John Millington Synge's Playboy of the Western World - 1907

January 26, 1907 marked the first production of JM Synge's controversial play. At the famous Abbey Theatre in Dublin, the play went on thru protest and rioting. The language was so strong and obscene and suggestive at times that the relatively conservative crowd was shocked. On top of that, the way in which Irish peasants were portrayed turned the crowd violent and there was a riot in and outside the theatre following the play. Synge said later that he only meant the play to be "a comedy, an extravaganza, made to amuse. I never bother worrying whether my plots are typically Irish or not; but my methods are typical."

William Fay, playing the lead character in the work, said the audience became "a veritable mob of howling devils" at the very mention of a petticoat.

Sinn Fein founder, Arthur Griffith, detested the play's "foulest language", saying that it was "a tribute to the good taste and common sense of the audience". By Monday, the crowd that showed up to see the play were primed to explode before the curtain opened. WB Yeats and Lady Gregory pleaded with the crowd to stop their boo-ing and screaming, but they continued, yelling "Kill the writer" and other such violent phrases.

WB Yeats later recollected that second performance of the play: 'On the second performance of The Playboy of the Western World, about forty men who sat in the middle of the pit succeeded in making the play entirely inaudible. Some of them brought tin trumpets, and the noise began immediately upon the rise of the curtain. For days articles in the Press called for the withdrawal of the play, but we played for the seven nights we had announced; and before the week's end opinion had turned in our favour. There were, however, nightly disturbances and a good deal of rioting in the surrounding streets. On the last night of the play there were, I believe, five hundred police keeping order in the theatre and in its neighbourhood.'

The play was a bleak, though fairly accurate, representation of the Irish peasant. Many screamed that the play was indecent and guilty of promoting negative stereotypes of the general Irish population. Now it is viewed as a great cultural work of Irish literature.

  ¶ 4:15 a.m.

  School work is keeping me busy. So here's some short history things.

1803: Arthur Guinness, founder of the brewery, dies.
1881: William O'Brien, founder of the United Irish League, is born.
1971: There were riots in the Shankill Road area of Belfast.
1976: The Irish Republican Army truce was officially brought to an end
1986: Westminster by-elections. Sinn Fein drops 5% from previous years local elections.
1989: Provisional IRA stands down its West Fermanagh Brigade.
1999: UFF reinstate their "ceasefire", they would continue their reign of terror on the Catholic communities in Belfast.
2000: 20,000 people gather in W. Belfast in the memory of Tom Williams.
2001: Real IRA launch mortar attack on Derry British Army base.
2002: Saville Inquiry temporarily moves to Britain to take testimony from paratroopers involved in Bloody Sunday.
  ¶ 2:00 a.m.

  I blame the slowness of the site yesterday on the Aontacht manifesto.

Damn you Aontacht.
  ¶ 1:41 a.m.

  Today in Irish History:

1860 - Douglas Hyde, founder of the Gaelic League is born in Castlerea, Co. Roscommon

1964 - Campaign for Social Justice (CSJ) is founded. It sets the pace for the eventual Civil Rights movement.

1971: Official Sinn Fein announces an end to absentionism in Leinster House, Stormont and Westminster

1972: 7 nationalist internees escape from HMS Maidstone docked in Belfast Lough

1975: Provisional IRA ends their two week ceasefire during which the groundwork was laid for an eventual truce in February, which would last until the end of January 1976. It is now viewed as a large mistake by most outside analysts.

1992: The Provisional IRA exploded a bomb on a bus filled with civilian workers on the way to work at a Tyrone British Army base. 8 were killed. This bombing is now know as the Teebane Bombing.


  ¶ 4:18 a.m.

  Historical Summary Account - The Funeral of '48 Rebel TB MacManus

Terence Bellew MacManus was born to a traditional Fermanagh family who immigrated from Ireland to Liverpool. He would return to Ireland in 1843 to join the Repeal Association and the Young Irelander Party. During the Young Irelanders' short uprising in 1848, MacManus joined Smith O'Brien and John Blake Dillon at Ballingarry, County Tipperary, where the only sustained combat took place. For his part in the Rising, he was sent to the British penal colony of Tasmania. Within two years of his arrival, he had his escape planned. He and a few comrades, including a future American Civil War hero, Thomas Francis Meagher escaped via a ship headed for the coast of California. Upon arriving in San Francisco, he settled in the large Irish community and lived out his days.

