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Daithi Forde Memorial Lecture, 2005.

Liam Mellows Weekend - Daithi Forde Memorial Lecture

It is especially appropriate that we commemorate Liam Mellows in Wexford - not just because, though born in England, he spent his childhood here between Castletown and Inch, but because it is Wexford which was the very crucible of the Irish Revolution and the United Irishmen.

Liam Mellows' youth encapsulates his later life and death - a life of building revolution, and his death at the hands of an enemy crazed with revenge and the desire to suppress the opposition and their ideas.

The people of Wexford County had also lived both:

They lived the struggle of liberation of the people of no property, and

They lived an outcome which was counter-revolution.

From the very start Liam Mellows saw around him both the vision of the United Ireland - born of revolution which brought Protestant, Catholic and Dissenter together in the struggle for an Ireland won through and for what Tone called 'that respectable class of people - the men of no property'. And he also saw the retribution applied by the Yeoman against the people of the land in their suppression of the revolution of 1798.

Liam Mellows lived, as a child close to the hills where the United Irishmen fought their battles, not far from the gap through which the United Irishmen made their way to the capture of Arklow. The area was one of the first and best organised in Wexford, and it was from Inch that Anthony Perry came - who, amongst many, was subjected to the unimaginable cruelty of the gunpowder cap. Those from Inch knew the depth to which repression sank, repression that feeds on its own monstrous creation in the arrogance of arbitrary power.

These were the stories of the local people, who still knew of and remembered the retribution meted out by the forces of the counter revolution, the Yeomen and the Red Coats, on the men and women of no property in Wexford, who had participated in the battles of 1798 as the flying columns of the people, who took with them their families, their possessions and cattle, to fight together, as Tone said, to "subvert the tyranny of our execrable government, to break the connection with England…".

It is these people who we all commemorated over the last years - taking our own struggle back to the very ideals which gave birth to Republicanism - the struggle for Liberty, Equality and Fraternity.

It is a struggle, as Connolly wrote, 100 year later, out of which we have of necessity learned toleration. "We have learned that our struggle is, and has been the struggle of all the lowly and dispossessed, where we have grown broad-minded with the broad mindedness of the slave in revolt against slavery."

And that is what the counter revolution is about - the re-enslavement of the risen people - Its means - is terror. And it is terror that began in the year of Liam Mellows' death, where he, and 3 other prisoners, Rory O'Connor, Dick Barrett, and Joe McKelvey arbitrarily chosen, supposedly representatives of four of the provinces of Ireland, were taken from their cells in Mountjoy, at 3 am, to be shot at 7.20, in retribution for the death of a treatyite deputy, Sean Hales, presumed by the free staters to have been killed by republican bullets.

A revenge killing, without pretence of legality, inflicted on Irishmen by other Irishmen, to secure, through the terror of injustice, their hands upon the state - that would force back into its box, the people who had defied subjection to British rule and the power of wealth: The people of no property, who had been locked out in 1913, the bravest of whom had risen in 1916, declared a Republic which would 'cherish all the children of the nation equally'. And on whose behalf the Democratic Programme of the first Dáil was proclaimed, in 1919.

All of this in all but a decade - A short passage of years indeed in the 800 years of Irish struggle for sovereignty - sovereignty of the people.

It was from Mountjoy that Liam Mellows wrote two letters, known as his prison writings - two months before the free state government murdered him., Mountjoy prison where Irish prison guards were ordered from the vantage point of their watch towers, to shoot at prisoners who defied the order not to talk out of the window,

As the pro treatyites began to seize the reins of power, Liam Mellows, wrote out from his prison cell, calling on the republican leadership to establish and clearly demarcate, through the establishment of a Provisional government, the first principles of the Democratic Programme, which were a beacon light to draw together - the people of no property, and their allies into embracing the vision of the Republic - to strive to engage labour in the republican struggle of revolution.

