Catalonia is not the problem

No, the problem is Spain, or more precisely, the Spanish political class as represented in politics by the PP, the PSOE and Ciudadanos. The latter two parties have supported Mariano Rajoy’s PP and its policy of squashing Catalonia’s limited autonomy and have enabled the passage of Article 155 of the Spanish Constitution to put that into effect.

Every effort made by the Catalan President and parliament to engage in dialogue with Madrid so as to find a solution to the crisis has been imperiously spurned. The so-called ‘king’ of Spain (what a ridiculous medieval construct that is!) has rowed in on the side of the PP, causing great offence in Catalonia not least for his tacit endorsement of the actions of the storm-troopers sent by Madrid in to halt a democratic process — the independence referendum.

But the problem is also the EU. Every appeal by the Catalans for a vindication of supposed EU democratic ‘values’ has been resisted. The truth is, of course, that the EEC/EU was founded along explicitly anti-democratic lines, as Teresa Forcades, Yanis Varoufakis and others have shown. We in Ireland have our own proof of that anti-democratic nature in that we were forced, twice, to vote a second time in referendums on the Nice and Lisbon Treaties. Why? Because we twice gave the ‘wrong’ answer from the point-of-view of the EU and our own rabidly-Europhile political class.

As I write, the Catalan parliament has just endorsed the Declaration of Independence while, simultaneously, the Spanish parliament has voted to trigger Article 155.

There will be conflict as a result, and we should hope that it will be confined to words. The people of Catalonia have shown themselves to be peaceful democrats, but the same cannot be said of the regime in Madrid headed by the Partido Popular, the latest manifestation of a political line that stretches directly back to the fascist dictatorship of Francisco Franco. And behind that party are the string-pullers, accurately described recently by British journalist Paul Mason as the remnants of Falangism, Ultra-Catholics, Opus Dei and neoliberals. An unsavoury lot! Who, in their right mind, would want to be associated with that?

But what of the rule of law, and what of the constitution? The answer to that is that the Spanish regime has stuffed the courts with pliable judges drawn from the same political class, and has itself shown a contempt for the constitution both in the case of Catalonian autonomy and in ensuring that rampant corruption within and around the PP is shielded. And the answer is also that the Catalan Republic has its own laws and its own constitution. That comes with self-determination.

There are some who worry about nationalism as though that is automatically a bad thing, which it need not be. The Catalan parliament, acting on behalf of the Catalan people, has clearly stated that the independent state would take the form of a republic, and that it would be informed by universal Enlightenment values of Freedom, Equality and Solidarity. As a republican, my visits to Catalunya over the past ten years have convinced me that the people of that region already think and act as republicans in their daily lives and interactions with one another.

There is another political element that should assuage people’s worries, and that is the healthy state of Catalonian politics and democracy. Into the normal mix of Left and Right parties there has been injected in recent years a developing and very healthy progressive movement based on municipalism, employing open discussion of issues and policies and using citizens’ assemblies to widen participation in politics. That is most readily observed in local democracy, and the presence in parliament today of most of the 700 Catalan Mayors is probably the strongest armour the newly-proclaimed Catalan Republic has against aggression from Spain.

Catalonia’s national boundary is very well established. The same cannot be said of the national boundaries of most of the world’s nations, most of which are arbitrary constucts to suit the wants and needs of imperialist powers — lines on maps in Africa, the Middle East and so on. Oh, and in Europe itself!

At this moment what Catalonia and its people need is solidarity. Its enemies are legion, and powerful, from an aggressive Spanish unionist regime to the EU and some of its most powerful member-states, and beyond among Spain’s allies and those with vested interests in Spanish cooperation. The UN has a role to play here, since its own charter recognises the right to self-determination, the conditions for which Catalonia meets.

But most of all, it is down to us, as individuals or as members of groups to offer solidarity to the great people of Catalonia. It is up to us to counter an antagonistic mainstream media both in Spain and internationally, and to put pressure on our own governments to act ethically and in the spirit of the UN Charter on self-determination.

80 years ago it was necessary to raise an International Brigade to fight in defence of the Spanish Republic. Today the battlefield is ideas and principles — and propaganda. Let us make sure we meet that challenge.

Long live the Catalan Republic!

Freedom, Equality, Solidarity!

Adelante!

 

 

Catalonia: Imagining The Republic

After a day spent watching events unfold in Catalonia via social media as the paramilitary agents of Spanish PM Mariano Rajoy used jackboot tactics to disrupt a democratic process – the October 1st independence referendum – I went to bed with some crucial words from Catalan President Carles Puigdemont occupying my thoughts.

Puigdemont, speaking on TV, indicated an early declaration of independence based on a 90% ‘Yes’ vote in favour, and concluded by saying that an independent Catalonia would ‘take the form of a republic’. That, to my mind, is a critically important statement of intent. There are a number of reasons for that.

The intent to create a republic represents a clear break with the Spanish constitution which is that of a monarchist state, and a clear rejection of the authority of Spain’s constitutional court which is not independent but is politically appointed by the Madrid government whose authority over Catalonia is also clearly rejected. In a republic the constitution is the primary legal instrument of the people, and is moulded by them. In a republic there can be no monarch since it is the people who are sovereign.

Over 2000 years ago the Roman philosopher Cicero laid out the basis of a republic. Central to that is his statement that “A commonwealth (res publica) is the property of a people. But a people is not any collection of men brought together in any sort of way, but many people united by agreement on justice and a partnership for the common good”. That is the antithesis of a theocracy, or monarchy, or plutocracy, or any other form of government that we can identify in the world today, including the Spanish state.

Cicero’s republican model was further developed during the European Age of Enlightenment of the 17th and 18th centuries and gave birth to the three abiding principles of a modern republic – Freedom, Equality and Solidarity. Each of these words, and the combination of the three, has surface meaning which is easily understood. But beneath that they have a deep structure of meaning to be mined in the creation of a true modern republic. That deep structure of meaning provides the building blocks and the tools for the making of a constitution of a true republic in the 21st century – a republic that is owned by all of the people “united by agreement on justice and a partnership for the common good”.

And so I am envious of the opportunity that is available to the people of Catalonia should they choose to seize it. Even in my own country, Ireland, which has a strong history of a struggle to create an enlightened modern republic, and which has the template laid out in the Proclamation of the Irish Republic in 1916, we are not at that stage of opportunity or resolve.

The people of Catalonia have the knowledge of their history on their side. The battle to protect the Spanish Republic of the 1930s is still vivid. They don’t need lectures from outsiders like me to know the value of a republic. Their ancestors, some still surviving, paid the high price required to defend it. From my observations both from afar and on visits to Catalonia, it seems the younger generations still have the spirit and the yearning for a better and more enlightened way of living together. On my last visit to Girona and Barcelona, one week before the independence referendum, it felt as if the essence of the republic was already in the ether.

