and the things that I have heard them called.

Tim: Jolene, just read what some of the spokespersons have said – there’s radio evidence, there’s Facebook evidence of them spouting racism and hatred – so whatever the rally’s intent may be that’s what will happen. And it will incite hatred in Belfast. The way that we’ve seen people in London and Manchester rally against terrorist acts is the way forward – where the communities come together – Muslim, Christian, no faith – coming together, rallying around in solidarity with each other – that was the generous way to deal with the situation – how to oppose terrorism – it’s not to try to create further extremism and further difficulties in Belfast or in any other city – that’s the danger of what you’ve organised.

William: Let’s go to the phone lines on this. (William solicits listener calls and recaps the facts and opinions expressed on the segment so far. ) Dee is there first. Welcome, Dee.

Dee: How’s it going, William?

William: Go ahead, Dee.

Dee: Well my name’s Dee Fennell. I’m the Chairperson of the Anti-Internment League and this will be the fifth year we organised a national march against the continuing use of internment-by-remand, miscarriage of justice and revocation of licence in the case of people like Tony Taylor. And each year we…(crosstalk)

William: …Alright, we’re going to keep the focus on this, Dee…

Dee: …Yep, yep, yep – but the focus, the focus…

William: …but just on this issue and it’s got to be brief, sorry.

Anti-Internment League March poster
Dee: It’s something I think maybe, if you’d care to notice, William, is the fact that this year’s march will take place at the exactly the same time, and the application has been made for the same time….

William: …On the 6th of August?

Dee: On the 6th of August, leaving Ardoyne at 11 AM, passing through Royal Avenue…(crosstalk)

William: Alright Dee, thank you. I’ll put that to Jolene. Thank you very much. Is that part of the reason why you chose that date?

Jolene: …No. That certainly has nothing to do with that.

William: Why did you chose that date?

Jolene: It was actually the only day that I could get a number of people together so that was the reason the day was chosen. It was a group decision from the people that I have to work with.

William: Alright. Damien’s in Doire. Hello, Damien.

Damien: Hey, how are you, William? William, I just wanted to ask Jolene if she would condemn Thomas Mair, the man who stabbed and shot MP Jo Cox shouting: ‘Britain first. You must put Britain first!’. Would you condemn him as a terrorist?

Jolene: I would one hundred percent condemn anyone who takes any innocent person’s life and Jo Cox was innocent.

William: Damien, thank you very much. Do you condemn people who try to invade mosques?

Jolene: I have just seen no evidence that they actually invaded a mosque. I know that they do protests outside a mosque and asked mosque…

William: …Are you actually briefed? Are you actually briefed on what happened to Paul Golding;  why he went to prison?

Jolene: They tried to find out the truth from mosque leaders and I have seen evidence that they have asked mosque leaders to speak about the terrorism and to speak about the things that – certain preachers within mosques have… (crosstalk)

William: …Do you condemn intimidating behaviour?

Jolene: Yes. Certainly.

William: Yeah. And you acknowledge that Paul Golding went to prison for eight weeks around those issues?

Jolene: Yes, I have knowledge of the event…

William: …Do you regard that as a kind of terror? To engage in that kind of behaviour?

Jolene: It’s not…

William: …to intimidate a community?

Jolene: I don’t believe that it’s – I don’t believe that it is something that Paul intended to do – whether that is the case that he…

William: …We can’t re-try him. That’s what the courts are for.

Jolene: Yes.

William: He was found guilty.

Jolene: Yes, but his intentions were not that and I have spoken to Paul about this and about not demonising a whole community.

William: What do you make of that, Tim?

Tim: Well you know, again, this is the problem: Some politicians equivocate over violence and illegal activity. There should be no equivocation. Terrorism is wrong.


Headline: The Belfast Telegraph
Racism is wrong. Intimidation is wrong. And what we’re bringing to the streets of Belfast on the 6th of August, and there’s other activities that day as well, is dangerous. We know in the past number of years there’s been attacks on ethic communities across Belfast and across The North. All this will serve to do is will put fear in many communities, in many cultures, that some people who attend this may rally against creating a more multicultural society. What we should be doing is trying to work together to create an equal society where we embrace all cultures and the rich traditions that come with them. This…

William: …Jolene, do you agree with that? We should work together to create an equate society where we respect diversity?

Jolene: One hundred percent. Yes.

William: You agree with that?

Jolene: Yes.

William: Would you be concerned that members of the Muslim community, for example, would feel nervous, at the very least – to put it mildly- about the presence of Britain First on a platform outside the City Hall?

Jolene: If Muslims would feel nervous about this you know, I question why they would feel nervous about a group of people coming together to speak out against terrorism.

William: A group who has an anti-Muslim record who’s party leader has gone to prison…

Jolene: …We are speaking out against terrorism…

William: …around those issues and you wonder why they might feel nervous?

Jolene: But we’re speaking out about terrorism we’re not speaking out against the Muslim faith and I would not have the Muslim faith – yes, Sharia Law I do believe is wrong but I would not have anyone putting down any faith. People fought and died so that we have freedom of religion in this country. We also have freedom of speech. And people should be allowed to come together to discuss this and to speak about it and not be demonised for speaking out against terrorism.

(transcript pauses)

Audio: William takes listener calls.

(transcript resumes)

William: Jolene, you’ve been trying to get in. Go ahead.

Jolene: William, the only hate crime that will be – the only hate speech which you will hear at that rally is hatred against terrorism. And if you’re not allowed to express hatred against people killing innocent people then how is there freedom of speech in this country?

(transcript pauses)

Audio: William takes listener calls.

(transcript resumes)

William: So you condemn racism. You condemn racist attacks. But you’re going to stand on a platform with someone convicted of engaging in the incitement of racist hatred (crosstalk)…

Jolene: …What I don’t understand, William, and this is something…

William: …I’m just asking about the consistency.

Jolene: …that I feel that the courts have got wrong because Islam is not a race – it’s a culture. And it’s a culture that is harming the world. All over the world we see Islam and its ideology destroying countries, destroying people and killing innocent people.

William: Are you anti-Islam?

Jolene: I would be anti-Islam, yes.

William: You’re anti the religion?

Jolene: I’m not anti-Muslim and I believe everyone has…

William: …you’re anti the religion of Islam.

Jolene: …I believe that the ideology of Islam is wrong…

William: …the teachings, the teaching are wrong?

Jolene: …is wrong. Yes.

William: Well, you’re entitled to believe that the teachings of any religion are wrong but why do you ...

Jolene: …these people – and I can’t say that I have read far enough…

William: …but why do you focus on Islam? If you are oppose to…are you a Christian incidentally?

Jolene: I am, yes.

William: Do you think that all religions, apart from Christianity, are wrong?

Jolene: I don’t believe that they are wrong and I believe people have the right to their own faith…

William: …Of course they do. But what’s your particular beef with Islam?

