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The POW Department of Republican Sinn Féin is once again appealing for financial support and physical assistance from our supporters and members at each and every protest and picket.
The Republican prisoners in Maghaberry prison who give their allegiance to the All-Ireland Republic and who reject the Belfast Agreement are having to fight for political status, something that was fought for and achieved by hunger strike and death just 20 years ago.
No-one wants a repeat of those terrible days of the hunger strikes of 1980/81, so what are we doing about it now? Thousands of posters featuring Tommy Crossan have already been printed and distributed by the POW Department to highlight this campaign. A second print run has been ordered and is now available from the address below.
Cash is essential so that this campaign can continue and succeed. Please organise functions, raffles, collections etc and send the proceeds to the POW Department, 223 Parnell Street, Dublin 1. (Do not send cash in the post.)
POW DEPARTMENT
223 Parnell Street
Dublin 1
(Tel. 01-872 9747)
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Brian Cowen in his Sunday Business Post (October 15) article Connolly’s Vision Relevant in our Era omits a very relevant quotation from that great Irishman. It is from his last statement to the British Courtmartial which sentenced him to death:
“Believing that the British Government has no right in Ireland, never had any right in Ireland and never can have any right in Ireland, the presence in any one generation of Irishmen of even a respectable minority ready to die to affirm that truth, makes that Government for ever a usurpation and a crime against human progress.”
In 2000 AD the British Government still claims the right to rule in Ireland.
RUAIRÍ Ó BRÁDAIGH
President
Republican Sinn Féin
223 Parnell Street, Dublin 1
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The RTÉ programme Who wants to be a millionaire? of October 24 last asked one of its contestants a question regarding Wolfe Tone’s death, and stated that the correct answer was ‘suicide’; that is incorrect.
After his arrest, Tone was tried in Green Street Courthouse and sentenced to be hanged on November 12, 1798. In the early hours of that morning he was found in his cell with a fatal wound to his throat and died a week later. The doctor who attended Tone in his last days in jail, Benjamin Lentaigne, a member of the 15th Dragoon Guards of the British army, wrote in his report of “an unusual neck wound” on his patient which, he stated, was consistent with a pistol bullet having passed through his throat.
For obvious reasons, the British administration refused repeated requests by Tone’s family to have their own medical doctor admitted to see their son. Wolfe Tone was given a charade of a trial and a lingering, painful death at the hands of the British.
Historians such as Peter Beresford Ellis and Desmond Greaves [see Sunday Tribune, January 5, 1997, page 18] do not believe that Wolfe Tone committed suicide, the British military authorities were in grave danger of having to release Wolfe Tone under a writ of habeas corpus issued by their own Lord Chief Justice Lord Kilwarden -- it was only then that Tone’s death was made public.
The fact that Wolfe Tone was held in solitary confinement speaks volumes for British intentions, as does the fact that, after his death, the British would not allow a post-mortem to be carried out on his body.
The British claim of Tone’s ‘suicide’ is viewed by republicans as propaganda -- shame on RTÉ for perpetrating it.
JOHN HORAN
Dublin
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When I read Provisional Michael Ferguson alleging that the Continuity IRA was responsible for beating up a man for anti-social behaviour it made me sick when there is not one week goes by without the Stormont Brigade, Ferguson’s party -- the Provos -- leaving some person crippled and more recently dead under a cover-name.
Ferguson would do a lot better if he condemned the Provisionals for signing away political status which the 10 H-Block Martyrs gave their lives for.
Tiocfadh ár Lá.
M MURPHY
Ballyphehane
Cork city
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Just thought I’d send you this clipping from the Irish News of October 19, 2000. So, you do seem to be on the right track in fact. I believe that ÉIRE NUA (not new to me at all) is the only way. I read up on it in the 1970s until Adams and his shower binned it for an alliance with the Brits and loyalists which I opposed. I left Sinn Féin -- that was the mid 1970s. I wish you all well. Stay firm and stay strong. I support Republican Sinn Féin.
BELFAST READER
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Watching Fianna Fáil on RTÉ News reporting from Bodenstown and listening to Bertie Ahern would make Wolfe Tone walk out of his grave as he heard Ahern condemn Republicans and praise Fianna Fáil which is ridden with tribunals and corruption.
Wolfe Tone wanted the wealth of Ireland to be shared amongst all the people of Ireland, not amongst Fianna Fáil. Wolfe Tone, like Republican Sinn Féin, wanted Ireland free from British occupation while Fianna Fáil wants us back under British rule.
Ahern did not mention the murder of Joseph O’Connor in Belfast or condemn the people who carried it out. ‘The Republican Party’ written on Fianna Fáil’s posters is getting smaller, the quicker it disappears the better.
