Month: May 2021

Details here.

In the early hours of 31st May 1941, four high explosive bombs were dropped by German aircraft on Dublin, 3 of them falling on the North Strand and Summerhill, a residential area on the north side of Dublin City Centre.

Twenty-eight people were killed, over ninety injured, and 300 houses were destroyed.

 

Dublin City Libraries & Archives has collected eyewitness accounts and memories of the bombing and its devastating effects on the people of the North Strand.

On this site you can read about the events of that night, listen to and read accounts of people who were there and stories handed down through local families, and find out more about Ireland during the Emergency.

Exhibition of North Strand bombing, and two short films, set up outside Charleville Mall Library today until 4 pm, open to visitors, or available to see on Dublin City Libraries website dedicated to the event – https://northstrandbombing.ie/ to mark North Strand bombing 80th Anniversary commemoration. Films will also be available to view in Sue Ryder shop at Five Lamps

This is a quick round up on the current series of the podcast and plans for the future. We’re interviewing people starting this coming month and we’ll be back with more guests in the late Summer/early Autumn. Thanks again to everyone who has spoken to us so far.

Also, thanks to those who have provided documents for inclusion in the Irish Left Archive over the years; they are all listed in the acknowledgements on our content submissions page. If you have any documents relevant to the archive, we always appreciate receiving new material – you can contact us on the website.

Very welcome news this. Out this morning – first of a couple of podcast episodes on pandemics, zoonotic diseases, biodiversity loss & capitalism – next one is Monday June 7^th –

🚨 New podcast series 🚨 – with focus on zoonotic diseases (like Covid), biodiversity loss & capitalism- drawing on Irish agrarian/enviro social history- 1st episode out this Mon (May 31) 'The Landscape of Lyme'- second episode (June 7) 'The Factory Farm and the Forest Frontier'. pic.twitter.com/gGxAM0bj8K

— Peelers And Sheep (@peelersandsheep) May 27, 2021

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Will be up on www.peelersandsheep.ie & all the main podcast platforms. 

…but where is the surprise in the scenes seen in Dublin at the weekend? Given the political and media ‘good news’ framing of the easing of certain restrictions who thought that such scenes and others were unlikely to occur? After all, only a day or so before this had been trumpeted in the media. One has to wonder where behavioural psychologists were in all this too. Surely such a response was more than likely on foot of that framing.

But then there’s something very strange about how the government has seen fit, and NPHET too, to ease restrictions to the degree that they are, so far, doing so. Even the slight retreat to ‘local lockdowns’ line by the Tánaiste doesn’t seem to capture the caution necessary given the variant causing so much concern in Britain at this point, one that has already been found in this state and on this island.

Indeed one notable aspect of this is the continual use of 82% vaccinated by the end of June line by politicians and media, without the necessary caveat that this refers to a single dose, not full vaccination. So where will we stand in June/July. This from RTÉ is useful.

Based on the numbers available, and assuming no further major changes in the meantime, Prime Time now estimates that between 35% and 45% of adults will be fully vaccinated by the end of June…Prime Time now estimates that between 72% and 78% will have received one of a required two doses by June. If things go as they are currently planned – which at this stage, may be optimistic too – it now appears the 82% target (fully vaccinated target will now be reached) will be reached in mid-July.

Meanwhile on RTÉ this morning various city Mayors. As Tobuktu has noted in comments one got a tough time of it while others didn’t – but notable for how strong the Mayor of Cork was on the necessity for caution. And earlier in the same segment business owners in Dublin City centre gave an outline of how massive crowds caused real problems for them. One can imagine the cognitive dissonance for some having to choose between ‘freedom’ and support for businesses.

A gloomy point here:

Public health specialist Professor Anthony Staines, professor of health systems in the School of Nursing in DCU, agreed that some restrictions made more sense than others…
“But the question will be: what do we do when there are over 1,000 cases a day? Do we decide to muddle through it and accept that some people will die, although not as many, or do we try something else? We should not want to find out.”

To download the above please click on the following link:

To go to the Left Archive please click here.

This is the third document to be added to the Archive from Socialists Against Nationalism and many thanks to Alan Kinsella of Irish Election Literature for sharing it with the ILA.

As noted previously:

Socialists Against Nationalism was a campaign established by the British & Irish Communist Organisation, the Limerick Socialists Organisation and the Socialist Party of Ireland in the late 1970s against ‘nationalism’.

This is the second revised edition, appearing in July 1981, after the first edition released the previous month. The back cover of the document, a short twelve pages long, states:

The H-Block Demands have variously been presented by southern politicians as questions of humanitarianism or of prison reform. 

They are neither.

This pamphlet shows that the H-Block demands and the campaign built around them are an integral part of IRA strategy leading to full-scale war with the Protestant population of the North in which they hope the South will become embroiled. 

The pamphlet urges rejection of the wooly-minded ‘humanitarian interpretation of the issue and resistance to a campaign which is raising tensions to a dangerous new level.

The document is structured in sections; H-Block: What it’s All About, British Withdrawal and the ‘First National Aim’, ‘Southern Army Invasion?, H-Block: the Southern Response, and so on. 

A box on the last printed page contains the following:

Socialists Against Nationalism

Do not consider the present war in Northern Ireland to be a war of national liberation

Do not believe the territorial unity of Ireland to be an essential prerequisite of the development of socialist politics

Publish a monthly bulletin – Labour Won’t Wait

It’s the end of spring, so what’s going on in the world of left gardening?

Interesting exercise here which asks various people to list their five favourite books on the North from Claire Mitchell to Brendan O’Leary. Which leads me to a question. What five books have shaped people’s thoughts and views on Northern Ireland? I guess one could break that into two different areas – those that deal with politics, history and economics and those that are novels.

In the latter category consider some of Brian Moores novels and Danny Morrison’s The Wrong Man. Eoin McNamee’s The Resurrection Men and The Ultras which were perhaps a little over written but still good. Under his pseudonym John Creed he wrote a few nicely cynical thrillers, two of which are set in the North. A late entrant, Adrian McKinty’s books on a Catholic RUC man, Sean Duffy. Well worth a read.

As for books on the history, I’d think The Uncivil Wars from the early 1980s still holds up remarkably well. A lot of people not fond of Stephen Howe’s overview of Ireland and Empire, but even where one doesn’t agree there’s a lot in there. Cheating wildly there’s a triumvirate of Swan’s Official Irish Republicanism, The Lost Revolution and Moloney’s Secret History (and of course cheating even more there’s INLA: Deadly Divisions). But look, those are only suggestions, what do others think?