Watching the events unfold on ‘independence day’ via social media and on TV, I saw more evidence that the people already act as they would in a republic. The unspoken catch-cry seemed to have been Freedom, Equality, Solidarity. People of all ages, from the youngest to the oldest, the fittest to the most infirm, faced up to the armour-clad forces of reaction and refused to be cowed. They demanded the freedom to vote. They looked after one another as equals. They stood together ‘united by agreement’, faced down Rajoy’s bullies, and refused to take a backward step. ‘We will vote’, they said, and they did, in ‘partnership for the common good’. ‘We will vote’ – and nobody asked if ‘Yes or No?’ before standing in solidarity with that person’s right to vote. They owned the day. They deserve to own the republic, if that is what they want.

Other voices, more knowledgeable than me in the intricacies of Catalan politics, caution against putting too much store in what this or that political group in Catalonia have to say about independence or the republic, or the level of commitment that they bring to the project. Can the Catalan government be trusted? Is the Municipalities Movement fully on-board with the project? Or Podemos? Or this group of unions, but not that? Those concerns (or that alignment of the commentator with her/his preference) are not an issue for me. As a republican, I put my trust in the people. The republic, if it to exist, is owned by them, and it is for them, acting ‘in partnership for the common good’ to assert their collective authority over the various political actors. They, more than any of the political actors, have shown their courage, stoicism, collective care and dignity in the face of tyranny. They led themselves on the streets and at the polling stations. Those massive citizens’ assemblies were their creation. That is the flowering of the republic.

But if it is to be a republic, let it be a true republic, and not a sham republic.

In 1922 in Ireland the suppression of our true republic – the Irish Republic proclaimed on 24th April 1916 as the prelude to our revolution – was implemented by a reactionary counter-revolutionary element which, in either of two guises has ruled, or misruled to be precise, the state ever since. The state remained a member of the British Commonwealth until the same counter-revolutionaries declared the so-called ‘Republic of Ireland’ in April 1949. But it was a sham republic, and it has been ever since, a ‘republic’ in name only. It fails to meet basic requirements of Cicero’s model or the Enlightenment model of a republic in crucial respects. It is owned by a self-perpetuating ‘elite’ of about 15% of the population who routinely thrash those principles of Freedom, Equality, Solidarity. It has denied the most basic rights to the poor, to women, and to children. It has ceded important areas of social policy such as health and education to the Catholic church. It denies full autonomy to women, including their reproductive rights. It has overseen the physical and sexual abuse of children in care, often by clerics of that same Catholic church who have mostly gone unpunished. It has championed the ‘rights’ of wealthy property owners over the most basic right of citizens to adequate housing, health, education and other rights. There is a long list of what reasonable and informed people might see as ‘crimes against the people’ that can be laid at the door of that political class, and it continues to this day.

How does that work? How can a people, the Irish people, believe themselves to live in a republic when it is but a sham? What comparison could I offer to the people of Catalonia to illustrate our circumstance in a way that they could relate to? I compare it to Spain!

In a recent article, and an associated tweet, British journalist Paul Mason described the string-pullers in the Madrid government as unreformed Falangists, Ultra-Catholics, Opus Dei and neoliberals. In other words, a deeply conservative exclusive ‘elite’ with fascistic tendencies (as demonstrated days ago, but in other ways too), wedded to the dominant religion, a hierarchical monarchy, and kleptocracy. With the exception of a formal monarchy, that is Ireland too. Remember that our governing party, Fine Gael, has its roots in overt fascism through its 1930s ‘Blueshirts’ which stood with Franco, while the alternative, Fianna Fáil, flirted with German Nazism. We have never had a left-leaning government in all of 95 years. Our media, both state and private, controlled by the political class, maintains the status quo, and the pretense that we live in a ‘republic’. It does it through the distribution of overt and covert propaganda favouring that corrupt status quo.

Who in their right mind would not want to end that?

That is the opportunity that presents itself to the people of Catalonia – to make the break with tyranny, to challenge that notion of the ‘indivisibility’ of the Spanish state even when that state rules by force and through corrupt judicial processes, to engage fully in imagining the beauty of a true republic that the people can construct and own and mould for the better over time, to offer that model to other regions of Spain and to other parts of the globe, and to inspire us all to shake off our torpor and our fear and to strike out for a more enlightened future for our children – all of our children.

That is a heavy responsibility to place on the people of Catalonia. But they have shown themselves to be people of tremendous character, not just now but in the past. For our part, we salute them and stand with them. Their battle-cries are ours.

¡No Pasarán!

Adelante!

 

 

Catalonia & Ireland: The Republic, interrupted.

One of the most important aspects of the current struggle between Catalonia and the central Spanish government in Madrid is, I believe, being overlooked. It is the battle of ideas between the dark ages of monarchism and hierarchical control of the people by a distant elite and the establishment of a progressive enlightened republic in Catalonia owned and shaped by the people and fit for their life in the 21st century.

It is not the first time the people of Catalonia have explored the potential of such a republic, but the fifth. On four previous occasions a Catalan republic has been proclaimed; in 1641, 1873, 1931 and 1934. We know that on the last occasion the republic was brutally put down by Franco’s fascist forces with the assistance of Hitler, Mussolini and, less overtly, of Britain and other western governments. Shamefully, one of those was the Irish government.

There are parallels between the Catalan experience and the Irish experience.

In 1916 a serious attempt was made to establish The Irish Republic with an armed revolution directed against British rule followed by the War of Independence which brought about negotiations in 1921. Unfortunately for the Irish people, those negotiations were led by proto-fascists on the Irish side who, following a civil war in which their side was supported by the British, established a counter-revolutionary government in 1922. We in Ireland have lived with the consequences of that for 95 years. Five years of seeking to build a modern republic, and ninety-five years of seeking to destroy that dream. But the struggle is not over.

I arrived in Girona last week on a short visit, excited by the prospect of observing the preparations for the Catalan Referendum, and wanting to get some sense of the mood of the people. In my backpack I had a book I wanted to revisit; ‘Labour in Ireland: (Labour in Irish History & The Reconquest of Ireland)’ by James Connolly, a principal architect of the 1916 revolution, a socialist-republican who was executed for his part in that great enterprise in which my paternal grandparents were also involved. By night I read his people’s history of my country, by day I watched part of the Catalan people’s history playing out.

There was no doubt of a defiant mood about the place. The Catalan flag was visible everywhere in Girona — on buildings, draped across the shoulders of students on the street, in shop-windows, attached to cars. Large banners supporting the referendum and ‘Democràcia!’ were strung from balconies. Posters proclaimed ‘república no monarquia’ — ‘republic not monarchy’, or ‘Hola república’ — ‘Hello republic’, or announced an assembly of young people of Girona to ‘flirt with a decent future’, or invited people to join the ‘struggle for the Catalan republic’.

I have never seen such a well-organised street-level use of propaganda, and it matched the freely-expressed opinions of a range of people I spoke to, from workers to students to small-business owners, all with the exception of one being firmly fixed on their right to vote regardless of it being for ‘Yes’ or ‘No’ to independence, the one exception explaining her reluctance as being based on having family in Madrid.