When MacManus died towards on January 15, 1861, the Irish community of San Fran, who had grown to respect and love this man, funded his trip back to the land he loved most: Ireland. His extended funeral procession was the most effective fundraising means imaginable at that time. Any town with a sizable Irish population demanded the funeral pass thru on its way to Boston.

These stops along the train tracks and dusty roads of rural America fed the Fenian Brotherhood and Clann na Gael with both funds and fresh recruits. The demand to hold memorials for this man in every town along the way was so great that it took nearly 10 months for his coffin to reach Boston harbour.

Arrangements for further processions once the body reached Ireland were made. The Church made a failed attempt to stop these memorials from happening, but the Fenian show of strength and support in Cork City was breathtaking and quashed any hope of shutting them down. Nearly the entire population of the city and surrounding areas showed up to be a part of this man's funeral procession.

The coffin then traveled north to Dublin, where the major procession had been planned. On November 10th, 1861, an estimated 200,000 people showed up for the final trip of the Young Irelander. 50,000 men marched in military formation while a greater number lined the streets. Included along the way were numerous stops to tell the tales of hallowed spots of great fallen Irishmen. These included the church in front of which Emmet was hanged, the house where Tone's body was prepared before its burial, and the house where Lord Edward Fitzgerald was shot.

The church again tried to quell this open spurning of its authority and refused to allow the body to rest in any church or to give the dead man any funeral rites. But Father Patrick Lavelle, a previously secretive Fenian, defied Archbishop Cullen and openly performed the funeral ceremony. It was dark by the time MacManus' coffin was laid in the ground in Dublin's Glasnevin Cemetery.

This funeral helped to cement in the minds of many the true case for Irish independence from Britain. It also helped to expose the large amount of support at home and abroad for the cause of Irish nationalism. It was very much akin to the funeral of Jeremiah O'Donovan Rossa.


The quote below taken from The Wild Geese website:

"I think it no exaggeration to say that the funeral seems to me to be something in its kind unparalleled, or, at least, only to be compared with the second burial of the great Napoleon. But, in the last-named pageant, the power and resources of a great nation were called into action, while the MacManus funeral was the unaided effort of a populace trampled on or expatriated."

-Fenian Thomas Clarke Luby
  ¶ 12:50 a.m.

 
About fifteen minutes later a helicopter landed and took off (now lifting Bernadette and Michael to Misgrave Hospital in Belfast), and though the place was now completely sealed off by the Brits and the RUC it was not until the 10:30am news that Gerry McAliskey heard and realised that Bernadette and Michael were shot and that gunmen were arrested.

"We tried to get up to the kids but the RUC would not let us and said they were being taken care of," said Gerry. "We wanted to know who was taking care of them but they would not tell us." After the Avenger car had been removed that afternoon and forensic examination had been completed, Jim went to the house and cleaned up the blood which stretched through three rooms, and secured broken doors.


Reaction to the murder bid was immediate. Ruairi O Bradaigh, president of Sinn Fein, said that it was directly related tot he struggle by protesting republican prisoners in the H Blocks and Armagh jail for political status:

"It follows a pattern of attacks on vigorous and fearless H Block campaigners such as John Turnly, Miriam Daly, Ronnie Bunting and Noel Little, and is what the nationalist community in the North have come to expect for speaking out for their rights.

"Not only is it an 'offence', punishable by death, to raise a militant voice against teh oppressors of Ireland and attempt to give meaningful leadership to the nationalist people, but it requires great courage and, in the case of Suzanne Bunting and Michael McAliskey, among many others, exacts a cost also from one's family," he said.

Some British newspapers relished in the irony that paratroopers, whom Bernadette had "made the target of her campaign of hate" (as the Daily Mail put it) had given her vital medical attention.

But, one English reporter with considerable objectivity placed the incident in context. Of the woman who had witnessed fourteen Derry people being slaughtered by the same paras, Simon Winchester (formerly Irish correspondent for the Guardian) wrote: "The irony is not oen which bears much repition though, since the soldiers' presence (in Ireland) was, of course, indirectly responsible for her being the target of the shots."

It should also be noted that applications by the McAliskey's for a legally held fiream to protect themselves from such attacks have been refused by the RUC.


On Wednesday afternoon, three loyalists were charged with the attempted murder. They were named as Thomas Graham, aged 37, and Raymond Smallwood, aged 30, both of Lisburn, and Andrew Watson, aged 26 of Seymour hill, Dunmurry. The latter was also charged with the attempted murder of Sean McConville, a Catholic small businessman, who was shot and wounded at his tyre store in Dromara, County Down, in November.