Jolene: My particular beef with Islam is the things that we have seen. Their teachings, the Koran, the hatred that is built in the Koran where you know the prophet Muhammad was, you know, he was extremely brutal at times and I personally think that that’s where…

William: …We had a Muslim theologian on this week saying it’s not in the Koran…

Jolene: …I believe that – I believe that these terrorists who have killed innocent people around the UK, these people who have raped young girls – they are following the word of the Koran which you know it is there are passages…

William: …Which is deeply offensive to decent Muslim people…

Jolene: …There are passages within the Koran which tell them to do that…

William: …It’s deeply offensive. It’s deeply offensive to Muslim people to say that rapists are simply following the teachings of the Koran when they rape. That’s an outrageous thing to say.

Jolene: That’s what the Koran says. There are passages within the Koran.

William: What’s the passage?

Jolene: I don’t have the passage with me here but I can get it up.

William: Have you read the Koran? Have you read the Koran?

Jolene: I haven’t myself. No.

William: No, you haven’t read the Koran…

Jolene: No, but I have seen the…

William: And yet you come onto a radio programme…

Jolene: I have seen it in the book…

William: …and say that!…

Jolene: …I have seen it in the book…

William: …and you say that the Koran recommends raping!

Jolene: I have seen it, I have seen it in the book…

William: Shouldn’t you inform yourself?

Jolene: I have seen it, I have seen it in the book. I haven’t read the Koran.

William: Do you know any Muslims? Do you know any Muslims, personally?

Jolene: Personally, no, no.

William: Never met a Muslim personally?

Jolene: No.

William: Listen to yourself, Jolene.

Jolene: I’m listening to myself.

William: You’ve got, you’ve got to back up arguments with evidence and experience.

Jolene: I understand that. I understand that. But what I’m saying to you, William, is that there are passages within the Koran which do ask….

William: …encourage people to go and rape people and rob them?

Jolene: To look at unbelievers as – I apologise, William…

William: …No, it’s alright.

Jolene: I should have had the, I should have had that if I am gonna say that…

William: …(crosstalk) I brought the question. It’s fair that you don’t have everything at your fingertips. Tim, sorry, you were trying to jump in.

Tim: Yet, again – I think this is the problem when you – the mask slips after a period of time. Jolene has said this is all about a rally against terrorism and very quickly you get into offensive comments about Islam. And that is the primary purpose of Britain First. It is to – they see Islam in the UK as the problem and that’s just offensive to many, many, many people of various religions. And what we should be doing, instead of making offensive comments, is we should be uniting together all creeds, all faiths against terrorism. And the danger is what will happen on the 6th of August will be a hate-fest and they may talk a bit about terrorism but very soon they’ll come in and vilify and make offensive comments against Muslims and Islam and I think that’s unfortunate.

Jolene: Tim, I hope that you do listen to the speeches and you see a different side of the story. I’m not saying that all Muslims take what is in the Koran literally but there are many out there who we call extremists who take what is in the Koran and act it out in real life which is – it has been seen in the streets of Manchester and …

William: …Well I take – I take that clarification. So you’re not saying you’re making comments about all of Islam – it’s just the extremists because there are Christian extremists…

Jolene: No, one hundred percent…

William: …there are Christian extremists who kill in the name of the Bible and they don’t represent the mainstream of Christianity any moreso.

Jolene: Definitely not.

(transcript pauses)

Audio: William takes listener calls.

(transcript resumes)

William: We’re nearly out of time on this but we have been contacted by the Belfast Islamic Centre to make an offer – to make an offer to you because they heard you saying that you haven’t read the Koran and you haven’t met a Muslim – you don’t have any personal experience of meeting Muslims. They’re making an offer: Would you like to meet the Belfast Muslim community in the Belfast Islamic Centre? Come in. You’re welcome. Talk with them. Find out a little bit about Islam from actual Muslims. Would you take up the offer?

Jolene: Yeah, I think I will. Yes.

William: You would?

Jolene: Yes. I would appreciate an open and frank conversation…

William: …Oh, really?…

Jolene: …and I would like to have a chat with them. That would be…

William: …And I think what will be helpful – we’ll let you do that, we’ll put you in touch with them if you’re open to doing that because it’s a genuine offer on their part and they said it’s a genuine offer and they’re not just trying to be difficult or anything. If you do that would it be possible to bring you and a representative from the Islamic Centre back together again in the studio to talk about what you discover – of the conversations you’ve had, the progress you’ve made in the conversations?

Jolene: Certainly. Yes.

William: That would be very interesting, wouldn’t it?

Jolene: But, William, I want to make this very clear…

William: Please, yeah.

Jolene: This rally is not about demonising anyone other than terrorists and anyone who wants to take an innocent person’s life, who thinks that it is okay to run cars over people and to slaughter people in the street, who thinks it’s okay to plant a bomb or to use themselves as a bomb. No one has the right to take innocent peoples’ lives whether that’s at a pop concert or whether that’s at a remembrance service in Northern Ireland. You know, this is against terrorism and any hate that is spoken at this rally will be against terrorists. And I would like to think that the country would unite against terrorism. I know that we have a very – not humane structure at times and where we do have terrorists within our government but we need to unite against terrorism.

William: And others will object to that kind of language I know – but we’re into all the language debates around where we’ve been – what we’ve been through in the last few decades and everything. Jolene, thank you very much. You didn’t have to come in. You came in and sat in the studio and took some calls and talked about it. We’re grateful to you for doing that. Jolene Bunting. Thanks also to Tim Attwood from the SDLP.

Where Have All The Councillors Gone?

Matt Treacy writing @ Brocaire Books looks at the culture of bullying in Sinn Fein.

Jonathan Dowdall
Oscar Wilde once said that to lose one parent may be regarded as a misfortune, but to lose two seemed like carelessness.

Which brings us to the topic of the missing Sinn Féin councillors. In the 2014 southern and northern local elections, Sinn Féin won an impressive combined tally of 264 seats. However in the past three years they have managed to lose 29 of them. That is over 10% of those elected.

The figure for those elected in south is even starker. 22 of those elected have left or been thrown out. That is almost 14%. Now, at one extreme you have the convicted water boarder Sinn Féin Councillor Jonathan Dowdall, who was eventually allowed leave, but at the other you have people who claim to have been basically intimidated out of the party.

The latest episode in all of this was a lengthy statement from Westmeath councillor Paul Hogan who claims that he has been subjected to a prolonged and intense campaign of vilification, innuendo and threats. All of this based on a personal issue which none of us really has any business being pruriently involved in.

Hogan’s statement refers to 80 instances of bullying and intimidation, including having been summoned to what he describes as a “kangaroo court” to respond to what he claims were “vile allegations” against him. I heard some of them while I was still working for the shinners and am ashamed to say that I gave them credence. Such is the manner in which these Stalinist tactics operate. No doubt there are people who believe in the stuff being said about me now.

Who else do we have. Well in the week before Paul Hogan made his statement, Councillor Seamie Morris from Tipperary claimed that he had been basically forced out by what he described as a “rogue element” which operated from “darkened rooms.” Charming. I have seen evidence of it myself.

