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MARCH 1952 saw the publication of the political aspects of the “Overall Plan” for the Republican Movement.It was announced by the Ard-Chomhairle of Sinn Féin as the Plan of Campaign – a term borrowed from the Land War of the 1880s.
The first section was carried on the front page of the March issue of An-t-Éireannach Aontaithe/The United Irishman. It was introduced as follows:
“The Plan renews the Republican policy which Sinn Féin has never ceased to preach and practise. It sets out in broad outline the manner in which Sinn Fein will go before the people; its attitude towards the Puppet Parliaments (Leinster House and Stormont), and the electoral machinery in Ireland today.
“The new Plan of Campaign has come at an opportune time when the whole nation is divided into different camps ruled by various corrupt politicians.
“The Plan may be summarised as a present day adaptation and continuation
of the principles of Irish Republicanism.”
There followed in Extract Number 1 what came to be known in Republican
circles as the Four Cardinal Points of Sinn Fein:
“1. To convene the elected representatives of all Ireland as the National Assembly of the Independent Irish Republic.
“2. To proceed to legislate for all Ireland.
“3. To use every means in our power to overcome opposition to the Republic.
“4. To repudiate all treaties, pacts and laws that in any way curtail the Nation’s Independence”.
(As a matter of interest these Cardinal Points were put forward as a resolution to the united Sinn Féin Ard-Fheis of 1984. It was never taken for discussion at that Ard-Fheis.
The following year, 1985, it was submitted again but was voted down on the direction of the leadership as “a long rambling resolution”. A resolution to “accept Leinster House” also failed – by just 20 votes).
The Foreword to the Plan read as follows:
“The objectives of Sinn Féin are: to break the connection with England; to end the entire British Imperial system in Ireland; to end poverty and insecurity; to abolish the existing partition institutions of government in Ireland and to replace them by a National Government having complete and effective jurisdiction over the entire territory of the Nation.
“The administration by such Government of the affairs of the Nation to be completely free of all foreign influence and unhampered or circumscribed by agreements conditioning its establishment.
“Within the framework of the Republican Movement with Sinn Féin
cooperating with kindred organisations, proposes to restore as the most
effective means of achieving its objectives, the Irish people can again
become invincible – as they were from 1918 to 1921.
“Generally speaking, the aims and objectives of the Republican Movement are but imperfectly understood by a part of the generation grown to manhood within the past quarter of a century, whilst the remainder of it is completely unaware of the existence of such a movement.
“Part of the task and a first duty of the leadership of the movement
is to rectify this deficiency of understanding and knowledge by endeavouring
to attract the Youth of Ireland and availing of the means at its disposal
to enlighten them on the fundamentals forming the base on which the Republican
cause rests”.
The Plan then sets out an Analysis of the Political Situation in Ireland.
“Success in achieving the aims and objectives of the Republican Movement depends on the co-operation and support of a majority of the Irish people. To obtain such assistance, it is necessary to indicate clearly to the people, the line or lines of approach towards fulfilment of the task undertaken by the movement.
“In determining the line of approach and the means to be employed, cognisance must be taken to the relative situations as regards the connection with Britain that exist in the Six and 26 Counties.
“Indubitably, both areas are ruled by partition governments whose functions in maintaining a sundered and divided Nation are identical.
“But whereas Britain maintains direct control over a major part of the affairs of the Six Counties and exercises a compelling influence over the remainder, a somewhat different situation exists in the 26 Counties.
“The difference in the existing situations referred to makes the problem with which Republicans are confronted more complicated and in many respects more difficult to solve.
“It presents them with the immediate problem of deciding whether a single line of policy can be formulated suitable to a general application all over Ireland, or whether a different line will be necessary in respect of the two areas of existing government, with both lines complimentary to one another and dovetailing into a comprehensive policy for the whole of Ireland”.
(to be continued).
On Saturday February 16, there was a demonstration at the Adelphi Cinema, Dublin during the showing of a 15-minute newsreel film of the late King of England. Included in the same show was a 20-minute tribute to the life and work of that King.
Dublin Republicans were following the example of Cork in December, there was deathly silence in the cinema, apart from the voice of the newsreel commentator who was paying glowing tributes to the late King when a young man in the audience jumped up and spoke in a loud and passionate voice.
“Republican Ireland”, he said, “does not pay tribute to her tyrants. We do not mourn the death of the man under whose reign Barnes and McCormick and other Republican soldiers were executed”.
There was loud applause, the lights were switched on and the police and cinema attendants were quickly on the scene. Several young men moved into position as a bodyguard around the speaker who continued his speech.
He referred to the fact that less than 100 yards from that location the All-Ireland Republic had been proclaimed in arms at the GPO and defended against English tyranny. The films being shown were an insult to Irish Republicanism.
The police and attendants moved in and pushed the speaker towards the exit. The youth sang “A Nation Once Again” and many of the audience joined in.
To shouts of “Long Live the Republic” and “Sinn Féin Abú”
the young men were eventually pushed out and a number of people left with
them.