When first arrested last Friday morning, the three had claimed that they were members of the Red Hand Commando, an illegal loyalist paramility group thought to be decunt, which was a ruse to detract attention away from the paramilitary Ulster Defence Association to which they belong, and which enjoys legality while pursuing a vicious assassination campaign against the nationalist people.

THE END.
  ¶ 2:12 a.m.

 

That the Brits heard the shots at all (from automatic pistols) means that they must have been close to bernadette's house one of her closest neighbours, Michael's cousin, Gerry McAliskey, heard no shooting. And if they were close enough to hear the shooting they must also have heard the approach of the loyalists' orange-coloured Hillman Avenger car, which because of the twisted narrow lane and dangerous ditches would have been reducd to travel at a crawl and would have had to have had its headlights on.

The UDA gunmen parked their car (which apparently had been hired in Belfast) in the small courtyard, got out, and began smashing fown the kitched door with a sledgehammer - a tactic similarily used by the loyalists involved in the murder of prominent IRSP members and H Block activists Ronnie Bunting and Noel Little in Belfast last October.

Inside the house they first shot Michael before shooting Bernadette, ripped out the telephone to prevent their children or any neighbours coming on the scene immediately after the shooting from dialing for help, and then went to escape. The British army have limited themselves to simply saying that they "succeeded in detaining three men at the scene" and have not clarified if this was in the house, or in confrontation in the courtyard or lane. (In confrontation with republicans the British army invaribly shoot first and ask questions later.)

COUSIN

For Gerry McAliskey, Michael's cousin, who lives sevel hundred yards below him, Friday morning began as usual He had drivel into Coalisland just before 8 a.m., had noticed no unusual cars on the road before returning home to read the morning newspaper. At about 8:30 a.m. there were footsteps in the lane. A British paratrooper, in is mid-twenties with face blackened and who was very wet and nervous, had approached Gerry's twenty year old son, Jim, outside the house.

"He said to Jim", recalled Gerry, "'You will have to come with me with your car. I need to get to a phone."

The soldier commandeered the car and Jim drove him to the home Jackie Corr, a Coalisland accountant and local independent councillor, which was about a mile away. Even at this stage Jim, nor his parents, were aware who had been shot.

The soldier had just said that there was a seriosu shooting, that "they were ambushed up in the bushes and two were very seriously injured." The soldier's hand were so cold that Jackie Corr had to dial for him. The number was not a local number and was possibly British army headquarters at Thiepval barracks in Lisburn.

Meanwhile, Gerry McAliskey was getting uneasy and went to the lane to see if his son Jim had returned. Although the soldier had claimed that his patrol radio was broken, two army landrovers, which had obviously been contacted, had arrived and went up Bernadette's lane. At about 8:40 a.m., Jim's car returned and the paratrooper rejoined his patrol.

**more tomorrow

  ¶ 2:41 a.m.

 


Late on Thursday night, Bernadette returned home from an H Block meeting of Tyrone delegates in Coalisland. Other travellers on the road that night were stopped at a UDR checkpoint around 1 a.m. at Washing Bay, about two miles from the McAliskey home.

However there is no suggestion that the UDR were directly involved in the shooting, only that their regular patrolling of this nationalist district makes them familiar with it. Given that those charged with the murder bid are complete strangers to the area (two from Lisburn, the other is from Dunmurry, also near Belfast), it is obvious that they needed extremely detailed directions.

because Bernadette and her husband were unable to talk for several days after the shooting, the British army have had a monopoly on the version given of precisely what happened last Friday morning. According to the Brits, "by chance" one of their patrols was in the area, and heard the shooting, which, they say, happened at quarter past eight.

They rushed to the scene and surrounded the three gunmen, whom they arrested. They then gave immediate aid tot he wounded couple but had to send a soldier for transport (which was delayed for almost three quarters of an hour) because their radio was waterlogged and out of order! This version poses many questions which have yet to be satisfactorily explained.



The most predominant local theory is that the Brits were given a "tip off" about the impending attack on Bernadette's life (which logic anyway could have predicted) and that they staked out her house. However, instead of preventing the attack, the Brits allowed it to take place (thus allowing the elimination of a nationalist leader), and then appeared on the scene to make a grand capture of the assassins which would exonerate them from criticism.