Councillor Sorcha O’Neill and other members of Kildare Sinn Féin were forced out in April, again over claims of bullying and intimidation. The father of a Galway councillor Maireád Farrell claimed that he had been threatened over differences involving an election nomination.

And there are many more such tales, including the circumstances that led to the departure of Cork East TD Sandra McLellan who had the temerity to point out the absurdity and indeed hypocrisy of the enforcement of the handing over of money to the party. Hypocritical as both she, and I in my book, pointed out, it is not actually applied across the board.

So there we have it. An internal party regime based on intimidation, the demanding of peoples wages, and which seems totally unable to deal with “dissent” of any nature.

Would you like to live in a country controlled by these people?

After Grenfell Tower

From People And Nature a guest post by Cliff Slaughter

What is to be done? What can come from the anger of millions of people, especially the victims, and the bitter protests about the fact that it is only ordinary working people who were hit?

One answer came from Cardinal Vincent Nichols, Catholic Archbishop of Westminster:

The thing about anger and its energy is it has to get directed in the right way. It has to get shaped so it becomes a positive source. And I think that what I find most troubling is those who wish to use that anger to deepen divisions in society.

This gentleman of the cloth is telling the surviving victims, and the rest of us, to direct our anger and energy away from the disaster and its causes, towards what he calls “positive” ends, and above all not to “deepen divisions in society”.

I conclude the exact opposite. The Grenfell disaster and all its implications arose from the “divisions in society”, in essence from the class division between capital on the one hand and the working class, the exploited, poor majority, on the other. This class division is already deep, profound, basic to our existence under the rule of capital.

It needs not to be accepted, softened, ignored, put aside, as the noble Archbishop suggests, but understood and recognised as something which must be put an end to. The preparation of that “putting an end to” is where our anger and energy must be directed.

As one man, Ishmael, put it, speaking to a Sky news reporter at the scene: “Those people lived there and died because they were poor!” He showed how warnings and fears voiced by the Grenfell residents were repeatedly ignored and rejected be the agencies of the state, and how those agencies failed to respond to the needs of those who were made homeless and had lost their loved ones.

Thus the victims of the disaster were not served by the “public” services, agencies of government and the state machine and its organs like the local council.

The whole incident shows clearly that the working people have no voice, no influence, but only the deception of what we are told are “representative” institutions, the “national interest” and the rest.

Actually, as is now made crystal clear, these are nothing but agencies for keeping the working class in its place.

And so we are talking about the Grenfell disaster as an enormous class issue, raising the big questions: Who has the power? Who has a voice? Why were working people put in death-traps?

The responsibility lies with decisions made by the agents (mouthpieces, personifications) of capital and its state machine. Individual resignations, confessions of neglect and guilt, and apologies like those of prime minister Theresa May, or this or that Council official, do no more than hide the essence of the question.

Theresa May graciously allocated £5 million to the Grenfell relief funds. A few days later she bought from the Democratic Unionist Party of Northern Ireland the 12 votes she needs to ensure a Parliamentary majority. The price: £1.8 billion! And so we know the ruling class’s estimation of the value of hundreds of working-class families.

The price of staying in power in Parliament with the support of the deeply reactionary Democratic (sic) Unionist Party is 360 times the value of the victims of Grenfell Tower.

People were housed in these hell-holes by decisions of the state, of government. It was parliament – at that time dominated by the “business-friendly” Labour Party) which approved the Private Finance Initiative (PFI), handing to business the opportunity to profit from constructing Z-class housing like tower blocks for working-class families. The companies and contractors of course acted according to their true nature – to maximise profit, cutting costs even on fire prevention.  

East London residents in solidarity with Grenfell Tower. From the Grenfell Action Group blog.
And so building, maintenance and “refurbishing” were done without installing elementary means of fire prevention (sprinklers, detectors, fireproof materials, in some cases even fire-extinguishers) or escape methods. The councils supplied fire services with equipment and hoses reaching to only 11 storeys for 25-storey blocks. These companies were the immediate beneficiaries and the immediate responsible parties of the whole course of events.

But consider the basic responsibility, that of the whole economic, social and political system.

London is the very core of Britain’s capitalist power, centred on the City, leading centre of banking and finance-capital, the dominating force in capital. It has many, many thousands of men and women employed in its satellite offices and organisations in London to sustain it. Many of them are paid high salaries and are housed in expensive apartments and houses.

But as well as these, London has millions of workers in essential services (transport, hospitals, welfare, catering, education, sales, fire services, etc.) and businesses. Where to put these workers, essential to life in London? More than 50% of land property in London is owned by big investors based in other countries (US, United Arab Emirates, China, Russia, etc). Ordinary workers cannot afford to live outside London and commute for hours to reach their places of employment. In the name of solving the “housing crisis” they are dumped in high-rise flats. There they live not only in inadequate housing but in danger, in what are now revealed as monuments of incarceration.

The cynicism of all this is not down to the callousness of individual decision-makers, but to the very nature of a system subject in every way to the rule of capital and its imperatives, its subjection of humanity to exploitation in the interests of capital accumulation.

Only a few years ago, the whole workforce of a clothing factory in Bangladesh were trapped by locked exit doors, and hundreds died. The goods produced there were sold in British stores. In Melbourne, Australia, in the United Arab Emirates and elsewhere, workers and their families are living in high-rise flats subject to exactly the same dangers as was Grenfell Tower. In China hundreds of workers have committed suicides in factories like Foxconn, which makes the computer components we use every day. And so on and so on.

These are not “third world” problems, nor problems of “advanced”, “developing”, “underdeveloped” or “backward” countries, only the problems flowing from the global rule of capital in its relentless insistence on squeezing the last bit of profit and the last drop of humanity’s blood. That is what was laid bare at Grenfell Tower in June 2017.

But it had its earliest precedent far away and long ago, in the year 1911. It echoes eerily:

On the afternoon of March 5, 1911, a fire at the Triangle Shirtwaist Company that began in a rag bin swept through the eighth, ninth and tenth floors, too high for fire ladders to reach. The fire chief of New York said that the ladders could reach only to the seventh floor. But half of New York’s 500,000 workers spent all day, perhaps twelve hours, above the seventh floor. The laws said factory doors had to open outward. But at the Triangle Company the doors opened in. The law said the doors could not be locked during working hours, but at the Triangle Company doors were usually locked so the company could keep track of the employees. And so, trapped, the young women were burned to death at their work-tables, or jammed against the locked exit door, or leaped to their deaths down the elevator shafts. The New York World reported:

… screaming men and women and boys and girls crowded out on the many window ledges and threw themselves into the streets far below. They jumped with their clothing ablaze. The hair of some of the girls streamed up aflame as they leaped. Thud after thud sounded on the pavements. It is a ghastly fact that both the Greene Street and Washington Place sides of the building there grew mounds of the dead and dying… From opposite windows spectators saw again and again pitiable companionships formed in the instant of death – girls who placed their arms around each other as they leaped. When it was over, 146 Triangle workers, mostly women, were burned or crushed to death. There was a memorial parade down Broadway, and 100,000 marched.’ (From Howard Zinn’s classic A People’s History of the United States, pp 326-327.)