But of course there is a precedent for that use of street-propaganda, and it is in the similar use of posters and flags during the 1931–39 struggle for the republic and against fascism. That struggle seems to be playing out again.

Spain’s prime minister, Mariano Rajoy, leads the Partido Popular which has direct links back to the People’s Alliance party founded in 1976 by former Francoist minister Manuel Fraga. The PP is a member of the European People’s Party in the EU, as is Ireland’s ruling party Fine Gael which had its roots in the Irish fascist Blueshirt movement in the 1930s which avidly supported Franco, Hitler and Mussolini.

In Girona, I was conscious of those historical facts, and envious of the more advanced position of the Left in Catalonia than in Ireland. Like Spain, Ireland has been savagely assaulted by the austerity-gang led from Brussels, aided and abetted by the corporatist-kleptocratic political class in each country.

In Spain, that provoked a reaction, first the Indignados movement, later Podemos, now the Municipalities movement and its call for the feminisation of politics.

In Ireland, the people largely caved in and suffered egregious cuts in living standards until the attempt, encouraged by the EU, to privatise the provision of water began. That led to the Right2Water campaign that brought hundreds of thousands onto the streets and forced the government to stall the plan, although that struggle hasn’t yet been decisively won. It remains to be seen if that Right2Water movement can be harnessed as a political movement, and meanwhile parties of the Left in Ireland refuse to cooperate fully to end the corporatist regime despite the obvious signs of real suffering endured by at least 25% of the people.

Back in Ireland, I have followed events in Catalonia via social media. Rajoy’s inner fascist has emerged, his authoritarianism knowing no bounds, even of basic common sense. He can hardly have imagined that his attempts to subdue the people of Catalonia would succeed. He has provided the pro-independence-referendum side with PR they couldn’t have dreamed of. He must be an idiot. They want Democràcia! He wants to deny them that.

And what of the Catalan Republic? We are a day or so away from knowing what the result of the referendum will be. And the referendum is not about the creation of a republic, but of independence. But it is hard to see, in the event of a ‘Yes’ outcome to that, the people of Catalonia not opting for a republic in preference to a monarchy. Freedom, Equality and Solidarity surely trumps rule from afar by a self-perpetuating ‘elite’.

Catalonia and Ireland have both flirted in the past with the republic as the preferred form of government, in both cases having that interrupted by fascist coups before the republic could be properly established.

I am hoping that Catalonia will give Ireland the lead when the referendum result is announced, and that we on the Left in Ireland — republicans and socialists — can follow that lead, can get beyond petty differences, and can organise to give the same option to the people of Ireland.

They desperately need it.

 

 

Martin McGuinness & dispelling sectarianism

On my way back to Dublin with a parcel of other 13-year-olds from a three-month stay in the Gweedore Gaeltacht in 1961, I paid my first visit to Derry to switch from bus to train.

Even for a boy who was well used to seeing the Dublin tenements, Derry was like something out of the distant past. No sign of development or modernisation but all the signs of poverty. I particularly remember a street of single-storey cottages of the sort featured in old photos of 19th century evictions, maybe mud-walled. Hovels. Ragged children, and ragged mothers. Another country.

My parents had told me about that other country. During the war, freshly married and with no ready employment in Dublin, my father had got work with Thompson & Nutt’s motor works in Garvagh in Derry, reconditioning truck bodies at a time when no new trucks were available because of the war effort.

Son of a 1916 Volunteer, and a committed republican, he worked with a mainly Protestant work-force without any problems at all. When he was the subject of a serious external death-threat, it was his Protestant workmates who sent out the message that not a hair on his head was to be touched, and that was the end of the matter.

He stayed in touch with Thompson, Nutt and his workmates for decades after, and he and my mother made regular trips north of the border from then on.

So, they made sure their children knew from an early age what the set-up in the Protestant State for a Protestant people was, and the conditions I saw in Derry in 1961 confirmed that there was no place at the table for Catholic nationalists.

The six-counties didn’t have to be a sectarian state. That was a choice, and it wasn’t made just by six-county unionists, it was a choice made in Westminster, and sustained by Westminster. And it was a choice made in Dublin and sustained through studied neglect by Dublin. Better a hegemonic conservative Catholic 26-county state than a 32-county state in which Protestants would have to be accommodated.

When the civil rights marchers were assaulted by the RUC and Loyalists at Burntollet Bridge in 1969, no surprise. When Sammy Devenney died as a result of a gratuitous beating from the RUC in Derry, no surprise. When Bombay Street in Belfast was burned to the ground in the same year by a Loyalist mob with RUC support and we had a refugee family living with us in a normal three-bedroomed house in Dublin, no surprise. When Harold Wilson sent in the British Army and it turned on the nationalist community, no surprise. When that army slaughtered civilians on Bloody Sunday in Derry, no surprise. When internment of nationalists, and torture, were carried out, no surprise. When the RUC, British Army and Loyalists colluded in the murders of nationalists, no surprise. When the Orange Order repeatedly paraded their bigotry on the Garvaghy Road and Drumcree Church year after year, without state sanction, no surprise.

When Martin McGuinness and others stood up to that repression having, of necessity, armed themselves to defend their people, no surprise.

And there is no surprise either in the brutality that ensued. That is war, wherever it occurs, and civilians always bear the brunt of it. The real crime is that it lasted for decades. That was the politics of failure. Or, more exactly, it was the politics of imperialist obduracy. Westminster was going to beat Irish nationalists back come hell or high water. Hell came and went, and high water too, but the republican movement was still standing its ground, still undefeated but without the possibility of fighting the sort of decisive battle that would drive the obdurate imperialists from Ireland. And even if that had been possible, full-blown civil war would have ensued, and the imperialists would have stoked that. They have form on this island in doing that.

Stalemate is not a solution. Achieving your ultimate ambition is a solution. For republicans, that ambition is the establishment of a true 32-county republic.

Every year republicans go to Bodenstown, to the grave of Wolfe Tone, one of the principal architects of Irish republicanism. They don’t go as a single body of republicans, but in separate groups because they have fallen out with one another. Internecine disputes become more important than realising the republican ambition.

Wolfe Tone, and the other Protestant men who founded the republican movement in Ireland, left a fundamental tenet of republicanism for us to follow. The constitution of the Society of United Irishmen stated in its first article its intent as “forwarding a brotherhood of affection, a communion of rights, and an union of power among Irishmen of every religious persuasion”.

There is no other way to create a true republic encompassing all of this island than by following that tenet. No republican could over-ride the will of unionists by imposing a republic on them without their assent. No republican could even contemplate expelling the unionist population from the land so as to create a republic. If they did either of those things it would be self-defeating. It would not be a republic. It is therefore necessary to persuade unionists that they have nothing to fear from the sort of republic that their Protestant ancestors laid out in Belfast in 1791, but that they have much to gain from it.