However, another possible theory, rather than either the Brits' "by chance" one, or the "conspiratorial" one, is the one of "incompetence". That, in fact, the Brits did have the bungalow staked out - for political observation and/or reasons of a tip off - but thru incompetence (for example, having been inadequately brief, being half-asleep, being badly positioned, or sheltering from the torrential rain - which blotted out their radio), they arrived on the scene, red-faced, seconds after the attack.

Local people, however, are suspicious about the lengthy delay in removing the McAliskeys to the hospital, and are sceptical about the British army patrol having lost radio contact with their base. But it has been attested by Michael McAliskey to Fr Faul that the British soldiers on the scene did give them vital medical aid, and attended to their wounds.

*more tomorrow
  ¶ 1:43 a.m.

  *Continuation of the Bernadette McAliskey shooting article tomorrow

Today in Irish history

1921 - Brits make policy in Ireland that allows any person found with ammunition, explosives or firearms to be executed.

1970 - IRA split made public, Provisional and Official wings recognised.

1988 - Hume/Adams meeting. A precursor to the current "peace process"

1994 - The Free State announced that Section 31 broadcast banned lifted from Provisional Sinn Fein on January 19th

1997 - The Provisional IRA, no longer on cease-fire, mortars an RUC barracks in Co. Fermanagh.


  ¶ 6:00 a.m.

 
Three members of the loyalist Ulster Defence Association, which is legal in the North, have been charged with attempting to murder prominent nationalist Bernadette McAliskey, aged 34, and her husband Michael, aged 35, at their isolated cottage at Derrylaughan in County Tyrone last week.

Bernadette McAliskey, then Devlin, first rose to international prominence in the late sixties as a leader of popular nationalist resistance in Derry, subsequently became an independent Westminster MP for Mid Ulster and was - until the assassination attempt - PRO of the National H Block/Armagh Committee.

The attack occurred early on Friday morning, although there is conflict over the exact time of the shooting, between the original British army version and that given by Dungannon priest, Fra Denis Faul, who claims that Michael McAliskey (who is in Belfast's Musgrave Hospital) told him on Monday evening that the attack took place at seven oclock and not at quarter past eight as claimed by the British Army.

The British Army's quick presence on the scene can be accounted from by the fact that on the afternoon of Thursday 15th January, the day prior to the assassination bid, a helicopter, which made two or three journeys, flew in from the direction of Dungannon and dropped off a number of patrols, about fifteen soldiers in all. A Scottish regiment has been based in this part of Tyrone but these soldiers were, strangely, members of the Third Battallion of the Parachute Regiment.


Local people saw the soldiers move into "The Moss", as Derrylaughan, a wide expanse of flat, swampy land, is known. The McAliskey home, a modest tin-roofed bungalow, is situated almost in the middle of this bogland, and can be extremely difficult for ever the locals to find, with an outsider - once off the nearest main road - having the choice of a number of pot holed lanes to get lost on. Bernadette's home, which is half surrounded by a wood, is at the one of one such cul-de-sac lane.

Local people say that the soldiers had their faces blackened and were carrying packs, which included more than one radio. The patrols split up, presumably to take up observation positions in dug outs which is normal practice in rural areas. (Bernadette, because of her political activities, may well have been under observation by such an intelligence-gathering army squad.) Dogs for miles around advertised the presence of these strangers by howling and barking all through Thursday night.

*more tomorrow.
  ¶ 2:56 a.m.

 
Whilst it is premature to assume that the protests in H Block and Armagh Jail have been resolved, and whilst extreme vigilance is still required, it will do no harm to consider the fronts republicans will have to pour their energies into, and the fronts they will have to open up in the freedom struggle when the present prison crisis has been eventually settled.

Many lessons were learnt. The peaceful and disciplined protests under the broad front of the National H-Block/Armagh Committee attracted, on a single issue, scores of thousands of people, and united people of different political persuasions as well as uniting the nationalist people in the North in a big way not seen since perhaps the early internment rallies nine years ago.

Rubbing shoulders with republicans dispelled for many of these non-republican, though nationally-minded people some of the ill pre-conceived notions they had about republicans. For many republicans, the experience has shown that thousands of people can be mobilised into a political force and with a great deal of considered thought and planning, the lessons could possibly be put to greater use over the questions of the British occupation of the six counties and Irish self-determination.

But, before moving on, one big Brit myth needs to be disposed of.

