NEWS FROM SAOIRSE (freedom). The Voice of the Irish Republican Movement. Republican Sinn Féin http://rsf.ie 223 Parnell Street, Dublin 1 229 Falls Road, Belfast

 
WE carry below the concluding part of Des Dalton’s address at the Bobby Sands Memorial Lectures in Dublin on the theme The ‘Civil War’ and the Counter-Revolution. Part one was published in the October edition of SAOIRSE.

By May of 1923 the Free State had executed 77 Republican prisoners, Brian O'Higgins in his 'Wolfe Tone Annual' of 1962 lists 113 “unauthorised  murders” or executions carried out by the Free State. In Kerry , at Ballyseedy, Countess Bridge and Baghas , unarmed prisoners were tied to mines and blown up.

The prisons and internment camps were swelled with 12,000 Republican prisoners. Following the death in action on the Knockmealdown Mountains of IRA Chief of Staff Liam Lynch on April 10 1923, the remaining IRA Executive under its new Chief of Staff Frank Aiken decided further military resistance under the prevailing conditions was impossible. And so on May 24 the order to Dump Arms was issued.

In contrast to the decision of the Provisionals to Decommission Arms over the last number of months, the decision of the Republican leadership in 1923 was guided purely by military considerations and in no way constituted a political surrender.

The Counter-Revolution like all such wars was marked by its sheer brutality, leading the Commander of British Forces in Ireland Macready to comment that Republican Resistance had been crushed “by means far more drastic than any which the British Government dared to impose during the worst period of the rebellion.”

Yet despite all of this in the 26 County elections of August 1923 , in the face of censorship and  coercion and despite the fact that the majority of its candidates and election workers were imprisoned or on the run, Sinn Féin had 44 candidates returned, polling a total of 286000 votes. As Michael Hopkinson observed : "The election results demonstrated the continuity of Republican support which had been obscured by the war's unpopularity.”

The Treaty of Surrender and the war of Counter revolution which it spawned has served to retard the normal social, economic and political development of Ireland North and South.

In the Six North Eastern Counties, and due to the promises made in the Treaty about the role of a Boundary Commission all of which  served to relegate regime and the question of partition in the Treaty debates to a side issue. It put in place a state, whose foundations were naked sectarianism, discrimination and bigotry, all of which have only been further entrenched by the Stormont Agreement , as evidenced in the streets of Belfast, Portadown and Lurgan. Meanwhile the 26 County State in its 80 years of existence has been characterised by its endemic corruption, failing in its primary duty to provide for the mass of its citizens, for many years using , just as the British had done before, the emigrant boat and plane as its safety valve.
 

In decades which have followed it has continued to use the gallows, the firing squad, the internment camp, political police and censorship to suppress the Irish people's legitimate demand for National - Self Determination. Again as Mellows pointed out, the 'State', for those who have supported it came to surpass Nation as the ultimate expression of Irish identity, and its defence and preservation more important than Ireland's inalienable right to unfettered Nationhood.

If Irish history teaches us anything it is that a British withdrawal and the dismantling of both 'Treaty' states are essential steps In the building of a New Ireland based on the All-Ireland democracy as embodied in the All-Ireland Republic.

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SAOIRSE -- Irish Freedom, 223 Parnell Street, Dublin 1, Ireland
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Web layout by SAOIRSE -- Irish Freedom November 9, 2002  Send links, events notifications, articles, comments etc, to the editor at: saoirse@iol.ie.