That is the project that Martin McGuinness and the rest of the willing republican leadership and rank-and-file set out on over two decades ago. Others had and have a right to a different opinion and a right to resile from that decision. Many of us have had to swallow very hard when symbolic gestures were made by republicans that went against the grain, other than as part of an overall strategy of moving towards a ‘brotherhood of affection’, or to put it the other way a ’parity of esteem’.

As Sinn Féin engaged with the political process, the party was rightly criticised for not being sufficiently ‘of the left’. Republicanism is intrinsically of the left. James Connolly stated that to be republican was to be socialist and to be socialist was to be republican, that the two are the same in terms of the social, economic and political outcomes that they should produce if they are true to their doctrines.

But political progress depends on public support, and the fact is that on either side of the border the population is conservative in outlook and cautious in the face of change, the result of a century and more of exposure to right-wing, anti-republican, anti-socialist propaganda from church, state and press. Many of the social and economic problems that people on both sides of the border endure would be solved by the left, but still the left struggles for support.

One reason for that is the presence of often bitter internecine disputes across the left, between socialists and republicans but also within socialism and republicanism. The right unites to hold power, the left fractures all over the place to avoid power. Another crucial reason is the absence of any form of progressive national media, not just now but since the imposition of partition and the creation of two sectarian states. Solving the latter is probably far easier than solving the former.

Has progress been made north of the border over the past two decades? Have attitudes changed? Has sectarianism diminished? Have the two sides moved towards better accommodating one another? Has Brexit made a difference to the question of the border? Could Scottish independence play a part in moving the border question on? Would the English ditch the six-counties to concentrate on their own post-Brexit situation? Has the 26-county political class been forced to engage with the border question in a realistic way for the first time since 1922? Is it within the left’s capability, republican and socialist, to make significant political advances over the next five or ten years on either side of the ridiculous border? Is it more possible than it was twenty years ago to imagine that republican vision that Tone and the other Protestant republicans had, coming into being?

For me, the answer to each of these questions is yes.

Are we significantly closer to “forwarding a brotherhood of affection, a communion of rights, and an union of power among Irishmen of every religious persuasion”?

Yes.

His detractors will not acknowledge Martin McGuinness’s contribution to that progress, but I do.

That snapshot I saw of a filthy sectarian six-county state in 1961, and the filthy sectarian 26-county state that I was going home to, are memories.

It is a very different country.

And I am grateful for that.

Work done, Martin McGuinness. Rest in peace.

Work to do, for the rest of us.

Buck US-EU trends – let’s shift Ireland leftwards

Driving home on Thursday, crossing that ridiculous border that divides this small island into two failed states, with my sterling in one pocket and my euros in another (another ridiculous division), it flashed into my mind that I had been in a concentration camp for 48 hours, but not the sort that we associate with that term.

I was very fortunate to have been included in a political school sponsored by Unite the Union with full participation by those other great and enlightened Right2Water unions, Mandate and the CWU, and superbly organised and delivered by Trademark Belfast.

Crammed into 48 hours was a series of presentations by specialists, mainly academics, on fundamentally important issues arising from neoliberalism that confront the people of this small island and the wider world. These were: Free Trade and Globalisation; the Future of Work; Sustainable Economies; Media, Hegemony and Ideology; A Broken Economy; Debt or Democracy – Public Money for Sustainability and Social Justice; Commercialistation of the Public Sphere.

Each presentation was followed by full participation by the inmates of the concentration camp in teasing out these issues and possible solutions. That is where concentration was required, and no escaping it since we were voluntary prisoners on a small island in Lough Erne.

‘We’ included leaders and officials of those Right2Change trade unions, Independent for Change TDs and councillors, community activists, Trademark facilitators, academics, and, until they had to dash back to Dublin to deal with the aftermath of that perverse judicial decision on Apollo House, Brendan Ogle, Dean Scurry, Terry McMahon and Glenn Hansard of Home Sweet Home.

We had presentations and discussion, but of equal importance was the out-of-school democratic engagement/discussion by all on ‘where we are, where do we want to get to, and how do we get there?’. We know where we are – in the shit created by the political class, and where we want to get to – a republic of equals founded on fundamental rights and based on justice and equality and solidarity and ownership and control by the people. But how to get there?

The consensus was that the means to that end lies in encouraging and facilitating the bottom-up people’s movement that was brought into being by the Right2Water campaign and enhanced by the public response to the Home Sweet Home initiative with further progress likely to emerge from public campaigns on other serious issues that beset the people (other than the 20% political class).

What means could be used to make the necessary progress towards that end? Like James Connolly and Jim Larkin before them, the leaders of Unite, Mandate and the CWU, Jimmy Kelly, John Douglas and Steve Fizpatrick understand that the solution lies in the first place in political education and secondly in the provision of information to counteract a propagandist right-wing media hegemony that exists without real challenge by progressives. That understanding of the proper role of trade unions, which goes beyond the central task of representing workers and into the area of creating political change from rule by an ‘elite’ to rule by the people for the benefit of all, separates these and a few other trade unions from other less visionary and less progressive trade unions.

Neither Connolly nor Larkin were prepared to concede the media landscape to the right-wing capitalist class, and so they published their own left-wing newspapers. There is now serious intent to explore the creation of a new online newspaper with a progressive ethos and proper journalism to fill the vacuum of ideas and information necessary to create a genuine fourth estate. More on that later, hopefully of a positive nature!

In terms of political education, there was agreement by all on the necessity to continue the excellent work done during the Right2Water/Right2Change campaign by Trademark and the unions in providing very easily understood presentations to local groups across the island, so that anyone who attends one of these will be able to understand and gain a perspective on the forces at play in the world and on this island, and how we might defeat them and their nefarious ideology.

Over the past two years I have got the sense that the tide is turning, that more and more people are ready to embrace the chance of themselves forging real political change from which will flow economic and social change. I have waited a lifetime, like many others, for that to happen. It could just be that moment in our history when the crack that lets the light in widens. Remember the Berlin Wall moment in which, in a matter of days, a seemingly impregnable structure was torn down? These moments come, but they have to be fuelled and then seized upon.

That is what this 48-hour session seems to me to have been about. Let’s find ways to help people to change their lives for the better, and let’s do it by coalescing with each other and in doing that, as Rory Hearne wrote yesterday, “by keeping that common heart beating we will find a way forward”.

Much of the western world is turning sharply to the right. We have no need to go there since we have been stuck in that cul-de-sac since the foundation of the corporatist state in 1922. Our opportunity is to turn left and to correct the ills created by malign governments representing only political class-capitalist interests.

So let’s keep that common heart beating strongly, and don’t be diverted by fools or knaves who pretend to be on our side while trying to tear us down.

¡Adelante! Forward! Ar Aghaidh Linn!

The Time is Ripe to Create the Republic

“You never know if the time is ripe until you try. If you succeed the time is ripe, if not, then it was not ripe.” James Connolly, 1915.