The ruthless and murderous exploitation by the American “robber barons” a century ago is equalled by big business and the capitalist state at Grenfell Tower.

The state services responsible for the public’s safety have ignored the working class’s safety, and ignored the repeatedly expressed concerns of working people about safety. They are not in fact offices for “public” safety, as Kensington shows. And all the time we must listen to the prime minister and other politicians and the press and other media telling us about the “national interest”. There is no “national” interest. The words are a trap for the unwary.

The role of the media has been to conceal the class nature of the disaster and its cause and consequences. The victims interviewed immediately after the fire felt bitterly that class nature and spoke with crystal clarity. They angrily insisted that this would not have happened in nearby, well-off areas (Kensington, Chelsea) but only to the poorer people.

But within days the media’s tone changed completely, with the emphasis only on individual grief and suffering, help from other people, charity, apologies from officials – all important but clouding over the essence of the matter, the class essence.

Sixty “luxury” flats are to be placed at the disposal of displaced Grenfell families. And what next? Who will evacuate and re-house the potential tens or even hundreds of thousands of people who now live in fear of meeting the same fate as did the residents of Grenfell Tower? Who will expropriate the properties that will have to be used?

These problems and their solution are a massive class issue. They will not be resolved in the interests of the working class by the state and the capitalist class, the enemy class. On the contrary, the task in front of the working class is to prepare urgently to gain our political independence, to develop, through all the ways possible of confronting and challenging the class enemy for responsibility for the life-threatening condition in which millions of us have been placed, the practical class-consciousness necessary to break the murderous rule of capital.

The working class has the numbers and the strength to do this. The great depth and seriousness of the questions raised by the Grenfell disaster can stir the will, the anger, the confidence, the empathy and solidarity necessary for men’s and women’s class-consciousness in ideas and in practical action.

(The deadly issues raised by globalised capital in its structural crisis have, more and more, their heaviest impact on women and families, and that this makes women more and more the vast untapped resource for the working-class movement, as I have tried to show in my recent book Women and the Social Revolution. Grenfell Tower is no less an example of what I mean than the indiscriminate bombing of civilians and shattering and displacement of millions of families in Syria, Iraq and Yemen.)

As things stand now, public safety and welfare are in the hands of a class and its state machine who have by any human standard lost the right to rule. How can working people get hold of the means to ensure public safety and welfare, control their own lives? As Grenfell Tower has revealed, this is an imperative need. More people than Ishmael have concluded that there is no solution other than revolution. (Note that the young Karl Marx wrote, 172 years ago: “The immediate spur to revolution is imperative need”). 12 July 2017.

■ Cliff Slaughter, brought up in a Communist Party family in Yorkshire, worked as a coalminer as an alternative to military National Service, before graduating from Cambridge University. He co-authored the classic Coal is Our Life with Norman Dennis and Fernando Henriques, since when has written a number of books on the working-class movement, socialism and Marxist theory, including Marxism, Ideology and Literature. More recently, he wrote Not Without a Storm: towards a communist manifesto for the age of globalisation, ... Bonfire of the Certainties: the second human revolution, and Women and the Social Revolution , and edited Against Capital: experiences of class struggle and rethinking revolutionary agency. Now retired, he for many years taught social anthropology and sociology at the Universities of Leeds and Bradford.

■ About the photo. On 27 June residents of council tower blocks and estates across East and South London dropped 22 banners – one for each of the 22 residential floors in the 24 storey Grenfell Tower, destroyed by fire on 14 June – in a show of mass solidarity with victims, survivors and the local community. The action, named “East 4 West – Grenfell Solidarity”, was mainly organised by black and brown communities, with people of all faiths living in social housing in Tower Hamlets, Newham, Hackney, Southwark and others boroughs. From the Grenfell Action Group blog.

Also about Grenfell Tower

Collective rage, collective care, by David Berrie (19 June)

A feeling of persecution that runs deep, by Al Mikey (19 June) 

Dónal Billings: RSF Offer Solidarity To Impeached POW

Republican Sinn Féin POW Department hit out at the treatment of a republican prisoner, Dónal Billings.

Dónal is a quiet man who has always had time for any of the POWs he met while imprisoned either in the 26 county state or in the cages of Long Kesh. In both these Gaols he made every effort to aid others in learning Gaeilge. It is said he taught Hunger Strike Martyr Bobby Sands Gaeilge while both served time in Long Kesh.

Now in his 60’s he has been cast in among criminals in the Midlands. Considering the present situation among criminals this action could quite easily place Dónal in the path of danger. The bullying tactics by those on E3 and E4 are doing immense damage to Republicanism. And considering the calls for “unity of Republicans” by their leadership it goes diametrically against what they say they purport to seek. Support for Republicanism in general has been damaged by this and other recent actions including the forced acceptance of two gangland criminals onto E1 only a short while ago.

We call for Dónals immediate re-admittance onto E1 and the cessation of all bullying of the independent POWs and those Republicans whose numbers are low in the Gaols of Ireland. While all Republican groups have their differences, it has always been the case that we agreed to unity on POW issues. The recent divisive actions make such unity difficulty and this can only have a knock-on effect for the POWs themselves. When all is said and done it play’s directly into the hands of the imperial partitionist States we all oppose.


Dónal Billings: On Hunger Strike

In the few short hours since the statement issued this morning by Sinn Féin Poblachtach it has come to light that Dónal Billings has begun a hunger strike. As a dedicated Republican we can assume that this path was not chosen lightly and has been forced on him by the actions of counter revolutionaries who had him removed from the landing in Portlaoise.
Dónal is a life long Republican and in in Gaol for Republican activities.

We call for his immediate repatriation to the landing and the cessation of the bullying tactics being used by the majority group within the Gaols before permanent damage is done to the health of Dónal.
It is past time for Republicans to stand up firm against these tactics that have crept into both Gaols. All POWs, whether aligned to a group or independent, who are incarcerated for Republican activities deserve to be treated equally and with respect. No group can force their ideology upon them or block them from the landings.

Críoch / Ends

Retracting MyArse: A Cynical, Censorious Cop-Out

Alfie Gallagher writing @ Left From The West hits out at the handwringing cant so visible in the Sunday Times after a column by Kevin Myers. Yesterday's retractions of articles written by Kevin Myers for the Sunday Times and the Irish Independent (8 years after publication in the latter case!) reek of hypocrisy, cynicism, and cowardice.
Myers's piece in the Sunday Times was his typically noxious plat du jour -- a smug, facile, bigoted Colonel Blimp rant. This, in itself, was nothing new, for it has been his stock in trade for decades now. Of course, Myers normally prefers safer, easier targets — single mothers, Muslims, travellers, gay people, feminists, etc.