We in Republican Sinn Féin take our mandate from the First Dáil not Leinster House or the collaborators in Stormont.
NORA LYNCH
Limerick
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A lot of people are interested in the 1940s period. The government had very bad advisors. The executions, some on the Sabbath day, served no purpose. A sad but true story of 1940. An innocent man shot as an informer. Michael Devereux, Wexford, an officer of the Wexford Battalion, IRA in 1940. Seán Russell, Chief of Staff IRA, went to America to counteract British propaganda there. Stephen Hayes, who was prominent in the GAA took over Seán Russell’s duty temporarily in Russell’s absence.
Hayes had a drink problem. The Fianna Fáil party and the police knew all this and pressurised Stephen Hayes. So it was the Fianna Fáil party and the police who ran the IRA for a short period. The police discovered an arms dump in Wexford. Michael Devereux happened to be in Dublin, went into the hotel and to his surprise saw Stephen Hayes drinking with a Fianna Fáil minister and a police superintendent.
They were also shocked and for them there was only one way out -- to have Devereux shot as an informer.
Hayes had the power and he ordered that Michael Devereux be shot. Hayes knew George Plant, a trusted IRA Veteran, who was of the opinion that informers were of the lowest type of wild animal’s life. So he appointed George Plant for the job of doing away with Devereux.
Sixteen days after the Imperial War [WWII] was declared, de Valera ordered that a number of IRA men to be interned. Martin White, Lisdoonvarna and myself were put on the list to represent Clare. Raymond Burke, Mayo, had a habeas corpus taken against the Free State on behalf of his brother Séamus Burke, whom he claimed was illegally interned.
Seán MacBride, Con Lehane and Hogan were the legal team and Gavan Duffy, the only fair-minded judge the 26-County State ever had, ordered that we all be released and as it was a Friday evening, all Leinster House TDs were gone home and de Valera could not muster enough of them to rush an emergency bill through to prevent our release.
De Valera set about amending that part of the Cosgrave Coercion Act and I had to go on the run While on the run I had to go to Baldoyle with four others to a course on explosives. Mick Galvin, Tralee, was our senior officer. He had an order from Chief of Staff Hayes that I would go to Clonmel. I did not know Tipperary and I was not happy. Joe O’Connor, Kerry was with me in Clare and he said that he would not mind going. We tossed a coin and I won. I had avoided something without knowing it.
Later while in the Curragh Internment Camp we burned a section of the camp, for which I got two years and was sent to Arbour Hill Military Prison. There I met George Plant who told me why Hayes and the de Valera government wanted me thrown in with him for good measure. George Plant and Joe O’Connor were charged before a military court with shooting Devereux. The Chief Superintendent made a slip, he showed O’Connor a copy of Stephen Hayes’ confession, and told O’Connor that there would be no flowers by request at his funeral. Seán MacBride argued that the government had already sentenced him to death. O’Connor was acquitted — I might not have been so lucky.
De Valera later passed an emergency order that statements taken under duress be accepted as evidence by the military courts and George Plant was sentenced to death, put in the back of a military lorry with his coffin and executed at Portlaoise prison.
All this will give you some idea of the party which talks about the ‘men of violence’, about ‘peace and justice for all’.
We know the pocket is the sorest part of the body. When the stock exchange was blown up the money classes wanted something done about it. With Fianna Fáil and Adams they brought about a ceasefire while there are thousands of foreign soldiers on Irish soil. And Adams must know the history of Fianna Fáil, the great Pádraig Pearse said we had renewed the struggle down the centuries, and that was the way it would be while there is one foreign soldier on Irish soil.
“There can be no peace without freedom.”
MARTIN CALLIGAN
Kilmurry McMahon
Co Clare
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I am writing to you as a former internee and to voice the grave concern of the people of west Belfast to the recent disclosures of a highly-placed British agent, code-named “Steakknife”, within the Provisionals and their apparent attempts at a cover-up.
But what makes this case more disgusting is that in covering him up they are also denying the Notarantonio family the right to uncover who had their father and maybe other nationalists and civilians murdered by loyalist death squads to keep him in place.
Now the dogs in the street seem to know or have a fairly good idea who Steakknife is. Even John Mullins, the Guardian journalist, seems to know his identity and has said his unmasking would devastate the Provisionals now.
The Provo leadership are quick to call for inquiries into shoot-to-kill incidents and are quite right to. Other people who have studied the Provisionals and their so-called peace strategy think the real reason for the cover-up is Steakknife’s very high profile and his directing the Provos to the Stormont deal while all the time being an FRU agent and exposing him now would undermine their whole leadership.
Never mind his victims but unfortunately there seems to have been a number of Steakknife’s at work within the Provos during the 1980s and 1990s.
Partition has been copper-fastened.
BELFAST REPUBLICAN
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