That observation is as true today as it was in 1915. But while Connolly was prepared, one year later, to put it to the test, there is no evidence that we are prepared to do so despite finding ourselves in the most propitious moment in the past 94 years to re-establish the progressive, enlightened, Irish Republic, for the benefit of all.

Instead, we blather about the Republic but effectively do nothing to put it in place, we stare misty-eyed at the past but are myopic when looking to the future, we squabble with each other about whose method is best or interpretation more pure, we wring our hands at the degradation of our people as if we are helpless, we stand and observe as the no-mandate parties take power once again, we give out about the same-old-politics and then give in.

We have to stop doing that. The republic is there for the making, but only if we have the courage of our convictions, only if we imagine the republic as it must be today – a 21st century republic, only if we believe in it, only if we are prepared to work for it, only if we develop a strategy to win it, only if we forge the alliances with other believers that are necessary to make it a reality, and only if we explain to the people how that republic would enhance their lives in very real ways.

The cards we have been dealt favour such a project. But have we the courage and the commitment to play that winning hand?

Thanks to the centenary of the 1916 Revolution, and despite the best efforts of the political class to play that down, the people are more engaged with the notion of a republic than at any time since the 50th anniversary in 1966. The Proclamation took centre stage. In every part of the state, national school students went home one day and engaged their parents and grandparents with questions and observations about the Proclamation. In other words, the republic was smuggled into homes by children, and families talked around the table about it, and what it could mean.

In stark contrast to the ideals of the Proclamation, and the sacrifices a previous generation were prepared to make to establish the republic, the people have been presented with all of the signs of an utterly failed state in which crisis follows crisis and scandal follows scandal, in which incompetence is rewarded and jobbery and corruption excused, in which obfuscation and the cover-up are the norm, in which private interests trump the public good, in which (Catholic) church and state are still inseparable, in which grotesque inequality is evident at every turn, and in which the norms of a true democracy are routinely thrashed.

But this is a republic, they tell us. Yes, in the same way as a dodgy car salesman turns a clapped-out Nissan Micra into a Mercedes by sticking a Mercedes badge on it. This is not a republic.

All over this country good people, decent people, caring people, work alone or in groups on issues of real public concern. They labour under the illusion that engagement with the regime can bring about meaningful change. They assemble in protest outside parliament, imagining that some notice will be taken – but are viewed from behind the windows of Leinster House as just noisy gnats. Some make it into Leinster House and emerge satisfied that some politician or other has leaned towards them to say “I’ll do what I can for you’ – with all of the sincerity of a snake-oil salesman. The system is not designed to resolve issues of pressing concern to citizens who are not part of the political class. We know this to be true.

In a properly constituted progressive republic things will be very different. The republic is owned by the people and not by any ideological sect. The republic is founded on immutable principles of Liberty, Equality and Solidarity. Think about each of those words in their wider meaning, the private as well as the public – the personal as well as the national, and it becomes obvious that the republic cannot exist if it doesn’t strive at all times, under the direction of the people through genuine democratic engagement, to vindicate those principles.

Women must be well aware that under the current regime – the latest manifestation of a continuous conservative regime stretching back to the foundation of the state – there is no possibility of achieving real equality with men or true personal autonomy in mind, spirit and body. In a republic, drawing on the promise of the Proclamation and based on those three republican foundational principles, women’s equality with men and their personal autonomy, their liberty, will be a given – otherwise the republic cannot exist.

The same is true of those sections of society that suffer economic disadvantage and impoverishment, including deprivation in housing, health, nutrition, education, employment and opportunity. Their status will remain the same under the current regime, driven as it is by corporatism – rampant capitalism – a false ideology that demands that a precious resource is thrown on the scrap-heap as if that makes any economic sense, to say nothing of the ethical/moral dimension of such oppression. The republic will work assiduously to correct that gross imbalance and injustice, otherwise the republic cannot exist.

The same applies across a whole range of social, economic, justice and human rights issues. The current regime working as always in the interest of a powerful minority will not resolve, for instance, the issue of Travellers’ rights, or of the rights of those in Direct Provision, or the rights of those suffering mental ill-health, or of those forced into emigration, or a host of other big and small issues, which in a republic will have to be resolved – otherwise the republic based on those three principles cannot exist.

The same applies in the area of foreign policy, international relations and our place in the world. While the majority of our people express support for neutrality and non-engagement in wars, the state is busy dismantling a too-vague expression of neutrality and moving towards NATO involvement while simultaneously facilitating US wars in the Middle-East. An ethical republic would present itself internationally as peace keepers and facilitators of conflict resolution. It would also present itself as committed to resolving international issues around the environment, sustainability, resources, justice and freedom from oppression.

If we want to correct the failures of this state then the progressive enlightened republic, with a constitution fit for a republic and supported by the people, is the only viable option. The Proclamation and its further development in the Democratic Programme passed by the Dáil in January 1919 provide us with an initial template to follow. A modern constitution worth examining is the Constitution of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela. The preparation of an initial draft constitution of the Irish Republic is well within the scope of civil society groups and individuals to achieve in the coming year.

Can we win democratic support for the creation of the progressive republic? I firmly believe we can, if that is what we want to – and intend to – achieve.

The recent general election showed that politics is in a state of flux, that the people have thrown off the habits of the past in sufficient numbers to fracture the hegemony enjoyed since 1922 by the two conservative-capitalist parties, Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael, supported when necessary by the Labour Party. Support for those two parties is now below 50%, while there is now a solid core of left/republican parties, groups and individuals in parliament.

The Right2Change initiative was an important element in provoking that shift among sections of the electorate, and will be in the run-up to the next election. Its one failing – and this is not a criticism – was in not being able, not least because of time-constraints but also because of disunity among its community pillar, to find and support a community R2C candidate in every constituency. That strategy of having a non-party citizen-candidate is important in the context of an antipathy among sections of society to Sinn Féin and other parties of the Left, exacerbated and exploited by a hostile media on behalf of the political class of which senior media operatives are an important part and are beneficiaries in maintaining the status quo.

We will have an election in the near future. It may be in six months, or eighteen months, or at a stretch two years. If we get to work now we can be in a position to fight for a seat in every constituency for a non-party candidate who is committed to the idea of creating that progressive enlightened republic. Ten extra seats for the progressive republic would tip the balance in its favour. To achieve that we will need a body of Citizens for the Republic as soon as possible in every constituency, explaining the basis of the republic and the benefits for the great mass of people of its reinstatement, encouraging people to talk around the table about the republic with family and friends and to engage with others to spread the good message about the republic and the great boon it would bring to our lives.

All elements of civil society – NGOs, organisations, voluntary groups and individuals – have a key part to play in spreading that message. The republic is the only place that we get to realise our ambitions, that we resolve issues, that we create a true democracy – the republic owned by the people. We are capable of realising James Connolly’s ambition for the republic, that it would act as a beacon of hope for oppressed people around the world.