Elsewhere in the Republican newspaper, the veteran Séamus Steele
of Belfast wrote of the death of the King of England and said that as
Republicans we could not give him the charity of our silence – just yet.
“As a free and united country we could and would join in mourning his passing, and we could not so easily forget that he was King of a country whose invading forces were STILL in armed occupation of part of our territory”.
He had presided over the hangings of Barnes and McCormick. With him
rested the final decision, but innocent though they were, he had allowed
them to die.
In this case the crime of usurpation of the Irish nation by England was one in which the late King shared some responsibility. That crime had been passed on to his heirs without any apology or repudiation but rather with the idea of perpetuating it.
Steel concluded by stating that it would have been “more in keeping with the tradition of unfree Republican Ireland had the so-called national press and Leinster House politicians given the charity of their silence to the news report of the death of George, King of England”.
George VI, in point of fact was the last British Monarch to claim the title “King of Ireland” (Henry VIII was the first). His coronation as such in 1937 occasioned many protests, baton-charges and rioting in Dublin and other centres in Ireland.
Elizabeth II was crowned “Queen of Northern Ireland” in 1953, a title she still holds.
An indication of public support for the Republican ideal in Cork city fifty years ago is contained in a report of a concert held in the Capitol Cinema by Cumann Tomás Mac Curtáin of Sinn Féin on February 10.
A “near-capacity audience enjoyed a very successful evening’s entertainment”. Frank Ryan, the Waterford tenor was the principle artiste whose rendering of national songs was thoroughly appreciated.
Great applause greeted May Courtney’s singing of “Barnes and McCormick”, “The Dying Words of Brugha” and “The Lonely Road to Upton”. Champion step-dancer Mick Fitzgibbon (known to many of the present generation) and Mick Byrne and his band were warmly applauded.
Other contributors were the Hasson Troupe of Irish Dancers, Gerry Cronin and Aingeal Ní Cheanntaí (recitations), Cecil Sheehan (jokes and humorous songs) and Kate O’Connor, Paddy O’Halloran and Bill Rice (singing).
The Cork Volunteer Pipe Band opened the concert with a selection of
Irish marches and brought it to a close with Amhrán na bhFiann.
An unusual feature in the March 1952 edition was another article by
Frank Gogarty, later Chairperson of the Civil Rights Association in the
Six Counties. He wrote under his non-de-plume “P Mac Giolla Chroim”.
This time his contribution was headed “Art” and he wrote of the exhibition in Dublin the previous month by the young French painter Marianon, whose work he praised as “good painting, sincere and human”.
He outshone many recognised Irish artists. George Campbell and Daniel O’Neill were two competent painters who promised to bring a welcome breath of fresh air to Irish art of this scenic type (“pretty thatched cottages cum mountain moorland compositions”).
So far no painter had attempted to use our old traditions as (WB) Yeats used them so successfully for poetry and drama. Poor reproductions of the Book of Kells were available to our students.
Art Ó Murnahan, whose “Leabhar na h-Aiséirí” deserved a more prominent place in the museum, was one of the few who had learned to appreciate and use the Book of Kells to any worth.
Both he and Richard King (stained glass) were distinctly Irish in their art. Of those whose paintings bear the quality of “Irishness” Gerald Dillon was perhaps the most remarkable and individual.
His style, elusive and simple, reminds one of Marc Chagall. The same primitive clarity and beauty delights us. The sickly sentiment attached to our nation has resulted in the popular stereotyped landscapes.
We need a more nationally-minded artist in place of the commercial unimaginative craftsman.
We need a generous public to appreciate and encourage the artist who, mindful of his nationhood, expresses the nations struggle through the years and does his part in shaping the destiny of the nation, “Mac Giolla Chroim” concluded.
One wonders why he did not refer to Jack B Yeats’ work “Bachelor’s Walk” (1915), “Communicating with Prisoners” (Sligo Jail 1924), “The Funeral of Harry Boland” (1922), and “Going to Wolfe Tone’s Grave”.
Perhaps it was because he [Gogarty] was concerned with the early fifties rather than the teens and twenties of the 20th century?
Another article deals with how the British applied the description “Terrorists” to Egyptians and Malayans then fighting for national liberation and why Irish daily and evening papers referred to them as such.
“The Black and Tans are now engaged in Egypt (and in Malaya) in the self-same role that they played here in Ireland. The homes of patriots are razed to the ground, burned and looted.
“Their wives, sisters, sweethearts are subject to the most degrading questioning and to the ribald insults and rapine of the British Tommy. Execution without trail and shot trying to escape are today the lot of the Egyptian Army of Liberation.
“In passing it might be remembered that one of the types of tank used by the British is called the Cromwell tank. How appropriate!
“We here in Ireland should follow the lead given by the Egyptians….God Bless the ‘terrorists’ of all nations which are still smarting under the heel of British domination and who endeavour to free their country from thraldom”.
And so say all Irish Republicans….
(More next month. Ref: An t-Éireannach Aontaithe/The United
Irishman, March 1952.)
Web layout by SAOIRSE -- Irish Freedom March 11, 2002 Send links, events notifications, articles, comments etc, to the editor at: saoirse@iol.ie. |