Unveiling of Cull-Tymon Memorial in Arigna

A very large turn-out of the local community as well as people from every Connacht county and Longford and Westmeath attended the unveiling of an impressive memorial on the banks of the Arigna River, Co Roscommon on Sunday, September 19.

The memorial is sited beside the dug-out where Comdt Séamus Cull and Volunteer Patrick Tymon were killed by Free State forces on February 27, 1923.

Also honoured was Captain Michael Cull killed on active service at Ballyconnell on the Fermanagh Border by the forces of the 26-County State on January 6, 1923. The Co Roscommon IRA Commemoration Committee erected the memorial and the ceremony was under their auspices.

The parade formed up beside the Cull homestead at Tullynaha and, led by a colour-party and the Raheen Pipe Band,marched to the site. Addie Clarke, Hillstreet was Chief Marshal.

Tommy Cull, Arigna, nephew of the Cull brothers, presided at the ceremony. Republican veteran Jim Mannion, formerly of Castlerea and now residing at Manorhamilton, performed the unveiling with great dignity.

Father Tom Ryan, CC, Arigna, read a passage from the Book of Ecclesiasticus and blessed the memorial. Wreaths were then laid by the following: Mrs Maggie McManus (niece of the Cull brothers); Seán Rynn and John Tymon (nephews of Patrick Tymon); Seán McGoldrick, Riverstown, Co Sligo (National Graves Association); Republican veterans John L McCormack, Leitrim and Meath; Paddy Earley, Leitrim and Dublin; Johnny Gilraine, Leitrim and Dublin; Michael Kennedy, Mohill; Pádraic Cryan, Cortober, chairman of the Co Roscommon IRA Commemoration Committee; Michael Hannily, Ballinagare (Roscommon Comhairle Ceantair, Republican Sinn Féin); Mícheál McDonagh on behalf of Republican prisoners and Paddy McNama, Arigna (Cull-Tymon Cumann, Republican Sinn Féin).

A piper from the Raheen Band played the lament Thomas Ashe and Seosamh O'Doherty (grand-nephew of the Culls) led the attendance in a decade of the Rosary in Irish.

Local historian Frankie Watson, Cootehall, then gave a graphic and evocative account of Séamus and Michael Cull's and Patrick Tymon's lives and death as well as a deeply-researched description of resistance to English rule and landlordism in the Arigna area.

The chairman then introduced Tommy McKearney of Tyrone as the son of a Roscommon mother and the grandson of Tom Murray, Carnalasson, Fourmilehouse who served with the South Roscommon Brigade, IRA 1919-23.

Over the past 25 years Tommy McKearney has lost three brothers, an elderly uncle and two elderly in-laws due to the British Army and British-backed loyalist actions. He had spent 16 years in the H-Blocks of Long Kesh – five years of which was on the blanket strike and 53 days on hunger-strike.

Tommy McKearney said that the Irish people's will for liberation, democracy and the Rights of Man should be expressed freely and openly. They should have free and open access to the media.

The people in deciding their future should not be constrained by threat, bribery or intimidation and there should be no qualification of the people's will.

He said that the Treaty of Surrender in 1921 which had set up the Six-County and 26-County States had been imposed on the Irish people under the threat of "immediate and terrible war" by the British government. The Cull brothers and Patrick Tymon gave their lives resisting that threat.

Ruairí Ó Brádaigh, President of Republican Sinn Féin, said he saluted the sacrifice of the three Volunteers being honoured. He also wished to honour a third Cull brother, Owen who was saved from the English hangman by the Truce of July 1921.

Owen Cull was charged with the deaths of three members of the British forces -- RIC men -- killed in a reprisal ambush at Keadue for the execution of Paddy Moran of Crossna, an innocent man, in March 1921.

Owen later became a Sinn Féin member of Roscommon County Council and was again a council candidate for Sinn Féin in 1960. He died in 1966. The chairman thanked all who subscribed and all who worked on the memorial, especially Mícheál McDonagh, Drumshanbo. He also thanked the sculptor, Brian Murray, Athleague, the design-artist, Monica Murray, Four Roads, Athleague; the Raheen Pipe Band; the proprietors of Flynn's and McRann's premises, Arigna and all who helped in any way.