First imagine the republic, understand it, believe in it, then go to work for it. Tap into the goodwill that exists for it thanks to this centenary year. Mine the myriad failures of the state to correct serious problems affecting so many in society across a range of issues and so often involving personal catastrophes. Forge the republic!

I began with Connolly’s quote. Let me end with a quote from a very different individual, W B Yeats – but in essence the same message!

“Do not wait to strike till the iron is hot; but make it hot by striking.”

 

Citizens’ Centenary Commemoration united all at the GPO

We measure ourselves by special birthdays, 13, 18, 21, 30 and so on. We attend annual commemorations and they blend into one another, that is until the special ones – the magic numbers – come around.

When I was seventeen I stood at the corner of the GPO and Henry Street. It was the day of the 50th anniversary of the 1916 revolution. Two stands flanked the portico of the GPO, each full of the surviving 1916 revolutionaries, by now old men and old women.

Just up above me I could see Ernie Nunan who had been a 17 year-old London Volunteer, and a member of the GPO Garrison. I was with his son Jim, my best mate at school. My Volunteer grandfather wasn’t in the stand. He had died in 1940 rescuing a young woman from the sea at the Shelly Banks, and I felt I was representing him.

1966 commemoration Henry St corner

I remember thinking of the significance of the 50th anniversary, and wondering if I would make it to the centenary, and wanting to. 100 is one of those magic numbers.

I made it. On April 24th 2016, Republic Day, the magic number rolled around.

If the actual anniversary of the revolution in 2010 had been marked by a proper commemoration organised by someone else I would have happily stood at the corner of the GPO and Henry Street again in 2016. But nothing was organised and that is how the Citizens’ Initiative for Republic Day was started – to cover that outrageous omission. Each year since, a group of citizens has marked that date with a proper commemoration under the Republic Day banner.

But the centenary commemoration had to be different, in scale and content. In spite of impediments thrown up by others we held firm, refusing to be squeezed out, not because of hubris or ego, but because we offered what others didn’t, a neutral space capable of being occupied by all as equal citizens, provided they were prepared to set their politics or differences aside for a short time so as to concentrate on the real purpose of a commemoration, that is to remember and honour those from another time who are worthy of being commemorated.

Nobody should feel inhibited about attending a 1916 commemoration because of their politics or religion or skin-colour, or because of factional differences with others. That would fly in the face of the principles on which a republic is founded – Liberty, Equality and Solidarity – and because the republic is the property of the people – all of the people. And so neutral space is necessary, particularly if we are also commemorating the Proclamation of the Irish Republic, given political and/or factional differences that exist.

I know that that worked. Looking out at the assembly I could see citizens I know of different political persuasions or belonging to different factions. All were entitled to be there, to play their part in the commemoration and to be at peace with the moment and the collective of which they were part. The extensive feedback on the day and especially since the commemoration have unanimously endorsed the sense that something special was experienced by all, that any differences had been put to one side, and that all present were unified, standing shoulder to shoulder as equals, paying tribute to the men and women of 1916.

In 50 years time, some of the children and teenagers who were present on Republic Day 2016 will again assemble at the GPO for the 150th anniversary of the 1916 revolution. The torch has been passed to them.

 

I owe a huge debt of gratitude to those who contributed on stage; Adrian Dunbar, Ruan O’Donnell, Marie Mulholland, Lorcán O’Coileáin, Rita Fagan, Fergus Russell, Proinsias O Rathaille, Danny Healy and Mary Stokes – and to the Colour Party of Paul Callery, James Langton, Pól De Pléimeann, Dáithí O’Cuinn, Brendan Hickey and Pauline Mc Caul. Shane Stokes provided a lot of support, including the live-streaming of the commemoration for the benefit of those who could not be with us, and photographing it on my behalf. Thank you to all. Comrades!

But it is the citizens who participate who really make a commemoration valid and true, and so thank you to all who attended. As I said in my closing remarks, I think we managed to create a mini Irish Republic at the GPO for at least 45 minutes on Republic Day, although I think that mood continued for the rest of the day. As Adrian Dunbar said later, perhaps we opened a gap into a space that people can occupy where differences aren’t a roadblock to progress. That is what being a citizen of a true republic should be like.

Let’s now work to create the full-scale Irish Republic without delay, for the benefit of all.

We can do that. First imagine, then believe, then act. We’ll use ideas and words and listening and persuasion instead of bullets.

That way we can arrive at the Irish Republic. What a beautiful destination that will be.

Video of live-stream of the Citizens’ Centenary Commemoration

Adrian Dunbar – Compere

Ruan O’Donnell

Marie Mulholland

Lorcan Collins

Fergus Russell ‘The Foggy Dew’

Rita Fagan reads the Proclamation

Proinsias O Rathaille

Colour Party Paul Callery

Colour Party 2

Colour Party 1

Danny Healy The Last Post & Reveille

Mary Stokes, singer Amhrán na bhFiann

Tom Stokes

Tom Stokes closing words

It’s A Wrap

 

 

Citizens’ Centenary Commemoration on Republic Day 2016

On the 100th anniversary of the issuing of the Proclamation of the Irish Republic and the commencement of the 1916 Revolution on April 24th 1916, there will be a Citizens’ Centenary Commemoration at the GPO in Dublin from 11.15 to 12 Noon – to the day and the hour of that seminal moment in modern Irish history.

Organised by the Citizens’ Initiative for Republic Day, and free of political party or political group influence, the commemoration is designed to facilitate citizens and those who have chosen to be among us to unite for the purpose of paying tribute to the men and women of 1916 who imagined a far better future for us in a true republic of equals, and who were prepared to offer their lives to achieve that.

A commemoration is about remembering people and/or events from another time. In this case it is about looking back to 1916 and to the revolutionary act that began the road to independence, and to those who had the courage and generosity to take a stand in support of the Irish Republic even though that meant confronting the most powerful empire in the world at that time.

A commemoration of 1916, such as this, cannot be about us, or the time we live in, or failures to live up to the vision contained in the Proclamation by any and all governments since 1922. Its focus, for the 45 minute duration of the commemoration, must be solely on 1916.

Given that a proper commemoration must have a period of reflection, a short programme hosted by Adrian Dunbar will include three speakers: historian and biographer of Patrick Pearse, Ruan O’Donnell, will speak on the origins of Irish republicanism among Belfast Protestants in the 1790s and the republican continuum up to 1916; women’s rights activist and biographer of Dr Kathleen Lynn, Marie Mulholland, will speak on the women of 1916; 1916 historian and biographer of James Connolly, Lorcan Collins, will speak on the revolutionaries of 1916, particularly the rank-and-file, and on the contribution of the people of the inner-city tenements to the revolution.

Singer Fergus Russell will provide a bridge between the reflective part of the commemoration and the formal part with his rendition of an iconic song about the revolution.

