Joe O'Connor Appreciation Presentation

On Suday 28th March, members of the North Kerry 32CSM presented Tralee publican Joe O'Connor with a personalised Bodhrán in appreciation of his support of Republican Prisoners in Portlaoise Prison.

Solidarity In Derry

2010 Easter Commemorations

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Ballyseedy Commemoration

On the night of March 6th 1923, five members of the Dublin Guard were killed in a trap mine explosion in Knocknagoshal. The following night nine Republican prisoners were taken from Tralee and brought five miles out the Castleisland road to the crossroads at Ballyseedy. At 2am there was a shattering explosion. Eight men died...

After the Knocknagoshal incident the Free State authorities in Kerry stated that prisoners would be used to clear barricades in future. In Ballymullen Barracks throughout the evening of March 6th the soldiers concieved the plan. They selected nine prisoners to be blown up, making sure that they had no clergy in the family. At nightfall Captains Eddie Flood andJim Clarke constructed the mined barricade at Ballyseedy. David Neligan selected the prisoners to be blown up.

They took three prisoners from the workhouse, about a kilometre from Ballymullen, where the Kerry County Council head office now stands. Stephen Fuller, George O'Shea and Timothy Tuomey were taken from there to Ballymullen Barracks. There, they took Fuller into a room where there were nine coffins. The Free Staters told him that his comrades were in eight of them and that the other one was for him. They then took him to the interrogation room.

The prisoners were tortured using hammers. John Shanahans spine was so badly injured he couldn't walk. He was originally supposed to be one of the prisoners to be taken to Ballyseedy but he collapsed after the torture and his illness saved him. James Walsh had a shattered wrist.

The Free Staters took the nine prisoners to a lorry and told them that they were going to remove a barricade but they were unsure of the true purpose. How were sick men with broken arms supposed to remove barricades?

Captain Ned Breslin was in charge of the "barricade removal." As the prisoners were taken out the Castleisland road a soldier handed them a cigarette each and said "those are the last cigarettes you'll ever smoke."

At Ballyseedy Cross they left the lorry and were told to remove the barricade which consisted of a log laying across the road underneath a metal gate and some stones. As they stood there, hesitant, they were set upon by the soldiers who held them back while a rope was passed around them. They were tied in a circle around the barricade which contained the mine, with their arms and legs bound tight.

"The language wasn't very good," Stephen Fullerr recalls. "One of them called us Irish bastards, and he was an Irishman himself!" One prisoner began to say his prayers and he was hit on the head with a rope by a soldier who said "No prayers, you didn't give our lads time for prayers. Some of ye might go to heaven and if ye do you can say hello to our lads." Then the soldiers moved back about 100 yards into the darkness dragging electrical cord with them. "Pray as long as ye like now," they were told.

They knew what to expect then and one of the prisoners said "goodbye lads." Stephene Fuller replied "Goodbye...Goodbye lads."

.......Then up it went............

The ropes around Fuller's arms and legs were burnt and he was flung into a ditch. As he crawled away he heard three smaller explosions and machine gun fire. The prisoners who weren't already blown to pieces were finished off with grenades and machine gun fire. Fuller crawled over fields to Curran's house where he saw a doctor the next day. The skin was burnt off his arms and the back of his legs, gravel and small stones were blown under his skin. A day later they brought him to and the n at various locations until the eventual ceasefire.

When the shabby coffins provided by the Free Staters were handed over to the families outside the gates of Ballymullen Barracks, they transferred the remains to proper coffins and then broke the origional coffins and left them outside the barracks at the side of the road. A protest by Cumann na mBan almost ended in a riot. Michael O'Connell's sister found her brother in a coffin marked "Stephen Fuller." Pat Hartnett's mother could only recognise her son from a lock of his curly black hair, the rest of his had stones and shrapnel embedded in his body. The bodies of the Republican prisoners were then taken away for burial.

George O'Shea and Timothy Tuomey are buried in the Republican plot in Kilflynn.

Pat Hartnett is buried in Dysart near Lixnaw.

James Walsh and John O'Connor are buried in the Republican plot in Tralee.

Patrick Buckley, John Daly and Michael O'Connell are buried in the Republican plot in Castleisland.

RIP

Nrth Kerry Beir Bua Issue 2

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32CSM New Year Statement 2010

32 County Sovereignty Movement
New Year Statement 2010


We commend our activists for their dedication and hard work in pursuit of the republican goal in 2009. We commend all other republican activists for being true to their beliefs and for being generous and inventive in listening to the beliefs of others. 2009 was a year which witnessed that inventiveness being translated into political action which was widely recognised throughout the republican base. It represented the most potent expression of solidarity with imprisoned comrades. It is solidarity in action with those who were bereaved in the struggle. It is also the way forward for Irish republicanism.

The 32 County Sovereignty Movement has a clear vision for the year ahead. The reclamation of our sovereignty must take real form. We must give leadership to our communities to help them achieve this. Throughout Ireland communities have been betrayed by the institutions of faith, finance and state which have long purported to speak and act on their behalf. The abundance of trust placed in the integrity of individual leaders has proved misplaced. They have been left leaderless.