The proceedings ended with the playing of Amhrán na bhFiann by the Band.
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Counter-revolution then and now

Speaking on Sunday, September 19 at the unveiling of the memorial to Séamus Cull and Patrick Tymon, killed in a dug-out in Arigna, Co Roscommon and to Michael Cull, also killed by Free State forces in 1923 at the Fermanagh Border, Ruairí Ó Brádaigh, President of Republican Sinn Féin, said that a counter-revolution similar to that which followed the Treaty of Surrender in 1921 and swept away the lives of many hundreds of Republican soldiers was taking place in Ireland today.

The institutions of Partition at Stormont and Leinster House were being strengthened through a more widely-based support. The British colonial police here, the RUC, was to be renamed and its symbols changed but its functions of defending British rule in Ireland remained unchanged.

Slowly but surely former Republican leaders were being absorbed into the British system. How long would it be until they called for recruits to the new RUC, promising an end to British rule, just as John Redmond urged young nationalists to join the British army in the hope of Home Rule?

Redmond failed, betrayed by the British on the Partition issue, and the present Provisional leaders would also fail and be discredited. Every compromise they made on Ireland's national rights was met by unionist intransigence.

All parties to the Stormont Agreement had underwritten the Unionist Veto with the inevitable result. Eventually the British government would have to remove their prop if progress were to be made.

An Ireland where majorities and minorities could exercise power in proportion to their numbers was the alternative, not the permanent hegemony of one section with the backing of the British government.

A new four-province Federal Ireland with maximum devolution of power to local level was the best formulation of such an alternative and would have to be worthy of consideration when all other options failed.

Surely we could learn from the dearly-bought lessons of 1922-23?
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'We in the Republican Movement are not dissidents'

Speaking at a Republican Sinn Féin rally outside the GPO in Dublin's O'Connell Street on September 25, the eve of the All-Ireland football finals, Seán Mac Oscair, Fermanagh, said that a contrived majority of the Republican Movement at the 1986 Ard-Fheis dissented from the Republican Constitution and the fundamental Republican position of non-recognition and abstentionism from Partition assemblies.

He continued: "We in the Republican Movement are not dissidents. Today we send a message to Republican dissidents be they still remaining with the Provisionals or with other dissident Republican groupings. Having recognised the futility to the Republican cause of their course in embracing British-imposed parliaments in Ireland, we call upon them to advocate to the youth of Ireland the Republic which was proclaimed here on Easter 1916.

"Let me state that the British military intelligence are working overtime with the assistance of agent provocateurs in Ireland and an all-too-willing media to create division and ferment ill-will among the Republican constituency in an effort to destroy once and for all the continuity that has been maintained and the faith that has been borne by this Movement since the Republic was declared in 1916 and mandated in 1918.

"Side-shows are fine -- we had those in the 1950s, good and genuine people, diverted because of mistrust, petty jealousies, egotism or personal loyalties. At the end of the day there is one Republican Movement and I call on Republican people to support this Movement.

"Every time the hard-pressed British go to the table with our gombeen politicians they pull equality out of the bag and give it an airing. We got equality in 1829 with Catholic Emancipation; we got equality in 1969 with Terence O'Neill's reforms; we got equality again in 1973 with the Sunningdale Agreement; we got more equality in 1985 in the Anglo-Irish Agreement and we got even more equality in the Stormont Agreement of 1998.

"People can get equality in a democracy. The Six-County State is not a democracy, it is still an artificially-created statelet that is dependent upon a level of discrimination and demographic manipulation in order to survive.

"If the British have no selfish or strategic interest in the Six Counties, as they claim, what are they still doing with such coercive instruments in the Six Counties such as Section 42 of the State laws which deprives those who are openly opposed to the Six-County statelet the right to work.

"The equality agenda is for those who are prepared to work hard at conforming to the status quo. When the short-term objectives of British Imperialism are in place, when Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness have put their party through the constitutional hoops they will get equality. They will get their DHSS spectacles just like Gerry Fitt . . . but like him they'll be on their own, they won't have Republican Ireland with them.

"Regarding the Patten Report, less there be any confusion or doubt, it doesn't matter what colour, creed or shape, two-legged or four-legged species that is put in a British uniform to administer the Queen of England's writ in Ireland, Irish Republicans shall hold them in the same disdain as our grandparents did the RIC and the Black-and-Tans and they shall be treated likewise.