The only reason he finally got his comeuppance yesterday is that he just happened to indulge in the "wrong kind" of bigotry and it just happened to go viral.

The subsequent retractions, though, display the worst kind of journalistic cowardice there is. For years, editors at the Irish Independent and at the Sunday Times were quite happy to pay Kevin Myers handsomely for his pseudo-intellectual imitations of Eric Cartman. Yet the moment one of his tiresome tirades kicks off an international Twitterstorm, both newspapers suddenly develop an "editorial ethos" and piously pull his articles from their websites.

This is not just rank hypocrisy — it is a cynical, censorious cop-out. Myers is an obnoxious bigot, but if you're going to hire him and trade on his shock-mongering, then you must publish and be damned. You face the consequences rather than weasel out and retract whenever his bile creates a social media storm that threatens your advertising revenue.
MyArse indeed.

Frontline Revolutionaries Are Always Expendable

With the New IRA faction supposedly the most dangerous of what remains of the dissident republican movement, political commentator Dr John Coulter uses his Fearless Flying Column to question if there can ever be purely democratic republican unity?
An old chum who once had a background in the Workers’ Party once told me the following ditty – what is the first item of business when a new republican group is formed? Answer – when to split!

But what this ditty really means to me as a Unionist is that dissident republicans have clearly forgotten what befell the Official IRA in 1972 after the latter murdered an off-duty Catholic soldier in Derry.

When the Officials murdered 19-year-old Ranger William Best of the Royal Irish Rangers, they did not believe it would start a backlash which would result in the OIRA having to call a total ceasefire eight days later.

In 2011, dissident republicans opposed to Stormont and Sinn Fein’s peace process killed a Catholic police officer in Omagh.

The Tyrone market town was also the location for one of the worst massacres of the Troubles in 1998, when the dissident Real IRA killed 29 people in a no-warning car bomb.

In 2011, too, mainstream republican and unionist politicians walked side by side at the funeral of the murdered police officer. In 1972, after Ranger Best’s murder, some 200 women from the Catholic Creggan and Bogside in Derry marched on the Official republican headquarters in the city.

The current dissident republican terror campaign has a three-fold purpose – to de-stabilise the Stormont Parliament, although Sinn Fein and the DUP are already making a good job of that purpose; stop Catholics from joining the police, and embarrass Sinn Fein by forcing republicans to condemn dissident attacks.

Dissidents live in a terrorist fantasy world, believing they are akin to the Viet Cong guerrillas and North Vietnamese Army driving the Americans out of Saigon in the mid 1970s.

Unlike Sinn Fein, which believed in a political process operating alongside a terror campaign, the dissidents believe there must first be a military victory over the British and unionists before a political solution can be implemented.

But the dissident campaign is starting to have the opposite effect. Rather than driving a wedge between the nationalist community and the police, it is uniting republican and unionist in a common cause – rooting out the various dissident factions.

The Provisional IRA was nudged into the peace process as a result of losing key operatives in shoot-outs with the security forces, such as the Loughgall ambush in the 1980s when eight top members of the IRA’s feared East Tyrone Brigade were wiped out.

It makes you wonder, though, how many ‘military’ republicans were ‘eliminated’ so that the Sinn Fein peace strategy could be guaranteed a ‘success’? The same question can also be posed off the loyalist movement.

Sooner, rather than later, dissident republican leaders must realise they have to negotiate with the British and Irish governments. What makes the dissident republican movement so different from any other so-called ‘independence’ movements the British Empire has negotiated with?

At some point in every republican generation, the ethos of ‘we need to talk to the Brits’ will emerge.

Militarily, the current generation of dissidents will not be defeated in Loughgall-style ambushes by the SAS. That could only lead to young militant nationalists swelling the ranks of the various dissident terror gangs.

In 1972, in the aftermath of Bloody Sunday in Derry in which 14 innocent Catholics were killed by the Paras, the ranks of the fledgling Provos were also swelled.

The dissidents will be defeated when people from the nationalist community give the police the necessary intelligence the PSNI needs to bring these terrorists before the courts. The bitter reality is that when violent dissidents have served their purpose, they will be cast aside in the same way de Valera feed Collins to the republican wolves.

Modern dissident republicans of the 21st century would do well to remember the so-called Marxist revolutionary warning – frontline revolutionaries are always expendable.

However, there is the real danger any dissident campaign could spark a second Irish Civil War, which saw republican kill republican.

The history of the present Troubles is littered with bloody internecine feuds within republicanism.

The Provisionals have fought the Officials; the Officials have fought the INLA; the INLA has imploded as the various factions butchered each other.

In late October 1992, the Provos used hundreds of members and supporters to attack people linked to a breakaway republican faction, the Irish People’s Liberation Organisation, on the grounds the IPLO was heavily involved in drug-dealing.

One IPLO member was killed and several others wounded. Within a week of the Provo attacks, the IPLO disbanded.

Officially, the Provisional IRA no longer exists. But if the dissident campaign continues to endanger Sinn Fein’s peace strategy, there is the prospect republicans loyal to mainstream thinking may retaliate against the dissident groupings on a ‘no claim, no blame’ basis.

In the Irish Civil War of the 1920s, former republican comrades slaughtered each other in some of the most notorious incidents in Irish history. The 26 Counties contains numerous memorials to republicans killed by the Free State Army in atrocities more akin to the tactics of the Black and Tans during the earlier War of Independence.

And with the centenary of that bloodbath looming in a few years’ time, old family wounds may be re-opened, especially in the Irish Republic. Perhaps it was the B-Specials, which formed the backbone of the Unionist establishment in partitioned Ireland, which prevented the Irish Civil War spilling over significantly into the emerging Northern Ireland?

Likewise, we can only speculate what would have happened in Ireland had the Great War not erupted in 1914 and a military showdown took place between the Irish Volunteers and Irish Citizens Army on one side, and the Ulster Volunteers and Orange Order on the other.

My speculation would be that the British would have helped arm the Unionists – in spite of the earlier Larne gun-running. The Germans would have helped the republicans.

Ireland would have been partitioned, but instead of a 26 to six split, the island would have been divided in two with each side holding 16 counties apiece. Naturally, there would be have been ethnic cleansing on a vast scale in both territories.

Ironically, vast numbers of Unionists and nationalists did die fighting – not each other, but together for the Allies in the trenches of Europe, Africa and the disastrous Gallipoli campaign.

Irish political, religious and community leaders have stressed they do not want the dissidents to drag the island back to the bloodbath days of the 1970s.

Past speculation that dissidents would try to increase political temperatures by disrupting either a royal wedding or royal visits to the Republic came to nothing. Indeed, even the chances of sectarian conflict – with the loyalist marching season still in full step – are slender as the Twelfth 2017 has proven to be one of the quietest on record.

But what is a distinct possibility is vicious inter-republican blood-letting. That would be a case of dragging the island back to the 1970s.

Unionist voters are transforming the one-time myth of Unionist unity into a political reality by voting in massive numbers for the DUP, making the concept of a single Unionist Party a clear possibility.