He writes, "In our efforts now to win back public support to the Republic, we are forced to recognise - whether we like it or not - that the commercial interest, so-called money and the gombeenmen - are on the side of the treaty, because the treaty means imperialism and England. We are back to Tone - and it is just as well - relying on that great body 'the men of no property'. The stake in the country people were never with the Republic. They are not with it now and they will always be against it - until it wins. We should recognise that definitely now and base our appeals upon the understanding and needs of those who have always borne Ireland's fight."

And that is our fight today, to build political strength, to strengthen that grand and respectable community for change, before the terror of the counter-revolution should hit us, as the rich business and gombeenmen try to push back in their box the people who have been inspired to demand change, change in the institutions of the state, to allow for democracy and participation in a human rights based new and united Ireland

The principles proclaimed in the Democratic Programme, which state the very essence and inspiration of the Republican struggle today are stated in the words:

"We declare The Right of the people of Ireland to the ownership of Ireland, and to the unfettered control of Irish destinies, and to be indefeasible; and

"We declare that the Nation's Sovereignty extends to all men and women of the nation, and to all its material possessions, the Nation's soil and all its resources, all the wealth and all and all the wealth producing processes within the nation; and

"We reaffirm that all right to private property must be subordinated to the public right and welfare."

Are these rights enshrined in today's Ireland? The answer is No, most definitely not.

Immediately we think of the concerted attack in the dismemberment of our health service, and the right of all of the people to have the best health care possible, not to be denied care on the grounds of inability to pay. The government is week by week introducing an outrageous two tier system of health, whereby our local hospitals are closed, or services curtailed, charges increased, whilst the Government of this statelet makes provision for huge private hospital developments, build often on public hospital sites, which only those who can afford high rates of health insurance can use.

Meanwhile the public hospitals carry the burden of subsidising private health beds in existing hospitals, and endless wastage of resources in funding repeated consultations, contracted out to exorbitantly expensive consultancy firms, which are paid on contract to do the very work that the people are paying civil servants to do.

This is a deliberate and concerted attack on the working people of this country, to extract more wealth from them, and to deny them their right to have free medical treatment. The state should not be let to penalise those who are sick, because they are sick.

All of that brings into sharp focus our dear friend and comrade Daithi Forde from Wexford who we are remembering here today. Because it is but 2 months ago that Daithi who was loved and valued hugely by the people of this county, and all of us - the republican family across Ireland, died as many believe, because of incompetence and because of the inadequacy of health provisions in this state, and directly because of the long queues in hospitals for specialist consultations and immediate diagnostics.

Daithi went into Wexford Hospital, was lift on a trolley, was left without proper medical care, because the greedy state could not afford to provide proper facilities, was left without proper diagnosis for months, waiting on lists for more thorough examination, till a day he was given a proper scan and inoperable cancer was discovered.

Would Daithi have lived if he had the money for private medical care? Would his warm smiling face been greeting us today? Would he be chairing these proceedings? Who can say? The thought is too hard to bear, as it is for all those whose relatives have suffered because they cannot afford private medicine, and who have therefore received second rate care, in a world that labels you second rate, simply because your income is not so large as those of others. Are you less of a human being?

This has to change. This is not the republic which can "serve as a beacon light to the oppressed of every land."

Ireland is now classed the second richest country in per capita wealth, amongst the most developed countries listed, and it is now second only to the United States in the level of inequality. Yet despite this wealth, the two governments in the two partitioned statelets do not attempt to provide free health care for all. It has 50,000 thousand families alone in the south, waiting for accommodation, hundreds who sleep rough on the street of our towns, Belfast and Dublin, in the cold and the wet.

We can recall Rossport and the outrageous, corrupt giveaway of our national resources to the Multinationals including Shell, who murdered 9 people in Nigeria, only a decade ago, to hammer the local communities into subservience to their theft. Yet the conditions under which Shell take Nigerian oil, were more favourable to that state, than those corrupt ex- Minister Burke agreed for Corrib.

But that is not the only concerted attack on the Irish people exercised by this government. We have only to look at the struggle this week against government policy which nauseatingly has allowed Irish Ferries to ignore labour laws, destroy the basic conditions of the working people of this country, which have been hard fought for and won down the years, to know the answer as to whether this statelet, run by the gombeenmen was working to promote the ideals of the Democratic Programme of 1919, or to flatten the very environment in which to advance them. We saw the answer yesterday in the huge march of support for the Irish Ferries workers in Dublin.