The formal elements necessary to a proper commemoration of 1916 include: the reading of the Proclamation of the Irish Republic by political, community and women’s rights activist Rita Fagan; the laying of a wreath on behalf of the people by Proinsias O Rathaille, grandson of The O’Rahilly; the raising of the flags of the Irish Republic, the Starry Plough, Cumann na mBan, na Fianna, and the Tricolour by Volunteer and Citizen Army reenactors led by Paul Callery; The Last Post and Reveille played by trumpeter Danny Healy; and the singing of the National Anthem, led by singer Mary Stokes, which will bring the commemoration to a close.

A great deal of care has been taken to ensure that the centenary commemoration will adhere to the three principles of commemoration – recognition, reflection and respect. It is expected that all present will want to  honour the men and women of 1916, putting all present day differences to one side for the short duration of the Citizens’ Centenary Commemoration at the GPO which should act as common ground as we pay tribute to, and focus on, that golden generation who gave so much for us at great cost to them.

The organisers of the commemoration are just facilitators. The act of commemorating is performed by all who are in attendance. It is they who, after this once-ever experience since there is only one centenary of 1916 on the day and to the hour, should be able to disperse knowing that they have been part of a memorable experience and that they have played their full part in collectively paying proper tribute to the men and women of 1916.

Then, let us be inspired to put that beautiful model of the true republic contained in the Proclamation back in place.

That would be the enduring tribute to the men and women of 1916.

 

 

State 1916 Commemoration: insulting the living and the dead

The hugely successful 19th century Irish theatrical impresario Dion Boucicault once said, “What the audience wants is spectacle, and by God I will give them that”.

That same thinking seems to have formed the basis of the state’s supposed commemoration of the 1916 Revolution.

“Let them have spectacle” is the new “Let them eat cake”. By God, spectacle is what they got, those who could see the giant screens, excluded as they were from the theatre that was O’Connell Street and the GPO. The barriers preventing them from being close to the action might well have borne signs stating “No riff-raff”, since that was what was intended.

O’Connell Street and the GPO were to be the exclusive preserve of the Irish political class, the self-styled ‘elite’ – politicians, both former and current; judges and lawyers; senior state functionaries; corporate kings and bankers; other wealthy individuals; and of course the propaganda wing of state, the media. In an attempt to attach some credibility to proceedings, relatives of 1916 revolutionaries were allowed to apply as supplicants for tickets from some committee or other, or not – a position some of us chose to adopt.

In my case it is because it stretches credibility beyond its limits to have dictating the nature of the state commemoration a prime minister (‘acting’ since the recent election) who has attempted since coming to office in 2011 to submerge the commemoration of the seminal event in modern Irish history, the 1916 Revolution which led to independence and self-government, in a sea of other often minor-by-comparison commemorations, a decade of them no less. Imagine, the state’s launch video for the 1916-2016 commemoration did not have a single image of a 1916 leader but featured a singer (Bono) and a queen (English)!

But the acting prime minister’s party, Fine Gael, has previous form. It is the 1930s iteration of the counter-revolutionary party Cumann na nGaedheal, whose central mission was to obliterate, via the Anglo-Irish Treaty of 1921 and a brutal civil war, the Irish Republic fought for in 1916 and sustained up to 1921. It morphed into Fine Gael in 1933 when the remnants of Cumann na nGaedheal joined forces with the fascist Blueshirts. Fine Gael has never moved from that counter-revolutionary corporatist-fascist ideology. During its kleptocratic five-year term since 2011 it forced the most swingeing austerity, often on the most economically vulnerable in society, while transferring huge amounts of wealth to the already wealthy.

In stark contrast, the Proclamation of the Irish Republic promised universal suffrage, religious and civil liberty, equal rights and opportunities to all citizens, to pursue prosperity and happiness for all, in a resolutely anti-sectarian, sovereign republic, owned by the people. Those ideas and ideals are anathema to Fine Gael values, and to those of its equally right-wing alternative, Fianna Fáil, as history shows.

And so to the commemoration (even if we can only see it on a screen).

In the first place, this ‘centenary commemoration’ was a month early. Instead of holding it on the actual anniversary, 24th April, the government chose to stick with tradition and hold it on Easter Sunday, thus tying it to a Christian religious feast. The revolution actually began on Easter Monday, not Sunday, 1916, but hey, let’s not be pedantic about that. Its association with Easter down through the years has been a handy way of associating the Catholic church with the revolution that that church opposed tooth and nail.

Being monarchic in its structures and practices, the Catholic church has always been antagonistic to Enlightenment secular republicanism and to the concept of the egalitarian and democratic republic.

That is why the counter-revolution played into the church’s hands, allowing for the creation of a state that combined Catholic theocracy with plutocracy and oligarchy, the so-called Free State. By creating a false official history, propagated in Catholic schools, the republican basis of the 1916 Revolution was extinguished in favour of one that presented it as having been a Catholic nationalist rising, not a progressive revolution.

That must have made it easy for the one clergyman called on to read the prayer during yesterday’s event. The Irish Defence Forces’ Head Chaplain is, of course, a Catholic priest. He delivered a heavily politicised prayer which very inappropriately at an event marking 1916 slyly referenced the Troubles. We can take that to mean the recent Troubles. Besides that, it was as if all present in O’Connell Street and beyond the barriers in Riff-Raff Street were Catholics, rather than people of all religions and none.

But worse than that, the absence of even an ecumenical prayer instead lumped all of the dead revolutionaries in together, as if Protestants, Jews, Pagans, Atheists, Agnostics, etc., had not formed part of the revolutionary forces along with Catholics, which of course they did. What of it that the inspiration for 1916 came directly from the United Irishmen of the 1790s, all initially of the Protestant faith, or that the 1914 gunrunning into Howth and Kilcoole was almost entirely a Protestant enterprise from start to finish? A Catholic prayer will be good enough for them, and they should count themselves lucky.

What does that say, in this centenary year, to the Protestants of Ireland, north of the border as well as south of it? We know that the Irish Republic of 1916 was proclaimed as a 32-county Republic belonging to all of the people. And we know that if the border is to be obliterated that we must negotiate with northern Protestants, not all of whom are unionists, as well as northern Catholics, not all of whom are republicans or Irish nationalists. But this state refuses to honour Protestant patriots of 1916 in an appropriate way – by acknowledging their existence or their immense contribution. That reveals the ingrained partitionist mindset that delights in a Catholic state on one side of the border and a Protestant state on the other. But this is the 21st century, time moves on, attitudes change, what seems fixed in stone shifts. That, though, doesn’t apply to Fine Gael, and only to a slight degree with Fianna Fáil.

The Proclamation was read. Yes, it was uncensored. Those passages which address issues that have real relevance to the plight of so many of our people today – sovereignty, equal rights and opportunities, happiness, prosperity, control of national resources – were read in full, without the slightest evidence of even a solitary embarrassed blush among the serried ranks of the political class. Perhaps they have inbuilt auditory filters, or perhaps sociopathy is part of their make-up.