An SDLP Assembly member once got his political knuckles severely rapped for suggesting the notion of a single party to represent all shades of nationalist thinking.

Would republicanism be any more stable as a movement or achieve its ultimate goal if it was represented by a single party? As a Unionist, I know how a single movement would bring stability to the pro-Union community. The same ethos would surely work for Irish republicans.
Follow Dr John Coulter on Twitter @JohnAHCoulter

Frontline Revolutionaries Are Aways Expendable

With the New IRA faction supposedly the most dangerous of what remains of the dissident republican movement, political commentator Dr John Coulter uses his Fearless Flying Column to question if there can ever be purely democratic republican unity?
An old chum who once had a background in the Workers’ Party once told me the following ditty – what is the first item of business when a new republican group is formed? Answer – when to split!

But what this ditty really means to me as a Unionist is that dissident republicans have clearly forgotten what befell the Official IRA in 1972 after the latter murdered an off-duty Catholic soldier in Derry.

When the Officials murdered 19-year-old Ranger William Best of the Royal Irish Rangers, they did not believe it would start a backlash which would result in the OIRA having to call a total ceasefire eight days later.

In 2011, dissident republicans opposed to Stormont and Sinn Fein’s peace process killed a Catholic police officer in Omagh.

The Tyrone market town was also the location for one of the worst massacres of the Troubles in 1998, when the dissident Real IRA killed 29 people in a no-warning car bomb.

In 2011, too, mainstream republican and unionist politicians walked side by side at the funeral of the murdered police officer. In 1972, after Ranger Best’s murder, some 200 women from the Catholic Creggan and Bogside in Derry marched on the Official republican headquarters in the city.

The current dissident republican terror campaign has a three-fold purpose – to de-stabilise the Stormont Parliament, although Sinn Fein and the DUP are already making a good job of that purpose; stop Catholics from joining the police, and embarrass Sinn Fein by forcing republicans to condemn dissident attacks.

Dissidents live in a terrorist fantasy world, believing they are akin to the Viet Cong guerrillas and North Vietnamese Army driving the Americans out of Saigon in the mid 1970s.

Unlike Sinn Fein, which believed in a political process operating alongside a terror campaign, the dissidents believe there must first be a military victory over the British and unionists before a political solution can be implemented.

But the dissident campaign is starting to have the opposite effect. Rather than driving a wedge between the nationalist community and the police, it is uniting republican and unionist in a common cause – rooting out the various dissident factions.

The Provisional IRA was nudged into the peace process as a result of losing key operatives in shoot-outs with the security forces, such as the Loughgall ambush in the 1980s when eight top members of the IRA’s feared East Tyrone Brigade were wiped out.

It makes you wonder, though, how many ‘military’ republicans were ‘eliminated’ so that the Sinn Fein peace strategy could be guaranteed a ‘success’? The same question can also be posed off the loyalist movement.

Sooner, rather than later, dissident republican leaders must realise they have to negotiate with the British and Irish governments. What makes the dissident republican movement so different from any other so-called ‘independence’ movements the British Empire has negotiated with?

At some point in every republican generation, the ethos of ‘we need to talk to the Brits’ will emerge.

Militarily, the current generation of dissidents will not be defeated in Loughgall-style ambushes by the SAS. That could only lead to young militant nationalists swelling the ranks of the various dissident terror gangs.

In 1972, in the aftermath of Bloody Sunday in Derry in which 14 innocent Catholics were killed by the Paras, the ranks of the fledgling Provos were also swelled.

The dissidents will be defeated when people from the nationalist community give the police the necessary intelligence the PSNI needs to bring these terrorists before the courts. The bitter reality is that when violent dissidents have served their purpose, they will be cast aside in the same way de Valera feed Collins to the republican wolves.

Modern dissident republicans of the 21st century would do well to remember the so-called Marxist revolutionary warning – frontline revolutionaries are always expendable.

However, there is the real danger any dissident campaign could spark a second Irish Civil War, which saw republican kill republican.

The history of the present Troubles is littered with bloody internecine feuds within republicanism.

The Provisionals have fought the Officials; the Officials have fought the INLA; the INLA has imploded as the various factions butchered each other.

In late October 1992, the Provos used hundreds of members and supporters to attack people linked to a breakaway republican faction, the Irish People’s Liberation Organisation, on the grounds the IPLO was heavily involved in drug-dealing.

One IPLO member was killed and several others wounded. Within a week of the Provo attacks, the IPLO disbanded.

Officially, the Provisional IRA no longer exists. But if the dissident campaign continues to endanger Sinn Fein’s peace strategy, there is the prospect republicans loyal to mainstream thinking may retaliate against the dissident groupings on a ‘no claim, no blame’ basis.

In the Irish Civil War of the 1920s, former republican comrades slaughtered each other in some of the most notorious incidents in Irish history. The 26 Counties contains numerous memorials to republicans killed by the Free State Army in atrocities more akin to the tactics of the Black and Tans during the earlier War of Independence.

And with the centenary of that bloodbath looming in a few years’ time, old family wounds may be re-opened, especially in the Irish Republic. Perhaps it was the B-Specials, which formed the backbone of the Unionist establishment in partitioned Ireland, which prevented the Irish Civil War spilling over significantly into the emerging Northern Ireland?

Likewise, we can only speculate what would have happened in Ireland had the Great War not erupted in 1914 and a military showdown took place between the Irish Volunteers and Irish Citizens Army on one side, and the Ulster Volunteers and Orange Order on the other.

My speculation would be that the British would have helped arm the Unionists – in spite of the earlier Larne gun-running. The Germans would have helped the republicans.

Ireland would have been partitioned, but instead of a 26 to six split, the island would have been divided in two with each side holding 16 counties apiece. Naturally, there would be have been ethnic cleansing on a vast scale in both territories.

Ironically, vast numbers of Unionists and nationalists did die fighting – not each other, but together for the Allies in the trenches of Europe, Africa and the disastrous Gallipoli campaign.

Irish political, religious and community leaders have stressed they do not want the dissidents to drag the island back to the bloodbath days of the 1970s.

Past speculation that dissidents would try to increase political temperatures by disrupting either a royal wedding or royal visits to the Republic came to nothing. Indeed, even the chances of sectarian conflict – with the loyalist marching season still in full step – are slender as the Twelfth 2017 has proven to be one of the quietest on record.

But what is a distinct possibility is vicious inter-republican blood-letting. That would be a case of dragging the island back to the 1970s.

Unionist voters are transforming the one-time myth of Unionist unity into a political reality by voting in massive numbers for the DUP, making the concept of a single Unionist Party a clear possibility.

An SDLP Assembly member once got his political knuckles severely rapped for suggesting the notion of a single party to represent all shades of nationalist thinking.

