Irish march banned in Glasgow
On 30 August and 7 September Irish Republican marches in Glasgow were violently attacked and threatened by loyalists. A wave of anti-Republican hysteria in the Scottish media accompanied these attacks as politicians of all stripes rallied to condemn ‘sectarianism’ – their traditional way of depoliticising the issue of British rule in Ireland.
Following this outcry, and with Police Scotland warning of further loyalist counter protests on a ‘size and scale’ beyond what had already been seen, the Public Processions Committee of SNP-led Glasgow City Council banned the Republican Network for Unity march which was to have taken place on 14 September.
This is not the first time that marches in support of Irish self-determination have been banned in Scotland. In April 1981 a three-month ban, under the Public Order Act, came into force in the Labour-controlled Strathclyde region ‘to silence the growing Glasgow campaign in support of Irish political prisoners on hunger strike for political status’ (see FRFI 10). In October of that year a further one-month ban was placed on Republican marches specifically. The RCG campaigned alongside others from the Hunger Strike Action Committees to challenge this with street rallies and pickets of police stations. In May 1988 a three-month ban on ‘sectarian marches’ in the Labour controlled Lothian Region Council was in force, outlawing a march to commemorate Edinburgh-born Irish revolutionary James Connolly (see FRFI 78). During these bans, supremacist loyalist marches and ceremonies continued to take place.
Only a handful of loyalist marches were affected by the 14 September SNP ban. There continue to be on average over 200 in Glasgow every year, dominating the city’s streets with anti-Irish and anti-Catholic bigotry, especially over the summer, compared to fewer than 20 Republican marches.
This latest banning of the Republican Network for Unity march shows that nothing has changed when it comes to the British view of anti-imperialist solidarity with Ireland. In the eyes of the racist state and media it is those who march against British racism and imperialism that are the problem. As the SNP council explore legal possibilities for curtailing Republican marches in future, the RCG will continue to defend the democratic right to march in solidarity with the Irish people.
Glasgow FRFI
In memory of freedom fighter Tom Manning
Class war prisoner, man of the people, man for the people, long held political prisoner Thomas William Manning died on 30 July of a heart problem at the federal penitentiary in Hazeltown, Kentucky.
Tom – Tommy to his many comrades, family and friends – was a lifelong revolutionary freedom fighter. From the early 1970s Tom was a public activist and organiser, and later a quite successful armed militant in the anti-imperialist underground. Captured in 1985, he and some of his comrades became known as the Ohio 7 or the United Freedom Front defendants.
After many trials, Tom was hit with 58- plus 80-year sentences. He was then thrown into some of the harshest prisons in the US. Being in captivity did not stop Tom from continuing to work and struggle for justice, freedom, human rights and the socialist and environmentally sustainable future so many people and our planet desperately need. Tom struggled against abuses inside prisons and continued to work for the independence struggles in Puerto Rico and Ireland, the Palestinian struggle and the then still ongoing anti-apartheid struggle in South Africa. Tom of course always continued to support the struggles of poor and working people in this country, the struggles of black people, Native rights and land struggles, against police abuses and murders of civilians, people of colour in particular.
Tom was an artist, an accomplished painter. His artwork truly captures the dignity of working people, children, women, the strength and determination of revolutionary fighters and leaders and more. A beautiful book of some of Tom’s art was published in 2014, For Love and Liberty – Artist Tom Manning.
Now Tom is gone. Our comrade, my comrade, who suffered years of medical neglect and medical abuse in the federal prison system, your struggle and suffering are now over brother. But your example, your words, your art live on. You truly were a ‘Boston Irish Rebel’, a warrior, a person of compassion motivated by hope for the future and love for the common people.
Jaan Laaman
Ohio 7 anti-imperialist
political prisoner
Reply to article on prorogation
The RCG’s statement on prorogation is excellent, exposing the shocked denunciations of prorogation by the Left. One of the reasons they are so outraged is, of course, that Parliament is the very institution that they had hoped to use to peacefully implement socialism. The fact that a faction of the ruling class can simply swat it away if it gets too noisy or inconvenient demonstrates what a powerless sham and talking-shop Parliament is. The same will happen if a really socialist government is ever elected in this country – Parliament will just be kicked aside. Boris Johnson and Co have ripped away the fig leaf of the parliamentary road to socialism. This one practical step by reactionaries teaches more about the realities of power in Britain, and about who exercises it, than thousands of learned treatises.
Steve Palmer
Government scapegoats the poorest, most powerless and most marginalised
During times of economic and political crisis, and potential social unrest, the scapegoating of already marginalised groups as a way of deflecting social anger and protest away from those actually responsible for growing poverty and austerity is a characteristic of all capitalist societies in decline. As Britain experiences the economic consequences of leaving the European economic imperialist block, an increasingly right-wing British government is already targeting the most demonised and oppressed groups, both as a strategy for shifting public anger away from the most powerful and privileged and onto the poorest and most powerless, and also as a cover and justification for significantly increasing the apparatus of repression in preparation for growing social unrest and rebellion.
As always, the establishment media is enthusiastically assisting in the scapegoating of prisoners and those trapped by poverty, racism and disempowerment in criminalised lifestyles. The symptoms of the economic and social destruction of working class communities are instead portrayed as the CAUSE of that destruction. The measures advocated to deal with those portrayed as the root cause of the destruction of the social fabric are predictably repressive and militaristic: the virtual occupation, especially of ethnic minority communities by increasingly armed police and a massively increased prison capacity. The replacement of ‘civil policing by consent’ with colonial-style policing is reflective of a ruling class recognition that a traditionally compliant and comparatively privileged British working class no longer exists and so more colonial-style policing methods are needed to maintain ‘Law and Order’ within increasingly deprived and desperate poor communities.
The recent appointment of Priti Patel as Home Secretary is symptomatic of a more overtly repressive approach to ‘Law and Order’ and her remark that she intended to make potential offenders ‘literally feel terror’ when contemplating breaking the law signals the fate of the poorest, marginalised, and most criminalised groups in Britain and an increasingly brutal policing of the communities where they are concentrated. Patel’s openly declared support for the death penalty will no doubt manifest itself as a ‘life means life’ policy for indeterminately sentenced prisoners and the effective abolition of parole for such prisoners. Boris Johnson’s increased financial resourcing of the police and prison system and the appointment of far-right zealots to manage and administer the criminal justice system is clearly indicative of a state now seriously focused on increasing its armoury of social repression in anticipation of social unrest post-Brexit and its economic consequences for the mass of the population.
John Bowden
HMP WARREN HILL
FIGHT RACISM! FIGHT IMPERIALISM! 272 October/November 2019