For the Irish Ferries dispute is not just about workers' conditions in Irish Ferries. It is not just about refusing a highly profitable private company, whose directors and shareholders are amongst the key figures of the business establishment in Ireland, to substantially reduce the wages of their employees. It is a struggle in which all workers in this country be they migrant workers, or people who were born here, be their faces black or white, all of us need to engage.

There is a concerted attack, by the business establishment - the propertied people, on workers' rights in this country. Irish Ferries is only the tip of that iceberg.

All over the country, North and South, worker rights are being undermined:

Through black work;

Through companies that will not allow unions;

Through people who work in menial jobs, without contracts of employment;

o or restrictions on hours worked;

o or commitment to enforcing health and safety conditions;

o or to pay the basic legal minimum wage of just over €7;

o or observe any of the regulations and legislation that the Government is there to enforce.

Instead the Government sponsors this behaviour, and encourages a climate of hate, through media and government practice of mass deportation of asylum seekers, encouraging us to look on migrants as 'other', as 'illegal', as scroungers, who should not be entitled to enjoy the rights of Irish born natives, but who are here, only to take our wealth and our jobs.

There is a climate of institutional racism encouraged by the Government here and it's Minister of Justice, Micheal McDowell, which betrays the very principles upon which republicans have fought down the years. Human beings are equal, because they are human. Republicans abhor the notion of second class citizens, or second class workers, which enables companies to exploit all their workers and extract more profit - be the workforce mostly Irish national or mostly 'new nationals'. We in the 6 counties have known generations of second class citizenship.

These governments have made a poor fist of it. Far from governments whose primary function is to care for the people, and ensure their rights are vindicated, we have had governments which have assumed as their sole function - maintaining a favourable environment for rich business to make huge money - and run away without paying any tax.

And the tribunals and inquiries into corruption roll ever onwards, with mind boggling detail, whilst the corrupt evade prosecution, at huge legal expense to the people of this country, in legal fees.

The greed of the rich business sector, and the corruption of government, is all a part of what the people of no property have fought to change - what comrades like Daithi Forde during his too short a life fought to change - by establishing a vision of an Ireland of equals, and rallying all to this flag - the flag under which we will forward the republican struggle as first articulated by Wolfe Tone and the united Irishmen and women.

How did it all go so wrong? We need to know this if, in our day, we are going to win this struggle for the New Ireland, an Ireland of equals, which is not based on discrimination, corruption and profit to the few.

Most obviously the Brits succeeded, through the treaty, in dividing us, and they divided us over the issue of Document 1 and de Valera's Document 2. You may say that already by the treaty debates, the divisions were set -for instance

In some areas, the IRA helped forward the take over of land, to help the small farmer - in other areas they took the small farmers to court.

In some areas the IRA set up local courts to establish the rule of the peoples' law and justice, in other areas they closed down the appropriation not only of land, but of co-operatives, in favour of establishing British law, and the rule of the local landlords and business men.

The treaty divided us - but - did brother go out to kill brother based on the difference between these documents? What is most striking about the treaty debates, which established, in history, the grounds of division, which only a few months later, saw volunteers fighting each other down at the 4 Courts, and guards firing at prisoners because they disobeyed a ridiculous order - what is most striking is the confusion of the debate - the confusion over what was the real issue - the issue of the people of no property - those who wanted an Ireland that respected their needs and looked after them, against those moneyed gombeenmen who were anxious to maintain the status quo. No one articulated what Greaves, Mellows' biographer, calls the class struggle, at least in the history books - they did not. They just muddied the waters of the debate.

And it is this muddying of the waters, that most offends Mellows in his prison writings. He knew the importance at that juncture in the history of Ireland's struggle, to declare the vision of the Democratic Programme, the vision of the Ireland where all rights to private property are subordinated to the public right and welfare.