Would republicanism be any more stable as a movement or achieve its ultimate goal if it was represented by a single party? As a Unionist, I know how a single movement would bring stability to the pro-Union community. The same ethos would surely work for Irish republicans.
Follow Dr John Coulter on Twitter @JohnAHCoulter

Not Exactly Great Penmanship

Via The Transcripts a Radio Free Éireann broadcast from 8 July 2017: John McDonagh &Martin Galvin speak to Tony Quinn, a Celtic Football Club supporter from New York, via telephone, about that status of the Celtic – Linfield football game to be played at Windsor Park in Belfast this week and about the sectarian dangers that will prevent Celtic supporters from traveling to the game.

WBAI 99.5FM Pacifica Radio
New York City
listen on the internet: wbai.org Saturdays Noon EST
Audio Player
 (begins time stamp ~ 10:25)

John: Right now Tony, I want to get into, because you’re a big part of the Celtic Football Club here in New York City and Celtic is famous worldwide. They go everywhere in the world. They sell out. They’re in the Champion League. And there was a draw that happened (and I’m going to get into what the whole July Twelfth thing is) but how sectarianism in The North has infected every aspect of life, not only in the Six Counties, but also in Glasgow. And what is happening that Celtic had this draw with a football team in Belfast but nobody might be able to go to the game? What is the story behind this now?
Tigers Bay Before Brexit Vote Photo: The Belfast Newsletter
Tony: Well we were, there’s a European-wide competition, the Champions League, which contains the clubs from you know the upper-reaches of the leagues every year.

This year Celtic drew Linfield from Belfast – I’m not sure if any of your listeners know, geographically, where that stadium’s situated by it’s just south of the city surrounded by places like you know, Tigers Bay, Sandy Row, the Dublin Road, places like that which are no-go areas, pretty much, for Nationalists/Republicans in The North. So when the draw was made representatives from Celtic met with representatives from Linfield and the PSNI (Police Service of Northern Ireland) of Belfast and subsequent to that meeting Celtic issued a statement to say that they would not be picking up their allocation for traveling supporters to the ground. Now it infers there is that the PSNI cannot guarantee the safety of Celtic supporters traveling to the game. So there will be no ‘away’ support I think for the first time – I can’t remember any other game where there hadn’t been an away contingent of support represented at a game. They’ve also moved the game. The game was scheduled – these games take place on a Tuesday or Wednesday traditionally – so they’ve now moved the game to Friday which again I can’t recall having a game being moved so they will play next Friday at Windsor Park in Belfast and then the second leg, the return leg, will be back at Glasgow the following Wednesday. Celtic have offered Linfield, and it will be accepted, an allocation of tickets for their support on the return leg to Glasgow. So clearly, the Strathclyde Police, or Police Scotland as they are now, can guarantee the safety of traveling support but the PSNI, with all their armoured vans and weaponry, can’t guarantee the safety of the traveling support of the Celtic fans.

John: But will Linfield fans be at the game next Friday?

Tony: They, I saw – they had a television footage of them lining up yesterday to pick up their tickets yesterday at Windsor Park in Belfast.

John: So this is Celtic, that is a world renown team – actually is it the son or the father of somebody from WBAI, Gil Scott Heron, who’s well known here at WBAI, didn’t his father play for Celtic?

Tony: His father played for Celtic, yeah, back in the day.

John: Yeah, so I mean it has a long tradition – Irish team founded by…

Tony: …Well it’s always been – Celtic never been, you know they’ve never been a sectarian club, they’ve never been a racist club, they’ve accepted players from – you know we had a guy from India play for us at one stage and I think that was back in the ’20’s. The important thing to remember is that on the other side of that both Linfield and Rangers had sectarian policy right up to the 1980’s where they wouldn’t sign players of the Roman Catholic persuasion and to the extent that Jock Stein, the famous Celtic manager, said that if was offered a Catholic player or a Protestant player to sign for Celtic he would always sign the Protestant because he knew Rangers would never sign the Catholic!
Irish Republican News 8 July 2017
John: Well, there’s another thing that’s going on and it’s affecting things in Glasgow – the Orangemen marched through Glasgow there a couple of weeks ago and people on the sidelines were singing this song that we’re going to play next. Now, what’s going on – and we have a debate here about hate speech and you know free speech and everything but there’s something that goes on in Glasgow and the Six Counties that certain songs cannot be sang and it’s getting wider and wider every year. But I’m going to play this song, it’s called The Famine Is Over. And it’s a take-off or it’s aimed to the Catholics in Glasgow – you know – we fed you, we clothed you, the famine is over now get back to Ireland and get out of Glasgow. So I’m going to play that and I want to get your reaction to the song.
Audio: Song, The Famine Is Over, performed by The Thornlie Boys, is played. The lyrics are: 

I often wonder where they would have been
If we hadn’t have taken them in
Well we fed them and washed them
Thousands in Glasgow alone
From Ireland they came
Brought us nothing but trouble and shame
Well their famine is over
Why don’t they go home?

Well now Athenry Mike was a thief
And Large John he was fully briefed
And that wee traitor from Castlemilk
Turned his back on his own
They’ve all their Papists in Rome
They have U2 and Bono
Well their famine is over
Why don’t they go home?

Now they raped and fondled their kids
That’s what those perverts from the dark side did
And they swept it under the carpet
And Large John he hid
Their evil seeds have been sown
‘Cause they’re not of our own
Well their famine is over
Why don’t they go home?

Now Timmy don’t take it from me
‘Cause if you know your history
You’ve persecuted thousands of people
In Ireland alone
You turned on the lights

Fueled the U-boats by night
That’s how you repay us
It’s time to go home
Because your famine is over
Why don’t you go home? (song ends)

John: Ah, yes – isn’t that a lovely tune? The famine is over why don’t you go home? We fed them and we washed them and you brought on us nothing but shame. Tony, it is an unbelievable song but it is a very popular at Linfield and at Rangers because anytime you watch some of the games and they do the highlights, and they did it in Glasgow, this song is now one of their favourite songs.
Tony: Yeah, right from – you know you go from The Beach Boys to the Billy Boys I guess, you know?

John: Yeah, you want to be ‘knee-deep in Fenian blood‘ – I guess that is a good one, too.

Tony: You listen to the lyrics and you think to yourself: You know we had Joyce and Yates and Wilde and Beckett and Heaney and then you have some individual who could come up with that, you know? It’s not exactly great penmanship. But I mean it’s important to remember that these marches don’t take place just on the Twelfth of July itself – this lasts for weeks coming up to The Twelfth. And they have what they term ‘Church Parades’ They have these ‘Church parades’ where they have their flute bands playing what they call ‘kick the Pope’ songs, anti-Catholic songs and yeah, it causes disruption throughout the Six Counties for weeks leading up to The Twelfth – certainly on The Twelfth to the extent that you know there’s this economic argument that The Twelfth is a cultural festival that generates you know money in the Six Counties but with the large numbers of Nationalists and Republicans who actually leave – my family growing up – it was my dad, you know coming up to The Twelfth he was like: I don’t care where we’re going but the car’s headed south! You know, a lot of Nationalists and Republicans flee the jurisdiction for the period so and just, you know, I guess there’s legislation to deal with parading, there’s legislation to deal with hate crimes – I was talking to a friend of mine yesterday and they put up these bonfires – now some of these bonfires are eighty feet tall!