They have not, however, been left powerless. It is in recognition of this reality that the 32CSM will now engage with our communities. In a disciplined approach the 32CSM will liase directly with local communities to explore ways of reclaiming their sovereignty, and under these auspices, help them pursue their political and social objectives. We will focus our efforts in ensuring that all community activity will by default be a pursuit toward national sovereignty. Such a process will be a challenge to both states. It is a first step in filling the vacuum left by those who are now wholly subsumed into the apparatus of partition.

Communities so organised can become the template for national freedom. The republican objective is twofold; to secure our sovereign independence and to organise a just society within that independence. Like our republican forebears we can now enact our aspirations, we can involve our people with our beliefs in real and tangible terms. Republicanism cannot be detached from the people and the people cannot be detached from the strategies deployed to secure their freedom. We can only lead through democratic involvement with our communities.

Because it is a first step it must be taken with due diligence. We have prepared our arguments and are refining our position as mandated at our Ard Fheis. It will be democratic. It will be a learning process which will require discipline, patience and pragmatic political judgement. Republicans cannot interact at a distance. We need to create a new interface between ourselves and our people which will allow us to seek their mandate for our struggle. This mandate will not be measured by a gerrymandered vote. Its value will be in its democratic integrity and its sovereign credentials. For us the ballot box means more than just numbers. Democracy can only be returned to the Irish people when their national sovereignty is recognised.

Because it is a challenge to the state the state will obviously respond. Mistakes will be made, but also learned from, and it is this disciplined approach which will allow for this engagement to spread successfully to other areas. In part the success of this project may be gauged from the state’s reaction to it. They will not be alone. Establishment Nationalists will also have a vested interest in seeing this project fail. They will seek to divide and conquer. But a clear understanding as to the implications of its sovereign distinction and clear democratic practices will thwart them. After all it was disdain for democracy within their own organisations which led them into the cul de sac they now find themselves.

The 32CSM will be active on other fronts. Two major international initiatives will be launched in the coming year. We have observed how issues at play on the international stage are geared toward political events in the occupied six counties. We have made our intentions known to the relevant governments that we are determined to follow a particular path challenging any move that would seek to de-legitimise the republican struggle. These initiatives are for the benefit of Irish republicanism, we will not claim sole ownership of them. But we will provide the leadership that will open up counter arguments for all republicans to employ against these nefarious measures.

Republican unity in 2009 resulted in impressive demonstrations on a range of issues. The continuing media and political demonising of republicans is proof of their effect as is their grudging admission of our growth. The media and political establishment’s objective is to ignore us but through mutual cooperation we have made this impossible. In the coming year this cooperation can be galvanised within our communities as these issues now become their issues in pursuit of our national objectives.

The British Government’s strategy of finally destroying any vestige of republicanism within the provisional movement will not be allowed to undermine the separatist ideal. A resurgent republicanism will demonstrate to both governments and the international community that the destruction of the provisional movement was the liberation of Irish republicanism. It is up to all of us to ensure that 2010 clearly demonstrates this reality.

Eddie Carmody Commemoration

Eddie Carmody Commemoration

Ballylongford Kerry

21/11/09

Oration Francie Mackey

A chairde, Comrades

The circumstances in which I address you here today reflect clearly the nature of the struggle in which we are engaged and our ability to adapt to whatever the forces of occupation throws at us. As you know our National Secretary Marian Price was detained in a political operation by the RUC/PSNI earlier in the week. These events prohibited her attendance here today. But they in no way prohibited or deterred us from holding the event itself. On the contrary our presence here is the most telling answer we can give; nothing they can do will prevent us from honouring our patriot dead; nothing they can do can deter us from prosecuting the struggle to which we are collectively committed.

In honour of Eddie Carmody we respond to these arrests by announcing the formation of the North Kerry cumann of the 32 County Sovereignty Movement. Over the past years the Sovereignty Movement has resolved to utilise commemorations like these for a more practical and dynamic purpose. We firmly believe that to truly honour our patriot dead we must advance the cause for which they gave their lives. We resolved that to proclaim a link to the past we needed to demonstrate that we could advance republicanism into the future. This is the greatest service we can pay them. And this is why we endeavour that on each subsequent annual commemoration we are in a position to outline these advances. At this our inaugural commemoration of Vol. Eddie Carmody the formation of our new cumann in this area represents the first step in this process.

This process, like others around the country, will be based on political activism. It will be driven by democratic consensus within our movement to pursue the initiatives we believe will advance our goal of a sovereign independent Ireland. These initiatives cannot be implemented from a distance. Like Eddie Carmody’s involvement with the initiatives of his time there will be no easy way but rather a difficult struggle in the face of a very determined enemy. Eddie’s involvement robbed him of his life in a most vicious and brutal way.

His period of struggle witnessed some of the momentous events in the history of Irish republicanism. Within the short period between 1916 and 1922 our nation once again rose up against a most powerful empire. That sacrifice empowered our people to use their political strength as a sovereign people. That power gave us a National Parliament, Dáil Eireann, from which we declared our independence to the world. Eddie Carmody was a volunteer soldier in the army which defended that sovereignty. He did so with his life. The course of the next few years was to see other republicans also forfeiting their lives alas at the hands of their fellow Irishmen.