"I would like to take this opportunity to extend solidarity to those Republican soldiers imprisoned in the cause of Irish freedom and would applaud the courageous stand taken by Josephine Hayden who has not shirked or abandoned her principles, despite atrociously bad conditions and a continuing health condition. No doubt had she acquiesced in regard to her principles she would have been released long ago. It is galling to see the way the Irish media and former comrades in the Six Occupied Counties are prepared to criminalise this Irish woman and Republican POW."

In his address Des Dalton, Kildare said that Republican Sinn Féin as the only political organisation which remains committed to the All-Ireland Republic, proclaimed here 83 years ago, made no apology for rejection of the Stormont Agreement.

"We believe it cannot deliver a just and lasting peace. The Stormont Agreement would simply re-structure and update British rule in Ireland. We don't wish to update British rule, we seek to end it. We want to break the connection with England not strengthen it. We demand a New Ireland not a New Stormont.

"Twelve months ago Bertie Ahern said that it was his intention to break Republican Sinn Féin and all opposition to the Stormont Agreement. Well, Mr Ahern, we are still here, we will not be intimidated, brow-beaten or bought. We are here for the long haul, and will continue to oppose British rule in Ireland in all its guises."

Líta Ní Chathmhaoil, Cork, said that a New Stormont, with promised improvements in civil rights, is not what Irish Republicans have fought for during the last thirty years of struggle.

"They did not sacrifice their lives on active service and on hunger strikes, endure imprisonment and deprivation so that the symbol of their oppression could be reinstated. Neither did they die so that the British colonial police, the RUC, would be renamed and its symbols changed, though its functions of defending British rule in Ireland remained unchanged. Those nationalists who took their seats in the new Stormont and were the only groups to attempt to work it are guilty of treachery to the Irish Republic.

"Today as in 1921 we see former Republican leaders being absorbed into the British system. How long will it be until they call for recruits to the new RUC, promising an end to British rule, just as John Redmond urged young nationalists to join the British army in the hope of Home Rule? Redmond failed, betrayed by the British on the Partition issue, and the present Provisional leaders will also fail and be discredited .

"Every compromise they make on Ireland's national rights will be met by unionist intransigence and indifference from the British rulers who are attempting to destroy the strongest threat that the British in Ireland have faced since 1921.

"All parties to the Stormont Agreement have underwritten the Unionist Veto with the inevitable result. The British government will have to remove their prop if progress is ever to be made. The only alternative is an Ireland where majorities and minorities could exercise power in proportion to their numbers, not the permanent hegemony of one section with the backing of the British government.

"Figures released recently by the British government show that nationalist men in the Six Counties are still nearly three times more likely to be unemployed than their unionist counterparts. This news coincides with an increase in unemployment figures in the Six Counties. Meanwhile, as loyalist terror forces nationalists from their homes throughout the Six Counties the unionist bias of the Housing Executive remains in force. "

"Intimidation of nationalist families has been intensified in the last few years. On occasion, homeless nationalists in north Belfast have been sent as far as Cookstown and Dungannon for emergency accommodation. The Stormont Agreement has brought no changes for beleaguered nationalists in the Six Counties.

"In the 26-Counties the Celtic Tiger rages on but does not affect the lives of the poor and underprivileged. The old, the sick and the homeless fare badly and the Dublin administration tells the working people of Ireland not to expect a fair share of the cake. They themselves think nothing of demanding an extra £12,000 per annum increase in their already over-paid salaries.

"Tribunals into every facet of public life continue on a daily basis as a result of the clientelist system which was inherited from the British. Corruption in public life breeds cynicism in the young who indulge in materialist pursuits rather than pride in their country and its future.

"Republican Sinn Féin proposes a new four-province Federal Ireland with maximum devolution of power to local level as the best alternative for Ireland, both north and south. It would bring power to the people and involve them in every aspect of the running of their own lives and the destiny of their country.

"Republican Sinn Féin remains the only organisation which is unequivocal in its opposition to British rule in Ireland and we call on the young people of Ireland to join with us in our struggle to bring about ÉIRE NUA -- a new Ireland where Catholic, Protestant and Dissenter can come together and live in peace."
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Patten wants GAA to recruit for 'new' RUC

Ard-Chomhairle member of Republican Sinn Féin, Joe O'Neill, Bundoran told the eve-of-the-All-Ireland rally on September 24 last that Republican members of the GAA should call on all nationally-minded people in the organisation to resist the attempt in the Patten Report to open membership to the British Occupation Forces in the Six Counties.

"In fact Patten goes further by urging the GAA to act as a recruiting sergeant for the renamed RUC (paragraph 15.2)," Joe O'Neill said.

"Rule 21 was adopted because the British forces – including, at the time, the majority-Catholic RIC – would spy on nationalist members through the GAA. This is still the case in the Six Counties where the British forces daily intimidate and harass the nationalist population. The British army – who shot dead Aidan McAnespie in February 1988 as he walked past the British base in Aughnacloy to play in a Gaelic football match – is still patrolling the streets of the Six Counties.

"The RUC's brutal treatment of peaceful nationalist protestors on Belfast's lower Ormeau Road on August 14 last illustrates the true sectarian nature of this British police force. Cosmetic changes cannot hide the fact that the renamed RUC is there to defend the undemocratic Six-County statelet.

"The Patten Report's call to remove Rule 21 contradicts Article 1 of the GAA Constitution which states that the basic aim of the organisation is 'the strengthening of the National Identity in a 32-County Ireland' and further contradicts Article 3: 'It should foster an awareness and love of the national ideals in the people of Ireland'.

"This divisive question will no longer arise when the conflict is truly over and Britain withdraws her forces and administration from Ireland. Then indeed will Rule 21 have outlived its usefulness and be removed with the least possible controversy and the greatest jubilation," he concluded.
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French State wages war on nationalities

The French authorities have arrested and charged the editors of two Breton independentist newspapers in an attempt to silence the Breton nationalist cause and those who post a threat to the 'French Hexagon'.

Denez Riou, editor of Combat Breton, the monthly paper of the left-wing independence movement, Emgann and Charlie Grall, director of Breizh Info, a weekly Breton paper were arrested at their homes in Lorient and Carhaix on September 30 by French special police units.

Denez Riou has represented Emgann at the annual Ard-Fheis of Republican Sinn Féin in recent years. Both men and a third Breton militant, Richard le Faucheux of Loriert, were held and charged with "providing logistic support and shelter" to Basques who are accused of the theft of eight tonnes of explosives from a private depot in Pleven, Brittany on September 28.

Three Basques were arrested in Pau in south-western France on the same day as the Bretons and the French police allegedly found 2.5 tonnes of explosives and a quantity of fuses and detonators in the house.

The following day, October 1, another Breton member of Emgann, Alain Solé, was arrested in Fougères, charged and sent to jail in Paris with his three comrades. Three more Basques were held by French police in Baiona and Miorritze.

On October 4, a further two Bretons who worked on the Breton newspapers, Bertrand Grimault and Christelle X were arrested and jailed in Paris. On October 7 there were unconfirmed reports that Christelle X was released.

Emgann called a demonstration outside the French state office in Fougères for October 9 and has asked all political organisations and trade unions to attend and show solidarity with the newspapers Combat Breton and Breizh Info.

They have asked oversees supporters to protest by press releases to the media and to send faxes and e-mails to French embassies and consulates throughout the world.

According to the Breton movement the activists arrested were all well-known for their involvement in local trade unions and political, social and cultural groups. The French authorities were using the explosives raid as an excuse to clamp down on those voices calling for an independent Brittany.

The French police have been briefing the media that the stolen explosives may have been shared by ETA and the Breton separatists and that part of the dynamite still missing may be already in the hands of the Breton Revolutionary Army (ARB).

French officials have been implicated in the activities of the Spanish-created death squad GAL which killed more than 28 people, mostly Basque activists, in France and Spain in the 1980s.

In another dirty war against Corsican separatists French military police have been recently revealed to have been responsible for an arson attack on a restaurant near Ajaccio in the Mediterranean island in April 1998.

The head of the French military police on the island, Colonel Henri Mazeres, admitted he directed his officers to burn down the Chez Francis restaurant, frequented by Corsican separatists.

Seven military policemen and gendarmes are in custody awaiting trial and Colonel Mazeres has said that the island's former French direct ruler, Bernard Bonnet, ordered him to carry out the attack.
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East Timor: UN must act

The proposed UN force for East Timor must oversee the implementation of the overwhelming popular vote for independence and not just "restore law and order" in cooperation with the invading Indonesian forces, Republican Sinn Féin President, Ruairí Ó Brádaigh, said on September 15.

UN publicity material before the referendum in late August promised the people their decision would be implemented. Posters declared: 'Unamet will stay on to make your choice a reality'.

