Landmark book on great Republican

Accepting the Challenge – the Memoirs of Michael Flannery. Edited by Dermot O’Reilly. Cló Saoirse, 223 Parnell Street, Dublin 1. Hardback £10, Paperback, £7.50.

MICHAEL Flannery was one of the great Republican figures in the 20th century. Part but only a part of this was due to the long and active life he led from his birth in Co Tipperary in 1902 to his death over nine decades later in New York in 1994.

Like John Devoy and Diarmaid Ó Donnabháin Rosa before him, indeed like the New York-born Éamon de Valera, their long lives inevitably mean that they will have a place in history. But living so long also runs the risk of compromise, of failure in older years, of tiring and giving up, of taking pragmatic and practical decisions in a changed context and in circumstances old age may not fully understand that can seem to be and indeed in some cases are a contradiction of all these people stood for in their youth.

Michael Flannery had no problems in that regard. He was from the beginning one of that tough band of “unreconstructured Fenians” who felt, who passionately believed that England or any other foreign power had no right in Ireland, that they should be asked and indeed forced to withdraw by every means at our disposal and that the right of the Irish people to self-determination could only be destroyed by the destruction of the Irish people themselves.

Flannery was born at a time when the dormant flames of Fenian rebellion were being kindled again at the end of the Victorian era but also at a time when the British Empire was the greatest the world had ever known so that the sun never set on the Union Jack in one country without rising in another area under the Crown.

This revival coupled with the cultural revival of Conradh na Gaeilge, the GAA and indeed the dairy co-operative movement in the parishes of places like Knocknagowna in Munster but also in the mixed religious communities of south Ulster, came to a head at Easter 1916. After that terrible beauty was born, anything was possible even if it was clear that Ireland would have to call on her young men, like Flannery, and Seán Tracey and Dan Breen and Séamus Robinson to force the British to obey the clear will of the Irish people which they expressed in no uncertain terms at the 1918 general election.

Personally I found the early part of the book, penned more than three decades after the events one of the more enjoyable parts of this work, if only because the events recounted are so far back to form part of official history and because we need to read the recollections of one who was there at the time in order to get a clearer, more authentic perspective.

We should be eternally grateful to Editor Dermot O’Reilly, to consulting Editor Seán Ó Brádaigh and of course to Cló Saoirse-Irish Freedom Press for producing the handsome professional volume of memoirs based as they are on recollections which were coaxed out of Flannery at the age of 90. It is a magnificent work, a landmark book that we all need to buy and read and reflect upon and indeed promote in every way but most especially by buying copies for all our friends and relatives, for a younger generation on birthdays and other occasions when a good book is always a good idea.

I am not going to discuss the details of the work here. It is after all Flannery’s own story, as he saw it, from the conflicts of his youth in Ireland to despair at the Civil War and the heartbreak of emigration to America where he had to start a new life and go about earning a living that he would probably be prevented from earning back home in the more vindictive years of the new Free State regime.

But Michael kept faith and like so many other veterans of the Civil War to this day in America he saw no reason why the struggle should not go on in the land of the Free, in whatever capacity or opportunity presented itself.

It is a story with which all of who grew up in the second half of the 20th century are familiar. We a re familiar with all the splits, compromises, “betrayals” if you wish to be nasty about it, down the decades and the deliberate attempts of many powerful forces in a partitioned Ireland to deny the exiles the full truth of how old Ireland stood, and to seek to persuade the Irish American community to limit their involvement in Ireland to tourist dollars, more trade, and ideologically airbrushed education programmes and summer schools that were about as free from spin as a Gerry Gregg documentary on Des O’Malley!

Flannery would have none of this. In his view the issue of Ireland’s right to nationhood was “a moral issue”. Yes and no did not mean the same thing and while there could and would be different shades of green and indeed orange in the pluralist Ireland he wanted that did not mean that you played down the full reality of your own cultural attributes or indeed the full fervour of your faith.

Hence, Michael Flannery practiced his Catholic faith with fervour all the days of his life. He maintained a special relationship with the GAA in New York and indeed with Croke Park which he always described as “headquarters” and never apologised for any part of his Irish identity. That did not mean that he had no time for Protestants or people of other faiths. The ways of America may have helped him here. Certainly he had no problem with the concept of a Federal Ireland when Dáithí Ó Conaill and others proposed it as a key Republican political alternative to the failed partition solution in 1970 – as long as the British were out of the equation.

Being the gentle and intelligent soul that he was he did have room for compromise – but not on fundamentals! And he always had room for new ideas and initiatives into old age – the real test of an educated and cultured gentleman.