And the telling lesson to be drawn is that the British Government chose sovereignty as the very issue to undo all that had been achieved. They went to the very foundations of our struggle to undermine its legitimacy. Not only did they declare the democratic will of the Irish people illegal they also sought to define in their terms what the votes of our people stood for. This was the trap which some of our leaders fell into by accepting this British definition. This was the same trap which subsequent leaders would fall into also.

When republicans were confronted with similar events in 1997 they took the lessons of history and deployed them wisely. Their first move was to defend Irish sovereignty in the face of another British onslaught against it. But this time London was aided and abetted by the institution they created to usurp our sovereignty namely Leinster House. This is why our sovereignty had to be defended in an international context. Republican leaders at the time had secretly accepted the principle of consent in return for a seat at the negotiations table. The Dublin government were to renounce Articles 2&3 and the totality of the British strategy to ensure a national sovereignty did not exist on our island was completed. But they failed to take into account our reading of history. The 32 County Sovereignty Movement sent a delegation to the United Nations to lodge a formal challenge to the proceedings which led to the Good Friday Agreement and also to uphold the Irish people’s right to national sovereignty. The submission remains the only legal challenge to partition in existence.

The UN Submission was just a first but necessary step. It was from that first step we began to develop our future programme just as Eddie Carmody’s leaders did after the Proclamation in 1916. The status and importance of the UN Submission is to be found in the right of all republicans to utilise both its existence and its premise into whichever political programme they deem appropriate to their political strategies.

For us in the Sovereignty Movement the lessons to be learned from the ingenuity of Eddie Carmod’y generation did not stop there. Not only were we inspired by the prophetic and revolutionary text of the 1916 Proclamation but also by the disparity of beliefs which could unite behind it. That display of unity was a very important act of political pragmatism and one which we cannot ignore. We have to look at ourselves in terms that are truthful and realistic and come to understand that we cannot do this alone. There is disparity within the republican community but it remains a community nonetheless. The Sovereignty Movement believes that unity of both purpose and intent can be found by republicans coming together as equals and working toward common ground. We are strong advocates of the Republican Unity Initiative which we believe allows for this process to be successful. The Irish Republican Forum for Unity enabled for the first time our people to come and engage with republican organisations to move our struggle forward. It facilitated a dialogue between different groups and between those groups and our people. It is a true republican ethos.

Of late the project has experienced difficulties. No one said it was going to be straight forward. Indeed some of the problems are not problems with the idea itself but are concerned with external matters. But nonetheless no amount of ideological or political philosophising can escape the basic fact that this process must be seen through if republicanism is to advance its agenda. The Sovereignty Movement will not shirk its responsibilities in the face of any difficulties which may arise. Indeed we have long advocated a strategy which allows for us to collectively address these issues. It is on this basis that we will continue to work with other republicans and advance strategies and ideas which we believe can move us forward.

Like other cumainn in our organisation the North Kerry Cumann have expressed concern and have sought direction in the area of our involvement in the local politics of our communities. Guided by the thinking of James Fintan Lalor who said that the struggle between the tenant and the landlord is a microcosm of the struggle between Ireland and the British government we are devising strategies which allows our movement to fulfil this role. We have been active in our communities for some considerable time but as expressed at our recent Ard Fheis we need to give this activity focus and direction. As republicans we need to be able to go into our communities armed with solutions and alternatives. We have confronted the drugs scourge in areas where we have a presence but we fully realise that our efforts alone does not in itself represent a resolution of this difficult problem. We need the community to be involved with us and we need to establish a mechanism by which this can be accomplished. As republicans we cannot be detached from our people but neither can we allow ourselves be detached from our core objectives in helping them. These two activities we must make synonymous with each other and the Sovereignty Movement will be pursuing a definite strategy which will realise this.

As in Wolf Tone’s time the necessity for a newspaper as means of propagating our message remains the same. It is very heartening to see that the North Kerry Cumann have realised this with the issuing of the first edition of their Beir Bua newssheet. The importance of these publications cannot be over stated. They are not just of local concern but play a vital part in communicating a national message. The Beir Bua’s are the eyes and ears for our national paper the Sovereign Nation. They connect all cumainn in a way that shows our political activism extends throughout our organisation. But they are also a connection with our people, the raison detre of our existence.

Comrades eighty nine years ago Volunteer Eddie Carmody gave his life in defence of our peoples right to determine our own future. We are now part of his future yet what he fought for has still to be realised. Tonight in this part of Ireland we have taken a first step in achieving this. We stand here in his name, guided by his experiences, and declare that we will endeavour to stand here again and be able to report that the ideals for which Eddie Carmody made the ultimate sacrifice have been brought closer to fruition. No more glorious defeats. No more journeys into distraction. No more hiding in history. We are here to forge ahead, Eddie Carmody deserves no less from us.

Beir Bua