Bonfire on the Shankill Road    
They hang them, they hang effigies of various Republican leaders from them, they’ll put Vatican flags up there, Irish Tricolours, the Starry Plough, whatever they can get their hands on and that – those – you know that’s hate speech and the PSNI, for some reason, let them away with – you know, they don’t want to, I guess, start ‘trouble’, inverted commas, so they let them off.

John: And also, on the Irish Tricolour, they’ll put ‘KAT’ – Kill All Taigs – which is a derogatory term for Catholics.  




2014: Police investigating after “Kill All Taigs” facepainted on five-year-old goes viral.
Source: TheJournal.ie  
And just to let our listeners know: This is commemorating a Battle of the Boyne in 1690 where King Billy over King James. This is what’s being commemorated on July Twelfth where, like Tony was saying, the Nationalists just bail out and now they’re closing down all the liquor stores in the Six Counties because there is a madness that takes over this week that is not to be believed! You have to be up there to see it – the bonfires and they pick a special town – I was over one year, Kesh in Co. Fermanagh was picked – the amount of arches and Union Jacks and everything and you know there’s a lot of Catholics that lived in the area – you just didn’t go into the town. It was sort of given that this was the Protestants going mad. This is their time of year and that but now, Tony, I played that song – how do you feel about them now using that song to be banned and in Scotland now – they’re saying now they’re going to ban marches ’cause people on the sidelines sang it and you’re having what’s going on at Celtic, too, at Celtic Park, that if Celtic supporters sing certain songs they are fined and banned from the stadium – I mean but how far do we go on what songs that we’re going to ban or what chants?
Tony: Well there’s certainly legislation in Scotland banning certain songs. In some cases Celtic fans that have been pulled from the stadium and brought up before the courts have successfully argued that the songs that they were singing were not sectarians but were you know ballads, Irish ballads, and, in fact, there’s very, very few cases where Celtic fans, even though they’ve been brought up before the courts, have been found guilty. You know, you have these parades in Doire and in Newry – places where there seventy-five percent of the population is Nationalist/Republican and you usually have about six or eight major marches to what they call ‘the field‘, where you know the bands and the onlookers gather, for an alcohol-induced, frenzied, you know debauched – and don’t forget – these are ‘Church parades’ – that’s the – the emphasis must be made that this is a religious outing – they market this as a celebration of their religion. Yet there’s nothing religious of any note that takes place at these so-called fields that they gather in afterwords.

Martin: Tony, this is Martin Galvin. I just want to make a point. We should tell our listeners: First of all it’s the Battle of the Boyne and, indeed, the Pope supported one of the two English kings in that battle. He actually supported King Billy, King William, because the French were allied with King William and said a Mass of thanksgiving in honour of that victory and he still gets burned in effigy and kicked down the street in all those parades. One of the worst parts about these parades is the desire to go into Nationalist or Republican areas– you know they have to go down the Ardoyne or a section like that, or the Garvaghy Road. It seems like a big part of these triumphal parades is to do it in Republican areas, in Nationalist areas, to try and step on and show superiority, triumphalist, over their Nationalist, their Catholic, their Republican neighbours. And today in Donegal is a big parade in Rossnowleah, that in the South of Ireland, no one will interfere with it, nobody’ll have any problem with it, nobody’ll try and break it down or try to humiliate anybody where that parade marches although it is in a – you know, in Donegal, which is, obviously, part of the Twenty-Six Counties but if you go into The North there’s going to be an attempt just to parade – you talk about ‘Church parades’? That song is sometimes sung outside of Catholic churches that are along the route. And I just want our audience to understand how much bigotry, how much triumphalism, how much of an element the anti-Catholic, anti-Nationalist part of those parades, those demonstrations, those ‘Church parades’ as you call them is. Isn’t that so?

Tony: Well they, they – you know have instances in the past were they would throw coins, they would throw pennies, down from the walls of Doire down into the Bogside.


But they certainly are – they’re coat-trailing exercises, they’re an exercise in – you know they have this, the Rangers, they have this sign that’s over the door, the dressing room, before they walk onto the park itself, onto the pitch itself, ‘We Are the People’ (WATP) – it’s this generational idea that they are superior to the Nationalist/Republican community in The North.

Martin: Okay. Tony, we’re going have to wrap it up. We’re going over to Dublin in a minute. But there you have it – the story of why – you know, you talk about a United Kingdom but people can’t go from Scotland, or people who support one of the – an internationally famous soccer or football team, Celtic – to go to see a Celtic match because it’s in a part of Belfast where Catholics and Nationalists will not be safe for watching a Celtic match.

John: And Radio Free Éireann…

Tony: …I mean it’s just…

John: …Go ahead.

Tony: Can you imagine – just before I go – can you imagine the New York Jets telling the Miami Dolphins that they can’t guarantee the security of their fans…

Martin: …John and I are both Jet fans. We would love to see that happen however, we have had them at the stadium humiliating us as they defeat us over and over again and we would start with New England fans but…

John: …But you know Tony, is incomprehensible that you know here, you want to say within the United Kingdom, a team from Glasgow cannot travel to Belfast and be guaranteed their safety.

Tony: I know.

John: It’s just bizarre! But in keeping…

Tony: …it’s 2017. That’s the thing everybody needs to remember. It’s 2017.

John: Yeah.

Martin: And not that they – not just interested in going there and saying: Great! Our team won. It’s just that they would attack, go after, try and humiliate and physically attack…

John: …well, kill…

Martin: ….physically kill people for rooting for the other team because of what their religion, what they assume their religion is, by virtue of the fact that they support Celtic.

Tony: I’ll quickly finish up: In 1948, Belfast also had a Celtic team, Belfast Celtic, they played on the Falls Road, had a stadium there that held fifty thousand people. Belfast Celtic played Linfield in 1948. The crowd rioted.
Headline
Photo Source: belfastceltic.org   .



The Linfield fans rioted – attacked the Celtic players on the field, broke one of the legs of one of the Celtic players – which resulted in Belfast Celtic withdrawing from the Irish League at the time and Belfast Celtic was subsequently wound up the following year. So they killed off Belfast Celtic but they ain’t gonna do it to Glasgow Celtic ’cause they’re in for a beatin’ when we meet them.

John: Alright, Tony, in keeping…

Martin: …and you’re talking about the score – not the type that…

Tony: …I’m talking about the score! I’m talking about the score, yeah!

John: And in keeping with the Glorious Twelfth here we’re celebrating on Radio Free Éireann we’re going to go now with The Old Orange Flute by The Dubliners and when we come back we’ll head to Dublin. (ends time stamp ~ 27:56)
11 July 2017 Update: Bonfire that targets Celtic Football Club player, Scott Sinclair, a black man.


Location: Avoniel Leisure Centre
12 July 2017 Update: And hours later this great Tweet was posted in reply: