GETHSEMANE
Anthony McIntyre
Six years ago on a Saturday, our old friend Brendan Hughes died in a Belfast hospital after a short illness. For over a week this redoubtable leader of the H-Block blanket protest had lain beyond the reach of any human help other than the palliative. Sometimes he rallied. The previous Saturday in the company of another former prisoner I made my way to the hospital in fear of the worst. Upon arriving we were relieved to learn the moment had passed and for a while Brendan seemed to pick up. But it was a temporary respite.
Framed photos of him adorn our mantle piece, as they have since the day he died. They were placed there that very evening five years ago and have remained there since. The by-now well-known photo of Brendan and Dolours Price was put there the same night. Dolours was in our home at the time awaiting the inevitable. Now she too no longer graces our company.
Two great fighters from the republican battle fields died in the full knowledge that the armed struggle they participated in had been comprehensively defeated, their energy, effort and endurance hijacked and traded in by others in ignominious exchange for political careers. It caused them no small measure of regret as did many of their own actions. Yet they took responsibility for what they did and never sought to shift culpability away from themselves and onto the shoulders of others.
Brendan and Dolours were quintessential Provos: and the Provos were the antithesis of anything that smelt even remotely of compromise and capitulation. They arose in part as a reaction against kowtowing and forelock tipping to the British state and its unionist allies. Yet the greatest about turn in the history of republicanism was made by the Provos who now stand four square with the DUP against the republican tradition. That sort of four square orientation would never have resonated in the minds of either Brendan and Dolours. For them four square would have conjured up imagery of the IRA attack on the Four Square Laundry operation in October 1972 when the Belfast Brigade inflicted a considerable intelligence coup on the British Army.
Both felt badly let down by the Gethsemane stance of Gerry Adams, their one time military commander, who has since taken umbrage at CNN for having described him as a military commander. No chance of Brendan and Dolours having found it shameful to learn of themselves being referred to as former IRA commanders. They would have seen it as an accolade to be worn like a badge.
St Peter only did the denial trick three times during the course of one evening, whereas Gerry has done it on countless occasions over a thirty year period, denying Brendan and Dolours and every other IRA volunteer he commanded as his comrades-in-arms. But they are not alone in being on the receiving end of that denial. Bobby Sands, who they share the good company of, is another whose comrade-in-arms status is routinely denied as well. Bobby is just someone Gerry met while the latter was imprisoned for civil rights activities. An IRA comrade – never. Merely somebody he met on his journey of peace.
The cock would be hoarse by now if it were to crow at every denial from the Great Denier. But Peter is certainly crowing and cackling with delight each time the DUP boss sees the stalwarts of IRA armed struggle disowned and effectively disdained by the man who made more categories of legitimate targets than Barney Hughes made baps.
George Santayana is known for famous sayings, like: "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it" and "Only the dead have seen the end of war." Santayana is broadly included among the pragmatists with Harvard University colleague William James. He said that he stood in philosophy "exactly where he stood in daily life. In the same vein, many observers of recent Irish history are struck, by the uncanny political and religious resemblance of Gerry Adams and (see link) Éamon de Valera
Bearing in mind the current brutal treatment of Irish political prisoners, in the wake of the Peace Process and hunger strikes, Gerry Adams' party's apparent detachment or covert involvement with due process, the critical question for the Irish Republican Movement today, must now surely be the following. Would a Sinn Fein Government led by Gerry Adams in the Free State, rely on special courts, military tribunals and draconian legislation like De Valera (Sinn Fein/ Fianna Fail) previously did, in attempts once again to crush Irish Republicans. and more worryingly a coalition with Fiann Fail deliver even greater repression than the current Zionist Blueshirt axis.
In 1936, De Valera’s Fianna Fáil government introduced special courts to imprison republicans and three years later, in August 1939, during the IRA’s English Campaign, it also established special military tribunals which were empowered to return only one the death sentence, from which there was no appeal. During the early 1940s, hundreds of republicans were interned by De Valera and sentenced to long periods of imprisonment by special courts. Six IRA Volunteers, Paddy McGrath, Thomas Harte, Richie Goss, George Plant, Maurice O’Neill and Charlie Kerins – were tried by military tribunals, found guilty and executed.
The same De Valera Government also allowed another three Republicans, Jack McNeela, Tony D'Arcy and Sean McCaughey die on Hunger-Strike. So the question now is; Would Gerry Adams bearing in mind his current record of collusion, interning innocent people like Martin Corey be another Eamon De Valera disaster? Are Provisional Sinn fein secretly enabling this odious activity with their President's private religious blessing?
An example of this duplicity, is that on 16 September 1953 De Valera met with Churchill for the first and only time, at 10 Downing Street. He surprised the UK Prime Minister by claiming that if he had been in office in 1948 Ireland would not have left the Commonwealt. While Churchill reprimanded De Valera as he would no doubt reprimand Adams today when he said, “The power of the Executive to cast a man into prison without formulating any charge known to the law and particularly to deny him the judgement of his peers is in the highest degree odious and is the foundation of all totalitarian government whether Nazi or Communist.”
At the general election of 1957, De Valera, then in his seventy-fifth year, won an absolute majority of nine seats, the greatest number he had ever secured. This was the beginning of another sixteen-year period in office for Fianna Fáil. A new economic policy emerged with the First Programme for Economic Expansion. In July 1957, again in response to the Border Campaign (IRA), Part II of the Offences Against the State Act was re-activated and he ordered the internment once again without trial of Irish republican suspects, an action which De Valers claimed, did much to end the IRA's campaign.
But it didn't did it ? Neither did internment in the early '70s with Adams himself interned along with Martin Corey. The central question currently with regard to the political prisoner of conscience Martin Corey Corey is whether Gerry Adams is going down the De Valera route or does he or his party, actually have anything progressive to offer the extremely dysfunctional island of Ireland? The omen are not good without any actual current activity other than a few prayers by Adams on the release of Marian Price. Like the banketer farce, words are simply not good enough at this stage, action is now required. Provisional Sinn Fein have been given the same mandate that the SDLP were given 40 years ago when they withdrew from Stormont and a nominally republican Irish party, has no business there while administering internment. There is no grey area with regard to this, they cannot run with the hare and hunt with the British hounds on this issue any longer. Hiding in prayer, while ignoring Martin Corey's reality is not good enough at this stage.