A UN spokesperson was quoted after the independence vote as saying that it was not going to let an "armed minority" (the Pro-Indonesians) threaten the will of the majority.

Irish people will react ironically to these words, reflecting the situation of Ireland since the British-imposed partition of the country.

"The United Nations Organisation failed East Timor in 1975 when the Indonesians first invaded it with fearful slaughter. It has never recognised the Indonesian annexation of the country, so why did the UN and western nations wait upon an invitation from the aggressor to intervene," Ruairí Ó Brádaigh said.

He added: "This attitude would be the equivalent of standing by in 1991 until Iraq invited it to act in the case of Kuwait. Meanwhile the massacres continue and one third of the East Timorese population of less than a million has been slaughtered. Whether in East Timor, West Timor or elsewhere, this must be stopped.

"World capitalism and economic imperialism are the hard realities here. Indonesia is a huge market of more than two hundred million people and as a country is very rich in natural resources.

"As such multi-national corporations have a huge vested interest there and the small East Timorese population counts for little as far as they are concerned. Besides there is a lucrative arms trade engaged in by Britain, France and other powers.

"Republican Sinn Féin through its Foreign Affairs Bureau was early in the field on this issue. In the late 1970s it was in solidarity with FRETELIN (now called FALINTIL), the East Timorese resistance movement and worked in cooperation with it at international conferences when the case of East Timor had not got world-wide recognition. We demand the full implementation of East Timorese independence by the UN," he said.
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Eleven Puerto Rican freedom fighters freed

Eleven Puerto Rican political prisoners were released from US federal prisons in California, Connecticut and Indiana on September 10 last.

The eleven, who between them have served an average of nineteen-and-a-half years in prison, were released on parole following an offer of 'executive clemency' by US President Bill Clinton. A further two prisoners refused the clemency offer, an additional two were not offered clemency, while the sixteenth Puerto Rican political prisoner held by the US, Juan Segarra Palmer, must serve another five years.

The sixteen were jailed for campaigning for independence for the island under the catch-all charge of "seditious conspiracy".

The day following the release, thousands of Puerto Ricans carrying flags, banners and pictures of all the political prisoners turned up at the international airport in San Juan, capital of Puerto Rico to greet the returned prisoners. Of the eleven released, nine have chosen to return to live in Puerto Rico.

The terms of the clemency offer to release the prisoners from their sentences - which even the White House has admitted were excessive, in some cases 55 to 90 years for acts which did not result in any injuries or deaths - were harsh.

Among the conditions were that they acknowledged that they broke the law, individually request clemency, report to a probation officer, renounce the use of force to free Puerto Rico and that they not be in the company of any convicted felon. The terms effectively mean that they are prevented from working for Puerto Rican independence together, even by purely peaceful means.

As limited as it was, the clemency offers come after a long campaign that saw petitions and letters signed by 75,000 people in Puerto Rico and in the United States. The campaign on the prisoners behalf included such activists as Coretta Scott King, Rev Jesse Jackson, Bishop Desmond Tutu, Rigoberta Menchu and Dr Aaron Tolen, president of the World Council of Churches.

George Harrison, New York-based Patron of Republican Sinn Féin, has been active for the liberation of Puerto Rican political prisoners for many years and is in full support of the struggle for Puerto Rican independence and for those in its vanguard, Los Macheteros and the FALN.

Support for the unconditional release of the prisoners has come from all major Puerto Rican political parties, the Puerto Rican Federation of Labour (AFL-CIO), the Puerto Rican General Council of Labour, the Puerto Rican Manufacturers' Association, the Puerto Rican Bar Association, and the previous and present archbishops of San Juan.

The grudging clemency offer by the US is being viewed in the context of the upcoming US Senate elections, in which Hillary Rodham Clinton, wife of the President, is seeking to win a seat in New York, which has a large Puerto Rican population.

Hillary Clinton has used the issue to also seek to appeal to conservative voters by criticising her husband's clemency offer.

The US colony of Puerto Rico is used as a military base. Thirteen per cent of arable land is presently used for military purposes. The recent transfer of the US Army's Southern command from Panama to Puerto Rico will only intensify this military penetration. Last April a US civilian, David Sane, was killed by a 500lb bomb dropped on the island of Vieques as part of live ammunition US military exercises for the war against Yugoslavia.
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