The Brits have been persistently painting the H Blocks as merely a propaganda plank for the IRA which it enjoyed and did not want removed. But events showed that the prisoners controlled their own protest and made their own decisions, that the movement on the outside made all efforts to resolve the protest, and that nobody but the Brits are into dragging their heels and prolonging the H Block/Armagh deadlock.

One spill over from those who have swallowed or consciously been part of this British propaganda is the story presently being floated, mainly in British newspapers, that the IRA and Sinn Fein do not know where to turn next because the prison protest is "almost over" and because the December Thatcher/Haughey summit meeting in Dublin (hyped up to "historical" proportions by an exuberant Haughey) has undercut Republican support and the Republican struggle.
  ¶ 1:51 a.m.

  Jan 4, 1969 Burntollet Bridge
Summary of Main Events
http://cain.ulst.ac.uk/events/pdmarch/sum.htm



The People's Democracy decided to go ahead with a four-day march from Belfast to Derry, starting on 1 January. The march would be the acid test of the government's intentions. Either the government would face up to the extreme right of its own Unionist Party and protect the march from the 'harassing and hindering' immediately threatened by Major Bunting, or it would be exposed as impotent in the face of sectarian thuggery, and Westminster would be forced to intervene, re-opening the whole Irish question for the first time in 50 years. The march was modelled on the Selma-Montgomery march in Alabama in 1966, which had exposed the racist thuggery of America's deep South and forced the US government into major reforms.
Michael Farrell (1976) Northern Ireland The Orange State London: Pluto Press. (p.249)

Available police forces did not provide adequate protection to People's Democracy marchers at Burntollet Bridge and in or near Irish Street, Londonderry on 4th January 1969. There were instances of police indiscipline and violence towards persons unassociated with rioting or disorder on 4th/ 5th January in Londonderry and these provoked serious hostility to the police, particularly among the Catholic population of Londonderry, and an increasing disbelief in their impartiality towards non-Unionists (paragraphs 97-101 and 177).
Cameron Report. Disturbances in Northern Ireland. September 1969. (Cmd 532) (Summary of Conclusions; paragraph 15)

The People's Democracy March left Belfast on 1 January and arrived in Derry on 4 January 1969. The march had been organised by a group called People's Democracy which had been formed on 9 October 1968 and mainly consisted of students from the Queen's University of Belfast. The march was intended to increase the pressure for social justice and to draw attention to events in Northern Ireland since the Derry March on 5 October 1968.

Loyalists viewed the People's Democracy and the march as another attempt to undermine the Unionist government of Northern Ireland. A number of leading Loyalists, including Ronald Bunting and Ian Paisley, had indicated in advance of the march that they would be calling on 'the Loyal citizens of Ulster' to 'harrass and harry' the four-day march.

On each day of the march groups of Loyalists confronted, jostled, and physically attacked those taking part in the march. At no time did the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC), who were accompanying the march, make any effort to prevent these attacks. The most serious incidents occurred on the last day between Claudy and Derry. The march was ambushed at Burntollet Bridge by approximately 200 Loyalists, including off-duty members of the 'B-Specials', and 13 marchers required hospital treatment.

The march was again attacked as it passed through the Waterside area of Derry. Later in the evening members of the RUC attacked people and property in the Bogside area of Derry sparking several days of serious rioting.

The way in which the police mishandled the People's Democracy march confirmed the opinion of many Catholics that the RUC could not be trusted to provide impartial policing in Northern Ireland. The events also further alienated many in the Catholic population from the Northern Ireland state. The march also marked the point where concerns about civil rights were beginning to give way to questions related to national identity and the constitutional position of Northern Ireland.

As what was left of the marchers continued on to Derry they were also attacked twice in Derry’s Waterside before receiving a rousing welcome in Guildhall Square.   ¶ 2:32 a.m.

  Today in recent history

I think it needs to be pointed out, in light of the recent campaign of economic firebomb attacks, that the Provos too, late in their history, began the same type of campaign.

On January 1st 1994, the Provisional IRA began a series of economic firebombings in Northern Ireland. Amongst the early targets was the Linen Hall Library in Belfast. Minimal damage was caused to this collection of historical documents.

Later that month, the Provos would continue this campaign in England, exploding two devices in a shop in Oxford St. London on the 28th.

I just point this out because I have recently heard many Provos deem this practice silly and out of date. I believe the volunteers carrying out these firebomb attacks need to continue their efforts, if only in a capacity to resist "normalisation".


Happy New Year.
  ¶ 11:40 a.m.