It is singularly significant that Joe O’Neill who gave the oration at Flannery’s funeral and which is included in this book, should have been denied the right to visit American for the launch of the work – seven years down the road from the [Provisional] IRA cease-fire and the “peace process”.

Gerry Adams got his pass into America and the right to collect money for the Provo political machine as a result of this process which was presented to the world as Bill Clinton’s great blow for liberty, or at least for freedom of speech and the right of every American citizen to hear all sides of an argument about what is going on back home in the old country.

It is clear that some political views are more “equal” than others in the great United States as well as in other countries are suppressed. Nor do I hear many liberal voices raised in Ireland to protest either. Perhaps the fear that Flannery’s friends instil into the hearts of the State Department is as good an indication of the integrity and truth surrounding the life and views of the man who wrote this book as anything else. Please buy and read and discuss.
-- Nollaig Ó Gadhra (author of Civil War in Connacht, published by Mercier Press, £9.99.)
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Clear and credible alternative

IN A letter to a local paper in Wexford on April 24 PJ Kelly, spokesperson for the Parle/Crean/Hogan Cumann of Republican Sinn Féin, Wexford town replied to a letter written to the paper by a member of the political wing of the Provisionals.

He said that the Provisional member was correct in stating that a vast difference existed between Republican Sinn Féin and the Provisionals and went on to say:

“Republican Sinn Féin, founded in 1905, continue to defend and uphold the Constitution and Aims of Sinn Féin, the same Constitution and Aims the Provisionals abandoned and walked away from in 1986.

“Those Aims stated clearly: ‘(a) The complete overthrow of British rule in Ireland, and the establishment of a Federal Democratic Socialist Republic based on the Proclamation of 1916,’ and ‘(b) To bring the Proclamation of the Republic, Easter 1916, into effective operation and to maintain and consolidate the Government of the Republic, representative of the people of all Ireland, based on that Proclamation’.”

PJ Kelly said he agreed with the Provo representative when she said that the root cause of the conflict in Ireland was the British presence, but pointed out that the Provisionals, by their support for the Stormont Agreement, “far from seeking to end British rule in Ireland, are in fact actively defending and administering it. In fact, in the past number of weeks we witnessed the spectacle of leading Provisionals seeking the support of a British court so as to carry out their duties as Ministers of the British Crown”.

“In the 1998 two-State referendums the people of the 26 Counties did not even vote on the Stormont Agreement but simply agreed to amend the 1937 Constitution. Indeed, as was pointed out by Mo Mowlam, the implementation of the Stormont Agreement depended solely on the Six-County Referendum. This was not a national act of self-determination but simply a reinforcing of the Unionist Veto and a denial of All-Ireland democracy,” the Republican Sinn Féin spokesperson continued.

“Republican Sinn Féin remain the only political organisation in Ireland with a clear and credible alternative to the Stormont Agreement. We propose the election by the people of all Ireland of a Constituent Assembly on the South African model, the purpose of which would be the drafting of a new All-Ireland Constitution. To such a body, Republican Sinn Féin would, if elected, bring its proposals, contained within ÉIRE NUA, for a federal Ireland with maximum decentralisation of power from provincial to regional right down to local and community level.

“Such a Constitution would be put to the people in an all-Ireland referendum. If adopted the British government must give a public declaration of intent to withdraw from Ireland within 12 months. Such a process would reaffirm the sovereignty of the Irish people over that of Westminster.

“Finally,” PJ Kelly said, “regarding any proposed ‘Mayoral pact’, it seems the Provisionals are content to allow themselves to be used as voting-fodder for Fianna Fáil.”
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Beannachtaí

DRAPIER II – Wishing a speedy recovery to Drapier II. From CABHAIR, Irish Republican Prisoners Dependants Fund.

DRAPIER II – Wishing to speedy recovery to Drapier II. From SAOIRSE .

DRAPIER II – Wishing to speedy recovery to Drapier II. From Republican Sinn Féin.

HARRISON – Birthday greetings to my friend and comrade George Harrison, New York, on the occasion of his 86th birthday on May 2, 2001. Have a ‘snort’ George. Am with you in spirit. From Cathy.

HARRISON – Birthday greetings to our Patron, George Harrison, New York, on the occasion of his 86th birthday on May 2, 2001. From the Ard Chomhairle, Republican Sinn Féin.

WALSH – Republican Sinn Féin, Limerick, wish Margaret Walsh a speedy recovery.

WALSH – Get well soon wishes to Margaret Walsh. From Joe and Nora Lynch, Limerick.
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