Of course the acting prime minister couldn’t resist one more stab in the back for the revolutionaries of 1916. Rather than allow the customary wreath to be laid at the GPO in their honour he had to continue with one of Fine Gael’s much-contested methods of diminishing the men and women of 1916, something that smacks by now of extreme Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. In directing the president, Michael D Higgins, to lay the wreath on behalf of the people of Ireland, the acting prime minister added ‘for all of the dead of 1916’, thus including the British forces who were sent to suppress the revolution by all means including murder of civilians and the levelling of the heart of one of the great cities of Europe using artillery.

By that action, the acting prime minister destroyed the notion that this was a commemoration directed at the men and women of 1916, and rendered it into nothing more than a very expensive fraud, a sham, a charade. No other prime minister in the history of independent Ireland has plumbed those depths, has offered such a gratuitous insult to the men and women of 1916 or to the hundreds of thousands of citizens who had assembled in Dublin to honour those men and women. The acting prime minister should be driven from office for that one act.

As for the defence forces, they were great. Most of us admire the role they usually play in the world as peace-keepers, less so the drift in the direction of active involvement with NATO and with US invasions of people with whom we Irish have no argument but have much empathy for their suffering. The same applies to the units from various first-responders too. No criticism is intended of any of them.

No, this is about the failings of the political class, and the failure of the government led by Fine Gael to demonstrate any respect for the revolutionaries or the cause of independence and a proper, modern, enlightened republic that they put their lives on the line to achieve for our benefit and not theirs.

And this is about the insults the government and the political class including the media offered in the run-up to and on what purported to be a 1916 centenary commemoration, to both the living and the dead.

What the audience didn’t need was the sight of the political class making a spectacle of itself. But perhaps we did need to see that, in its ugly naked elitism.

Couldn’t happen in a true republic. So let’s create one. That is the best honour we could pay those men and women of 1916. And it is the best thing we could do for ourselves and the generations still to come.

 

Moore Street reprieved, but let’s revisit the Carlton site

The relatives of 1916 leaders and supporters won a significant battle on March 18th in the High Court to save Moore Street and the 1916 GPO Battlefield Site when Judge Max Barrett ruled that the National Monument covered far more of the Moore Street terrace and the adjoining lanes and buildings than the four buildings designated as such by the Minister for Arts, Culture and Heritage.

That was a great victory, but it needs to be consolidated. The path is open for the Minister to appeal that judgement to the Supreme Court. Given that a very rational and fine judgement on the Lissadell right-of-way case by High Court Judge Bryan McMahon was subsequently overturned by the Supreme Court, presided over by Chief Justice Susan Denham who had a previous professional relationship with Lissadell owner Constance Cassidy but failed to recuse herself, it would be a mistake to place too much faith in that court particularly when it comes to property rights versus the public good.

And so, the campaign to save Moore Street and the Battlefield Site will need to continue. But it also needs to be expanded to imagine a very different use for the entire Carlton site on which the developer wants to put yet another shopping mall, as if we didn’t already have a surplus of those, and as if that was the most appropriate use of such an important site.

The Carlton site has stood derelict since 1999, a 17-year blot on the capitol’s premier street which has no doubt led to the degradation of most of the northern end of both sides of that street. It includes the Art Deco fascade of the Carlton Cinema. Fifteen years ago the idea was mooted that the Abbey Theatre should be relocated to the Carlton Cinema but was rejected. That proposal needs to be revisited. What better way to revitalise that part of O’Connell Street than to have the Abbey with a newly built theatre and that existing Art Deco street frontage. There is space enough to accommodate a new Peacock Theatre and all of the facilities that the National Theatre should have.

But there is more space on the entire site to accommodate other imaginative uses, ones that would tie in with a properly preserved and rehabilitated 1916 Revolution Quarter on Moore Street and the GPO Battlefield site which would no doubt draw large numbers of both tourists and those who live here, and that would also fit with the relocated National Theatre.

Why not a national dance centre encompassing not only traditional dance but also contemporary forms and even classical ballet which has never been properly encouraged here? Why not a national music centre, again not limited solely to traditional forms but including explorations into its effect on music in places the Irish emigrated to, and into fusions within world music? Why not  a Gaelic language centre that might also explore the effect of that native language on the English we speak and write today, Hiberno-English, a unique form of English that writers have used to produce so much work of literary merit over the past century? Why not a poets’ corner, a space for poets to meet and commune with one another, and to perform or read for the public?

Once we stop thinking of that site as a commercial site but one which would be used for the public good – for education, inquiry, leisure and pleasure, and exploration of national heritage and culture – then the possibilities are many.

If we were to really open our imaginations, and to think of Ireland’s place in the world today and into the future, then other possible uses for some of that site’s space open up to us.

Given our history of involvement with Enlightenment republicanism since the eighteenth century, why not a global centre for the study and promotion of the democratic republic as the ideal model of governance? That would tie into the GPO and the Battlefield Site. But then we would have to construct such a republic for ourselves first. We could do that if we had the will. We certainly have the template and will this year commemorate those who passed it on to us. It is up to us.

One more idea, and it too stems from a failure on our part, in this case our supposed neutrality. But it also stems from recent history and the negotiations to find some way to end conflict on this island and to find an accommodation between two communities, unionist and nationalist, and two States, Irish and British, whatever the imperfections in that project that some may point to.

We have never properly defined our neutrality, and that has allowed recent governments to facilitate the US through their use of Shannon Airport in waging wars on peoples with whom we Irish have no argument. But we do have a reputation around the world, particularly among non-aligned nations – most of them former colonies as we are, a reputation built not only on our defence force’s record as peace-keepers in many conflict zones and on our usually principled record at the UN but also our perceived position as anti-imperialist and opposed to colonialism.

We need to properly define our neutrality in the place that matters – a new constitution fit for a republic. We need to enhance that by committing to the pursuit of peaceful resolution of conflict, also in the constitution. Having done that, we might then set up a centre for that purpose, and locate it on that important site in O’Connell Street. Apart from the good that we could do in building peace, and we certainly have people with experience in conflict resolution and facilitation available, we would establish our own position as refusing co-option into war but being in active in the pursuit of peace, our best guarantee of sustainable national independence in a conflict-ridden world in which those services are badly needed.

Others may have different ideas of the uses that the Carlton site could be used for, but the important consideration is the turning of a commercial site into a civic site on our main thoroughfare and putting that civic space to work for the public good.

Re-imagining the Carlton site in this way, and presenting the arguments for so doing, and campaigning in favour of that approach, would provide the campaign to save Moore Street and the GPO Battlefield Site with an important defensive mechanism – that it is not just the historic quarter that should be saved for the public good, but the entire site for the same reason. The entire project needs to be revisited not just by planning authorities but by government, and possibly by the EU.

That could buy much-needed time in the event that the High Court decision is overturned or materially altered in a way that would compromise Moore Street and the GPO Battlefield Site.

But given the importance of developing the Carlton site in the best way for the city and for the people, we should consider that approach anyway, and let commercial development take place elsewhere.