"It is essential," Mellows writes, "if the great body of the workers are to be kept on the side of independence," and he goes on, "This does not require a change of outlook on the part of republicans, or the adoption of a revolutionary programme as such. The headline is there, in the declaration of 1919. It is already part of republican policy…It should be made clear what is meant by it."

Mellows writes, and he goes on,

Recently most momentous events have taken place in our struggle in the removal of the Army from the scene and in putting all arms beyond use. And as Gerry Adams has often pointed out, the implications of this event are not worked out any more than by our enemies as our friends, or even fully by ourselves. But all of us here feel in our deepest hearts that it has been a deciding point in the history of the struggle, even if we remain unclear the impact of this hugely significant decision.

But one thing is clear, most especially to the people of the 26 Counties - The cutting edge of the struggle has been firmly located in the 6 counties, though supported with great courage and consistency by the people of the 26 counties, who underwent years of widespread repression and imprisonment.

This has changed - the cutting edge has become all Ireland.

Now, with the Peace Process, the release of most, but not all, of our prisoners, the Good Friday Agreement, with its vision of new institutions of government, an united Ireland based on judiciable human rights and participatory government by all those in the community and in the workplace whose rights continue to be marginalised and ignored, that we have now regained the high ground of the Republican Struggle, which is All Ireland, which concerns all of us, North and South, in a fight to determine the shape of this New and reunited Ireland, which we intend to make an Ireland of Equals.

It means that each and every one of us, no matter where we live, has a part to play in this historic moment for republicanism.

And the change from July represents a further step. It is a call on all those republicans who were prepared to lay down their lives in the armed struggle for the republic, to engage with the people in articulating the vision of republicans of this new Ireland - of ensuring that now we do not divide as republicans divided in Mellows' times, and with that threw away the possibility of winning against the counter revolution. As Mellows said, republicans failed to hoist the flag, which clearly and articu/lately stated the ideals for which they fought in their day. And these are the same ideals, in our day, we have fought for over 40 years and more - the ideas of a republic based on the people of no property.

It is, if you like, the clearest of statements, an appeal to all those republicans, that now, as never before, we are needed to progress this republican politics, which already, as Mellows said, in his own times, are there - "the headline is there already, in the declaration of 1919 - Republicans must be provided with a rallying centre, and the movement with a focusing point"

We are at the very cusp of the struggle - if you like, the deciding point again, of whether it will be the revolution of the people of no property, or whether we are condemned to further years of counter-revolution, years which condemned Mellows, and so many others, to murderous death.

It is this task that all republicans are needed for - to proclaim the politics of the Democratic Programme of 1919, to set up, in every corner of Ireland, the rally point, for this revolution. July 28^{th is a call to each one of us republicans, all those people in Wexford who have supported through thick and thin, the advance of this struggle. It is now, as a result of the past amazing and almost incredible war that has been fought against the British Occupation of the 6 Counties, which has been a beacon light to all liberation struggles around the world, it is now that everyone is needed, to articulate and clarify that vision of the New Ireland, that we republicans have fought long for, and will continue to fight, to ensure, that at the end of the day, it is the people of no-property who defeat those elements who would initiate the counter revolution.}

^{And the people of no property are without doubt 90% of the people of this country, who do not own the wealth producing processes, but proclaim in their broadness of mind, 'the broadmindedness of the slave in revolt against slavery", that all right to private property must be subordinated to the public right and welfare.}

The possibility, as never before, is with us all today. We have to take up the task before us, to drive that vision which may start the revolutionary process towards a 32 county democratic socialist republic - an Ireland of equals. Then we will have learned from Mellows - and the best way we can commemorate him and Daithi Forde today, is by the application of our collective determination to forward the struggle in which Wexford has played so huge a part.

Thanks for inviting me here today, to Wexford, to join in the commemoration of Liam Mellows - to remember and to learn from those terrible days of civil war, of untold brutality and cruelty- when brother fought against brother - the days when the counter- revolution in Ireland began. Mellows writes, and he goes on,It is this task that republicans are needed for - to proclaim the politics of the Democratic Programme of 1919, to set up, in every corner of Ireland, the rally point, for this revolution. July 28

Daithi Forde Memorial Lecture, 2005.

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